Prologue — Book I

PROLOGUE — BOOK I

 

Before We Had Words

 

In 1995, Embong Awan was eleven years old and still learning how English liked to arrange itself.

 

His schoolbag smelt faintly of Malaysia, and his English—though improving—still arrived in fragments.  On his first morning of Year 5 at The Scots College Preparatory School in Sydney, he was nervous enough to bite the inside of his cheek raw as he stepped into the classroom. The room buzzed with chatter until the door opened and an elderly woman with grey hair swept inside.

 

“Diam!”

 

Embong froze.

 

Did she just speak Malay?

 

“Eh, bila masa Puan Mitchell pandai cakap Melayu?” he whispered under his breath.  Since when could Mrs Mitchell speak my language?

 

The blond boy beside him grinned. “Indonesian,” he said softly. “All the teachers here know some. It’s a subject we take from prep onwards.”

 

Embong blinked, unsettled in a way he could not yet name. That morning, he watched a room full of Australian boys slip easily into a language that sounded like home—but wasn’t quite. Later, in his first Indonesian lesson, he sat wide-eyed, muttering to himself, Pelik. Tak pernah aku tengok orang putih pandai cakap bahasa Indonesia.

 

Weird. I’ve never seen so many White people speak Indonesian.

 

He did his best. He stumbled through English, learned to write a cluster of trees instead of a group of trees thanks to Mrs Mitchell’s red pen, and endured her discipline when he tried to pass rubbish to a classmate at the beach. She made him walk it to the bin himself. Independence, Embong, her stern look seemed to say.

 

When Mrs Mitchell returned his writing assignments, her red ink never shamed him. Instead, Embong studied the notes carefully. Where he had written a group of trees, she had crossed it out and added a cluster of trees in neat cursive. His vocabulary was smaller, his expressions plainer, but rather than feeling embarrassed he found himself wondering: How could I say it better next time? He admired the way Mrs Mitchell seemed to hold hundreds of words in her head, and he was determined, little by little, to gather them for himself.

 

There were bright moments too. He befriended David, the fair-haired boy with an easy laugh, and later Star Wilkinson, whose Filipino-Australian household reminded Embong of his own. They built sandcastles at Bondi, swapped snacks from home—Star with dried mango, Embong with kuih bangkit—and argued about whose family back home was better-looking.

 

Embong finished his ice cream and stood holding the empty wrapper, scanning the beach for a bin. David shrugged. “Just give it here—I’ll get rid of it.” Before Embong could reply, Mrs Mitchell appeared beside them, sunhat pulled low, her presence sudden and precise.

 

“No,” she said calmly. “Embong will throw it away himself.”

 

Embong flushed, nodded, and jogged off across the sand until he found a bin near the promenade. When he returned, Mrs Mitchell had already moved on. David looked at him, puzzled. Embong only shrugged. He did not feel embarrassed. He felt—briefly, inexplicably—trusted.

 

At home, life moved differently.

 

Ganang was already there—five years old, quick to laugh, and utterly at ease in the house Embong was still learning to navigate. He trailed through rooms with unthinking confidence, claimed space without asking for it, and treated Embong’s arrival not as an interruption but as a fact already absorbed.

 

He did not question Embong’s silences or ask how school had been. He simply sat close on the floor while homework was done, passed toys across the carpet without comment, and moved on as if nothing about Embong required explanation. In that quiet way, Ganang taught him something before Embong had words for it: that belonging did not always arrive with ceremony.

 

He tried karate once and kicked a boy so hard the poor kid skidded across the hardwood floor. Embong apologised furiously, but the boy only laughed.

 

“Mate, that was awesome. You’ve got power.”

 

Embong had not known what to do with that word before—power—but he remembered that it had not frightened anyone.

 

And there was the dance.

