Called out from an unseen corner of the dark near the Haig Road hawker stalls. From behind a pillar Syed emerged in his clean white Son of a Beach tee that shone like a shield. Sleeping rough did not affect Syed’s grooming. Erect posture, proudly raised Arab head. What was a casual acquaintance a few months ago had developed steadily.
News of the death of the singer had brought Syed to mind earlier in the week. Syed was surprised at that and a little dubious. The surprise was greater still when the man was told that the famous voice had never been heard, which to a music man seemed extraordinary.
Syed tilted his head back for Whitney, nodding and rhythmically waving a hand. She was not just pop and fluff, Syed maintained.
Syed immediately produced his high-end Chinese replica iPhone and within moments the track was found. In the last couple of days Syed must have gone back in homage.
Ear pieces handed over. It took another few seconds adjusting the volume before the sound-bubble of Whitney suddenly overtook the whole of the night in that dim corner.
Stand-and-deliver Syed 10.30pm two or three days after the discovery of the body in the hotel bathtub somewhere in the States. Testing had not yet established substances. As much as the music, it had been the suspected substances that had recalled Syed.
After five or six years without any music-listening the effect was narcotic; the strength of the sound on the device a surprise too. Of course Syed had found any stretch without music difficult to comprehend; the long deprivation during his jail-time being something else. How to explain an oddity like that to a music man?
This was a big backing studio recording perhaps a touch over-produced. Even so the rise and swell of the voice, the reach and rhythm, sent the head swimming, the eyes closing at more than one passage.
Syed holding the phone close; the wires were short for that operation. A timer on the screen and a bass graph had Syed following at a remove. No doubt an aficionado could enjoy a fave piece from the meters alone. For Syed there was pleasure bestowing the gift on a friend always in a hurry, preoccupied and strangely denying himself.
Syed was often heavy-lidded, the raised chin accentuating the blinking. Syed was doing OK. The fellowship he attended helped greatly; support from the fellows was very important. The five daily prayers were important too.
Casual work was difficult to stick, Changi SingAir baggage most recently, 5 1/2 days, eight hours regular at $1600 monthly. Hands at the neck in the choking signal had indicated the situation when Syed told of it a few weeks before. In Singapore they gave you just enough to keep from drowning.
When Syed's parents, originally from Yemen, died early the youngest boy had been left a vulnerable orphan. A year after the first acquaintance some of the fuller story of the worst of the abuse was divulged in a kind of stranger-on-a-train scenario.
Siblings with their own families played a lesser role than the members of the fellowship and Syed's other friends around Geylang Serai.
Song lyrics entered a good deal of Syed's conversation, with the local accent the teasing out not always straightforward. Many even of the older generation here who had missed out in the meritocratic stakes picked up the imposed language from popular culture. Like for others from his part of the world, America was for Syed the Great Satan. (Syed had a strong political awareness.) The alternative America however—Hendrix, Dylan, Neil Young, Grateful Dead—"Leonard Skinard" references took some research and there were one or two others in the roll-call too—was as important as anything in Syed's life. In that company Whitney Houston had seemed an odd fit.
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