Unspeakable Spell

Annaliza Bakri

Can language satisfy the thirst for a life along the sungai, exploring the banks of one river to another? Would it break the unspeakable spell to remain fluid in a country that has an enormous barrage urbanising the way one catches and controls, but yet feeds on five rivers that run through the heart of the nation?

Scurrying off into a corner near the train doors, I am bound from carriage to carriage in this Mass Rapid Train (MRT). It’s the ‘red’ line, also known as North-South, the longest one that connects passengers whose main purpose in life is to close their eyes while venerating in their seat, pretending to be oblivious to the misfortunes that may befall the souls of bodies around them. The train could be their make-shift shrine as they erect pillars from stories of revelations and miracles that disintegrate a little more with every promise of salvation. This red line carries no bloodline.

The morning fog illustrates the perfect illusion of an unseen dichotomy – dark, mysterious and yet, it paints a hauntingly beautiful landscape of a thriving wilderness rebelling against the modern civilisation marked by an MRT that breaks down from time to time. The lush canopy of greenery stretches its wings, commanding the sun to trace its outline gently, stroking it with every streak of light. A former classmate once claimed that she saw a white horse galloping through the unclaimed forest. Immortalised for years, this framed image makes me want to pay a visit even when I know there is a possibility of never going through the interstices of mangroves and unknown depths of this body of water. 

What I did not realise until many years later is, I have been staring at a veiled portrait whose soul had once existed beyond this stillness, spinning stories and narratives of their own kind along this lush and blossoming world. Like a prolonged eclipse where darkness prevails, I unravel the intimacies and intricacies of this latticed lure through the labour of words, yes, through literature.

The absence of indigenous Malay communities in our (re)imagined world is not unintentional but it is no doubt political. How do you tell a group of people, the Orang Seletar, to come ashore when they have lived in boats for generations? It is our dirty linen to air when we asked to speak into the complicity silence of their disposition from the waters to a neighbouring state or of being forced to assimilate indeed. In fact, to phrase it as a cultural conflict is not offering any light to the struggle they faced and that they still do to this day. Neither does using their name to christen a suburban mall, expressway and a former military airbase turned commercial airport constructed on land, seems a fair representation of this indigenous group of sea people.

Something in my DNA envisaged freedom across frontiers. However, borders are also built on conspicuously defined words that we fool ourselves with - progress, modernisation, commodity, justice, love and on it goes. The train slowed down as it travelled from Khatib to Yio Chu Kang station, a common occurrence that made me doubt our level of efficacy and efficiency as a first-world nation. Looking out of the train panel, a quick respite from judging the other passengers two words came to my mind: reclaiming and displacing. 

Applying what I could still excavate from my human geography lessons back in secondary school, I mulled over the land area statistics. 581.5 square kilometres in 1960 versus 725.7 square kilometres in 2020. We are a force to be reckoned with when it comes to building new landscapes. But reclaiming also means displacing something in return, and to satiate our endless needs, the ones who have to give up their piece are Orang Seletar. Today, the Seletar River forms the Lower Seletar Reservoir, and the Orang Seletar can no longer roam freely in Selat Tebrau as Malaya is another fragment of the past. If I had to choose between silence and darkness, I would be at a standstill, not knowing which is the lesser evil. Should I keep this memory and translate this unspoken realm, or should I remain oblivious to this disintegration in society?

At present, my diagnosis of this nation seems inclined towards jotting down these two words – historical amnesia. The hegemony of an eclipsed cultural history could easily threaten our sense of being and identity. I tried to distinguish the elusive weaving of words in history textbooks, journals and I’m in awe of the nuances that keep brewing in this cultivated ‘cultured’ space. Like an elaborate ritual, I flipped pages of Malay poetry since various communities of indigenous Orang Laut who played significant maritime roles and were said to have been integrated into the Malay community. As the nation convulses in what history truly is, the sungai have taken on a different course. Many of the sungai have been canalised, perhaps more intimately known as longkang. Nature lovers are more worried about the loss of biodiversity than the loss of cultural heritage and way of life. Undeniably, the unstated consensus is to stay calm and follow the current. But the question is, do we really want to know where the damage lies? The unflinching interrogation of the self and society may leave us scarred for eternity.

While reading the poem ‘Sungai Kallang’ (Kallang River) by Hadijah Rahmat, I came across another indigenous community, Orang (Biduanda) Kallang who used to live in the swampy areas along Kallang River before they were dispersed to various places including the offshore southern islands. As a young child, my late dad used to bring me to the Grand Dame (Kallang Stadium) to watch soccer matches. As we made our way from Kallang Station to the stadium, I will always be in awe of the Kallang Airport – ‘miracle of the East’ as mentioned by renowned female aviator, Amelia Earhart. Taking reference from the names of indigenous communities to call our airports, I wonder if it is meant to be mnemonic. Returning to the poem, this Singapore Malay poet speaks the sacred truth. The tapestry of Kallang goes a long way back and the people were very much involved in trade and economy. This is a story of lineage, ancestry and it reflects a genuine attachment to its environment and how it’s possible to live together, sharing a common space.

Kallang River

a teardrop of mine flows inwards

and blood of your generation spills

the river filled to the brim

will not revert your course inland

or return to regurgitate every

piece of filth and rubbish

and refine the benthos of history.

Truth is, this poem is a start and stories of indigenous people can be found in the literary realm. Malaysian writer, Faisal Tehrani wrote ‘How Anyss Went To Heaven’ and this book narrates the atrocities suffered by the Penan community in Sarawak. In 2019, I hosted ‘A Spotlight on Indigenous Voices,’ one of the most evocative performances organised by Singapore Writers Festival, featuring spoken word poets Melanie Mununggurr-Williams and Moe Clark. Words can be both beautiful and powerful, offering strength, love and hope.

Swelling with layered invocation of unutterable possibilities, I seek out a breakwater since no vocabulary bank could tamper this shrilling cry of silence and sinking depth of absence. Could we protect their rights from further ‘invasion’? Perhaps, it is time to invoke the penunggu (guardian spirit) to ward off the inhumane. Neglected for years, the act of declaiming needs a degree of commitment to address imbalances and injustice. Dispelling the myth may seem like a mystical act but bring out the mantera if we must. Or you can place your finger on the redesigned MRT map like you would on the planchette of a Ouija to find your way out of this network. Soon after it gives you a glimpse of that mystifying topography, the North-South line train goes out of sight and slithers into a passage of purpose-built bunkers and air raid shelters. It will always reappear overland, somewhere, somehow, as if to reassure our wretched souls that there will always be light at the end of the tunnel.

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