The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (6 page)

Things had quietened down. But he still found himself consulted at regular intervals by people wanting insight into their destinies.

Yet the most curious request he had had for months had arrived that morning. A man named Amran Ismail had called him at eight that morning, and requested an urgent meeting. The man spoke politely with a curious accent—a mixture of east and west Malaysian English, sprinkled with Malay and Chinese slang. But he sounded intelligent and sincere. As Sinha moved the conversation around to detailing his consultancy fees, the man had explained that he, too, was a mystic, and wanted a no-fees exchange on professional grounds. Sinha had agreed to this.

Amran Ismail had turned up on the doorstep less than an hour later, and he and his host had sat down to a breakfast of freshly baked bread, home-made fig jam and fruit, liberally washed down with blackish oolong.

The visitor was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his mid-30s from East Malaysia. He had espresso skin, dark and rather pockmarked from an excess of chilli oil, Sinha reckoned. His thick jet-black hair was slicked back with something like Brylcreem. High eyes and a flat nose suggested he had mixed Malay and Chinese blood. He had a stockiness about his shoulders which suggested great strength. He wore Western clothes, somewhat rumpled and without a tie, and carried a small black briefcase. Yet for all the power of his physique, the visitor walked stiffly and with a slight stoop, like someone who regularly slept in a bed too small. He wore a goatee beard and had a small, oval hat on his head.

After they had swapped small talk and started on the breakfast, it had been Sinha who turned the discussion to matters of work. ‘You said you too were a mystic of sorts?’

Ismail noisily swallowed a large piece of bread and then wiped his mouth with his hand before replying. ‘Am,’ he said, tilting his head to one side. ‘I am a
bomoh.

’ ‘Really? How interesting.’

Ismail angled his head to the other side. ‘I know what you are thinking. Cannot blame you-lah. Don’t look like a
bomoh.
Don’t speak like a
bomoh.
How can I be real thing?’

The old Indian astrologer raised his bushy white eyebrows and smiled. ‘People come in all shapes and sizes. But I admit, you are right. You don’t look like the other
bomohs
I have seen.’

‘
Bomohs
are funny things, isn’t it?’ Ismail spluttered with his mouth full. ‘Witchdoctors.
Chee-sin
old men and women. Some, they dress in strange garments, so
cacat.
They have things around their necks—necklaces, icons, pendants, amulets. Bones. Bones they love. Bones of fish, bones of animals, bones of people. Not me. I prefer accessories from Dunhill shop on Orchard Road, ties by Hermes, nice cuff links, like that.’

‘You are not the only one who doesn’t wear bones. I have seen conservative
bomohs.

’ ‘Of course-lah. In Kuala Lumpur sometimes you see. Now KL is all full of Ah Beng types, yummies or what is it? But even in KL, working
bomohs
still are mostly old and crazy. Never they are young men in smart-smart business suit. Like me.’

‘I cannot disagree with you there.’

Ismail leaned back in his chair, having apparently achieved satiety after having eaten an enormous amount of bread—at least a loaf, Sinha calculated.

Then the visitor thrust his cup out. ‘Give me one more tea and then I tell you a story, very interesting, very amazing, very
shiok
,’ he said. ‘One time I was dead.’

Between slurps, Ismail explained how he had been a wild young man, and spent most of his youth screeching around a small town in Sabah on a moped. His father Aroff Ismail had worked as a log cutter and his mother Silvia Choong had been a canteen cook for the timber company for which her husband worked. He had three younger siblings: Nizam, 26, Musa, 17, and Zahra, 13. ‘My poor, sweet, sick Zahra,’ he had said with a sad smile, clearly having a soft spot for his sister.

Ismail left school at eleven and worked as a labourer in Sarawak, but in his early twenties had decided to go back to his studies and learn a profession. He did well at night school back in Sabah and was soon on a course that would lead him to an accountancy qualification.

At the age of twenty-five, he raised enough cash to buy a secondhand Japanese motorbike; he had been thrilled at the speed and freedom it gave him and the friends who clutched his waist as he turned corners at angles of forty-five degrees.

The joy had lasted exactly one week. Seven days after he had bought the bike, his father’s logging truck pulled out in front of him and he had driven straight into it at 110 kilometres an hour, a girlfriend holding on to his waist.

The bike had been destroyed instantly. And so had its driver and his passenger, according to the first witnesses on the scene. The 22-year-old woman, who had flown over his head and hit the truck’s cabin headfirst, was declared dead on arrival at the hospital.

Amran Ismail had been thrown into the tarpaulin sheet covering the logs the truck had been carrying. His heart had stopped beating, but a passing teacher who had learned cardiac pulmonary resuscitation on a first aid course six days earlier had managed to restart it. Ismail had been sent into intensive care, where he stayed for ten days. He was then moved to a general ward for six weeks, after which he was sent home to his parents. There was talk of amputating his right leg.

His father had wanted to hire nurses to look after him, but his mother had had different ideas. A woman of great religious conviction, she arranged for a local female
bomoh
to take charge of his recovery.

