The Baluch (Return to KL)

Three years, the older, chubby Malay says at the KL International desk after checking her computer. Three familiar faces there and two more around the corner on the main drag. Restoran Mehran’s street frontage had been reduced by half and a mezzanine added. Fruit and nut lunch (apple and later orange with six smoked almonds), ravenous appetite required disciplining. With the teh, nan and four veg. (chickpea, eggplant, tatter and spinach) total was RM10.50. Over the road from Mehran the people under the trees at the bus-stop had been one of the sights anticipated in the last days in Singapore. The importance of removing from the dearly bought success down in the South needed proper acknowledgement.

Near the end of dinner there was some concern about the size of the meal in front. Were that pair sharing a single nan and something else on the side plate? Sneaky nose-blow on the pavement for manners. It was impossible to forget three years before the trio out at a pavement table sharing out a cup of teh. One order, but three cups. Waiter had not battered an eye. A Punjabi himself, his compatriots were Baluch—majority Baluch here at Mehran on Jalan Ipoh and further along the street too. The Lahoreans and the others had ruined what remained of Baluchistan after the British irrigation projects for their hare-brained cotton. Twenty or thirty year war of independence passing without a blimp in the Western consciousness. No-where in Indonesia, India, Tibet or Nepal had the traveller Gab seen more dreadful poverty.

The contorted, shaky scarecrow Chinese beggar on this block had somehow survived three years. Was it possible she immediately recalled the White guy, as her manner suggested? The front table she had bypassed and turned on her heel after the requested One—finger raised and English sounded. Possibly she had merely returned the smile that had bloomed of itself.

Ten minutes of avoiding the eye of the bent old Malay scrounging around with a tin can and some kind of metal piece under-arm. In fact like the woman, the chap could easily have been some way short of fifty; no ounce fat and indeed muscle clearly displayed on his bare torso. After being asked, one of the Paki lads immediately reached for his packet—a light deferred for somewhere later when the man had settled.

Whereupon the bright candelabra of one of the Petronas pair through the pavement trees.

In the morning the odd gathering at breakfast with the scattering of uniforms reminded the KL Internat was owned by the Police Association of Malaysia. In Riyadh PM Najib was leveraging reliable troops in the time honoured way for documented dollars from the House of Saud.