by Shauna O’Meara
The heat-cracked thoroughfare of the Lahad Datu Night Market is packed with Last Chance tourists, the stop-start progression of browsers providing ample opportunity for pickpockets, vendors, and beggars.
Sitting on a crate behind a door straddling two fish buckets, I fan myself with a switch of pandanus as I watch an American run her hand across the weave of a baloy. It’s hot and I would give anything for a plastic stall sheet to shield me against the late-afternoon sun.
“How much?” The woman has inspected all seven baloy and chosen the deep-water ripples of navy, sapphire, and sky blue.
“Three-hundred-and-thirty ringgit.” “For a mat?”
“They take months to weave.” And that’s without paddling a boggo’ out to Pulau Batik to find and cut the pandanus leaves, dodging pirates, territorial fishermen, and the swift, black patrol boats of the ESSFOR coast guard.
“How do I know these aren’t from some Chinese sweatshop?”
We haven’t covered “sweatshop” in English class yet. But I know what Chinese means.
“No. I made these. Sama Dilaut, not Chinese.” And because she might not have heard our word, I offer up the Malay term: “Bajau Laut.” And the English one: “Sea gypsies.”
The woman is blank on all counts, which is surprising given how often Sama from the tourist islands of Selakan and Mabul feature on local billboards.
She caresses the baloy again, before turning to my cheapskate options: hunks of painted coral on strings.
Indian tourists wearing the blue and white-flash souvenir shirts of Sea Lightning Tours pass between my makeshift stall and the stalls selling sea-grapes, sautéed aquafarm urchin, and chilled coconut pudding.
The idea of paying to night-kayak on waters choked with algal bloom has always struck me as strange, given the stench and toxins.
Solar screens throughout the marketplace alert tourists to the fire ban, the caning penalties for open-air smoking. High above them, painful to look at against the sun-blanched sky, coconut trees drape desiccated fronds toward the asphalt.
I study the American’s eyes to see which colours they alight on and which are likely to bring more sales if repeated. The Chinese and Sulu- sympathisers like red. North Africans from dustbowl lands seek the nostalgia of green. Americans favour blue and orange.
She selects a fan of red coral. “Wow!” The minute branches divide and divide again, fine as sugar snaps. “When I went to Australia last year, all the corals were breaking down from acid in the water. This is just beautiful.”
“Only ten ringgit.” I have been experimenting with wordplay. I like the English modifiers “only” and “just.” Just ten ringgit. Only ten ringgit. Not much to spend. Treat yourself.
“And it’s real?”
“Straight from the waters of Bodgaya and Bohey Dulang. The reef is protected from typhoons so the coral skeletons stay intact.”
“So it’s bleached?”
“That section of Tun Sakaran is. But the colour is copied from live ones at Pulau Mabul.”
Relief fills her face. “Yes. I’ll be scuba-diving there on Saturday. Figured I had better come and see the reef before it’s all gone.”
I keep my expression rigidly polite. It is April in the second half of the worst El Niño on record. In December, two category-five typhoons raged across the South China Sea, decimating Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan, and Pahang and, with them, most of Peninsula Malaysia’s rice harvest, agriculture, and palm oil. Uprooted Malaysians and flood refugees from the Philippines, Bangladesh, China, Laos, and Vietnam streamed into my world: drought-stricken Eastern Sabah. There is not enough water, not enough food, and not enough jobs. Without Last Chance tourists like this woman, we’d be having food riots and street battles like Indonesia.
“Ten ringgit,” I repeat, holding out my palm. The first time I ever did this was by accident, the Austrian tourist so taken aback that he handed over his money.
The woman hesitates. “Last chance ever.”
Charmed, she makes the transaction.
I murmur a quick du’a of thanks to Allah as I slip the money into the pandanus purse at my hip. Mopping sweat from my face with the edges of my tudung headscarf, I scan the market for the blue uniforms of ESSFOR polis.
An anti-dengue brigade moves from stall to stall, checking for mosquito larvae, chiding anyone with a container open to the elements. As if called forth, the screens alert the marketplace about mosquito- borne diseases and proper safeguards, ending with the usual refrain: These diseases are notifiable. Not reporting malaria, dengue, Japanese encephalitis, and Rift Valley fever to health authorities is an offence under Malaysian law.
Three boys from my community, shabby-clothed and barefoot, beg food from an Australian laden with mango and rambutan. He kicks out at them: “Piss off!”
