1958. The British still fly the Union Jack over
City Hall, but the air smells of burnt rubber
and kaya toast. Ahmad bin Yusof, 28, drives a
battered Ford Prefect with a dented fender from
the ’42 bombing—he doesn’t fix it. It’s a
reminder: the war took his brother, the
Occupation took his father’s shop, and the
British took his chance to study. He survives on
grab runs from Kampong Glam to Tiong Bahru,
ferrying soldiers, shopkeepers, and the
occasional Eurasian nurse who won’t look him in
the eye. His licence says “Malay,” but his
mother was Peranakan, and his tongue still slips
into Hokkien when he’s tired. No one asks.
Asking means trouble.
The new rule bites hard: no passengers after
11pm unless stamped by the Municipal Licensing
Office. No exceptions. The night he picks up
Salmah, he’s two minutes past curfew. She’s
dressed in a faded kebaya, clutching a tin box
wrapped in newspaper. No papers. No ID. Just a
name and a address in Jalan Besar. He knows that
street. His brother, Ali, died there in ’43—
carried home on a bamboo stretcher, mouth full
of blood and a halfeaten kueh lapis.
He should turn her away. But her eyes are the
same as his brother’s. The same quiet. The same
way she doesn’t flinch when he swerves to avoid
a British patrol car.
He drives. The city is alive with whispered talk
of Merdeka. Men gather under streetlamps,
passing leaflets in three languages. Ahmad
doesn’t read. He listens. He knows the cost of
speaking.
At Jalan Besar, she opens the tin. Inside: a
wedding photo. Ali, grinning in his school
uniform, arm around a girl in a baju kurung.
Salmah. His brother’s fiancée. Vanished after
the Occupation. Rumoured dead. She says she was
hidden in Java by a Malay uncle. Came back to
find his family gone. The photo’s corner is
singed—burned by a soldier’s cigarette in ’43,
when they took Ali for “questioning.”
She doesn’t say it. But Ahmad knows: she came to
claim the ring. The one Ali hid under the
floorboard before they dragged him away. The one
his mother kept in a tea tin, buried beneath the
kitchen sink, never speaking its name.
He takes her to the old kampong house, now
halfdemolished for an HDB plot. The foundation’s
still there. He digs with his hands. The soil is
wet from last night’s rain. He pulls out the tin.
The gold band inside is bent, but whole.
She doesn’t cry. Just places her palm over his.
Her fingers are calloused—worked the fields,
washed clothes, survived.
They sit on the broken steps. The streetlamp
flickers. A distant radio plays “Bengawan Solo.”
No one comes. No one dares.
He doesn’t say anything. But he takes her hand.
And for the first time since the war, Ahmad bin
Yusof lets someone hold him.
The next morning, he drives to the Licensing
Office. Hands in the stamped form. Says nothing.
They stamp his pass. He doesn’t ask why.
That night, he picks her up again. Not for a
date. For the ride home.
They never speak of Ali.
But the tin box now sits on his dashboard.
And the ring? She wears it on her thumb.
No one asks.
No one needs to.
