As we climbed into a water taxi, I realized that my cousin was taking me here out of duty, to bear witness, to see where Father was from. I was glad Leo wasn’t with us on this river tour without a life jacket. As the sun shone, we careened under the wooden plankways and through the village, past shops and an array of colourful houses on stilts. Children in hijabs passed on their way home from school, and one boy expertly rode his bicycle in the opposite direction above us on the narrow wooden dock. The driver told us there was once a fire in a section of the village that spread quickly, since all the buildings on stilts were made of wood. The structures we saw were rebuilt with more fireproof material such as concrete siding and equipped with air conditioners and the latest appliances. The houses looked like the modest wartime bungalows in Ottawa, as if they were plucked out of any Canadian suburb and placed on stilts in the Brunei River.

We stopped suddenly and Auntie Choo Neo pointed upwards. “We grew up here! Your father and me. Look at that! All of us in that one small house.”

It was now occupied by a family who dangled their laundry over the murky river, waving like flags. A fan was perched in a window like a bird, wrenching its whirring head to one side. I tried to imagine Father as a young boy, living in this house on stilts, jumping into the river to swim.

Tears formed in the wrinkled corners of Auntie Chee Neo’s eyes. “You know, when I was growing up, I hated this place. People would look at our home and know we were poor. It only had two rooms, and all four kids had to share one—me, Uncle Ah Meng, your father, and our baby sister, Ah Muey. All the villagers knew we were the odd ones here. Not many Chinese people lived in Kampong Ayer, but we had no choice. My brothers were so naughty we got kicked out of our rented house, and the only place we could live was among the Malay on the water. We used to shit directly into the river!”

I apologized to John for the vulgarity of Auntie Choo Neo’s memory, but he just laughed.

“Do you miss it, Auntie?” I asked.

“No, Canada is my home,” she said without hesitation.

After we took some pictures, Auntie gestured that we could go. Whizzing by, the driver pointed at a rock poking out of the river. Perched there, suntanning, was a large crocodile, mouth open, eyes closed. He looked regal, like the king of all dragons, resting before taking calls from his subjects. The wind swept our hair as the motorboat sped deeper into the jungle, away from the village. After a few minutes, we turned towards the shore and our driver pointed upwards. In the distance, we saw proboscis monkeys snacking on some green unripe fruit in the trees, watching us intently as though staking their territory and reminding us who really belonged here. I felt the lure of this place, as if the mangroves’ claws clutching the earth underneath the salty water were trying to embrace me. Holding on to the side of the boat, I was surprised how a place could make me feel alive in a different way, seen and understood.