Saturday Morning

Woman had earlier sold tickets for the Delima bus to Malacca up at a stall at City Plaza. Thrown the job in after some bother with the boss she had reported a couple of weeks ago. This morning at Al Wadi again with her group of friends for a late breakfast, all scarved and bound, the tall looker with the high head-dress among the rest. They were not noticed when the author arrived for his morning teh and newspaper, en route to the drinks counter a voice from the crowd giving Hoy! Ah! Unexpected. These ladies were a new element here, encountered only once before when the Delima woman had brought them over for intro and short sit. Waves from a distance: the group were eating. Smiles, smiles. Half an hour later the woman come over to the table to offer farewell. Oh! Off already. Adieu. Where might you be bound now? Spot of shopping? Jalan jalan—tripping about?... Early-mid forties, mothers and grandmothers no doubt; thickened and softened. Was it the movies perhaps, Saturday matinee session with the girls?... The Gardens to admire the flowers and blooms? (After an extended campaign to achieve some kind of listing, finally Sing’ had a World Heritage site: the Botanical Gardens. The experiment with rubber trees by the British in S-E Asia had begun here more than one hundred years ago.) Group of four, one new woman among the others, the Delima dame informed. Oh, indeed. The tall head-dress fluttered her kohled eyes beside the addition. Might it be cup-cakes at a new patisserie out in McPherson?... No, wrong. It was off to class, Delima answered. Every Saturday and Sunday morning. Not at the Converts here; Lorong 12. That'd be at Jamiyah. Yes. Yes. Is there a good ustad up there? A good one, yes. The same as was here earlier. (Above the former Labu Labi—now the cafe turned into a cheap China apparel outlet—Jamiyah had conducted classes upstairs.) Good to hear, because you know good ustad are difficult to find. (Just in order to implant the thought; prompt some critical evaluation. All Islamic groups were carefully vetted here by the government; the day before Omar had used the example of the standard Friday sermon.) Zainuddin had often made the point about inadequate, indeed ignorant teachers of the Qur'an, men of little learning and incapable of serious study. Zainuddin had been reading the Qur’an all his life and Zainuddin could be trusted above all others here.