We went back to my place. We undressed hurriedly and flung ourselves on my springy bed. In moments, he was inside me. He felt like home. It felt careless, devilish but so, so good. We made love three times and by the time we were done, we were hungry again.

I felt like a truck had hit me and burrowed itself into my belly. It sat there, like a stone, unmoving. Him, lying there, like that.

Omar. Omar.

It was reckless, unbridled.

It was an instantaneous love.

So. Omar Tunku Malik.

This was unlike anything I had known. It felt dangerous.

The only man I had ever truly loved was my father, but that was the love of a child for her father. This was different. This was a woman’s love, for a man. Grief had consumed my father, killed whatever life he had left. My mother’s death had devastated him. I wondered if this man would consume me the same way. I wondered if I too would become a shell of a person. I wondered if this kind of love would destroy me.

He was two years older than me. Studied engineering at Cambridge—the kind of privilege only boys like him had. The kind that was a birthright. His mother, English, from Norfolk, and apparently descended from the earliest Normans who plundered and conquered those lands. His father, Dutch, Javanese, with some claim to Malay royalty. The embittered fucked each other to get ahead—but in actual fact, it was to make sure that bloodlines never ended.

Jangan Melayu hilang di dunia.

The Malays felt that their land had been taken from them, and that they now had every right to reclaim it. May the Malay race never cease from the earth. A union of paradoxes.

I had never been with a Malay man before. I was throwing myself into treacherous territory. I think I was afraid of the fact that he was Malay, that my preconceptions of who and what he was would spell a difficult and uncertain future. Something I wasn’t entirely sure I even wanted.

But one night, after the lovemaking and the wine, I told him about the tear gas, about running the streets, Saksi, my friends, writing and recording the Reformasi, my anger at Mahathir, at the police, the courts, the injustice of it all, my sympathies for Wan Azizah and Anwar’s young children, I poured out my heart and mind, I ranted and raved, I wept from frustration and more anger, and Omar, he listened and said nothing until I was done.

So…do you think I’m mad?

No. Why would I think that?

You’re really quiet.

I was listening.

Oh. And…

I think it’s time, this is the time. Let’s do this.

This?

Fight. We need to fight back.

Yes, we do. We must!

Yes?

Together?

A firm nod, a kiss sealed it.