Seated at the table in front of me was an older uncle wearing a white tank top and shorts, flip-flops dangling from his feet. He was smoking and talking to another uncle who was wearing neatly pressed cream-coloured pants tailored for his thin frame. His white button-up shirt was crisp, his shoes were shined, and his posture was relaxed but proper. If he were in a Chinese movie, he would have been the plantation owner. He was smoking and listening intently to the other man, who was now cleaning his teeth with a toothpick and occasionally clicking his tongue against his teeth. The sound reminded me of Father after dinner, readying himself for a smoke.

I looked around and saw women here, too, some wearing a kebaya and flip-flops. I surveyed each of them, searching for a familiar look, a recognizable smile, habitual movements, or the memorable planes of Mother’s face. Although I didn’t see Mother, I felt her presence. Tasting the food was like watching a classic old flick that I had seen many times before. Everything we had eaten on this trip, and especially here in Ipoh, reminded me of Mother’s cooking. While sipping a soup, I realized it had been so long since I had tasted this fragrant four-spice Chinese sibut, with black, plate-like rehmannia herbs and long, thin slices of white peony root. I looked into the black abyss in my bowl, where pieces of spent hen, goji berries, and red dates bobbed, and savoured the tong Mother used to make for me when I was sad, sick, or just wanting comfort. It was as if she had placed the bowl in front of me herself.

Everyone around me in the kopitiam was Chinese. I could understand their Hokkien, and when they spoke English, I swayed rhythmically with the cadence of their accents. I felt strangely at home here, as if I had lost my memory, but my senses were alerting me to my past.

But then, I was suddenly reminded that I was a foreigner. An uncle selling drinks approached speaking Malay, and I had to tell him I didn’t understand. While he gaped at me, I considered how Mother must have had to speak bahasa Melayu here and in Brunei. She had fought with Father about how English had become the lingua franca in our house, but living in this part of the world, Father would have undoubtedly fought against bahasa Melayu. Father never liked talking about the Malays, blaming them for his prior statelessness, and preferring the colonial English he was taught in school, perhaps too ardently. I looked beyond the bamboo shades to see women out on the road donning hijabs and gracefully gliding to the hawker stalls where halal food was served. I was mesmerized by one woman, who wore a long-sleeved silk blouse and a sharp watch around her wrist, her manicured fingers adorned with delicate rings, her makeup perfect and her sunglasses lending her the mysterious aura of a celebrity. The uncle in flip-flops saw me watching the women and said, “Only free-hair women here.”