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The following is the script for The Senseless Persecution of Love Beyond Borders. [link to listen]
The Senseless Persecution of Love Beyond Borders
By Diana Yeong
It’s 1.15 am. The house is still and quiet. I try to sleep. But my mind refuses to rest. I sit up in bed. I check the clock: it’s past 8pm in New Zealand. It’s a good time to call. The phone rings thrice, And I see her face. “Ma? Can’t sleep again?” Lina is still in her office. Working late again. My daughter runs her fingers through her hair. I can see the dark circles under her eyes. She smiles, but it’s strained. We chat, as we often do, about our days. Hers, long, tiresome, and stressful. Mine, filled with the mundane and the routine. I tell her of Aunty Lau’s bad knees, my physiotherapist Doreen’s fender-bender, and the big fuss when the neighbours’ cat went missing yesterday. We laugh a little, but it’s tinged with sadness. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the same room as my child, and seeing her face makes me yearn for her presence all the more. “It’ll be one year next month.” My daughter speaks the words I can’t bear to speak out loud. One year next month since her father’s death, she doesn’t need to say. “I still can’t get that visa to come visit.” Her eyes turn red from the tears she tries to hold back. My daughter isn’t Malaysian, and so she can’t get a visa to visit me during the pandemic. The only thing we could do was console each other, until I ended the call, urging Lina to go home for the night. I put down my phone, Lay back on my pillow, and pick up a nearby photo of my late husband John. John, with his kind eyes and shy smile, who swept me off my feet all those years ago. The thoughtful man who sat next to a nervous foreign student who was far from home and overwhelmed by it all, Who became first a classmate, then a friend, and finally my everything. The man for whom I stayed in Auckland to build a home with. Two months after we graduated, we were married. The year after that, we were blessed with Lina. When Lina was barely a year old, my father had a stroke. We returned to Malaysia to care for him, to console my mother and help raise my teenage brother. John came to love Malaysia, and eventually we decided we’d stay. We resolved to take over my father’s small business. Everything was going well. Well, almost everything. Malaysia, it seems, has no need of those who would wish to become Malaysians. There’s little provision for those who wish to be adopted by it’s beautiful shores, lush jungles and rich culture. We chose to stay here and raise a family, but if ever there was a way to test the structural integrity of a marriage, few could have topped the bureaucracy at the Malaysian department of immigration. Once our decision to stay was made We visited the department of immigration to begin permanent residency procedures. Little did we know of the nightmarish hurdles ahead of us. That first year John is asked to return to New Zealand while his application is being processed. We are told it will take two months, so we console ourselves it will be a short separation. Unhappily, we comply. But the two months come and go with no news, And the months gradually build up, While my young daughter wanders the house, perplexed, searching in the nooks and crannies of our tiny apartment for her missing father. I spent many tearful nights in that horrible year, yearning for my husband, single-parenting a young child, adjusting to the responsibility of shouldering a business. Almost six months of weekly checks with the immigration department later, John is finally allowed to join us. The hesitancy with which our young daughter approached the strange man at the airport almost broke both our hearts. Then we were told that John’s stay was conditioned on his employment at a multinational company. Tense weeks passed as we frantically searched for a suitable job. He was forced to widen his job search beyond my hometown of Melaka, as jobs were scarcer in the historical city. It was nothing more than a pure stroke of luck that we managed to find him a suitable job at a company in KL. I often look back and marvel at how our marriage survived those years. John’s weekly commutes to and from Melaka lasted for 5 years. The times we were forced to drop everything and scramble for every little concession at the immigration office. 5 long years, in which we were more often apart than together. Years in which we each had to maintain our own households. 5 years of raising a child who was bewildered each time her father woke early on Monday mornings to go far, far away for the week. 5 years in which I could feel my husband physically pulling away from me, as he lived a life he hated, all to be in this country for my sake. Can you make a family when you spend less than a day a week together? When your burdens are not halved by sharing, but doubled by distance? When absence makes your heart grow not fonder, but more resentful and emotionally fragile? Can you be someone’s loving wife and justify subjecting them to the slow, agonizing torture of endless governmental red-tape? Even my parents could see how the strain was tearing us apart. Eventually my brother was grown enough to take over my father’s business, And my daughter and I moved to the capital to be with John, to begin anew the process of becoming a a family. But while John eventually earned his red IC after 12 years of being in Malaysia, for my daughter it was a different story. Even with a Malaysian born and bred mother, Lina never got her Malaysian citizenship. For years we would have to fly overseas to renew her social visa. Later, she would have a student visa, but still the headaches persisted.
Again and again we would fill up all the forms to submit a request for citizenship, but always the status would come back stamped with bold letters: REJECTED.
