Two recent publications

The ThinkCity people in Johor Bahru, Malaysia have released a chapbook of my JB writings over a few years of stays in that town just across the Causeway from Singapore. Titled "Southernmost Point – Jalan Jalan Johor Bahru," here it is below. (ThinkCity is a non-government urban regeneration group that has previously worked in Georgetown Penang, Butterworth & KL. The photographic work is all their own doing I hasten to add – somewhat touristy for my liking.)

And an Australian literary magazine called Gargouille has recently published a new issue where a short piece of mine has been included, titled "Wife No. 2." Gargouille is based in Melbourne, $18 from various outlets & mail-order. After a decent interval I will post the piece on the blog.

Salam & shanti

And Eid Mubarak to my Muslim friends
Pavle

file:///Users/carllooper/Desktop/TC0001_5Chapbooks_1ST_FA_FORVIEWING.pdf

Wizardry

Pair of beautiful Afro sisters one hooded and one plaited. Nine makes the elder grade 4 and younger might have been 2 perhaps. Striking little coconuts with their Oz accents and rhythms. Daddy at the counter attempting to scan and print. Golly gee! Who walks into the foyer opposite all of a sudden but a girl from the elder’s class in school. Milly! Milly!... Oh my goodness! What are you doing here Milly?... Asian with glasses giving one look behind before she wordlessly disappears behind the glass of the Employment agency next door. Puff of smoke... Maybe her mother works there. How did Milly get here though? Catch a bus did she maybe. Even driving it took 20 minutes to get here. Waves through the door like cleaning a window pane. Milly! Milly!...  Won’t come out and the pair can’t risk going in…. Go on girls, do it! Watchya scared of? It’s safe…. Won’t risk it. You go in then!... Hey! But hang on a minute, whose classmate is she after all?... They’re not going to eat you in there, no big bad wolf waiting. Solving the mystery must wait on the morrow however. Darn. Veeeery strange. Daddy progressed to the PC room; Junior circling through the pair of doors, the prayer room and PC. Hello. Hello. Hello each pass…. Full of beans like that they could not have been fasting. Christians? You couldn’t tell. The Muslims occasionally brought in young daughters. Right oh. A game then. Come on. You ready? Need paper first…. Hang on, must be something here. Rummaging. Rummaging. Had some somewhere…. Yeah. Finally. OK, on your toes now and no second chances. This here is how you spell MILLY, alright. And this now is how you spell your name too…. What did you say it was? What?... FRATA? FRATA?... OK…. Block letters. F.  An R. An A…. Leaning in…. … No, no, no. That’s not how you spell Milly. And. That’s not how you spell my name either…. The former variant was easy as pie. Simple. No help needed. Latter we had to see…. An E?... OK , you got it. EEEE. There. And. What?... A PH. Like for what?... A dolphin?... Not FFFF. A P. And A Haich….Pen waving like a wand before big big stunned and gleaming brown eyes…. Abracadabra, jingily, jingily, jang!... There.  You. Are…. EPHRATA. But what I want to know now is why daddy named you after a river. You have to tell me. Come on. You gotta. No secrets. We going to be friends or what?... (WAH! The looks on the faces! Blimey! Little mite’s lamps bigger than anything and that swivel of the chin like an ice-cream cone!)

Brotherhood and Unity

Nearing quarter after five, the chaps were soon to partake. In fact the back tables had cleared again, many of the men returning to their homes for the repast. Four South Sudanese at one window table and an Eritrean Orthodox Christian adjacent. It had always been assumed that the latter had been a Muslim. Appearing last week with a couple of scarved women the matter had been raised with Abdul Razak. An Orthodox Christian, by the name of Haile Yesus – Haile for short. The woman with her daughter had been a cousin just returned from church. There had been nothing to distinguish the pair from any of the Muslim women on the street. Ten years now the ease and warmth between the Muslims and Christians on the Horn had been witnessed. Back in the day former Yugoslavia had featured similar camaraderie between the religious groups. Where Muslims were a majority, Haile Yesus suggested some days later, all was well between the different groups. On the Horn they had all managed very well. Hearing of the experience on the equator Haile was a little surprised. What, in six years in those parts not a single sharp, rabid Islamist? Really? Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia together? 

            Famously, Bratstvo Jedinstvo had been one of the chief slogans in communist Yugoslavia.

            In English Hailie translated as “power.” For the last emperor Haile Yesus had inadequate English. Fifteen minutes after the enquiry had been made the man returned with an answer. In English Selassie was “trinity”. 
            – You know trinity? Hail asked. 
            No wonder Abdul Razak and the other lads in the back row had been unable to provide.

