Our advertising executive Ridzwan Muhammad Nordin, or Riz, barely spoke to any of us. Nobody knew why. Maybe he hated the fact that he was working for a bunch of drunken Anglophiles. His sat, back straight, headphones perpetually stuck in both ears, twirling a pen in his hands with expert dexterity, brows twisted in a constant frown. He did his job well enough despite his poor social skills: ironic, as he had to sell ad space to keep the magazine going. He never once joined us at the pub, or partook in any office excursions. He was just there to sell ads. He came to work, stepped out for lunch, had three cups of coffee a day, went to the mosque to pray on Fridays—which neither Fairman nor Imran ever did—and went home at exactly 5.30pm every day.

The Review’s office was located on the ground floor of a shop lot at Phileo Damansara, just off Jalan Damansara. Sumi and I took turns to carpool to get to work, so we could save on petrol. Our salaries weren’t much: we made minimum wage and slightly more, but we knew that the writing was what mattered. And Fairman gave us that freedom.

The magazine kept pushing the boundaries of journalism; it was risky in many areas by Malaysian standards, but we didn’t care. As long as our Fairman stood by us, we would keep writing until someone saw it fit to shut us down. Our covers were sometimes controversial—we had lawyers, architects, a once-exiled student activist, a comedian, a popular musician, someone who was gay and HIV positive and, the month before, Anwar Ibrahim. Imran had written the cover story and he was mad, infuriated that Anwar was now behind bars.

He knew it was coming, you know. He fucking knew. Bastard wanted him out!

There was a brittle tension in the office. We were operating on adrenaline, gumption and a compulsion to flirt with risk. After Anwar’s arrest, we were on the streets again and again. We took to wearing sneakers to work every day, just in case there was another protest, and there always was. Every day. As the trial progressed the stories became more and more lurid: semen-stained mattresses, a how-to on sodomy, a self-inflicted black eye. It was vile. Whatever dignity we had as a country was gone; the spectacle was the fodder of international headlines. Such was the malaise of Malaysians. Our judiciary had become a mockery of justice and we were sickened to the core.

We had written stories on the new sex drug Viagra, the Clinton affair, Matthew Shepard’s death and the demise of Suharto, but none matched the ferocity of the Anwar story. As expected, other players were dragged onto the murky stage: Sukma Dermawan, Anwar’s supposed step-brother, who was alleged to have been sodomised 15 times; Azizan, one of Anwar’s aides, who had denied being sodomised, but later retracted his story; Dr Munawar Anees, scholar and speech-writer, and around them a motley crew of rogues and villains, all in powerful circles, with the Prime Minister on top.