The rice tastes of racism

In every tourist-board promotion, in every guidebook, and on every mainstream website, Malaysia appears to be a country of racial harmony where discordant notes are rarely heard. 

The reality, writes Italian expatriate Marco Ferrarese in his debut novel “Nazi Goreng”, is far more jangling. 

As a matter of fact, not speculation, the backlash against immigrants from places like Bangladesh and China is volatile and often turns violent. Those inflicting this rough justice are young Malay men with neo-Nazi outlooks and outfits – skinheads, Doc Martens, tight jeans. (The book’s title is a play on that fried-rice staple, nasi goreng, which also symbolises this melting hotpot of cultures.)      

Ferrarese, a travel writer by trade, has lived and travelled in Malaysia long enough to separate the home truths from the well-meaning propaganda. And he does not pull any punches. Some of the fight scenes are brutal. 

But these are not the wrestling and Mixed Martial Arts strains of violence that triumph in the thriller ring, where the visceral punches out the cerebral, for the author has a knack for balancing them out. As a sample:

“The Chinese girl was standing there speechless, shaking in the dark. Asrul could see that she was trying to become smaller, to be absorbed by the surrounding darkness. But when the other two boys circled around the bench and grabbed her from behind, she started screaming, so loudly that a window lit up in a not-so-distant house.” 

Admirably, the author has chosen to tell the story from the viewpoint of this young Muslim guy, Asrul, who finds salvation in underground rock gigs, but also a sense of grace in mosques and prayer rooms. As a subterranean guitar-slinger who works the blacker end of the metal spectrum, Ferrarese knows all these notes and riffs. 

A plot like this, fuelled by racial hatred and religious divisions, could have easily descended into atheistic polemic, but that’s not the case. And Asrul’s clumsy yet sincere affair with a young Indonesian woman also injects much-needed sweetness into this bitter brew. 

As Asrul and his friend Malik delve deeper into the sinister side of Penang, they meet an Iranian drug dealer. The details about the criminal underworld in this seemingly mild place, renowned for its Unesco World Heritage Site in Georgetown, are impressively rendered, as is the knuckle-gnawing suspense when the two go on their first drug run to the Thai border. 

“His neck was getting numb and was covered in pearls of sweat.” Given the fact that convicted drug traffickers still face the hangman in Malaysia, Asrul has good reason to feel like his neck is in a noose. 

Because this is a first book, and English is his second language, the tone does vary wildly at times as the metaphors and similes veer all over the road. Tighter editing could have smoothed the bumps out. 

For example, early in the book, after Asrul is almost knifed to death by drunken Indians for little more than two American dollars – which accounts for some of his xenophobic rage – the scene falters when it should fly. “The man stepped back, rhythmically followed by the unholy four, still stapled behind him in the same triangular array, like a deck of bowling pins at Deep Black Hell’s bowling alley. The last thing Astrul felt was a hard slap, the back of one strong hand hitting his jaw and making his neck twist, his teeth opening to let out his horrified pain.” 

Nevertheless, the occasional pothole – or descents into what read like lyrics from an Iron Maiden song – should not disrupt this exciting ride too much. 

In exposing Malaysia’s dark side through the light of literature, Ferrarese has bravely travelled to a place where few, if any, authors have gone before, in a promising and harrowing debut that marks him as a writer to keep both eyes on. 

 

Jim Algie’s latest book is the collection of prize-grabbing short stories, “The Phantom Lover and Other Thrilling Tales of Thailand.” More bytes and pixels at www.JimAlgie.com.

 

 

 

Nazi Goreng

By Marco Ferrarese

Published by Monsoon Books, 2013

Available at major bookshops, Bt222 

Reviewed by Jim Algie