Condolences

Rain close beneath the tin under the wing of the Studio before dawn was a trifle unsettling; it was something like the concern at howling wind and storm against the window in childhood. The evacuated possums would be having a torrid time of it without shelter. After having dispatched the large bushy-tailed felon a second much smaller was squeezing through a tiny gap on the other side of the front window. More trouble and expense. In the end handyman Goran had flipped the hinges on the box he had crafted that had fixed the first old fellow and filled that hole with expandable foam from an aerosol can. Three days later the operation appeared to have been a success—no sound of the creatures in the ceiling. After the funeral on Sunday over in Montenegro the matter of rain over a grave had played in the over-het brain. Finally the bereaved brother and the widow were reached on the phone and condolences offered. Words had been very difficult to find either side. As a sailor the brother Vajo had missed both his father and mother’s funerals. On this occasion he had been found at home. A flinty old mariner, thought had been that Vajo might have gathered himself and a calm, settled voice would be heard on the phone. In the event it proved to be not the case. Bad choking. Velika ti hvala, Many thanks to you, Vajo had responded. There was little else intelligible. Often Vajo could be quiet and circumspect. As in the villages, in Vajo’s place there at Kumbor where Aunt Radoslava had married he would live the remainder of his life one hundred metres below the church graveyard where all his family lay in the ground. Shaving the last days the thought had come of the preparation of the corpse. The younger brother Leka—Aleksandar—had a kind of large mole high on his cheek. In the summer it grew larger, he had said once. Some kind of skin condition ran through the male line in that branch of the family. Leka’s nephew Vladimir had a large dark patch of skin on his forearm that had raised consternation among the grandmas in his early years. The women shaving would need to take care with Leka. Surprisingly, late last year up in Johor Bahru, Southern Peninsular Malaysia, it had been revealed that among the Muslims in the Tropics at least it was the male kin who prepared the dead for burial. Not the case in another patriarchal form in Montenegro, where the duty fell to the widow, the daughters and other female kin.

                                                                                                       Melbourne, June 2017

Revolt

4pm, over 100 pages in on Patric, stopping at the Janissary passage – the Janicari that were of course well known to mother and all the tribes across the hills back home. Unspeakable horrors of history, invasion, power and domination. One’s own flesh and blood come back in the hated occupier’s colours to wage war on the people. There would be contemporary parallels, but nothing quite like that state policy of the Turks. Patric had heard the same stories at his grandfather’s knee possibly; being born in the old country he may have been luckier in that regard…. The older Viet girl here, married in fact with children and hardly a girl any more, understands immediately and accepts without hesitation the mandarin left for her on the counter. Possibly she saw peel on the table beside the bicycle helmet. Most of the lads were fasting of course, day six of Ramadan. Mario the Orthodox Christian in the window seat seen taking a drink of water needed a moment for recall. One could share the fruit cheaply today. Like her younger compatriots who also worked at Abdul Razak’s, the Viet woman was always pleasant, friendly and smiling. The girls here were all well treated by customers and the boss himself. Often the girls took food from a common plate with Abdul Razak, in the usual Muslim way. The ful was loaded up a bit more when Abdul Razak called them to the back table, Come, come. Quizzing the cheeky devil later about one of his common terms often playfully employed the man was less than forthcoming. The Mamalukes were vaguely remembered from the history books – Young Turks weren’t they? who assumed power in Ottoman Egypt for a number of decades, if not centuries. When copy paper boxes had been delivered the shifting had fallen entirely to the boss. The Viet woman in Abdul Razak’s employ had been busy at the coffee machine; there had not been a finger raised to help the man. Too many Mamaluka around here, Abdul Razak whined playfully. Bludgers, loafers, no-goods, Abdul Razak seemed to mean in his usage. Of course where the man came from the hired help – if it was hired and not owned – would jump to cart, clean, scratch the boss’s back without ever being asked; without the merest eyebrow raised. Of course. Those who were good and useful among the labour; there was always the laggard one could do nothing whatever with…. What is Mamaluku? the Viet woman had asked. She may have asked some weeks prior too without any answer from Abdul Razak…. Even he does not know, the woman was answered by the wise guy at the first table. In the enquiry that followed Abdul Razak was told the term was known from books, but what did he himself mean by Mamaluku?... Re-arranging the chairs Abdul Razak took his time responding, crafting his English for the reply. (Greatly improved English over these six years of absence. Six years ago Abdul Razak had possessed no more than four dozen words of English. Five at most.) If you know from books that is enough for you, Abdul Razak cheekily retorted, in a similar form that the elders had sometimes annoyingly employed for enquiries in childhood.  How many times had Abdul Razak been heard: Mamaluka!... Too many Mamaluku…. All Mamaluku here…. Loads and loads of times. Mr Morwell the South Sudanese Dinka might know the answer to the question. In the back room Morwell was working on a computer. A union leader back in his own country, who had spent six months in the USSR in the late 80s shortly before the collapse, Perestroika. Educated by Italian missionaries, Morwell spoke excellent English. Arabic as well as his own Dinka of course. There was some French too and fair chance Morwell knew more than a bit of the Tigrinya of the Eritreans. Teaching English to his people out in Fitzroy, Morwell was also collecting Dinka prose, poetry, proverbs and fables for an anthology he hoped to publish for the sake of the youth. With translations included there would be revealed some of his country’s literary heritage to Australian readers. Close Mugabe look-a-like, taller perhaps than the old fox. One “e” had been confirmed; the name was a compound of something like patience, perseverance, triumph overcoming hardship. Two separate Dinka terms mor and well, and nothing to do with English…. Ah! Yes. That was it. Revolt of the slaves. Yes. Not the Young Turks at all; that crew had been another kettle of fish altogether. One of the most remarkable of events from the pages of the history books; similar to Haiti, but in this case much longer duration. A revolt of slaves. Slaves assuming power and retaining it for a thousand years. Like Mugabe no doubt, once in the saddle ossification and the usual insularity and jealously guarded power centre…. Something Abdul Razak might possibly not in fact have in his knowledge and no need disturb the little chappie.

NB. Black Rock White City, A.S. Patric