 

In Year 6, for an Indonesian cultural day, Embong donned a bright yellow baju Melayu cekak musang with a red tengkolok lipat kajang rising in a neat triangular fold at his forehead and a sampin wrapped around his waist, balancing candles on plates in the style of a Minangkabau dance. The calm, fluid, Malay-sounding ceremonial music—Minangkabau in origin but close enough to court rhythms he recognised—throbbed through the hall, strange yet familiar, and for the first time since leaving Sarawak, Embong felt wholly himself again. Half Malay, half Australian, but rooted in both.

 

It was not something he could explain yet. But his body knew.

 

The auditorium smelt faintly of warm curtains and polished timber.

 

Parents filled the rows — mothers fanning themselves with programs, fathers leaning back with folded arms, teachers seated along the aisle with clipboards resting on their knees. The stage lights hummed softly overhead, bleaching colour into brightness.

 

It wasn’t Cultural Evening.

 

It was “Save the Earth Night.”

 

Embong had already performed his Minangkabau candle dance earlier in the program — yellow baju Melayu cekak musang, red tengkolok rising clean and proud at his forehead, sampin folded precisely at his waist. The applause had been generous. He had bowed carefully. His body had remembered what his tongue sometimes forgot.

 

He had changed out of the costume afterward and taken his seat among the boys.

 

Near the end of the program, the curtains opened again.

 

A small group from Year 6 stepped forward. A keyboard began the opening notes.

 

Recognisable.

Soft.

 

A few parents murmured.

 

“It’s from Pocahontas,” someone whispered in the dark.

 

Then the first voice began.

 

You think you own whatever land you land on…

 

The hall stilled.

 

It was Colors of the Wind — performed live, earnest, slightly off-key in places but unguarded.

 

Projected behind them, a simple backdrop of painted trees and sky. No elaborate set. Just colour and light.

 

Some boys sang confidently. Others glanced at the music teacher for reassurance.

 

Embong watched from the side row.

 

But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name…

 

The lyrics landed differently in the auditorium than they had on television months earlier.

 

Here, parents were watching.

 

Here, teachers were listening.

 

Here, the words floated upward and filled space.

 

He felt something shift again — not embarrassment, not pride exactly — but recognition.

 

The stage lights caught the singers’ faces. Their uniforms looked ordinary. The song did not.

 

You can own the earth and still
All you’ll own is earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind…

 

Embong swallowed.

 

He thought of Sarawak rivers. Of Sydney beaches. Of Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia and English correcting itself under red pen. Of the way some boys could move between languages without feeling split.

 

The song did not ask which land was his.

 

It suggested that understanding required listening first.

 

On stage, the final chorus rose — slightly louder, slightly braver.

 

For a moment, the auditorium felt larger than it was.

 

When the last note faded, there was a half-second of silence — then applause. Not ironic. Not indulgent. Real.

 

Embong clapped too.

 

He did not yet have the vocabulary to explain what had moved inside him.

 

But he understood something quietly destabilising:
English was not just something to survive.

 

It could hold spirit.

 

It could hold wind.

 

And maybe — if he learned it properly — it could hold him too.

 

By the following Year Six, the school trusted them with machines.

 

They lived in a corner of the classroom, arranged on a long bench like obedient boxes: beige Macintosh Classics with dark, glassy screens and a single disk slot that swallowed floppy disks whole. The computers hummed softly even when they were doing nothing, as though thinking ahead.

 

Embong had never touched one before.

 

Mr Baldwin showed them how to sit properly, how to place their fingers lightly on the keyboard, how to click—once, not twice—on an icon shaped like a smiling face. The mouse felt strange in his hand, like a small animal he did not yet know how to guide.

 

“This is Word,” Mr Baldwin said, writing it on the board as if it were a noun that had always existed. “You can make mistakes here. The computer doesn’t mind.”

 

That, more than anything else, caught Embong’s attention.

 

On paper, mistakes stayed. They stained. They had to be crossed out or explained. But on the screen, words appeared and vanished without protest. Letters rearranged themselves. Sentences could be moved whole, lifted and dropped somewhere better.

 

Embong typed slowly at first. His English still arrived in pieces, but the computer did not rush him. It waited. When he pressed the wrong key, nothing scolded him. When he pressed backspace, the error disappeared cleanly, as if it had never been there.

