Arif slumped in the backseat of his father’s car, earbuds jammed in, eyes glued to his phone as the dusty kampung road jostled the vehicle. TikTok videos flashed by in bursts of neon text and dance challenges. Every kilometer away from Kuala Lumpur felt like a year lost in the past.
Why are we even going to this dead-end place? he thought, scowling.
His father glanced in the rearview mirror. “One day, you’ll appreciate where you come from, boy.”
Arif didn’t look up. “Doubt it.”
When they finally arrived home, the air was thick with the scent of earth and ripening fruit. Wooden houses stood like old men, leaning slightly but stubbornly upright, each with stories etched into their weathered walls.
Waiting at the gate was Atuk — Grandpa Zul — all sun-leathered skin and a wide grin.
“Arif! Come, boy. You’ve grown taller than a banana tree!”
Arif forced a polite smile, nodding as he grabbed his backpack. Inside the old house, faded family photos lined the walls. One caught Arif ’s eye for a second — a sepia-toned picture of a young atuk, machete in hand, standing where the jungle used to be. He looked proud, defiant even. Arif shrugged and turned away.
That evening, as the sun melted into a crimson horizon, the power cut out. No WiFi. No lights. No distractions.
“Power’s gone,” atuk said cheerfully, lighting an old kerosene lamp. “Just like old times.”
Arif groaned, plopping down on the verandah steps. His phone battery blinked its last breath.
Atuk sat beside him. “City boy’s worst nightmare, huh?”
“I don’t get it,” Arif grumbled. “Why didn’t you ever leave? KL’s better. Faster. Everything here’s just… old and slow. So meh…”
Atuk smiled knowingly. “Why don’t you come with me tomorrow morning.”
Arif huffed. “Whatever.”
At dawn, Arif staggered behind atuk, half-asleep, into the fields. The grass was wet, and something squelched unpleasantly in his sneakers.
“Ugh, gross.”
“City feet too soft?” atuk chuckled.
Arif fumbled with a machete, nearly hurting himself. A rooster chased him around a palm tree, and he slipped in mud that smelled suspiciously like cow dung. Atuk laughed so hard he had to steady himself against a tree.
Arif scowled but felt a reluctant grin tug at his mouth.
Later, resting under an ancient durian tree, atuk began telling stories.
“This land… wasn’t always like this. Used to be thick jungle. Tigers, even. Your grandmother and I, we came with nothing but a few clothes and hope.”
He pointed to a carving on an old durian tree trunk: ‘Z&M 65’
“We were fortunate to be given this land, and this house to work on. We had no where to go, life was so uncertain that time. We just gained independence not too long ago but life was harder.
I made that carving the day we cleared this spot. This FELDA house, though old now, it was our shelter, our hope, our light, our pillar.”
Arif traced the rough letters with his fingers, a strange warmth in his chest.
That afternoon, Arif stumbled across an old diary tucked inside a dusty cabinet. The pages were yellowed, the ink faded but legible.
December 1970: Thought about leaving. City life calls. But Mariam’s eyes when she spoke about this place… about a future here. I stayed.
It hit Arif like a punch to the chest. His atuk almost left this place.
He read on — entries about friends lost to illness, of weddings, of harvests that saved whole families. The stories painted a life not of boredom, but of grit, of love, of fierce loyalty.
For the first time, Arif wondered if his own world — full of likes, followers, and trending dances — had anything as real as this.
That evening, a notification buzzed on his half-charged phone. A group chat lit up: “Surviving kampung life, bro? LOL. Don’t forget your goat milk!”
Arif sighed quietly to himself.
The next day, while harvesting, atuk suddenly staggered, clutching his chest.
Tuk!” Arif managed to catch him as he slumped.
Panic surged through him as neighbours rushed in. The old man was okay — heatstroke, they said — but seeing him so frail shook Arif.
That night, Arif sat by Atuk’s bedside. As atuk clumsily tried to reach for the little old diary by the side drawer, something slipped out and dropped to the ground — it was an old photograph of a younger atuk holding baby Arif under the same durian tree.
Arif picked it up and quietly look at the photograph.
“I’m sorry, Tuk,” Amir whispered. “I… I get it now.”
And this time, he really meant it.
The next morning, Arif woke before dawn. Without being asked, he fetched water, helped clean the yard. He learned to trim a palm frond properly. He fed the rooster that once chased him.
Then, with permission from atuk, Arif organised a small gathering that evening. Neighbours brought kuih and old stories. Arif read aloud from the diary.
“…‘I stayed because sometimes you don’t build a life in the easiest place. You build it in the one worth fighting for.’”
The old folks chuckled, clapped atuk on the back.
As the laughter mellowed into quiet conversations under a sky smeared with stars, Arif walked to the old durian tree with atuk’s carvings and ran his fingers through one more time. This time the feeling was different, he could really feel it.
He, then, picked up a rusty knife and carved into its trunk: ‘Arif 2025’.
Next day, when it was time to leave, Arif packed the old diary in his bag. His phone lay forgotten on the nightstand.
His father started the car. “So, how was it?”
Arif looked out at the fields, the trees, the old house that would someday be his.
“It was… real.”
As the car rolled down the dusty road, Arif spotted the durian tree one last time. A tiny sapling beside it, catching the sunlight.
And in that moment, Arif knew: the boy who came here wasn’t the one leaving.
