2024 Creativity Award
photo credit Geo Elasmar
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Click on the image above to view the recording of Geo reading his essay.
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Sticky Heat
by Geo Elasmar
In Malaysia, the language of reunion is loud. "They have grown so tall! relatives remark, their hands caressing my and my brother's hair and cheeks. I dance from one to another with careful choreography: swift hugs for those whose arms are open, kisses for the aunties and handshakes for their husbands, articulated "thank yous" for English compliments, wide smiles and glances to my mother for Cantonese ones. In my hands, seven years of accumulated red packets remind me of my long absence. I orient them like a fan and send cool air to my face.
In Malaysia, heat is dense. Sticky. It clings to my hair, dampens my skin lingers in my chest until each breath becomes meticulous, each movement strict. My room with its incessantly-oscillating fans consumes more electricity than we can afford, my grandfather jokes; I'll have to return some red packets. I laugh, wipe my forehead dry, and wonder how he and the rest of my family survive, how their eyes blink so indifferently, how their hair ignores the moisture, how their lungs withstand the air.
In Malaysia, everything feels outside of my control, all jumbled and unfamiliar. At dinner, our conference sized table saturates with family fast; everyone seems to recall my size as a child, yet I do not recall a single face. Later, when only streetlamps and phone flashlights grant outdoor vision, we saunter to the silken tofu stand, where my tongue is left burnt from the hot syrup and my skin burns under the vendor's contemptuous stares that whisper, "I know you are not from here."
That night I can't fall asleep. With each heavy inhale, I summon another memory of feeling detached from a country I thought I knew. With each exhale one question.
Why?
Is it that I am too American? Too accustomed to the sharp chill of Massachusetts winters and the salty Cape Cod wind of summers? Perhaps my tongue is not built to bend with the "lah"s and "woh"s of Cantonese. Perhaps my nose is too long to breathe that sticky air, my eyes too deep set to blink in it with ease. In my mother's own country, I feel as unwelcome as the bones in a steamed fish, interrupting the velvety bites of flesh.
But, as I awake to the fans' mundane hums and step outside my room, my grandmother surprises me with a bowl of cut jackfruit. "For you," she says, her smile like sunlight.
And maybe it's my grandmother's smile, or maybe it's the rapidly-surfacing memories of boyhood that the jackfruit ushers back, but somehow, somewhere in my brain, something clicks. Why dwell on the quest for belonging when I can embrace the person I already am, the person whom my grandparents already shower with unwavering love?
I can bask in the sticky heat's unfamiliarity and laugh when droplets descend from my forehead. I can smile when the silken tofu's ginger syrup jolt's me with its heat, and then I can learn to blow on my next bite. I can breathe the air that nourished my mother, because she breathes the salty Cape Cod air that nourished me, and neither of us turned out all that different. Sure, my brow is thick and my eyes deep set, but my blood is still rich with the DNA of my ancestors, even those with whom I cannot communicate, whose names I cannot pronounce, whose faces I cannot recall.
I know I am American. No less American than I ever was, for that is an ingrained quality, one glued to my skin like the sticky heat. And, as my grandmother's hands push the bowl of thoroughly prepared jackfruit towards me, I realize that I am Malaysian too. I am as Malaysian as the silken tofu vendor, as the aunties who greet me in Cantonese, as my grandparents, as my mother, because what makes me Malaysian is not the language I speak nor the faces I remember; it is all I have inherited: family who loudly rejoice at my arrival, two loving grandparents who make me feel at home in a country time zones away from my own.
So, I revisit that sleep-depriving question: Why do I not belong? And I see that it is answerless. Because belonging, I now understand, is embracing what is me; it is welcoming my Americanness and knowing that it does not obstruct my Malaysian identity, that the two can exist harmoniously. Because in Malaysia - I finally realize - I belong.
In Malaysia, heat is dense. Sticky. It clings to my hair, dampens my skin lingers in my chest until each breath becomes meticulous, each movement strict. My room with its incessantly-oscillating fans consumes more electricity than we can afford, my grandfather jokes; I'll have to return some red packets. I laugh, wipe my forehead dry, and wonder how he and the rest of my family survive, how their eyes blink so indifferently, how their hair ignores the moisture, how their lungs withstand the air.
In Malaysia, everything feels outside of my control, all jumbled and unfamiliar. At dinner, our conference sized table saturates with family fast; everyone seems to recall my size as a child, yet I do not recall a single face. Later, when only streetlamps and phone flashlights grant outdoor vision, we saunter to the silken tofu stand, where my tongue is left burnt from the hot syrup and my skin burns under the vendor's contemptuous stares that whisper, "I know you are not from here."
That night I can't fall asleep. With each heavy inhale, I summon another memory of feeling detached from a country I thought I knew. With each exhale one question.
Why?
Is it that I am too American? Too accustomed to the sharp chill of Massachusetts winters and the salty Cape Cod wind of summers? Perhaps my tongue is not built to bend with the "lah"s and "woh"s of Cantonese. Perhaps my nose is too long to breathe that sticky air, my eyes too deep set to blink in it with ease. In my mother's own country, I feel as unwelcome as the bones in a steamed fish, interrupting the velvety bites of flesh.
But, as I awake to the fans' mundane hums and step outside my room, my grandmother surprises me with a bowl of cut jackfruit. "For you," she says, her smile like sunlight.
And maybe it's my grandmother's smile, or maybe it's the rapidly-surfacing memories of boyhood that the jackfruit ushers back, but somehow, somewhere in my brain, something clicks. Why dwell on the quest for belonging when I can embrace the person I already am, the person whom my grandparents already shower with unwavering love?
I can bask in the sticky heat's unfamiliarity and laugh when droplets descend from my forehead. I can smile when the silken tofu's ginger syrup jolt's me with its heat, and then I can learn to blow on my next bite. I can breathe the air that nourished my mother, because she breathes the salty Cape Cod air that nourished me, and neither of us turned out all that different. Sure, my brow is thick and my eyes deep set, but my blood is still rich with the DNA of my ancestors, even those with whom I cannot communicate, whose names I cannot pronounce, whose faces I cannot recall.
I know I am American. No less American than I ever was, for that is an ingrained quality, one glued to my skin like the sticky heat. And, as my grandmother's hands push the bowl of thoroughly prepared jackfruit towards me, I realize that I am Malaysian too. I am as Malaysian as the silken tofu vendor, as the aunties who greet me in Cantonese, as my grandparents, as my mother, because what makes me Malaysian is not the language I speak nor the faces I remember; it is all I have inherited: family who loudly rejoice at my arrival, two loving grandparents who make me feel at home in a country time zones away from my own.
So, I revisit that sleep-depriving question: Why do I not belong? And I see that it is answerless. Because belonging, I now understand, is embracing what is me; it is welcoming my Americanness and knowing that it does not obstruct my Malaysian identity, that the two can exist harmoniously. Because in Malaysia - I finally realize - I belong.
