Efe Paul Azino
Dreams Die in Malaysia
Dreams Die in Malaysia
It’s been three years since I came back
the first time to beaming relatives
who gathered at the arrival lounge,
hugging self-consciousness tighter than
the swollen luggage I carried.
The one which held the antidote to a poverty,
three generations deep, the poverty I fled from
less than a decade ago. They welcomed me,
then with generous grins and backslapping,
scrambled to retrieve my luggage.
Today, the brave one who ventured returns
to be received by a clan of grief and sighs.
I remember the night of my first flight;
armed with a student visa afraid, my anxieties,
wouldn’t make it past the metal detectors.
My heart trying to skip out of my chest,
as we cut through the sky,
scorning distance, compressing time.
Welcome to Klia2.
I melted into a confluence of muddied river,
a black thread in a kaleidoscopic tapestry
of 1.8 million others.
I didn’t come to see the Lake Gardens
Or the Petronas Towers
I didn’t come to eat knowledge,
I came to beat fear.
Teeth cut in virtual shadow spaces
Twelve credit cards later, the skinny Nigerian
came into his own. A prince needs a palace
So I erected one back home, erected hope,
on the ancient bones of deprivation.
Greed soared on the wings of familial respect
and expectations,
So I climbed on a stack of plastic cards
And reached for bigger things.
8kg of Syabu. Doha to Sepang. But the food packets
wouldn’t be silent. So a decade later I travel back home
one last time. We cloned cards and ferried substances
sold our kidneys and hawked the rivers of pleasure
between our legs, we crossed 7,000 miles to
outmanoeuvre our demons. Some will always
return to the laughter and respect of family
others will come back someday, like me, in an oblong panel