My brother Jo was circumcised at home when he was nine. I was thirteen. It was not unusual for three- to five-year-old boys to be circumcised at home in the 60’s in Malaysia. But to wait till your child was nine was almost irresponsible, and maybe even dangerous. Parenthood did not come easy for my mother and father, they were challenged and they struggled. We were far from the ideal family.
But the day came when my parents did get it together for my brother. My father arranged for the Snipper to come to our house at an apointed time. It was a glorious day, the sun shone and so did our tiny two-bedroom home from the scrubbing we gave it the night before. My mother, all by herself, cooked chicken curry for thirty people! Every few minutes she had me tasting it.
Ni, she called, come! I stood next to the kerosene stove and stuck my palm out. She tapped the wooden ladle on my palm, and before the curry burned, I licked it and announced: more tamarind, or salt, or whatever I thought it needed.
My father paced between the front door to see if anyone had arrived, and the kitchen to check on us. Suddenly he remembered something, “where’s the banana trunk?”
We all looked around, then at each other; there was no banana trunk.
And oh, it started; the screaming, shouting, blaming, and shaming.
“I told you to get it, how many times I told you?”
“I have to do everything around here. Our son is a big buffalo and still not yet. “
“We are doing it now, what else do you want?” My father turned to me: “get banana trunk, hurry!”
I grabbed our biggest knife and ran half a mile to the nearest banana patch.
A banana trunk is green and about ten inches in diameter. It is fibrous and spongy inside. When you cut it, clear thick liquid oozes out, like aloe vera, but thinner and more viscous, with a damp smell and itchy on the skin. Of course, the knife was dull. I sawed, hacked, and slashed the trunk, which squirted even more of the icky sour juices on me. How does a trunk which bears fruit so sweet and creamy ooze juices so dank? The fluid trickled down my elbows and onto my front as I hugged the disembodied trunk and bolted home.
When I got back, no one had arrived. Time was elastic in Malaysia in the ’60s, we called it rubber time. You tell your relatives to come at noon and at around one thirty they start trickling in. You make an appointment with the Snipper at noon, you can count on him running late. But no! There he was, just a little past noon, curving up our street on his lime green Vespa, his sarong billowing like a sail in the wind. He wore a skull cap that looked like it was part of his head, like if you took it off, it would expose his brains, mushy and moist.
It wasn’t just my brother Jo who panicked, none of the uncles had arrived. Who was going to hold on to my brother? Big strapping buffalo that he was.
My mother put together a tray of chicken curry with bread, ripe papaya slices, and a cup of sweet milk tea. She brought it to the dining table. My father picked the tray like in a relay and brought it to our guest in the living room. The women folk; my mother, sister, my baby brother, and I, waited in the dining room separated by a wall and an open hallway, whispering and straining our ears to hear the living room. The Snipper ate the bread and curry quickly and wanted to get on with the program. Idle chit-chat and lingering till uncles showed up was not part of his plan. Chop, chop; he had a schedule: people to see, places to go, penises to snip!
There were no cell phones then, there was no knowing if an uncle was very close by. We were so poor we did not have a landline, to call, to find out anything.
“How about a neighbor?” the Snipper asked.
“No, no neighbors.” In my parents desire not to be judged by our own people, we lived as far as possible from them. Better to live amongst other cultures, and stay separate, so much easier to isolate and distance yourself from society. So no, no neighbors.
“The mother?”
“Are women even allowed?” my father asked.
“Yes, yes, his own mother, no problem, yes.” All rules thrown to the wind at this point.
My mother did not even pretend we were invisible and mute anymore, she blurted from our side of the wall: “No, no, I will faint.”
“The girl? The sister?” my father asked.
“The girl?” “Can, can, the girl, can.”
And so, “the girl/me,” stepped into the living room, an honorary male, not for the last time.
I leaned and held my brother on the left while my father had his right. My brother looked away, then up at the ceiling. I, on the other hand, was mesmerized. I had seen my brother shower buck naked in the open. His penis was not new to me, but I had never seen foreskin pulled, stretched, and so elastic. How was there so much skin? Just when I understood what my brother was about to lose—snip! My brother went limp, my father and I held and guided him to his bed. We tied his sarong with a string to the ceiling, so it formed a tent over his wound as he laid down.
The banana trunk? Turned out, during my father’s time, boys straddled a trunk during the procedure. Not so in the modern 1960s.
Easy Chicken Curry For 4
(40 minutes and your clothes and house will smell of aromatic spices)
2 TBS Cooking oil
Chopped or machined: 1 large onion, 3 garlic, ginger about an inch
Whole spice: 4-5 Cardamom, 4-5 Cloves, 1 inch stick Cinnamon
2 heaping TBS Curry Powder for chicken or meat
Bone-in skinless chicken for 4
Potato for 4
Carrot for 4
16oz. can crushed tomatoes
2 TBS plain yogurt and salt
Heat oil, put in whole spices, chopped onion, garlic, ginger. Sauté till soft, add curry powder till the oil “breaks,” it will glisten and separate from the paste. Then add chicken, potato and carrot. Stir and mix well. Add crushed tomato. Lower heat. Check-in every few minutes, stir, and cover. If you need to, add a little water. When ready, add salt and yoghurt to taste. Serve with rice or french bread.
Cooking curry takes patience and stirring. Keep checking and stirring and breathe in the wonderful aroma and tell yourself, mmm smells good. Stir, cover, stir, add a little water if you need to, stir, cover, stir. Put on music, dance, chop cucumber, onion, one jalapeno for relish, and squeeze lime, add salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar to it. Or chop cucumber, rub with a little salt, add plain yogurt to make raita. Curry tastes better after you let it sit for half a day— cook early in the day for an evening meal.
