We left Wakaf Bharu about noon. This short stay was good, apparently, to have an opportunity to see how this sleepy town woke up to the hectic morning and busy streets. The “outside” cars choking every corner of the narrow kampung pathways made you wonder why they were all here at the same time as you were. The locals showed disdain when the traffic jammed the roads and people started to jump the queue. This is not normal and only happened during certain time like school holidays or hari raya times. But they need the footfalls to boast sales at their usually quiet stalls.
The waze went crazy and led us through unusual routes and back alleys. I don’t need waze to show me the road but today I was not driving and my young driver relied heavily on waze . I let him have the roads and it took me through the ones I’ve never been before. I stopped rambling and started to enjoy the ride. My neighbourhood has more houses and places than I thought.
When you have diabetes, driving will become a chore, hard to focus and difficult to manage. But I love driving; it is the only thing I know how and can do better than anything else. The only thing I can be of any purpose especially to my wife and family. For not driving would be an intimidation to my presence and the very existence of me. The long silence at the back seat brought me back to the days I drove my family back and forth from Shah Alam and. Wakaf Bharu. Everyone in the car was so patience sitting there for 8-10 hours with little complaints. I commanded the trip like I was the most powerful man on earth. Now, that feelings are gone and what’s left is the remnants of that character; useless and insiginificant. Sitting in the back seat and looking out to the moving images of the world that I will leave, made me feel so lonely and a bit sad. Everytime we had a trip back to kampung for hari raya, the vibes were unbelievable. The kids, the bags and the whole excitement of a journey gave me the strength to endure the long distant driving. It was tiring but fun.
Now, for the first time I felt useful and for the first I felt sorry to my family for never complaining to such a dreading long journey. They mostly slept through out the journey so I thought they were okay. Apparently, they were not , infact, they endured a horrible experience in travelling.
As I sat at the back seat and being lulled left and right through the twists and twats of Karak Highway, the sadness became incessant teardrops falling down my cheeks. Insensitive. Inconsiderate. wrapped into narrcissitic man that I thought never existed. But he lives on to realize his mistakes and hoping for forgiveness. Does he deserve any mercy? He wondered , the sadness turned melancholic and the tears became heavier.
