My mother has been cooking for three days. This happened on April every year.
This is not an observation. It is a mathematical fact, a law of thermodynamics, as certain as the sun rising over the oil palms of our village in Perak. On the twenty-eighth of Ramadhan, she begins. By noon, the kitchen is a laboratory of smoke and sugar, of turmeric-stained fingers and the slow alchemy of patience. Lemang—glutinous rice and coconut milk in bamboo tubes, roasted over open flames until the insides turn jade-green and fragrant. Ketupat—woven palm leaves into diamond shapes, boiled until the rice inside compresses into a solid, sacred block. Rendang—beef simmered for eight hours, stirred by hand until the coconut paste darkens to the color of river mud and the meat falls apart at the whisper of a spoon.
I watch her from the doorway. She is sixty-two now.She always say she already old,not like before.Her knees make a sound like twigs when she kneels to check the fire. My father died seven months ago. This is our Raya without him.
“Don’t stand there like a ghost ” she says. “Come stir the rendang. Your arm is younger than mine.”
I stir. The spoon is old. Its handle is smooth. My mother has held it for thirty years.
The rendang bubbles. I smell galangal, lemongrass, kerisik and something else. It tastes like my childhood.Its my unforgettable memory along my life.
“He always wanted kerisik ” my mother says. ” Year he ate three plates. I told him his stomach would rebel. He said, ‘ let it rebel. At least I will die happy.’”
She laughs. Then she stops. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
I say nothing. I am thirty-four years old. I am an engineer in Kuala Lumpur. In this kitchen, I am seven again. I am afraid of the dark. I think my father is the man in the world.
Hari Raya Aidilfitri is a celebration in Malaysia which celebrated by Malay. It is also called Hari Lebaran or Hari Kemenangan. It marks the end of Ramadhan. It is a victory over hunger and the self.
My father had another idea. He was a fisherman. He spent years at sea. Every Raya morning he would sit on our steps and watch the sky.
“The victory ” he told me once “is not over hunger. The victory is over forgetting.”
I did not understand him then. I understand him now.
Raya is a festival. It is also a time to remember those who are no longer with us. Every empty chair, every plate, every photo from years past. It all reminds us of those who are missing.
In Malaysia we say “Selamat Hari Raya”. We mean it.We also mean that we remember those who are not here.
The first Syawal morning arrives with the sound of takbir from the surau. My mother wears her clothes. She has a hibiscus in her hair. She looks like any mother preparing for Raya. I see the sadness in her eyes.
“Go get ready ” she tells me. “People will come soon.”
I put on my baju Melayu. The fabric is dark green. It was my father’s color.
We had organized a event or called open house for another ethnic to celebrate “Raya” together.The first guests arrive at nine. Auntie Fizah from next door, with her three grandchildren in matching pink baju kurung. Uncle Ramli from the end of the lane, who smells of tobacco and laughter. Then the flood begins: cousins, second cousins, neighbors, friends of friends, strangers who heard there was good rendang. The living room fills with the music of salam—hands extended, palms open, fingers touching first the hands of the elder, then bringing those hands to the heart.
“Maaf zahir batin,” I say to Auntie Fizah. Forgive me for everything I did and failed to do.
“Maaf zahir batin,” she says back, and her eyes are wet because she remembers my father too.
We eat. The lemang is perfect—creamy, slightly sweet, the bamboo giving off a faint smoky perfume. The ketupat diamonds are unwoven with patient fingers, the rice inside sliced into cubes and dipped in rendang sauce so rich it leaves orange rings around our mouths. My mother watches everyone eat, and for a few hours, she almost looks happy. She refills plates before they are empty. She presses kuih raya into palms that are already full. She moves through the house like a general on the last day of a long war.
I see her look at the chair by the window. It is empty. My father used to sit. She arranged a cushion on it. No one sits in that chair. Everyone sees it.
At two in the afternoon the crowd thins. The children have gone to houses. The adults sit in the living room. Someone turns on the television. A Raya song plays. My father used to hum it.
My mother disappears into the kitchen. I find her standing at the sink. She is not washing anything. She just stands there.
“I cooked much ” she says. “I always cook much. Your father would eat the leftovers for a week.”
“It does ” I say. “The flavors get better.”
She laughs. We are quiet, for a moment. The surau starts the afternoon prayer call.
“I dreamed of him night ” my mother says. “He was young. He was standing on the boat throwing nets.”
“I am home, Mak.”
She turns to look at me. Her eyes search my face.
“I know ” she says. “. He didn’t mean this house. He meant… home. The other home.”
In Islam we believe that the souls of the people who have passed away are not gone. They are in Barzakh. A kind of waiting place between this life and the next. They can hear us the scholars say. They know when we pray for them. They feel the things we do for them.
My father wasn’t a scholar. He was a fisherman who only finished school.. He knew some things. He knew that the sea is really deep. He knew that the wind can come anytime.. On Raya mornings sitting on the front steps watching the sun come up over the palm trees he knew that the people who have passed away are not really gone. They are on the other side of a thin line.
“We don’t say goodbye in Raya ” he told me when I was ten. “We say maaf zahir batin. That means: I am sorry for all the things I did. Here is a door. Walk through.”
I didn’t understand then. I was ten. I just wanted money and cookies and new money.
Now I am thirty-four. I have buried my father. I have sat in his chair. Felt like he was still there. I have made his food and worn his favorite color and stood in his doorway watching my mother grieve.
I understand now.
That night after all the guests had left, my mother. I sat on the front steps. The moon was a curve above the oil palms. A mosque was calling people to pray. Else a family was still celebrating.
“Will you come back year?” my mother asked.
“Yes Mak.”
“And the year ”
“Yes,I will always back,do not worry mak.”
She nodded. She took my hand. Her fingers were rough from doing chores for a time.
” year ” she said, “we will set an extra plate. Just in case. Just in case he is hungry.”
I was going to tell her that this isn’t what the scholars say. I stopped. Because my mother isn’t a scholar. She is a woman who loved my father for forty-two years and lost him seven months ago. And if setting a plate helps her feel like my father is still with us then I won’t correct her.
So I squeezed her hand.
“One extra plate ” I said. “. Extra kerisik.”
She smiled. It was the real smile I had seen on her face since the funeral.
The takbir faded. The night settled.. Somewhere my father was smiling too.
Selamat Hari Raya, Abah. Maaf zahir batin. The rendang is still good on the day.
As we are all aware,Hari Raya Aidilfitri in Malaysia is not one day. It is a time. A week or sometimes two week.Before that,we will have a Ramadhan month,we need to stop eating after 6am and only can start eating after 6pm.It is a unique culture for Islam.While Hari Raya Aidilfitri , by visiting friends of giving money in envelopes of saying “maaf zahir batin” until it becomes a habit. We eat lemang and ketupat and rendang. We also feel the sadness of missing people. We. Cry at the same time. We set chairs for people who won’t come. We call it hope.
My father died of a heart attack on a Tuesday in Pasar Seni, carrying a bag of fish he had bought for my mother. He was sixty-seven. He had promised to teach me how to make his secret sambal—the one with dried shrimp and tamarind and a lifetime of adjustments. He never did.
But every Raya, when I stir the rendang and taste the kerisik and sit in the empty chair by the window, I learn it anyway. Bit by bit. Recipe by ghostly recipe.
Maaf zahir batin, Abah. I am still learning.
By: LIM LE XUAN
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