“Hey!” I call them over. “You be careful ESSFOR doesn’t get you.” They cackle like macaques. “We’re too slippery, Maslina. Like fish!” “Fish get put in cages,” I warn.
That sobers them. We have all noticed the black-ring aquaculture cages advancing across Darvel Bay as the reefs die and no longer fall under environmental protection.
Do you have your MyKad on you? I look up at the words on the screens as the children caper away. People twelve years and over must carry their MyKad at all times. It is illegal to trade without a MyKad.
I shift uncomfortably on my crate. Without a MyKad, I am an illegal citizen and so is my stall.
I glance at the coconut juice vendor in the neighbouring stall. She stares pointedly at the screen. She knows that I am Sama: my hair is brine- clumped, I wear an ill-fitting dress found on a beach, and my sun-baked skin is heavily mosquito-bitten.
I look away, hoping she will lose interest.
A girl in revealing clothes—practically a bikini!—trots past with a plateful of clams. My stomach rumbles at the memory of their fleshy innards dripping with hot satay, but my brain reels in horror.
Doesn’t she know? There are warnings all over Lahad Datu. “Hey, you!” I call in English. “You can’t eat that!”
The girl looks down at her plate. “Clams?” “Yes. Lokan panggang.”
“But they were selling it.”
“They shouldn’t have.” The vendor will be an illegal stall like mine. An undocumented Filipino, Indonesian, or Tamil worker let go from a failing plantation, unable to find new work or return to his climate-ravaged homeland, eking a living any way he can. “The algal bloom.” I think of the Sea Lightning tourists. “It feeds on river water carrying fertiliser from the plantations. It makes a paralysis poison that kills people who eat shellfish.”
“Oh. Really?” Inexplicably, she giggles.
As she sashays away without thanking me, I wonder if such foolhardiness is standard for Americans or if the reek of dead fish and gulls from the nearby waterfront addles their brains.
“I saw what you just did.” The terrible attempt at Bahasa is accompanied by a strong waft of mosquito repellent as a white woman in her twenties ambles up to my stall. Despite the swelter, she is clad head to toe in protective clothing, hair shrouded in a respectful tudung. “It was thoughtful of you.”
“I couldn’t just let her die,” I reply in English.
She chuckles wryly. “Ah, people that stupid shouldn’t breed.” “Darwin,” I say proudly, recognising the sentiment. “Evolution.”
Approval quirks her mouth. “Yeah. Evolution. How did you learn that?” She immediately looks mortified. “I-I’m sorry. That was really presumptuous!”
I know what she sees. The same thing ESSFOR looks for when conducting operasi raids: a lack of visible prospects. “No, you guess right. I go to an engio learning centre.”
“Engio…. Oh, NGO! The Youth Aid Society one?”
I nod. “The students are palm worker children, Sama, and refugees. Some come for the agar-agar broth we get after lessons, but I go to learn languages. I know Bahasa, English, Filipino, and a little Indonesian.”
“You looking to go to university?” She says it like it’s just something one asks a student.
“Uh, no.” I would need a MyKad for university. “I want to become a tour guide. I could make a better living showing tourists the islands than weaving baloy.”
The woman examines a mat with black and cobalt hourglasses shot through with randomised stitches of neon blue. “It’s a pity I can’t buy one. This one’s beautiful. Like a night sky.”
It is actually the flashes the algal bloom makes at night when dying fish disturb the surface, but I don’t tell her that. The elders teach that a true baloy comes straight from nature. Sometimes, I can’t help thinking they had prettier inspiration.
I select orange corals matching the forlorn orang-utan on her shirtfront. “Coral like this is very rare,” I begin, taking my cue from what the American had said about Australia.
Her eyes flash. “If it’s rare, you shouldn’t be taking it.” The blood abandons my face.
I get slowly to my feet and take a step back, trying to look calm. She is an informer sent to catch me. One of the Reef Guardians the engios set amongst the island people to inform them of illegal poaching.
The girl looks confused. “Are you okay?” “A-are you going to turn me in?”
“Huh? No! I just think nature should be left alone.”
I realise belatedly that her orang-utan is bounded by engio logos:
Hutani, Wilderness Asia, World Land Foundation.
