Antu Ngarung | The Guardian Spirit That Shapes My Iban Identity

In Iban belief, the souls of those who die go to Sebayan, the afterworld. Some remain there permanently, but certain individuals are believed to return. These are people who lived with exceptional courage or accomplishment during their lifetime. When these ancestors come back, they do not appear as humans. They come ngarung, meaning concealed, taking the form of animals. These returning spirits are called tua, or guardian spirits.

In the Saribas region, guardian spirits are often seen as snakes such as cobras or pythons. They move quietly, stay in the shadows, and leave without drawing attention. When I picture antu ngarung, I always imagine a cobra coiled in the dark corner of a house or at the edge of the forest. It stays still for a long time and slips away the moment it decides to leave. To many people, it would be just an ordinary animal. To us, it can be an ancestor paying a visit.

A guardian spirit usually belongs to an entire lineage. Because of that connection, the family must never harm or eat the animal that represents their guardian. This is a form of respect. The belief is straightforward: the guardian protects the family, and the family must protect the guardian’s form on earth.

In my family, our guardian is the kijang, the Bornean yellow muntjac. When I was four or five, my late grandparents reminded us repeatedly never to harm, kill, or eat kijang. They did not offer long explanations, but the message was clear. Someone in our line was once a brave person, and that ancestor is believed to return as the kijang to watch over us.

That instruction frightened me growing up. I was afraid I might break the rule by accident. I used to remind myself to always ask what kind of meat was being served when we visited people. At that age, it felt like a tremendous responsibility. Over time, the fear changed. I started to feel that my life was connected to something older and larger than myself. I also realised that this experience was not common among many non-Iban communities, which made me value my heritage even more.

The belief in the kijang has shaped the way I understand myself. It gives me a sense of courage. I am still afraid of many things, but this belief keeps me steady. It reminds me that my ancestors lived through hardship, violence, and uncertainty. My problems today are nothing like what they endured. I often tell myself to live in a way that does not dishonor the people who came before me. I exist today because they survived so much. That thought helps me face difficult moments.

When I imagine the kijang watching me now, I think it sees a woman who lives differently from the Iban women of earlier generations. My lifestyle and interests are not the same. Yet I believe it recognises my effort to understand my roots. It may also encourage me to continue forging my own path even when no one else in my family is doing this kind of work. Many women in my family excel in traditional crafts like beadwork and weaving, but none of them are writers. I have to accept that I may be the first woman in my family to preserve our heritage through writing. Someone younger in the future may look at my work the way I once looked at my namesake, the master weaver. Remembering this keeps me going, even when the work feels lonely.

This leads to something important.

We risk losing our identity when we do not learn about our heritage. The loss does not happen suddenly. It happens slowly. We begin identifying more with other cultures. We forget the meaning behind our names, our customs, and our stories. When we fail to protect what we inherit, we leave an empty space that can be filled by influences that do not reflect who we are. This is happening in many communities around the world, and the Iban are no exception.

Iban identity will not endure by chance. It survives because someone chooses to learn, write, document, and share it. It stays alive when people believe their heritage is worth protecting. It continues when people care enough to ask questions and remember the stories their elders passed down.

Our ancestors returned as antu ngarung for a reason. We owe it to them to honor the heritage they entrusted to us.

I write about Iban culture, ancestral rituals, creative life, emotional truths, and the quiet transformations of love, motherhood, and identity. If this speaks to you, subscribe and journey with me.

The Bungai: Ancestry, Identity, and the Iban Connection to Nature

The Iban believe that the self is not limited to the body or the soul that wanders in dreams. Our ancestors believed that each person has a bungai, which is a plant-image that lives in the invisible world of Manang Menjaya, the god of healing. This plant-image takes the form of bamboo or banana and grows in clumps from a single rootstock. It is a powerful way of understanding human life. The bungai grows, strengthens, weakens, dies, and falls to the ground, just as a person does.

When I first heard about this idea, it stuck with me for days. It helped me see the forest differently and understand why the Iban imagine the community the way they do. In this worldview, no one grows alone. We rise from the same source. Relationships, ancestry, and connections we can’t see hold us together in ways that go far beyond our personal stories. This belief feels very grounding at a time when many of us feel adrift or disconnected.

The choice of bamboo and banana is meaningful. These plants do not grow by themselves. They grow in clumps, called bepumpun. A single shoot is part of a larger body that gets its nutrients from the same soil and root. Every shoot has its own height, shape, and direction, but they all come from the same source. This is how the Iban once understood family. A family is one clump. A longhouse community is made up of many clumps. The forest itself becomes a reflection of the social world.

This is not a metaphor for the sake of beauty. People who live close to the land learn its pattern by observing it daily. The Iban watched how plants behave, how they survive storms, and how they keep growing new shoots even after the old ones fall off. The Iban were shaped by the rainforest, and it was a teacher, a mirror, and a guide.

