“Ready for court tomorrow?”

“Uh huh,” I say. “Are you ready?”

“Of course! So excited!”

“We need to set a precedent. If you can change it, it will be such a…a triumph for us all.”

“Yeah. Marina binti Rashid. Perempuan. Female. That’s it,” Marina says firmly.

“And Sumi is really pumped about this. She’s worked so hard.”

“I can finally be the daughter my mother always wanted,” Marina says, getting choked up.

“Will you go home to see her?”

“With my new IC!”

I take another sip of tea and hear the sound of tires squeaking in the driveway. “Hey, Omar is home, he’s been at the orphanage today… Have to go now.”

“Okay, darls. Have a good dinner!”

“See you tomorrow.” I hang up.

I hear the front door open, the sound of keys clattering onto the wooden dresser in the hallway, shoes kicked off and quick steps into the kitchen. Omar reaches out for me and I’m enveloped in his arms; then a kiss on the lips, a beaming smile.

“How are you, my darlings?” He leans down and kisses my belly.

“We’re fine. Really fine,” I say. He smells of sweat and wood shavings and I see flecks of sawdust in his hair.

“I showed the kids how to use chisels today; it got a little messy,” he laughs.

“What did you make?”

“It’s a work in progress, you’ll see.” He grins boyishly.

I take his hand and lead him out to the garden. The evening light is dipping and there is a hint of sunset in the sky.

“Look,” I say, pointing to the row of thriving strelitzia. “Alba’s flowers, they’re blooming.”

Acknowledgements

To Epigram Books—Edmund Wee, Jason Erik Lundberg, JY Yang, Allan Siew, Winston Tay, Kate Manning—for bringing this book to life; to my readers: Chuah Guat Eng, James Scudamore, Martin Axe, Umapagan Ampikaipakan, Tash Aw; the Anne Frank Huis in Merwedeplein and City of Refugees programme in Amsterdam, the writing residency at “het” Spui, Amsterdam and the Nederlands Letterenfonds; Mireille Berman, Judith Uyterlinde, Ton Van de Langkruis, Willemijn Lamp, Chris Keulemans, Helene Bergmans, Francis Broekhausen, Gerda Roest, Tineke van Manen, David van Reybrouck, Merel van Tilburg, Tatiana Bosteels, Ashraf Ibrahim, Syahrita Chairaty, Ton van Bragt, Ming; the International Writing Program (IWP) 2014, Christopher Merril and all staff of the IWP in Iowa City, my fellow writers Ali Cobby Eckermann, Yeow Kai Chai, Natasha Tiniacos, Cynthia Edul, Tang Sui Wa, Franca Treur, Daren Kamali, Lawrence Ypil, Andrea Wilson and our conversations at the Fox; Peter Bradley and Cathryn Klusmeier at the Sitka Island Institute, Alaska; the Stewards for their beautiful home in Sitka; WrICE 2014 in George Town; Francesca Rendel-Short, David Carlin, Maxine Beneba-Clarke, Melissa Lucashenko, Eddin Khoo, Laurel Fantauzzo, Alvin Pang, Robin Hemley Amarlie Foster, Jennifer Down, and Harriet McKnight; Tim Tomlinson for publishing the fragment “The New Gods” in ducts.org; Scribe (Melbourne) for publishing the fragment “In the Eyes of the World”; Xu Xi and the City University Hong Kong Creative Writing MFA, Heidi Stalla at Yale-NUS Singapore, Valentine Willie and Karim Raslan, Jaime Thistleton and family, Tomasz Sajewicz, Sumitra Visvanathan and Sharaad Kuttan for access to the Saksi Archives, Sabri Zain and his Reformasi Diary; Omar Musa, Nisha Ayub, Sulastri Ariffin, Rozlan Mohd Noor, Tini Zainuddin, Alex Yoong, Gioia Guerzoni, Punita Visvanathan, Shirley Lim, Linda and Farouk Aljoffery, Yin Shao Loong, Hayati Mokhtar, Evelyn Hii, Alison Morgan, Lynda and Omar Merican. Thank you all.