My lip curls as I recognise the engio that convinced Sabah Fisheries to rezone huge swathes of Darvel Bay and Tun Sakaran Marine Park No Take because the region was found to be bleaching slower than other reefs. They had all believed that keeping Sama from their ancestral fishing grounds would allow the fish to breed and replenish other waters. They hadn’t counted on seesawing floods and droughts hitting the region; suddenly, millions of starving people were on the move and they didn’t pay much heed to fishing zones and poaching laws.
I turn one of the pieces to reveal the white beneath the paint job. “This coral is dead. Food for algae and starfish. They say the last surviving reefs of Sabah will whiten and die this year. That’s why all the tourists are over here braving the swelter and dengue outbreaks: it’s their last chance on earth to see a live reef.” I indicate her shirt. “And you are here for the same reason! Last chance to see the apes before the exodus of Peninsular MyKad-holders forces the Sabah government to trade trees for housing and food production.”
She bristles. “We bought the Lahad Datu bridging sanctuary outright in 2021. Malaysia can’t touch our land.” I realise she is an actual engio worker. Not just someone wearing the souvenir. “I am not here like these disaster-porn people because I have given up, but because I believe good things can still be achieved if people step up. The NGO who runs your school believes the same: that children can be saved by education if only given the chance.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see a man approach a thin Tamil woman cooking spiced sainglag on a solar-powered hot plate. He leans close and says something. Her eyes grow huge and she starts rifling through a battered handbag, but I can tell from her body language she doesn’t have what he seeks. She starts babbling something that can only be, “Please, don’t arrest me. I have children.”
Another stall owner is forced to his knees and wrist-bound with yellow cable ties. The ESSFOR officers are not even in uniform. They are being discreet to not upset the tourists.
As if from great distance, I hear my customer saying, “You know, I could show you around the orang-utan sanctuary. Then you might understand—”
I am small for my age. I could pass for under twelve.
A man approaches the neighbouring stall. At first I think he is buying coconut juice, but then I see the vendor’s MyKad catch the sunlight. Moments later, she jerks her head toward me. I gawp at her as the man looks my way.
The woman with the orang-utan shirt is still talking when I flee. I race along the packed asphalt, weaving through the tourists on practiced feet, swiping loose bananas and mangoes as I go, the holler of vendors following in my wake.
***
I take the long way home, concealed within the plantations north of town. All around me, oil palms stand brown-tipped and wilting, their knobbly fruits undersized or mummified, a carpet of dropped flowers testament to the drought and heat they’ve had to endure.
A boy lies dead at the foot of one of the palms. He is little more than skin over bone, already stripped of his clothes and shoes, if ever he had them. I wonder if he died of disease or if starvation made him climb the palm, risking his life on the electric wires strung to prevent fruit theft by scavenging primates and pygmy elephants.
Cries from the market lift in the baking air. Illegals trickle into the plantation, moving swiftly through the palms. Their numbers will attract ESSFOR polis. I force my tired legs to move faster across the dusty, uneven ground.
Miles go by.
We pass a complex of earthen ponds lined in black plastic, the water clogged with plastic bottles to reduce evaporation. The remains of Sabah’s freshwater aquaculture industry, the ponds that were once home to red tilapia, walking catfish, and carp are now irrigation reservoirs: the only thing keeping the palms alive and thousands in work.
I salivate at the thought of the water resting dark and cool beneath the bottles, but know I can’t drink it any more than I can drink the sea.
The water is full of mosquito insecticide. I shudder as I recall the day the gate was left open and a whole troupe of proboscis monkeys died in agony beside the ponds.
Near the river, the palms are all dead: parchment-grey sentinels killed when typhoons forced the sea upriver, filling the groundwater with salt.
I follow the steep, crumbly riverbank downhill toward the Bay. The water is soupy and sluggish with drought. Green algae clogs the surface, elevated here and there by the long shapes of logs and branches.
Hornbills watch me suspiciously from stripped, bone-white trees leaning over the water.
The reek of algae, dead fish, and the fertiliser factory greets me as I step from the trees. The smell mixes with the heat and humidity to form air so cloying it almost has to be chewed to be breathed.
I cross the shiny, metal bridge separating the Lahad Datu Industrial Zone from my wooden, stilt-house community as buses of tourists and trucks of oil, fruit, and rubber rumble past.
At the end of the bridge, an elevated, plank footway extends from the riverbank to the first stilt-house. Passing along the warm, ash-grey wood into the community of house platforms and elevated footways, I reach the home my brother and I share. Out of habit, I check the water barrels beneath the palm-thatch eaves for mosquitoes. Then, taking an earthen water carrier, I follow a path of planks deep into the mangroves beyond the house to the plastic water-harvesting bags I’ve affixed to clumps of leaves.
