Faceless Apparitions

I caught my own reflection in the window of a 7a.m. train to work, sandwiched between a teenager furiously tapping a screen and an uncle nodding off to sleep. There was something remarkably unsettling about how easily a face blurs into the background. Mike Flanagan had it right in Bly Manor: ghosts don’t lose their faces because of a curse; they lose them because memory has a brutal half-life.

We spend decades manicuring our names, accumulating receipts, degrees, and petty victories, convinced our presence leaves a crater. It doesn’t. It leaves an indentation on a faux-leather seat that cools five seconds after we stand up.

The grim truth is that we die twice. The first death is the straightforward biological eviction: the heart stops, the breath leaves, you're given the last rites of enshrouding, and you're interred six feet deep. That part is mundane.

The second death is the Bly Manor treatment: forgotten, faceless.

Ask any man on the street to name his great-grandfather. Most will blink, scratch their head, and guess a generic monosyllable. In two generations, you won’t even have the dignity of a dusty shoebox or an antique frame. You will exist only as thumbnail data, an algorithmically generated “Memory from 50 years ago” that surfaces on a stranger’s screen, prompts a confused blink, and gets dismissed with a single, unceremonious scroll.

No one will recall the cadence of your laugh. No one will know the exact shade of temper you possessed when caught in a rainstorm without an umbrella or the petty triumph you felt when an idiot driver failed to filter into your lane. The jokes you thought were brilliant, the private jokes shared under dim living room lamps, the terror of your failures. All smoothed over, wiped clean like chalk off a wet slate.

Perhaps that is why the faceless ghosts hit so close to the bone. They aren’t monsters; they are simply our future tense. We are all of us walking around with the early symptoms of that quiet erasure, desperate to convince ourselves that our little spark will outshine the dark.

The reflection against the window showed a tired silhouette. A jawline that feels permanent enough to shave every morning, a pair of eyes that imagine they see the world with rare sharpness. In a hundred years, that window will reflect someone else’s furrowed brow, and I will be nowhere, not even an echo in the ears of the people who walk over my dust.

4 Misconceptions about the ritual of sacrifice on Eidil Adha in Singapore, refuted.

Misconceptions based on actual words uttered and heard.

1. "They slit off the sheep's throat and smear the blood all over the mosque altar. Then they dance around the altar shouting Allahu akbar in a bloodied frenzy!" (from a 'learned' colleague at a law firm) - No, no and no. That's sick but congratulations on your vivid imagination, you sicko. The practice is strictly controlled by NEA and all blood of the sacrificial animal is directly emitted into a drain and cleared. No blood on mosque walls or altars and guess what? There are no altars in a mosque. 

2. "The ritual is a spectacle openly witnessed by the public and even small children. This leaves them psychologically scarred for life." (from a lecturer at a local uni). --- Not true. The regulations stipulate that the slaughtering of the sacrificial animals must be away from public sight. You're welcome to visit any mosque tomorrow, put on your best Sherlock hat and try to spot any evidence of the animals and witness the act of the slaughtering itself. You won't see them. They're hidden. As Muslims, we are bound by the law of the land; we honour it and we willingly comply.

3. "Everyone is free to take part in the act of slaughtering. They anyhow cut, leaving the animal in horrible pain for a long time before dying." (some random rumour-monger on a bus, "teaching" her son) --- False. If that happens, we can't eat the meat because that's not the halal way. It's haram (forbidden). Only NEA licensed personnel are allowed to perform the slaughter itself, and the act, in accordance with Islamic religious law must ensure a deep cut to the jugular vein of the animal, ensuring a swift death.

4. "They leave the meat on the altar for days after that." --- Nope, the essence of the entire ritual is charity, giving and sharing. Commonly, it is mandatory that the meat is distributed into 3 parts: a part for the needy and destitute, a part for relatives and friends, a part for the donor's home. Again, there are no altars in a mosque.

The doom that shall befall the land.

Heaving his weight up the waiting public bus, he immensely regretted spending any remnants of change on a tabloid, forty-two flimsy pages of photographs of scantily clad women and columns upon columns dissing the outcome of the general elections. But mostly the photographs of the scantily clad women.

The government, which many had expected to be miraculously ousted, has returned to power. The haze has also returned with a palpable vengeance. Internet shamans had predicted imminent calamity for the nation now that the incumbent had once again been returned to power. "Cursed are those who curse this land! They deserve this government and the doom that shall befall them! Woe!" The haze, bordering around hazardous levels, is the first of these calamities, they claimed.

The characteristically hypocritical  shamans, who had for many years prior to the election campaign been utterly vocal in criticising the ruling party, hide the indelible fact that they, too, had been among the whopping 69% of the population who had voted for the incumbent upon sight of the polling box.

Jostling with what seemed like an unholy communion of tired workers who are glued to their mobile handheld devices as if they are scriptures, he found himself satisfied that amidst the bacchanalia of entertainment at the disposal men and women of this generation due to the advent of smart devices, he found a little space to read. But mostly to secretly gawk at the photographs of scantily clad women. 

Welcome to 2014. 2015, practically.

The insipid hum of the slender young waitress serving my breakfast, with the expression of intently judging my cheap breakfast of  cherry tomatoes, scrambled egg and scrawny sausages, shook me with a jolt stronger than any amount of expresso shots could ever achieve. "Good morning, asshole. Welcome to 2014...almost the beginning of 2015, actually. You haven't wrote anything on this blog for a goddamn six years. Damnit. Six years. Now tip me," she appears to mutter before sashaying away, without the slightest hint of effort in hiding her dismay at the paltry change this penniless customer handed her.

The Show Must Go On (A Prose)

"Inside my heart is breaking
My make-up may be flaking
But my smile still stays on.
Whatever happens, I'll leave it all to chance
Another heartache, another failed romance
On and on, does anybody know what we are living for?" - Queen

Lost in the abyss of his mind’s ebb laid the distant fragments of a past he once knew. As he attempted to decipher and to create meaning out of this conundrum, pieces of him shattered even further. He was empty. The bludgeoning of chance had brought him deeper down the path of abomination. Cursed, he searched for his breath – lost like a stolen wind.

Love, or in whatever manifestation of it which he could comprehend, laid spread-legged in the dark, cobbled alleyways beyond the city walls. With her wretched, soulless stare she waited for him, beckoning him, seducing him with her vile fragrance. In a language unspoken, she would sing a song, enchanting yet vulgar, which can only be heard by those who could afford her. Love, was available to the highest bidder.

He found his breath buried deep within her bosom, and pleasure between her legs. He shared with her his inner secrets, and Love answered in insatiable moans. Dancing between the satin sheets, not a whimper from the streets could disrupt the placidity throbbing within his body. Feeling every inch of her body, he soon climaxed into a crescendo of his own deception.

He was but another fool in her eyes. When morning arrives, Love, as he knew it, would laugh at his frailty.

The show must go on.

- Inspired by August Man, February 2008.