 

He began to breathe more easily.

 

The screen filled with a short paragraph—simple, uneven, but his. When he printed it, the page slid out warm and faintly chemical-smelling. The words looked more confident than he felt. He folded the paper carefully and slipped it into his bag like something valuable.

 

Later that year, in the library, he discovered something else the machines could do.

 

One afternoon, tucked between shelves of encyclopaedias and old atlases, a computer had been left on. No one was sitting there. The screen glowed quietly, displaying a city seen from above—tiny buildings, neat roads, patches of green. Cars moved. Numbers flickered. Everything appeared orderly, almost proud of itself.

 

SimCity, the label read.

 

Embong glanced around. No teacher. No student returning. Whoever had been playing had forgotten to save, or forgotten to care.

 

He sat down.

 

The mouse obeyed him now. He clicked through menus, reading slowly, carefully. Budget. Population. Disasters.

 

He hesitated at that last word.

 

Earthquake.

 

He knew what earthquakes were, at least in theory. He had seen pictures. He had heard adults talk about them with lowered voices. But here, on the screen, it was only a button. A choice.

 

He clicked.

 

The city shuddered. Buildings cracked. Roads split apart like broken sentences. Numbers plunged. Fires flared in red pixels. What had taken hours to build came apart in seconds.

 

Embong did not panic. He watched.

 

No one shouted. No one accused him. The library remained quiet, the ceiling fans turning lazily above. When the damage was done, he stood up, slid the chair back into place, and walked away.

 

No one ever asked who had caused the earthquake.

 

That afternoon, Embong learned two things.

 

That worlds could be built carefully, piece by piece.

And that, with the right tools, they could also be undone.

 

Not all adults responded to him the same way.

 

Least of all Ibu Roberts.

 

She believed learning should be precise, and that embarrassment was only useful when it served instruction.

 

Once, during an Indonesian lesson, she announced they would hold a peragaan busana—a runway show. The boys were told to walk to the front of the classroom while she described what they were wearing in Indonesian. Someone brought in a cassette, and she allowed it with a brief nod.

 

“All right,” she said. “Dengarkan baik-baik.”

 

Ace of Base’s All That She Wants played softly from a portable radio near the windows, its rhythm steady, faintly out of place. One by one, the boys walked past the whiteboard in their everyday clothes—shirts, shorts, trainers—while Ibu Roberts narrated without flourish.

 

“Ini David. Dia memakai kemeja putih dan celana pendek biru.”

 

Polite applause.

 

“Ini Star. Dia memakai kaus hitam, celana jeans, dan sepatu olahraga.”

 

A few snickers. She did not look up.

 

Then the door opened.

 

A tall boy stepped out wearing a long gown that clearly did not belong to him. Someone had added make-up—too much of it—and red lipstick that caught the light. The room erupted.

 

Ibu Roberts did not raise her voice.

 

She checked her list.

 

“Ini Alan,” she said evenly.

 

A pause.

 

“Dia memakai gaun. Dia memakai make-up dan lipstik.”

 

Nothing else.

 

“Silakan.”

 

The boy walked. He laughed with them—not nervously, not apologetically—as if the joke belonged to him as much as it did to the room. When he finished, he gave a small bow and left without asking permission.

 

Minutes later, he returned in his school uniform, hair damp, expression unchanged. The cassette looped again. The lesson continued.

 

Ibu Roberts switched the music off only when the track ended.

 

Embong did not remember the boy’s name.

 

What he remembered was this:

that some people could step into laughter and step back out again, untouched.

 

The rules did not bend.

Only people did.

 

It didn’t take long for the boys to test where the edges were.

 

Someone burped loudly during a written exercise. Another answered it with a badly concealed sound from the back of the room. A ripple of laughter followed, quick and expectant.

 

Ibu Roberts paused, marker pen still in her hand.

 

“Boys,” she said evenly, “it’s not rude. And it’s not funny. It’s just natural gas.”

