Talking about food in Malaysia is like breathing. Most people will greet you with some variation of, “Hi! Have you eaten?” Many of my favorite memories are accompanied by Malaysian food, which is a huge source of comfort for me.
Hikes on early Saturday mornings are followed by a gloriously messy pile of steaming banana leaf rice with an assortment of curries that will make your eyes pop. You have to eat it with your hands and you will likely ask for more poppadoms.
Every single foreign friend who visits is taken to one of the most popular spots for our most Malaysian dish, nasi lemak, for lunch. They smile in amazement that such a simple dish –rice, spicy sambal, cucumber slices, and crunchy fried chicken– could be so delicious.
Malaysian food is unlike any other, and it has such huge significance in our separate, yet common cultures. Apart from my family and friends, it is what I will miss the most when I migrate to the UK next year to be married to the (unfortunately) British love of my life.
I mean, it’s not all bad. I am ecstatic to begin a new life with my fiancé, to live in a city that I have loved since I first visited it more than five years ago, to see what opportunities lie ahead. I am looking forward to the changing seasons and making new connections.
But I’m also paralyzed with fear about becoming foreign–becoming the dreaded migrant. I am terrified of the visa process, which I have only just begun to try and make sense of. It is confusing and expensive and all-consuming. I gobble up the news about Brexit and hostile environments and migrant stories with a sort of masochistic dread–as much as I don’t want to read about it, I have to. I have to prepare myself.
Sometimes I let myself worry about the Big Move, and my throat tightens. I think, what if they reject my visa application and I have to fork out more money that I don’t have so I can try again? Or appeal, and wait months to hear if I’m rejected again? What if we can’t get any landlords to rent to us because they don’t want to rent to foreigners? What if people look at me, angry because they voted “No more foreigners!” and I’m there, foreign as foreign can be?
In a Facebook group I recently joined, people from all over the world share their visa struggles. Some lament that it’s been over six months since they applied and they still haven’t heard anything. Some ask questions I didn’t even know you had to ask. Others rejoice when the YES comes through and they can finally be with their loved one. The ones who get rejected lay bare their disappointment and ask the overwhelming question: now what?
This does nothing for my anxiety, but it does help me feel less alone. I’m still stuck in no man’s land, not yet in the thick of it, but already surveying the dark, swirling waters, bracing myself to jump in.
In times of nervousness, I turn to the warm familiarity of Malaysian food. The familiar smell of ikan bilis (dried anchovy) soup swirling with egg and vegetables in my mother’s kitchen, or the long, sauce-coated strands of wantan noodles my father serves up with salty-sweet pieces of char siew (barbecued pork).
So in the limited months I have left in my home country, I’ve pledged to eat everything I can. I won’t be able to cook everything in the UK (I doubt a big wok and a roaring fire will be available in any property, as whichever ministry is in charge of health and safety would probably have a heart attack), but I’ll be damned if I don’t try to bring the recipes of home with me.
My little handwritten cookbook is beginning to grow. I keep it so that when I’m faced with the scariness of being foreign, in a land where foreigners are feared and loathed, I can turn to the comfort of Malaysian food. And that fills me with some relief as I dive headfirst, heart willing, mind uncertain, into the unknown.
