Thoughts on Our Tongues

Yee Heng Yeh

The Coloniser’s Gift

What we’ve inherited is their language—
not the one they spoke, no,
but the truer one,
the one that lay under the one they spoke,
the way a true mirror isn’t its surface of glass
but its intangible silver.

It is a language of category,
and like any other language
it possesses not just the tongue
but the ears, too, and the eyes,
and at last even the skin.

It is a language for breeding cattle
except if this is a farm
then who are the pigs—

because, yes, it is a language of equality
in which some are more equal than others,
in which someone’s boot
is always on someone else’s head.

This language is so simple
that even a child could learn it,
pick it up in just one incident
of trauma or two.

It is an astonishing language, ingenious
in the way it stays completely silent

yet makes itself heard—you can’t not hear it—
in the way the courts say no, the bank says no,
the university says no, the open tender says no,
the way the library and the police report say no,
the way the newspaper says no, the award says no,
the cane and the telecommunication tower say no,
the bulldozer says no, the pothole says no,

and the Chinese landlord, the primary school teacher,
the friendly neighbourhood ustaz,
the stranger in the lift, the cashier
and the doctor—the way they all say no.

And only the pigs go yes, yes, yes
but that isn’t the yes you want to hear.

I want to seize this language by its neck,
give it a good shake and a kick
out the door—but that’s not how languages work.

All I have are my words—also an inheritance,
this tiny toothpick of a tool—to clean the plaque
from the gaps in the nation’s mouth,
though it’s really too blunt and unwieldy
to do much besides bring blood
to the surface now and then.
But it is mine; I write.

— —

Sama-Sama

When you say “sama-sama”,
do you mean it? Do you mean

— that you see yourself in me?
— that you, too, get up each morning
and lie down each night?
— that you sometimes cry
out of wonder, not sorrow?
— that you come from a mother,
and you come from a father?
— that you bow your head,
if not in prayer, then in rest,
which is not so different from a prayer?
— that you laugh at silly movies
and sniffle at festival commercials?
— that you look for your lover
in every face that you see?
— that you are still afraid
of trees looming in the dark?
— that you have sometimes picked pleasure
over joy without realising it?
— that you shrink from open flames?
— that you wish you could observe
yourself from the back?
— that you slap at mosquitoes
and walk past cemeteries quickly?
— that the language in your head
often stumbles on your tongue?
— that you dread making phone calls?
— that you have more than one question for God?
— that you could have been in my shoes—
a different body, a different history,
but just as desperate
to trust a stranger?
— that this isn’t the only reason
you stopped to help?
— that the dash
between the first sama and the second
does not separate, but joins?

— —

Cincai

You don’t know meh, here we all cincai,

can even call us the land of the cincai.

Ask us where to eat, we tell you cincai,

what movie, who drive, whose house—cincai.

You got license no license, don’t worry, cincai,

because the speed limit here is also quite cincai.

Our boss pay us also pay like so cincai,

of course we do work we just do it cincai.

What they teach in the school, we just say cincai.

Forest what forest? We don’t live there, so cincai.

Duit kopi here and there cause we so cincai,

want worry for what, they investigate cincai.

Dunnid to protest, just relax, just cincai,

anyway the gomen is always this cincai.

Who kena arrest and who didn’t, it’s cincai,

we read newspaper also read until cincai.

We okay with anything, that’s why we cincai,

and even our memory is a bit cincai.

Since our own life we forced to be cincai,

how other people die we lagilah cincai.