 

The room went quiet.

 

She turned back to the board and continued the lesson as if nothing worth noting had occurred.

 

Once, on a winter afternoon as the bus rumbled back from soccer practice at Centennial Park, she called the roll in her usual steady voice.

 

“Embong Awan?”

 

The boys glanced around, hiding their grins. Embong ducked under the seat, waiting.

 

“Embong Awan?” she repeated, her tone firmer now.

 

Suddenly he popped up, grinning. “Present, Ibu!  Right here, safe and sound!”

 

The bus erupted.

 

“That is not funny,” Ibu Roberts said calmly, adjusting her glasses.

 

“What?” Embong replied with exaggerated innocence.  “I was tying my shoelaces. You should be glad I’m not lost.”

 

“Embong,” she said evenly, “this isn’t about jokes. It’s about safety. If I cannot account for you, then I cannot keep you safe.”

 

The laughter ebbed.

 

Embong raised his hands in surrender. “Fair enough, Ibu. I’ll stay put next time.” Then, after a pause, he added politely, “But I still think you’d look nicer if you smiled once in a while.”

 

Her face remained as still as stone.

 

Not then.

 

But one afternoon, she surprised them all.

 

The class was practising introductions in Indonesian. Each boy had to stand, introduce himself, and say something he liked.

 

“Nama saya David,” the blond boy said with a grin. “Saya suka sepak bola.”

 

Polite clapping followed.

 

“Nama saya Star,” said another. “Saya suka adobo.”

 

He winked. The boys laughed. Ibu Roberts raised an eyebrow.

 

Then it was Embong’s turn.

 

He stood, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “Nama saya Embong. Saya suka… (I like)”

 

He hesitated, searching for the right words. Then he blurted, “Saya suka… makan Vegemite (I like to… eat Vegemite).”

 

“Liar!” David shouted. “You spat it out at lunch yesterday!”

 

The class roared.

 

Embong grinned and, sensing momentum, doubled down.

 

“Saya suka makan Vegemite… dengan sambal belacan (I like to eat Vegemite… with sambal belacan)!”

 

Laughter broke into chaos.

 

And then—something no one had ever seen before.

 

Ibu Roberts’ lips twitched.

 

Just once. Briefly. But unmistakably.

 

“All right, boys,” she said, shaking her head, “perhaps not the most authentic combination… but very creative, Embong.”

 

For a moment, the room was silent.

 

Then someone whispered, awed, “She smiled…”

 

The class never forgot it.

 

That first summer gave way to something quieter.

 

His first Hari Raya in Sydney arrived without announcement. The Takbir began after maghrib, drifting through the house in slow, steady waves—Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar—from a cassette left playing in the living room. The volume was low, almost incidental, as if the sound were meant to sit alongside the evening rather than command it.

 

Embong sat on the carpet with Ganang, folding paper ketupat that refused to hold their shape. The smell of coconut milk and lemang filled the kitchen. Delima moved between rooms with quiet certainty, counting plates, checking dishes, already thinking ahead.

 

The house looked familiar enough, but the rhythm felt slightly off—no cousins spilling in from next door, no neighbours dropping by unannounced, no echo of mosque loudspeakers threading through the night air. And yet, the Takbir softened the difference. It bent the distance. It made space.

 

When Star arrived with his mother that evening, shoes already half off, he brought someone Embong had not expected.

 

The girl stood just behind them, hands folded, eyes moving calmly through the room. She was older than Embong—taller, more settled in herself—her hair tied neatly back. When she noticed him watching, she smiled—not shyly, not boldly. Just enough.

 

She did not hover near Star, and she did not drift toward the adults either. She seemed to know, instinctively, where to place herself.

 

“This is my sister,” Star said, as if the information had always been available.

 

Embong was certain it had not been.

 

“Selamat Hari Raya,” he said, recovering.

 

“Selamat Hari Raya,” she replied, her Malay careful but assured.

 

Something adjusted quietly in his mind. So this was Star’s sister.

