Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 26 January 2015 issue)

Dear Kam,
Is it me or have you been overseas for a very long time?
Ardent Fan

After a long trip overseas, I am finally back in Malaysia. I had forgotten how hot it is here but it’s good to be back.

As I was leaving Britain, my last conversation with a Londoner was with a Somali-born taxi driver who took me to the airport. He told me that he has been in London for 10 years and in Holland for seven years before that. When I was living in London back in the 1980s, I never saw any Somalis but now, he said, there are 350,000 Somalis living in the UK.

He said he was grateful to the European countries for taking him in when his own country had descended into chaos and slaughter and when, he said, wealthy Muslim countries had done nothing to help. His uncle and cousins had been killed in the turmoil of the Somali civil war, but things have improved in recent years and he fully intends to move back to Somalia as soon as possible. He told me how the years of exile have changed the exiled Somalis, because “now, they know how to work”.

Before, back in Somalia, other people had driven the taxis and cleaned the toilets but now, a man like him from a privileged family is a taxi driver, and his own mother had earned money for her family by cleaning other people’s toilets. He also believes that Somalis have forgotten or have been cleansed of the old communal and sectarian hatreds that had destroyed their country.

Somalia had fought a bloody war with Ethiopia but now, his best friend is a Christian Ethiopian. He spoke of Somalia as a land of immense beauty and potential, with soil so fertile that anything can grow. His family still has land with mature mango trees, and he thinks that he can live a profitable and happy life in the new Somalia. He made it sound like paradise. He hasn’t actually been to Somalia since he was a child, and I think he’s in for a shock. Nobody gets rich selling mangoes.

London is full of exiled peoples, driven out of their countries by war, bad government or collapsing economies, and whenever I meet them, I get sad and scared. I’ve met many young Iranians whose single struggle is to get permanent residency in another country. They feel that they have no option but to leave their own country, because it can offer them no freedom and no financial future.

What if it were Malaysians? What if Malaysians lost all hope and left en masse? It’s not that bad, and I don’t think it will ever happen. Obviously, many have left but it’s different. Malaysia is not Somalia or Iran for that matter. But when I see gatherings of exiles in London telling stories of the good old days back home, I can’t help but try to picture what Malaysian exiles would do, talk about or remember. Would Malaysians gather to listen to old P Ramlee songs and cry into their sirup, as they remember a land of humidity and fertility, where different communities once lived happily side by side? Actually, many of us already do that.

When I told my Somali taxi driver that I am Malaysian, he said two things. One that surprised me and one that I knew he was going to say. He told me that the Malaysian government had given many grants for young Somalis to study in Malaysia, which I did not know. And then, I knew he would say, “Ah, Mahathir!” Whenever I meet somebody from the developing world who doesn’t pay much attention to Malaysia, he will say the one and only thing he knows: Mahathir. He admires Mahathir, even if he can’t think of any exact reason why. It’s always a general thing — Mahathir was a strong leader who brought development.

We were nearing Heathrow Airport, so I didn’t feel I had time to mention that Malaysia is still tackling the legacy of the “great man”. Nor did I have time to ask the unanswerable question: would Malaysia have experienced immense growth in the 1990s regardless of who was in charge? We’ll never know.

My Somali-born Londoner taxi driver dropped me off at the airport. Because we had established that he was an exile from a war-torn nation that is one of the poorest in the world and that I am from Malaysia, a developing world success story, I felt obliged to give him a generous tip, even though the value of my currency was dropping and he probably earns more than I do.

Dear Kam,
Is the National Service being scrapped? I was really hoping to get rid of my son for a few weeks so I could go on holiday.
Tired Parent

So the so-called National Service will be suspended to save some money. That’s good, but better still would be to scrap the whole thing. I’m guessing that the argument for its existence is that it helps or forces young Malaysians to mix with each other and it is character-building and it is blah, blah, blah. I would like to see young people mix with each other and not simply stay in their own groups as much as the next person, but this ridiculous National Service makes it seem like it’s their fault if they do not. If they do not presently mix, then it is not their fault. They are young people, kids. Their parents probably still choose their clothes for them and yet, somehow, it’s their fault that Malaysian society has become polarised. The words, actions and policies of their elders and betters have created their world and yet they must be forced into camps.

There seems to be a consistent need around the world for authorities (middle-aged men) to control two sections of society — women and young people — and, to my mind, the bullying reaction to a recent K-pop concert fits the mould. We older people seem to spend so much time lecturing young people on how they should behave and very little time looking at the impact of our own behaviour.

If there is to be a so-called National Service, then perhaps it should be for older Malaysians. I would reluctantly go. We could do unity exercises like building bridges out of Birkin bags.

Reprinted with the kind permission of