I know that the water is probably laced with heavy metals and poisons from the industrial effluents and sewage seeping into the river, but lighting a boiling fire, even on a bare beach, carries a minimum of seven years. In the advancing dark, an open flame or closed drum fire would stand out brightly to the infrared eyes of the aerostat security balloons hovering off the coast.
I slip beneath the house platform to the lepa riding low in the stinking water. In the tigerish orange and black shadows of evening, I see that Tadi has finished laying and caulking the deck, an impressive effort given every inch of the five-meter craft is constructed from interlocking puzzle pieces of driftwood, shined with sharkskin until glowing.
With all the typhoon rebuilding, and groundwater salinization affecting timber yields, wood prices are out of our league. Even driftwood is hard enough to find, given the number of people courting arrest to boil their drinking water.
I approximate the Qiblah and perform Maghrib prayer until the red light of sunset fades. Then I turn my palms to the early stars and say a du’a over the banana, mango and water, hoping Allah understands the desperation behind my theft.
I open the spot on the deck where Tadi and I keep our treasures. Among rare shells and barnacled things scavenged from typhoon wrecks is a collection of language dictionaries and Roaming Planet guidebooks abandoned by seasons of tourists.
Lying on my back across the boat, I angle a China travel guide to the light of the Industrial Zone and fantasise about where I will go once I am a language master with enough money to bribe officials for a MyKad.
For a people who used to roam the Coral Triangle deep into the waters of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, our lack of documents renders us very static. One would think being linked to no state would come with the freedom to travel at will, but, with everyone reinforcing their borders, we are stuck here in Sabah, not just starving for food and water, but starving for experiences and new stories. Often, I envy the tourists their ability to go and see far more than I do the effortless way they order their food.
The soft gongs of a kulintangan ring out. A healing rhythm, it is the most common sound in our village these days. I wonder who will be leaving us next.
Malarial mosquitoes swirl, catching the light. The Sama patient lying before the kulintangan is probably dying of malaria or dengue and yet Tadi and I survive on. I wonder if we are Allah-blessed, or if we have somehow—I try out the concept I learned in science—evolved to survive the diseases.
Pombots rumble up the river mouth: the first of the seaweed worker boats returning home.
Tadi arrives and swings down into the lepa. He’s warm and drip-dried, a shimmer of salt crystals on his skin. He smells beautiful, Tadi: like the ocean. Taking up his deck knife, he cuts me half a pineapple.
I suck the sweet flesh. “Thank you.”
He flicks through the China book; I see the subtle roll of eyes. He doesn’t know why I bother.
“We had raids at the market tonight. I lost all my baloy…” “Really?”
A sudden lump in my throat catches me off-guard, stops me speaking. I nod stiffly.
He notices my upset. “Oh, Maslina. I’m sorry.”
“Everything is going MyKad-only! I even saw Indonesian rubber workers and children from my school scavenging tonight. Apparently, they are all being replaced by Peninsular Malaysians!”
There is no wind. In normal seasons, we would have had our evening rainfall by now, to shift the river and wash out the stink of waterlogged mangroves, algae, and sewage.
“There are thousands of people on the move, Maslina, every one of them needing work. They favour Malaysian citizens because they’re the only ones who can vote.”
“All the more reason for us to be allowed market stalls,” I insist. “If people without MyKads can’t work in the factories and plantations any more, where else can we get money besides those rich Last Chance tourists?”
“They don’t see it that way. And, to answer your question, we Sama can get money from the seaweed farms.”
He sees me wrinkle my nose. “What, it’s beneath you? We’re water people, Maslina. Seaweed is something we are good at that can’t be replaced by Peninsular land-folk.”
“But it’s the same thing every day! The same water. The same horizons. The same skills, over and over!”
“So?”
“So, it’s…” I want to say boring, but taking breaks to watch the last of the green turtles and mantas glide through the water is hardly boring. Even diseased, with spreading starbursts of bleached coral, the seafloor is still beautiful, ever-changing. There is just no prospect of going anywhere, learning skills for the world beyond Sabah. Adapting to shifting times…
I realise what I want to say. “It’s risky.” “Risky?”
