Malaysia, the beloved country of my birth, would never be the same again.

Run!

The gas is coming again!

The mosque!

Get into the mosque!

We ran, like thousands of crazed rats. Our clothes were drenched and I realised immediately that it was impossible to run with soggy shoes. My hand instinctively covered my camera lens. A wet lens is a dead lens. My feet slipped and slid inside my drenched sneakers. I did not need or want a sprain or a broken limb. Sumi grabbed my hand, her eyes wild.

Are you okay?

I nodded. Our slippery hands held fast. I heard screams as some tried to rub the tear gas from their eyes, giving in to instinct. There is nothing like tear gas to make you angry. Politicise you. Our politicians had no idea what they were doing. Revolutionaries were created on the street, that very day.

The protest took place a few hours before Anwar’s arrest that night. We had gathered outside the National Mosque, getting handphone messages that he was going to be there. I picked Sumi up from her apartment in Sri Petaling and we drove into the city. The traffic jam was bumper to bumper all the way from Jalan Parlimen, cars inching up against each other, as we snaked along the road, all the way to Dataran Merdeka, Independence Square. A detour towards Central Market enabled us to find a spot in the parking lot. There were thousands of people already walking towards the mosque. You could sense the excitement, the anger. It was brittle, electrifying.

Anwar was sacked for supposed sexual misconduct—specifically, adultery and sodomy. In a country where draconian laws still harked back to the time of the British, giving someone a blowjob or having anal sex was a heinous crime.

The daily papers barked out offensive headline after headline, demonising Anwar.

Sodomite! Adulterer! The Rise and Fall of Anwar Ibrahim.

These words unleashed a national fury and Malaysians of all ages took to the streets. It was Reformasi. The Malaysian Reformation had begun.

Mahathir’s regime had created a generation of Malaysians who were complicit and afraid. The Internal Security Act ensured that. Detention without trial. Guilty until proven innocent. You were always guilty. And even if you weren’t, you’d still be.

Sumi was angry. We all were. She had studied law in the UK and we’d both been writers at The Review—“The smartest men’s magazine in town”—for two years. We liked each other from the start, we understood each other. We liked to drink and talk. We knew that what was happening was historic. And that it would change us forever.

By the time we got to the mosque, we could barely see Anwar, who was perched on a makeshift podium. We could only hear him through the loudhailer. All around me, I saw faces twisted in anger. I started taking pictures.