 

Later, while the adults talked and the Takbir continued in the background, Embong watched her help Ganang open a packet of dodol, tearing the plastic cleanly and handing it over without comment. She seemed to understand the house instinctively—where to sit, when to speak, when not to.

 

It felt less like a visit than an alignment.

 

Life moved on.

 

By the time his birthday came, a month later, the season had shifted. School had settled into routine. Sydney no longer felt sharp at the edges. When Star’s family returned—this time with a wrapped gift and no religious calendar attached—it felt natural, almost expected.

 

The girl smiled at him when she arrived, familiar now.

 

“Happy birthday,” she said.

 

This time, Embong smiled back without hesitation.

 

That same year, during an Old Boys’ gathering at the senior school, the rhythm of the campus shifted again.

 

While George Douglas chatted with former classmates, his son wandered the preparatory school yard, hands shoved into his pockets, curiosity unguarded. Geoffrey Douglas was eleven too. He carried a packet of Twisties and the easy confidence of someone who had not yet been disappointed by people he trusted.

 

Near the playground, he noticed another boy standing alone.

 

“Hi,” the boy said cheerfully. “You visiting?”

 

“Yeah,” Geoffrey replied. “My dad went to school here.”

 

“I go here,” the boy said. “I’m Embong.”

 

“I’m Geoffrey.”

 

They sat together on a bench, watching other boys tear past in loud, unthinking loops.

 

“Do you like it here?” Geoffrey asked.

 

“It’s alright,” Embong said. He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “Sometimes they call me ‘Bong.’”

 

Geoffrey frowned slightly. Not dramatic. Just immediate.

 

“That’s dumb.”

 

Embong glanced at him, surprised by how quickly the judgement had come.

 

“They say it rhymes,” he added.

 

“With what?” Geoffrey asked.

 

“I don’t know. Everything.”

 

Geoffrey snorted. “Well, it’s lazy. If you’re going to tease someone, at least put effort into it.”

 

Embong blinked. No one had ever framed it like that before.

 

“They’re not very creative,” Geoffrey continued, matter-of-fact. “Also, ‘Embong’ sounds stronger anyway.”

 

“Stronger?” Embong repeated.

 

“Yeah. ‘Bong’ sounds like it got cut off halfway.”

 

Embong laughed — properly this time.

 

“Maybe I should start calling them Half-Names.”

 

Geoffrey grinned. “Exactly.”

 

For a moment, it was nothing more than two boys agreeing that playground logic was flawed. No speeches. No grand solidarity. Just a small correction in the universe.

 

And in that correction, something subtle shifted.

 

A radio crackled somewhere beyond the fence—tinny, syncopated, carried on warm air from the street.

 

Ba-da-ba-da-ba-be-dop-bop…

 

Embong froze mid-step.

 

Then he laughed and sang along—loud, confident, and gloriously wrong.

 

Geoffrey blinked, then joined him without hesitation.

 

After a few steps, Embong frowned.

 

“Wait,” he said. “Shouldn’t it be Batman?”

 

Geoffrey snorted. “If so, I vote Catman.”

 

Embong shook his head, already laughing.

 

The song fell apart with them—no longer anyone else’s.

 

The radio faded.

The joke lingered.

 

Then the adult world returned, as it always did, to collect someone.

 

Soon after, George came to fetch his son.

 

“See you later, I hope!” Geoffrey called.

 

“See you later!” Embong waved back.

 

They never exchanged contact details. They were eleven.

 

Life moved on.

 

Nothing about the moment suggested permanence.

 

And yet, something quiet had been established—not a promise, not a plan, but a familiarity that would later find its way back through letters, hallways, winters, and a world that would learn how easily it could break.

 

For now, neither boy knew this.

 

They were simply children who had met, smiled, and moved on—believing, as most children do, that what mattered would always announce itself clearly when it arrived.

 

<< Back to Contents || PROLOGUE || Continue to Chapter 1 >>

 

Copyright © 2026 All rights reserved.  Omar Onn