“In science, we’ve been studying something called evolution.” I don’t get all of it, especially the part where some orang-utans turned into people and others decided to remain animals, but I get the part about some creatures being more fit. “Animals that only adapt to one way of living are at risk of dying out if things change too much. I think that goes for people too, Tad.”
“And you think going to language classes and learning science is going to be that lifesaving adaptation?”
“Maybe.”
“Not without a MyKad it won’t. It doesn’t matter what skills you develop, Maslina; without that card, you can’t work.” He jerks the pouch containing his daily earnings so I can hear the coins clink. “Using your skills to earn, even if you don’t like it, is a far better adaptation. Besides, we are more likely to be killed on land than at sea.”
His mouth turns down and I know he is thinking about our parents, missing since the 2045 famine protests, three years ago.
While my take-home message from our parents’ food struggles had been to finesse the skills wanted by booming industries like tourism, their arrests had only reinforced Tadi’s view that safety for Sama lay with the sea. It is why he is rebuilding the family lepa, lost when the massive flooding of January 2044 caused the Segama River to sprout a branch that cleaved its way through our community and fleet to Darvel Bay.
I stare out across the water, at the algae flashing blue around a dying fish.
Tadi’s right, in his way. Our people have been seafarers for so long, even our name means people of the sea. It seems foolish, even a little arrogant, to think one as tiny as I will be there to witness the end of so long a history.
At the same time, everything is changing very quickly. Tadi rarely enters town. He doesn’t see the tensions building everywhere: the bodies of street-children and glue-sniffers being taken away in the predawn hours before the tourists arrive, the aggression with which the MyKads have started defending even those things basic to survival—water, food, timber, jobs, and shelter. Too many people in Sabah and not enough for all. It must surely come crashing down.
***
We are woken in the night by the mutter of biodiesel outboards ascending the river. They cut out as they reach the stilt-house community, their rumble replaced by angry voices.
“Is that the other seaweed harvesters returning home?” I ask Tadi. “They’re back late.”
“Something must have happened.”
We climb the stilts to our house platform. Several platforms over, illuminated by the all-night mills, refineries, and processing plants of the opposite bank, the seaweed workers are clustered outside the nakura’s home. I hear requests for an urgent council meeting.
Tadi and I wander over.
“What’s going on?” Tadi asks. “Has there been trouble?”
“An ESSFOR patrol came to the seaweed farm today, checking for MyKads.”
My blood runs cold.
“They told the owner that if he ever hires undocumented labour again, he will be arrested for harbouring.”
“They said we look like Sulu terrorists,” one of the bigger boys adds.
“What, because we look Filipino?” Tadi growls. “Don’t they know their history?”
We all nod and mutter angrily. Many of our ancestors migrated to
Sabah waters in the 1970s, escaping the war in the Philippines. Of course we look Filipino.
The elders arrive and the council meeting begins, led by the most senior village man: the nakura.
Anger and fear is audible in the boys’ voices as they explain what happened. “They told our boss to spread the word to all the other farmers! No one is going to hire us anymore! How are we going to live?”
Tadi and I eye each other: he is remembering our earlier conversation.
He knows as well as I do how grim our community’s prospects are without the year-round seaweed harvest. All the land jobs are becoming MyKad. We are not allowed to fish or take any of the endangered sea cucumbers or giant clams. Even the pandanus palms and wild coconuts seldom have fruit on them anymore, so high is the demand by other starving seafarers.
Despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation, the elders counsel calm. The young men protest: how are they supposed to remain calm when begging and picking through bins for scraps could well be their futures?
No one has any suggestions for income alternatives.
Eventually, the meeting breaks with everyone dissatisfied, and Tadi and I head back to the lepa.
“What are we going to do, Tadi?”
“I don’t know. Sleep. Figure it out in the morning.”
We do fall asleep, but it does not last long. I am awoken in the wee hours by a boat knocking against the stilts of my home and sit up to see Tadi clambering into a boggo’ dugout canoe. In the darkness, other boggo’s with single and paired passengers bob on the water, haloed by brilliant blue algal light. I hear voices, and recognise some of the boys from the meeting.
My heart lumbers into an uneasy gallop. “What are you all doing? Tadi?”
“Shh. We’re just getting food. Those are our fishing grounds by historical right. Those ESSFOR bastards owe us a meal at least.”
His accomplices mutter agreement. “It’s illegal to fish. It’s all No Take.”
“Tell that to the pirates and the boats coming up from Indonesia. Tell that to the big trawlers who bribe ESSFOR to look the other way.”