We were never told the reasons why. You see, the overseas-born child of a Malaysian mother does not get automatic citizenship. Only men could claim citizenship for a child from distant shores. For Lina it was rejection after rejection, one blow after another, until we had no choice but to send her to a place that would never tell her she was not welcome to stay. Despite living here since toddlerhood, raised breathing Malaysian air, immersed in Malaysian culture, with the only family she ever knew all in Malaysia, She was still never allowed to truly call Malaysia home. She was destined to be punished for her foreign birth for all time. Such thoughts careen haphazardly inside my mind The soundtrack of so many insomniac nights, Until finally, I succumb to the oblivion of a restless sleep. The next day, I wake at 8, like clockwork. I’ve long retired and no longer work, but my body still retains the habit of years. I step outside for my daily morning walk, My two masks in place. I stay well away from the other morning joggers; the pandemic is far from over, And my days of taking my health for granted are done. I make a carefully-distanced purchase of a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread at the corner mini market, Then retreat to the safely of my own four walls to make my breakfast. My phone buzzes. It’s my cousin, Yee Ling, As usual, she wants to talk of her troubled relationship with her daughter-in-law. Like John, Shu Rei has married into a Malaysian family. She’s a sweet young girl, a Taiwanese, someone who, like me, had her heart captured by a fellow student. They wouldn’t listen when I warned them of the trials that lay ahead for the would-be immigrant. They figured love would conquer all. Now Shu Rei has lived in Malaysia for two years.
She works on her English, hoping for that employer who would take a chance and sponsor her work visa.
Until she finds a career, the young couple can ill-afford to move out of their parents’ home on a single person’s salary. They are saving for a deposit on their own home, and so have few funds to spare for her to live it up as she pleases. So she chafes at the restrictiveness of living with her in-laws, And cannot abide the smallness of her new life. This causes a great deal of stress for everyone in the family. With the pandemic, the stress levels are ever higher. Shu Rei has a looming visa renewal, and they have pinned high hopes that this time, she will finally have restrictions lifted. The young couple have heard that things may go easier with their application, if the couple is with child. Yee Ling is worried they may rush into having a child for the wrong reasons, when they are at such an unsettled time in their marriage. Their nightly fights and arguments are surely not going to lessen with the added burden of a baby in their lives. Many people think a baby will provide the glue for a poor marriage, But how often does unhappy parenthood destroy the marriage instead? I have words of sympathy for my cousin, but little in the way of consolation. The truth is, things have barely improved since the days when John and I, so optimistic and carefree, Imagined we could build the perfect life in Malaysia. I think of how I am separated from my child, Unable to be there for her in hard times, Or for her to give me comfort when I need it, And I can’t imagine what benefit the country derives from its draconian immigration policies. Too often, families give up and move elsewhere for good, Or just give up being a family, Added to the long list of victims of petty bureaucracy and an unyielding adherence to narrowly interpreted policy. I turn on the TV to watch the news, To take my mind off these worries for a while. The headlines are filled with news of the awe-inspiring athletes congregating in Tokyo for the Olympic Games. There’s a segment on Naomi Osaka, the tennis superstar who lit the Olympic torch to signal the start of the games. Osaka, the child of a Japanese mother and a Haitian father, who moved to the USA at the age of 3. At 22 she chose to take the Japanese passport, as a way of being closer to her Japanese roots. As I watch the coverage of the games, I see, again, and again, athletes who are clearly immigrants or children of immigrants. The ping pong players from China who have found new countries to represent. Zheng Ninali, the Canadian-born track and field athlete who competed for China to honour her maternal grandparents’ sporting history. Joseph Schooling, the young son of a Chinese-Malaysian and a Singaporean of British descent, who won Singapore’s first-ever gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics. All of them, welcomed by their adopted nations, and recognized as one of their own. I wonder how many persons of true potential we have turned away from our shores. I wonder how many we have denied the opportunity to be a true part of our communities. People who have wanted to be productive members of our society, But were never given the room to give their best to us. I think of John and all our endless visits to the immigration department. And all the times we wondered if our marriage could take the burden put upon it by our immigration woes. I think of Lina and how we, mother and child, have fought and lost the lifelong battle to belong to the same nation. I think of Shu Rei and the tough challenges she still faces ahead, and how all the Malaysian citizens around her are affected by her fate. The world today is one of fluid boundaries and increasingly transnational families. How long until we understand that the policies of the past must change in the wake of a new world? How many more must be affected before we choose a path of acceptance and open-heartedness? Will we be able to adapt in time to do right by our citizens, to heal our broken families, to no longer accept the senseless persecution of love beyond borders?
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