39 Years Ago Today

Thirty-nine years ago today, Kuala Lumpur exploded in racial riots. I wasn't even nine years old yet and because we lived in government quarters on Jalan Dato Onn, we were safely sequestered from the violence. Even so, those dark, dark days left their indelible mark on me. How much worse was it for those who witnessed the bloodshed or lost a loved one to the mobs?

I don't remember much of what happened that day. Did I go to school in the morning? Did my father go to work? I vaguely recall Mama coming home from the Chow Kit market and was advised to stock up on food. Or did Auntie Soh Looi's Boyan neighbours on Perkins Road give her the heads up?

May 13 became real for me and my sisters only when night fell. Suddenly a little Mini Cooper pulled up outside our house and out jumped three young women. It was my cousin, Sim, and two of her colleagues. They had been at Odeon Cinema on Batu Road (now Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman) watching the three-hankie weepie that everyone had been raving about when the fighting broke out on the streets. They were lucky, so lucky, to have gotten out safely. Sim had driven straight to our house because it was the nearest safe place they could think of.

My cousin and her friends stayed for a week or so until the 24-hour curfew was lifted. It was actually fun. They wore my mum's sarung and entertained my sisters and me with their "grown up" stories. Papa didn't go to work; my sister and I didn't go to school. We rationed our food, eating fish and ikan bilis, ignoring the pork in the freezer because one of Sim's friends was Malay. At night, we would huddle around the TV to listen to the news.

The scariest moment for me was when the curfew was lifted for a couple of hours so my parents went out to get supplies. The saddest moment was watching Tunku Abdul Rahman announce his resignation on TV.

Even though they didn't show it - or I was too young to see it - my parents and grandmother must have been frantic about my two aunts and their families who lived in the shophouse on Perkins Road where my father grew up. We later learned that they had been evacuated to Stadium Merdeka, like so many others, refugees in their own hometown. When the 24-hour curfew had been lifted, Auntie Rose and her family came to us, while Auntie Soh Looi and her family went to stay with Sim's family in their terrace house on Gopeng Road.

Auntie Rose and her family arrived in a small army lorry that also carried all their worldly possessions, which included all of Uncle Su Shen's huge medicine jars. I guess those jars were why they came to live with us. Suddenly our family of six had swollen into a household of 13 (including my grandmother's schizophrenic brother whom we all called Ah Ku Gila)and the rambling colonial bungalow we lived in became cramped quarters indeed. My two sisters and I moved into our parents' bedroom, giving up our room to Auntie Rose, Uncle Su Shen and their three daughters. Their son camped out in the living room. My grandmother, who had shared our room, moved out to the servant's room adjacent to the kitchen. Ah Ku Gila roughed it out in the storeroom.

Looking back, the events of 39 years ago appear so distant and remote. As mundane as my memories of that terrible time seem to be, they are laced with an undercurrent of fear and dread. My sisters and I had no real understanding of what was happening. Barely nine, eight and three, we were too young and the adults had been careful to shield us from the worst. But children are empathetic and we just breathed in the fear and uncertainty that hung heavily in the air.

It was only when things returned to "normal", that overt fear took hold. On my first day back at school I overheard my class teacher and Mandarin teacher agree that the authorities had been totally irresponsible for insisting that the schools reopen because it was still dangerous. My piano teacher was the world greatest rumour monger and every week, she'd arrive for our lesson armed with an arsenal of the most gruesome stories with she regaled Mama in front of us. That's when I began to understand what fear was.

What is so unforgivable is that as a nation, we have not been allowed to let go of this fear. Even worse, the Barisan Nasional government that has ruled since then has built upon this fear, using it as a tool to hold on to power, a weapon with which to intimidate and cow the populace. I was cowed in 1987 during the Operation Lallang days. I was cowed during the Judicial crisis and the Reformasi.

In a year's time, it will be exactly four decades since our society was fractured. I think it's high time we put the spectre of May 13 firmly behind us. As a nation, as a people, as individuals, we need closure and reconciliation. Looking at the events of the last few months, I believe we're ready to make positive changes in our government, our society and how we see ourselves as Malaysians.

To do this, we need to face our collective demons. And May 13 is one of our biggest demons and after 39 years, I thought it was time.