On the Crawl

Like the blind, from your sick bed you listen out more carefully and strain for the doings of the street. This rapid chopping-board dicing was a first, definitely not heard here before. According to the online advice, right now some garlic between the affected toes would be useful to combat this athlete's foot fungus. With a little more of the language the woman below might have been hailed from the window to bring some up. Tomorrow you have to drag yourself down to the mall for a number of purchases: cotton socks, a pair of sandals with a toe-strap only (not the band across), more tea tree oil, one of the recommended creams and a plaster for the other foot where a couple of days wear of these rotten plastic sandals the hotel provides raised a blister. (Like having your feet in the campfire, the medico online diagnosing the condition with a little sadistic touch.) The Paki nan-maker at what was once called Restoran Medina is only thirty metres away; anything further today could not have been ventured. Usually the only the kitchen sounds carried up here on the third floor was the steel spatula hammering in the wok. Caterwauling late nights sometimes; a couple of bedraggled crows roost in the frangipani opposite cawing. This morning going out for a late breakfast a Viet woman had suddenly set off at a run down the adjacent lane, as she passed the Tamil from the news-stand calling out, Sini, sini — Here, here. Ignored by her. A few moments later a young burly guy set off after the woman and in his wake an older fellow with a look of the main man about him. Off he paced in the same direction more or less leisurely, but face hard-set. Somewhere out of sight the heavily made-up woman in the get-up was in for it. At the eatery tables opposite a couple dozen of this woman's compatriots sit at the tables daily entertaining the old local Chinese uncles. Not easy to swallow day after day passing, though apart from a cat-fight involving a pair a couple of weeks ago the whole affair here runs smooth. Two or three times a week the place directly opposite behind the frangipani cranks up the happy days Indon numbers well past the dead of night. One hundred metres off sits a large police base, which means there are only rare disturbances in the quarter. Singapore spitting distance off, its housing towers visible at any of the passes toward the canal. The old Havana chomping uncle on the corner of the lane out back looks into the neighbour's heart all through the long day, with nary any kind of longing or disappointment one can most certainly tell. For the first month the man was selling luku at RM5 a kilo, delivered by a relative still out in the kampung one guesses. Perfectly content chap on his perch, friendly and always ready with greeting. Now the durians have arrived and the uncle sits confidently beside that king of fruits from early morning until the shadows of late afternoon, always a band of pals joining with whom to shoot the breeze. None of these men cast longing looks toward the shiny tall towers beyond sighing. They can have it, the men would tell you if the bridge of language allowed. Younger Tamil lads breakfasting at Muthu this morning had the neighbouring isle under examination. Stress, stress they reiterated in English. (That particular term of course does not exist in their mother tongue.) The Bollywood waiter at Muthu with the rusty highlights maintained from Devali a few weeks ago suggested something similar explaining his lack of interest in the money lure over the water. I no like machine, he said. Only working, working. There were no gulls in the tropics and certainly few birds of the air in the cities: sometimes the crows calling over what one knows is near-by water deceive. Slamming shutters in the last half for seven, the dark soon to gather, a narrow prospect opposite over the rusted rails. With the tee showing the Arabic script from the Islamic Museum in KL and a word or two of Urdu, some small confidence has been established with the Paki.