'Dugaan'

Imagine driving for more than an hour and then resting for a while at one of the last stops before resuming the journey, the wind beating across our faces through the open windows after we found the air-conditioning shot, and finally making that left turn. I drove towards one of the toll gates, and while we waited for our turn to pay I realized that the engine had died by itself; kept dying with each turn of the ignition key. Seconds later it was starting to smell, something was happening under the hood. Smoke seeped out from underneath it. The car was dead, dead.

We got down and she went to the toll gate to get help while I popped the hood open to see what it was that was making all that smoke. It rushed out at me when I raised the hood, and I was disorientated, seeing the insides of a Proton Wira for the very first time, not knowing where the support rod was. The smoke was in my face. I wondered if it was carcinogenic. I couldn't make out what broke or burst, there seemed to be oil splattered across various surfaces of the engine.

Tried to connect it to a popping sound I might have heard while I was driving, wondered if that was it.

I went too fast, shit.

Why did this happen (again)?

(The previous week I had car battery problems. The battery was replaced, and then it turned out to be a faulty alternator.)

Two male workers helped me push the car past the toll gate and into an empty lot situated right in front of the surau and washrooms. I had the hood opened and propped and we examined the mess again. One of them said that it wouldn't be possible to repair it without sending it to the workshop and provided a business card of a tow truck operator while I tried to figure out what the problem was by providing visual details to my car mechanic over the phone. He asked me to check the levels of the black oil and radiator liquid, and I did.

The radiator was bone dry. A few pipes that were connected to it were broken.

We called the tow truck operator. He arrived about fifteen minutes later and explained what our options were. We agreed to have the car towed to the workshop that he was working for and he immediately went to work. After taking our bags and belongings out of the Wira we shifted the lot to the truck and watched each step of the process.

It was a long straight road. We crammed our things and ourselves into that little space beside him. We held hands over bags and I was explaining where we were in Taiping. Both sides of the road were thick with trees.

At the workshop, the owner suggested that we leave the vehicle for further inspection, and told us that it could be collected the next day. All will be well. I asked him for the cost, but he didn't know, couldn't ascertain it without checking the car thoroughly. OK, I said, but please know that we need to leave with the car tomorrow.

They were the ones who drove us home: the owner, his wife and their daughter. Told them that she wasn't from here and that we were working in Penang.

The wife teased us, made me the small-town kid and her the city girl.

"Dugaan," the wife said, in Malay.

This incident, luckily for us, happened at just the right time and place: right in front of that toll gate, and not God knows where in the middle of the highway--this is what lovers have to go through, the wife elaborated. Trials and tribulations. A test to see what the relationship is made of.

Dugaan, I said to myself, like it was a new idea. I liked it. I held her hand again and smiled as the wife went on and on, talking to us, but mostly to her, since she was listening and responding more in the conversation. Me, I was thinking about how lucky we were.