Then, we’d lie on my bed and smoke cigarettes. He never liked the covers, so he’d be there naked, and I would put my head to his chest and hear his heart pounding. I loved him so much I wanted to punch him, claw his face, bite morsels, tear flesh off. I felt possessed, like one of the women from The Bacchae, inspired by a beastly, primal longing that made me ache for forests and trees. I saw shadows lurking in the dark and heard low guttural moans. I knew that this man could be the beginning and the end of me.

Hey you, come here.

I slid up towards him, on all fours, naked. His eyes were slits and the flecks in his eyes glowed like fiery seeds. He touched me lightly with his mouth. His tongue played on my lips, then moved inside my mouth, teasing, and then he sniffed my neck deeply.

Cium sayang.

Sayang. My love, my love.

Sayang. Darling.

He eased inside me, and pulled me up in one swoop. I was over him, my hair covering his face, chest, shoulders.

You’re so beautiful, Del.

His eyes burned into mine and when I mounted him, a frenzy seized me. Sweat drenched us, glorious and golden. And before I came, I saw visions of myself on a horse, thundering through a forest, mist rising from the ground and when the explosion came, I was on the pinnacle of a rock, arms outstretched, looking at a black sky.

Omar said he wanted to change Malaysia. We talked about reform, of needing to get rid of the status quo, of ridding the Malays of subsidies. He believed the National Economic Policy had crippled them, made them dependent on government handouts—instead of making them resilient—and the Malays had become greedy, only wanting more and more, but without doing it the hard way. Without having to work for things.

Embrace the land. We need to let our feet kiss the ground again. He kept saying it again and again. Tanah air—this is our homeland. Our. Homeland.

The sons had to return to the soil; the tar and concrete had corrupted the very nature of what it meant to be Malay. Perhaps, the only option was to return to the past, to embrace the colonial construct of the “lazy native”—an ideology which undermined native labour with a certain consequence and ease, yet which allowed Malay culture and tradition to flourish. To acknowledge the fact that they were once Hindu, live off the land, follow the harvests, bathe in clear, clean waters of the rivers made alluring by nubile virgins in batik sarongs, who laughed and sang in clear voices—and then govern a people who were gentle with a firm hand.