Reflections on a Bus Back to KL

Dear Reader,

I’ve just finished the Singapore launch of Malayland, my third non-fiction book on identity. It took four years for the book to be published, and here it is.

While I’m still elated from the reception of the book, I also feel a sense of bittersweetness. You know—it's like breaking up with that guy, despite being with him for so long, because you know it's time to go. After writing for twenty years about Malay Malaysians, it has that sense of finality.

My first book was about urban Muslims in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, titled I Am Muslim, and the second one was Holy Men, Holy Women, a year-long observation of Malaysians of all religions. In most of my writing for the media, I wrote about the Malay identity. I still have smoke signals coming out of my ears, writing about the topic for so long. Maybe I’ll write about other identities, maybe I'll go back to writing about the Malays, but from a different angle. Who knows? All I know right now is that I want a break.

On the bus back to Kuala Lumpur, I brainstormed about my writing future. Films? A spy novel? A new column? Back to work on my passion projects? What is certain is that this time around, I feel like I have returned home, as a creator and creative person. I spent the last decade working with friends on a small think tank (IMAN Research, which studies human security and peacebuilding) back in Malaysia, and suffice to say, what else is there to do? I can’t be fundraising my whole life. There will be hard discussions for sure when I get back. Concurrent with the publication of Malayland, IMAN is wrapping its year-long study on Malay youths.

When we reached KL, we stopped by a petrol station, and I looked out of the window and saw a rather hastily painted multicoloured apartment block, stark in its blandness and perhaps a not-so-bright future for its residents. It occurred to me that I had seen this building many times over the last ten, fifteen years, and I told myself, I didn’t want to grow old and pass this area again, seeing this poor imitation of Lego blocks cavorting as an apartment. I don’t know what I’m hoping for, but that building had this sense of melancholy. KL is in the process of rapid development, but many things just don’t change. Just yearly touch-ups.

A friend texted me to express incredulity that I had worked on Malayland for the past four years. Some people get married, divorced or have children during that time. What do you do with a message like that? 

I dropped out of a postgraduate track, and wrote this book instead. I think I did good. Those four years also led me to discover who I was: a third culture kid still figuring out what her country is about.

It’ll be good to not think about politics for a while.

Dina Zaman

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