Not an unusual sight. It was the actors and the circumstances that raised the platform here in this particular case. The long haired hippie string-bean who either kept a shop at the base of Joo Chiat Complex, or else managed for the owner, could be found afternoons on his stool out along the passage just by the escalator off the corner. Day by day the same, the man as if pasted on a billboard; or as if he were one of the manikins further ahead. This Saturday rather than an installation, suddenly a drama unfolding before one’s eyes featuring an august Raja receiving from his companion, his good wife in her black scarf, hooded Arab eyes and hook nose to match, lo and behold! the deepest, heart-felt bow in creation. Woman going whole hog too, dropping her forehead onto the back of husband’s palm…Everyday scene of course; nothing extraordinary. Perfectly familiar in that quarter. How many times had it been witnessed in precisely that form? Day by day this pair took turns out there by the entrance to the shop. Man getting away to Wadi occasionally, where there was always a nod offered in passing and a half smile. Going by his shop the same. Wife the same in her case too. In the wife’s case her acknowledgements came in the form of a greeting as a lover might make in a busy bazaar, no telling where the eyes of the husband and his clan are. Rarely did the woman leave the stool; certainly never ventured to Al Wadi unaccompanied. In fact she had never been sighted other than against the wall by the escalator, slumping a little, droopy lids that elsewhere could denote only one bad thing. (Sleep deprivation here in the punishing heat.) But just now had she returned from a late lunch? Visited her mother in hospital perchance?… Surely she could not give such honor to her husband at each and every change of shift, every meeting and return. (They almost never sat together in company out front of the shop.) What was that remarkable ceremony all about there as dusk fell early on the first Saturday of March? What bonds had been forged between the pair over how long a term? (Six years and more under the eyes of one witness.) Forget about four wives, harems, genital mutilation and all the rest: so often here the heart was raised and spirits soothed by the scenes of mothers, fathers and children, the elderly and their kin and husbands and wives coming together and reluctantly drawing apart on these pavements. Robert Plant was the reference for this chap, the Zepplin guy. Or was it the other, Robert Page, with the great frizz? (Schoolboy friends had been the real fans when Bette Midler’s Surabaya Johnny first began pointing in another direction even at that early stage.) Similar vintage in this case, the years weighing more heavily on the wife.
Geylang Serai, Singapore
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