IS MALAYSIA MY PAST OR MY PRESENT?

NINE, DECEMBER 2023

This week marked the first anniversary of our move to Malta. But writing about my experience here is still a difficult assignment because it doesn’t take long for me to segue into writing about Malaysia (where I lived for ten years prior, and where my husband lived his whole life). Everything I observe about Malta is filtered through what I know of Malaysia; everything is a comparison. How long will it take before I can look at things from a local point of view – is that even possible?

Before leaving Malaysia, I tried to imagine life in Europe again: being so connected to a faraway country that nobody around here knows very much about. (When I opened a Maltese bank account – something that non-EU citizens, by the way, seem to have a much harder time doing – the nice lady took my details and asked me “Malaysia, that’s in the EU right?” I swear I am not making this up.) I spent a decade learning about how Malaysia works; the majority of my friends are there, it’s the place that I know best nowadays, and any conversation topic risks being a springboard for me to tell you how things are different over there. I wondered if I would feel isolated, frustrated, to have this connection that people in Europe wouldn’t understand.

But the flip side of it is that Malta is a place for me to heal. We left Malaysia for a reason, after all. It’s hostile to queer people, and migrants have little chance of a secure future there, unless they’re super wealthy (spoiler: I am not). The decline into new levels of fascism and authoritarianism following the 2020 takeover by an unelected government killed off my love for the country, and my thoughts about leaving began to take a different form: no longer would it be the seemingly inevitable forced removal that I had always dreaded. I would leave of my own accord, on my own terms, withdrawing my presence from Malaysia’s built-in cruelty.

I was so anxious in those last few years, and also so self-conscious to talk about that anxiousness – I still am. Although after years of precarity and labour exploitation, I had finally ended up with a decent job and a comfortable daily life, I was also aware of how deeply fragile this was, and how suddenly it could change. While trans people and Muslims were most at risk should there be a raid on the queer parties we organised, being noticed as an organiser could lead to a swift cancellation of my visa. While Malaysians were the ones who were arrested every so often for expressing mild political opinions on social media, it would be so easy to eject a foreigner for the same – forcibly separating me from my home, my love and my community. It felt daunting to verbalise these what-ifs since people might just see white privilege when they looked at me – but the uncertainty weighed heavily on me.

Meanwhile, it’s obviously a lot worse for Global South migrants. Malaysia is a repeat offender when it comes to labour exploitation and trafficking. The country has a deep love of immigration detention, with tens of thousands imprisoned in centres where death is no stranger. (And these are where migrants who escape traffickers and bad employers can expect to end up.) Then there are the refugees, who are in a legal grey area: they’re treated as undocumented migrants, forbidden to work, denied access to welfare, exploited by employers and extorted by the police. 

In 2020, I started organising fundraisers for refugees in Malaysia. One thing led to another; things snowballed, in very convoluted ways, and now here I am, undertaking casework from afar, coordinating Garabtaag, a small collective of volunteers who bring their various skills and experience to problem-solve. Queer and trans refugees; survivors of gender-based violence; people with complex health conditions; unaccompanied minors; sex workers; speakers of Arabic, Bangla, Somali and Urdu; bereaved parents; people at risk from their own communities – we have seen a wide range of issues, learned about the (largely inadequate) existing options and set about finding ways to make things just a little bit better for as many people as we could.

This work began during lockdown, largely undertaken remotely, so it was easy to bring it with me when I moved away. And so, every day I am still connected to Malaysia; every day, refugees share with me stories that remind me of its intentionally harmful policies, of its default racism and xenophobia, of why I am furious, and of why I left. I don’t regret leaving. Although there is so much to love about Malaysia, it’s hard to unsee what there is to hate about it, too.

So. It is a bit disorienting, to dive into these endless appeals for help and then switch off and reorient myself to the Mediterranean. Maybe I am still figuring out who I am here in Malta. Is Malaysia my past or my present; is it some kind of blurry in-between? While I wait to figure that out, as well as to figure out how connected I feel to Malta, the main thing is that I get to enjoy breathing. I am no longer holding my breath, looking over my shoulder, waking up in the middle of the night for another bout of catastrophising. Home should not be a place where you feel dread. So maybe this is home.

For more information on Garabtaag, contact garabtaag@gmail.com.