World Without Men

Chapter II
(A summary)

(The bicycle politics.)

Every father in the village had a bicycle. As a son you could claim that the bicycle was yours when he wasn't home. You could ride it all day since your dad would only be home from work at a mine in Bukit Besi close to seven in the evening. Your mother wont bother with what you did with the bicycle, as long as you didn't bring it home with a flat tyre or the rim twisted into an '8'. It was nice to have a father who owned a bicycle. Unfortunately Grandma, Aunt and Cousin didn't own a bicycle, or knew how to ride one. That made me the only boy in the village without a bicycle. It was important that I had one too if I wanted to be included in their plan like going for a ride all the way north to Rantau Abang, or down the Nibong Bawah way to steal durian, or made a long stop at the jetty there to play on a tugboat, diving from the starboard into the water so deep no one had ever touched the bottom of. Not even Awang (not his real name), the bravest boy in the village on account he was the eldest among us, and a little too clever in the head he never got past primary school that he quit school to become a fishing boat skipper one day, and a religious person the next day. Last time I heard he tried to join an oil company to work on a rig but changed his mind when there were so many rules to follow that in the end, decided to start prospecting for oil in his backyard and start his own company so he could work the rules for his own pleasure. He's like that.

Coming home from school, walking in the hot sun dragging my bag to destroy it to bits by the time I got home just to prove my point to Aunt that I needed a bicycle, or else I was going to keep dragging the bag until the underside gone completely torn that the books would shred to pieces. And to prove another point, I didn't want to eat lunch because who needed lunch when a bicycle could change the world into a better place to enable me to ride it as far as I wanted.

By the time it was 'Asar, I was almost famished. But I needed to hold out on this one because I needed to prove a point. Through all this Aunt went about her ways as if she couldn't give a fish if I died of hunger. Grandma kept saying, please eat a little or your stomach will go bad on you later tonight. And I kept saying, bicycle! bicycle! bicycle!

Way past 'Asar and I knew Pok Mang, the guy who assembled the bicycle at the only bicycle shop in Dungun would leave for home. By this time, there was very little chance that Aunt would give in. Even if she did, it wouldn't mean anything because the shop would be closed and the Chinaman would surely ask you to come back tomorrow even if you wanted to buy ten bicycles cash, money on the table all bundled up into a neat roll held together by a rubberband.

Close to Maghrib hunger started to set in. People can do strange things when they are hungry that they won't stop to think what is going to happen if they do something stupid like gather enough stones to throw at the house, taking aim not to hit the glass windows. I started to pelt the house with the stones, making such a racket that Aunt kept saying in her sarcastic way, police come take this boy running amok over a bicycle. Grandma came out to say, will you please stop already, it's close to Maghrib. Cousin couldn't be bothered because she had Barbara Cartland books to read in her bed.

When this didn't work, I gathered bigger stones and started pelting the house turning that evening into a war between me against the house over a bicycle. Aunt was at the telaga, laughing as if this was all a comedy. I wanted to cry over the whole thing because apparently it wasn't working. It was a hopeless situation because I felt I wasn't man enough to make Aunt to come to a decision in my favor. In the end I gave up and let Aunt bathe me up like a wounded warrior who didn't manage to kill even a rat on the battlefield. She scrubbed me good from head to toe. I got my eyes shut tight because if you had been me, you'd know how embarassing it was to lose again and again to Aunt that you had to stand there like a small banana tree to be washed by her. She was behind you, scrubbing your back, all the time trying hard not to laugh because she didn't want to hurt you any more than what you had to endure.

That night I slept in the living room because I couldn't sleep with Aunt on the same bed feeling so guilty for doing something stupid and not get anything good out of it. But hungry people get angry and they do stupid things. Late into the night Aunt came over to wake me up and led me to her bed.

In the morning I got my bicycle.