I make an exasperated sound. Like that’s going to hold up in court! “I’m coming too, then.”
“No.”
“Tadi!”
“No.” In the faint, algal light, I see the warning in the set of his brows.
“You know where I’m going and why you can’t come,” he says quietly. “Oh no, Tadi. You can’t…. None of you can.” They are going to raid an
aquaculture farm, probably one of the Pulau Batik ring cages crowded with terrified groupers or barramundi. “You know they don’t always arrest cage poachers.”
They used to trial them, but the hungry were too numerous. Now, to be caught fishing anywhere at night, especially the aquaculture farms, is to
be convicted of piracy. Pirates seldom make it back to shore: many are shot and fed to the cages.
“I know. Say a du’a for me, Maslina. That we all return safely.”
***
Furious and terrified, I prostrate myself and pray to Allah and the ancestors the rest of the night. Despite my best efforts, there is no sign of the little fleet when sunrise breaks over the bay, filling the river with swirling oil-rainbows.
I concoct a breakfast of sainglag and stolen mango and settle in to wait, flicking through my guidebooks. But I can’t concentrate. My heart flip- flops between excitement and disappointment with every craft that enters the river.
Midday brings no sign of them. I prepare myself for the worst.
If Tadi is dead, I can’t help him. But if he and the others have been taken alive, I will need bribes. I think of the engio woman from the market, her offer to visit the orang-utans. Engios have money—I can only pray she has as much compassion for people as she does for apes.
The Lahad Datu orang-utan sanctuary is a tiny island of forest: an animal migration stepping-stone halfway between the main orang-utan habitats of Danum Valley and Tabin Wildlife Reserve.
Following the noise of people to the rehabilitation facility, I stagger to a halt just inside the grounds, struck dumb by the sheer scale of the facility—the sheer resources. There are volunteers everywhere: cleaning, feeding, and entertaining the orang-utans; bottle-feeding the babies; helping the injured adapt to missing limbs, relearn how to forage.
Platforms of cut fruit the street children would die for decorate every tree. There is even an orang-utan hospital!
“Hey! You came! Aren’t they amazing?”
The engio woman trots up. I realise we don’t even know each other’s names, and I am not even certain it matters, given how far apart our worlds are.
I had thought the first words out of my mouth would be a request for money, for a paying job. But all I can feel is a sick resentment at the unfairness spread out before me.
“Who pays for all this?” I rasp.
“Americans. People overseas. They like orang-utans.”
I don’t like orang-utans. They break into orchards, causing the farmers to put up fences not even Tadi and I can scale.
“Don’t they like children?” I blurt. I think of the family that had once occupied the house next to ours. Their daughter had died of cholera—treatable, or so I have been told, had they simply had access to medical care.
The woman blinks at that. “I … I don’t know. I guess they see the orang-utans as here first. They feel sorry for them because they are innocent and have no say.”
We are innocent. We have no say.
I think of my people, crushed beneath the heel of statelessness and ever- worsening deprivation, their futures looking bleaker by the day, and I finally understand why these orang-utans had decided to stay in the trees. Why they didn’t choose to become human.
They had found a way to harness the compassion of the wealthy: the ultimate survival adaptation.
The woman turns to me. “Oh, I nearly forgot! Wait here.” She dashes into a palm-thatched hut and returns with a fat envelope. “I took your mats and sold them for you. The people here think you are very talented. We could have sold them twenty times over.” She grins. “If you make any more, we’d be happy to be your sales outlet.”
I gape at her, my heart swelling with gratitude.
Twenty times over. She must surely have sold them cheaply. And yet, the envelope feels heavy.
“How much is here?” “Three thousand ringgit.”
I nearly drop the envelope.
Certainty rushes through me as I lift my palms to the canopy and cry tearful thanks to Allah: Tadi is alive! For how could he not be, after such a blessing?
Three thousand ringgit is more than enough for bribes and two MyKads. We will be allowed to work, to go to school. My people will have a market for their baloy. Things are looking up.
I cannot wait to plan the itinerary of all the places we will go.
Dr. Shauna O’Meara is a veterinarian, writer, and artist based in Australia. She was a winner of the 2014 Writers of the Future Contest, and her stories have appeared in Cosmos magazine, Writers of the Future, The Worcester Journal, Midnight Echo magazine, and several Australian anthologies, including the recent Fablecroft collection In Your Face.