A Harris bin Potter Hari Raya Special

(Before we go into the expository madness of Chapter 3, here is a little story from Harris bin Potter's earlier childhood. I need to thank Munira Maricar for that brilliant one-liner, and Sean Lee for agreeing to have a character styled after him. Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri everybody!)

There are several things that many Malay people do not know. That is not to say that Malay people are predisposed to not know things - that would be a horribly racist statement to make, even if the author himself is Malay. I am sure other cultures have varying degrees of ignorance in certain areas as well. The Hutu tribes of Central Africa, for example, are not well-versed in igloo construction. And ketupat-weaving, probably.

One thing many Malay people do not know is that the word they use to refer to fasting, 'puasa', is a loan word from the Sanskrit 'upavasa', which means 'an abstinence from sensual or corporeal indulgence'.

"You know what a lot of Malay people don't know?" Cik Petom was asking her family as they sat around the dining table, preparing to break fast. "That I invented the word 'puasa'."

"Wow!" her son, Dumbass, said, duly impressed. "I thought Zubir Said invented it?"

"No, son," the boy's father, Pak Pandir, corrected him. "Zubir Said invented the Shuffle, which is a kind of dance that gay people and accountants perform at night clubs."

As you can tell, Cik Petom and her family were the kind of Singaporeans whose ignorance can only be matched by their ability to draw pride from achievements that were not their own. They were the kind who would interrupt an acceptance speech by Taylor Swift and say that they had the best damn video of all time.

What you might not be able to tell about Cik Petom and her family is the secret they keep in their closet. This was literal - it wasn't that Pak Pandir was dying to bust his feather boa out for a Cher concert, or that Cik Petom too strongly related to an Icelandic prime minister whose time had finally come, and might take offence at such an obscure reference to lesbianism. No, the secret in their closet was - 

The radio played the azan, and Cik Petom and her family began to gobble their food.

"What about him?" Cik Petom asked her husband, gesturing towards the closet.

"A boy like him? Of course he doesn't fast! He's not strong like our Dumbass."

"Fasting is difficult, but I am the only 9-year-old who can do it," Dumbass proudly proclaimed as he heartily assaulted a large whole chicken with his teeth. Laid out in front of him were two plates of ketupat, two bowls of rendang, five plates of serondeng and thirty sticks of satay babat. A full tub of ice-cream awaited him in the refrigerator. It was his first meal, in half an hour.

The secret, the boy in the closet was Harris bin Potter.

The year was 2009. It was a simpler time, where nobody had to visit those damn voting booths twice in the same year - no offence to those who voted thrice in 1966. It was a simpler time for Harris bin Potter, too, for he had not yet known of his magical heritage, and had yet to enroll in the marvellous magical academy, Hog-Tak-Halal-What. For those same reasons, it was a darker, gloomier time for him as well.

Contrary to what Cik Petom believed, Harris was fasting, and right now, after 14 hours of abstaining from food and water, he desperately wanted to have something to eat. Expecting the worst of chastisements from his relatives but too hungry to care, he came out of the closet (hee hee).

"What the Joo Chiat Complex are you doing out here, boy?" roared Pak Pandir.

"I would like to break my fast," Harris said defiantly.

"And I would like to break your face," Pak Pandir told him. "Either you get back into the closet or you get out of my house!"

Angrily, Harris chose the latter and stormed out of the flat. At the void deck, he spotted a tall Chinese man studying a box of dates closely.

"Hey," Harris said to the man. "I need to break my fast. Can I have a date?"

The man smiled sheepishly. "Look, kid, I am very flattered. But I don't play for the rainbow team."

"I'm sorry, I don't understand."

"I don't play backgammon?"

"Well, neither do I. Capteh is more my thing."

"No I mean I am not a backdoor bandit. I am not a sausage jockey. No chi chi man." The man studied Harris' confused expression before realising the 11-year-old boy was not coming on to him. "Oh my God, you're just a hungry kid! I am so sorry. Here, have my phoenix dactylifer."

"We normal people call them dates," Harris said, as he accepted the two dates, or as per its binomial nomenclature for my scientist friends, phoenix dactylifera, and quickly ate them. "I am Harris. Harris bin Potter. Thank you so much, I was really starving."

"No problem. I am Eel. Sane Eel."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Sane Eel," Sane Eel repeated. "I am an analrapist suffering from arrested development."

Harris felt his butt involuntarily clench. "But...you just said that you weren't -"

"Oh, I should elaborate. I am a combination of an analyst and a therapist - an analrapist. You've never heard of an analrapist? There are a lot of analrapists in Port Manteau." Sane Eel studied Harris closely. "You're an orphan?"

"How did you know?" Harris asked, his face impassive.

"I picked it off your aura. You see, Harris, I am also a medium."

"Actually, I think you're a large. You're quite tall."

"No, kid. I mean I can communicate with the dead - I can help you speak to your parents. It's three more days to Hari Raya. I imagine you would really want to speak to them, especially now."

Harris thought about it, and the medium analrapist randomly carrying a box of dates around was right. He had only seen pictures of his parents, smiling at him from old photographs. He imagined what life would be like if they were still alive and hadn't died from food poisoning like his aunt and uncle told him. Without his realising it, Harris had began to tear, both from the gaping hole in his heart his parents would fill with love, and from the prospect of communicating with his Mama and Ayah.

"Take my hand," he said kindly. Harris placed his hand in Sane Eel's, and the medium closed his eyes for a long, long while.

When Sane Eel opened his eyes, it was glazed, and when he spoke, it was a voice that Harris had never heard before. Nevertheless, it was a voice heavy with a paternal love and affection. "Harris, I am so sorry we had to leave you in this world alone. Your mother and I love you so much," the voice said. "I don't have much time here, but there's something important I need to tell you."

"What is it, father?"

"Seriously Black is innocent!"

"Who is seriously black? Thats racist, father! Is it Wesley Snipes?"

"No, Seriously Black is - "

With a sudden jerk, Sane Eel snapped back to himself. He looked kindly at Harris, whose eyes were red and swollen from that brief exchange with his father. "I hope that helped make things easier for you," he said in his usual voice.

For the first time in the whole of Ramadhan, Harris managed a smile. It did make things easier. The mystery of this person named Seriously Black, whoever he was, can be resolved later. As he made his way back to Cik Petom's apartment, where he knew he would be punished for walking out the way he did, there was a warm sensation in his heart. It was a silent, bittersweet joy which, although it came from beyond the grave, allowed Harris to finally know what it was like to be loved.

Three days later, he had the best Hari Raya of his life thus far.