Every time I reflected upon my decision to come to Australia, there is always one person hovering around my every shadows. It was not deliberated, I had always wanted to go to Scotland, and initially I was already offered an admission to the University of Aberdeen. But I remember one night, in my little room in Kuantan, I quickly dialed Mak's number after the evening prayer; "Mak rasa senang tak nak dapat scholarship pergi UNSW?"
What followed suit was a rapid succession of events, and in a blink of an eye I already sat determinedly on the plane one July evening in 2008. Friends were surprised, question after question they ask on how certain I was to pursue the cause. I did not faltered, but the decision seemed to break all the rules laid out on me and opened up a whole new dimensions to what was inside me in the past years.
I was not sure what I would find, nor do I know what to expect. Meeting Uncle Greg for the second time after more than 15 years filled me with unimaginable relief, my memories of him and Aunt Lorraine when we were in Jerteh remained distinct and memorable in my mind and I am comforted by the shared tales of the place with them. It was as if given the fleeting presence of my family in so many different soils when I grew up, they are the proof of my 7-year old existence.
There were two things I remembered saying to myself when I walked home from school one day, deciding what it was I came to Australia for, "I want to find God, and I want to find Abah before I go back."
Finding my father, truth to be told, I earlier expected to find his name on the Golden Snitch or his friends like what Sirius, Lupin and Snape had been to James Potter. It's admittedly bizarre to expect such things of course, but I am desperately foolish to begin with. What then did I find of him? a genius, respected among his friends, and a larrikin too. He played guitar and he lived with an old man when he was studying. Qualities I have never gotten to learn due to the distance between us.
I remembered Abah's constant absence seemed to magnify his presence among us in the family. A single voice of Abah in the morning would wake me up instantly, pisang goreng and buah mangga always indicate his fortnightly return, even now we could predict the visit of my nieces at the presence of their Tok Ki. Perhaps, why engineers always appeal to me hopelessly could even be attributed to Abah's profession.
Does it really matter, now, how little or how much I know of my father? Are all the anger and despair washed away now I am treading on the very soil he had laboured on years before he even became a father? How did this journey change what I view of my father then and now? I ask myself again tonight at the eve of Abah's 63rd anniversary.
The answer is I don't know. But in all uncertainties, I only want to know he loves me now as he had loved me when he first held me in his arms, I only want to know he holds dear our family and my mother as he had before everything changed, and I only want to know I made him proud, no matter how hopelessly flawed I had been in my life.
Abah, please forgive me my flaws and shortcomings, and all the pain I had caused to you and Mak. Happy birthday and I love you both very much.
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