‘It turns out to be very brilliant idea,’ said Ismail. ‘Old witchdoctor-auntie she knows more about medicine than all the useless young
goondu
doctors and nurses that come out of Malaysian schools. She didn’t have to go again-again-again to the clinic for buying pills, powders, medicine, all like that. When I had pain in my bad leg or my head, she would go into the forest and come out with some leaves that worked better than any doctor rubbish.

‘My
mak
gave the
bomoh
a little bit of money and she look after me for six months over. My
pak
thought she was
chee-sin.
At first I was very much not happy. In the early days, when doctors tol’ me maybe I cannot walk after, I want to die, I think all finish with me-lah. I told my
mak
: Do’wan’ be a cripple. Let Allah take me now. The
bomoh
, so many potion she gave me. But I would not take.
Nothing
I would take. That stuff all
pantang.
Not believing in superstitious rubbish, you know.’

His head slowly revolved to one side and then the other on his thick, mottled neck. ‘But the pain in my leg—very, very bad. Cannot even tell you! Sometimes I was all wet, turning around and around on the bed, feeling my life all draining away, like water down a drain, you know?’

Sinha nodded sympathetically. ‘I can imagine.’

‘So one day I decide, okay, I take. The
bomoh
potions. I feel better already. Wonderful dreams, it gave me. In the dreams can walk, even I can fly. And you know what happen? Do you know?’

‘Er, you got better?’

Ismail looked reverently at a dirty string bracelet on his left wrist and then tapped his thigh. ‘
Allahu Akbar
, she pour the life back into my dead leg.’

After six months, he had no interest in going back to his old life as a student of chartered public accountancy. ‘Now I wanted to be a
bomoh.
My
pak
was horrified, but my
mak—
like in most Malaysian families, she was real big boss—she like the idea. So I became new sort of
bomoh.

’ His chest swelled out with pride. Clearly, he was reaching the climax of an oft-told tale.

‘Six months more I spend training, reading, visiting other
bomohs
in East Malaysia, like that. Then I set up
bomoh
office in Penang, small, just me, I everything one leg kick. I think I am first hi-tech
bomoh.
All usual
bomoh
skills I got: know which spells, which potions, which incense, which books to use. But my appointments I got by mobile phone.’ He tapped the Nokia swinging from his belt.

‘Website, my own home page also got.’ He pulled out a business card and pointed to some tiny print on it. ‘My invoices are attach to emails. Even you can email question to me and get reply in real time-lah. 3G phone even. You look sceptical. Any problem?’

Sinha blinked, his concentration suddenly interrupted.

‘Hmm? Oh no, not sceptical, not at all.’ In truth, the Indian astrologer’s main reaction was to be astonished to have met someone who told longer and more involved anecdotes than he did. He buttered another slice of bread and spoke slowly. ‘I am not sceptical. But I am surprised at the conclusion of your story. Surely the type of people who use
bomohs
wouldn’t have email addresses?’

Ismail gave a broad grin. ‘Of course-lah. Everybody think like that. But that make me one big hit.
Bomohs
belong to the poor, the working class, the people in shacks and villages in the jungles? Those old things are taken seriously by old people in old kampongs only, right? Fine for grandmother, but not for grandson, right?’

Sinha did not know whether the correct answer to this question was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, so said nothing—which was the right answer, since the question had been rhetorical.

The visitor continued: ‘Everybody think this. The truth much different. Many middle-class Malaysians had same beliefs as their grandfathers. Deep down everyone same-same. Also foreigners I had consulting me. Even they put me in new age bookshop.’ He raised his empty cup as if to toast himself. ‘I am a new age mystic-lah.’

‘I know the feeling,’ said Sinha, whose large breakfast had left him feeling in need of a mid-morning nap. He stifled a yawn. ‘It does seem to be that you have found a niche to claim as your very own.’ He raised his own cup to share the toast.

‘But tell me, what brings you here? What did you want to see me about?’

Ismail thumped the vessel on to the table and leaned forwards. He put both elbows on the rattan placemat and looked down, suddenly serious.

‘To thank Allah for giving me a new life, all my spare time I devote to make home for orphans. Small-to-medium only. Eighteen children I have, age eight to twenty. Before they were street boys. I pay for two nurse look after them. I get sponsor money from businesses, from the mosque, to buy rice, daal,
mee.
Hotels give me old food, old sheets, leftovers, like that. My sister Zahra, she is very sick.
Pak
and
mak
cannot look after her. I look after her, special nurse got for her only.’

Sinha noticed that the speaker was wringing his large hands together as he spoke. Evidently he was under stress.

‘Are you looking for financial . . . er . . . ?’

‘Money I don’t want. Professional advice only.’ Ismail slumped further forwards and studied his hands, suddenly deeply serious. ‘I wan’ give you see a case which I think very amazing. Case of a young person at my home with big problem—bad fortune in her stars. Very bad,
soay
only. I don’t know what to do. Expert advice myself I need on this matter.’