The bungai makes this idea clearer. It shows us that each person is both unique and part of a lineage. A child is a new shoot from an old rootstock. The state of one shoot affects the whole clump. The well-being of the entire garden reflects the condition of the longhouse. No one exists apart from the others who stand beside them. Even in the unseen world, the Iban imagined people living bepumpun, connected through generations, place, memory, and spiritual obligations.

I find this comforting. There were times in my life when I felt distant from my roots. Leaving home for school, work and marriage created gaps I did not understand at the time. I lived away from Sarawak for many years. I felt as though I was a shoot attempting to thrive in soil that was not my own. Learning about the bungai made me see that the rootstock never disappears. The connection stays even after we leave. We are still held by the unseen garden. It doesn’t matter how far someone travels; the lineage remains.

Another thing I appreciate about the bungai is how it reflects emotional and spiritual states. The bungai becomes weaker when a person is sick. It withers when the soul wanders. This worldview recognizes how closely the body, mind, and emotions are connected. It respects how complicated it is to be human. A withered feeling is not seen as weakness but as a sign that the self needs care, grounding, or healing. Manang Menjaya is responsible for this realm, taking care of the gardens of human life like a healer tends to the sick. It is a gentle belief shaped by compassion.

The idea that the bungai falls when someone dies is also meaningful. The clump remains alive and ready to push a new shoot upward for the next generation. The rootstock stays strong. The lineage continues. There is sorrow, but there is also continuity. The living remain connected to those who came before them.

When I reflect on this, I see how the bungai offers us a way to think about community in today’s world. Many of us live far from home. Some grow up with mixed heritage, navigating several identities at once. Some people don’t feel connected to their language, their land, or their family’s history. The bungai concept reminds us that belonging isn’t just about being close to someone physically. It also has to do with our shared ancestry, memories, and the unseen ties that still hold us together.

The forest shows us that we can’t survive alone. Bamboo stands because the clump stands. A community stays together because its roots are strong. Long before the words “ecology” or “sustainability” were even used, our ancestors knew this. They practiced it when they built longhouses, shared food, and worked the land. They lived in a world where the rhythms of nature and community supported each other.

Writing about the bungai feels like returning to a memory I never knew I had. It combines culture, spirituality, and nature in a way that feels very Iban. It makes me think of how our people used to observe the forest, learn its patterns, and keep it in balance. The bungai is more than just a spiritual idea. It is a way of looking at life that sees it as connected, continuous, and held by something greater than the self.

I want to honor this understanding as I continue working on my cultural projects. I want the Iban in the diaspora, those growing up with mixed heritage, and those rediscovering their language again to know that our roots are still alive, even when we feel far from them. The bungai reminds us that we come from the same source, and the clump endures.

One Clump
If we were bamboo,
we would be one rootstock.
Two shoots from the same source
fed by the same unseen tenderness
running under everything.

You would lean into me
when the wind turns,
and I would hold fast
with a strength drawn
from the ground we share.

A clump is a world.
A home where no stalk stands alone.
Each one rises
because the others do.
The root simply refuses
to forget a single one.

I want that with you—
a belonging without effort.
Our lives rising
from the same dark earth,
so that even Menjaya
counting lives in his garden,
would find us together.

If you falter, I stand closer.
If you bend, I become your spine.
We are two lives
shaped by each other’s nearness.

If we are a clump, love,
then we are one living thing—
one root,
one anchor,
one quiet refusal
to ever rise alone.

Why Malaysians Can’t Debate and What Literature Has to Do with It

I have been thinking about this sentence for days: Literature is vital to the development of civilization. It sounds lofty and almost too academic, but the truth of it becomes painfully clear when you look at what’s going on around us right now. In Malaysia, social media has become a chaotic place where people shout at each other, often without understanding what they are shouting about. The topics change every week, from the Israel-Palestine conflict to alcohol to race to religion, but the pattern stays the same. The loudest voices get the most attention, and the most aggressive ones dominate the space. It doesn’t feel like engaging in conversation and more like moral warfare.

Every time you scroll through Threads or Facebook, you see another argument about who’s right and who’s wrong. There are a lot of insults, accusations, and name-calling in the debates. Malaysian netizens have been calling each other kafir, Yahudi Laknatullah or Zionist sympathizers, pemabuk, tak sedar diri, and poyo just for saying something that doesn’t fit into the dominant narrative. The moral superiority that oozes from these posts is exhausting. Many Malays—though NOT ALL—seem to think that their views are the most righteous and anyone who questions them is automatically condemned. This behavior is so common that it is now seen as virtuous.

Seeing all of this happen has made me deeply weary. There are times when I want to say something, stand up for those who are insulted, and fight against racism and hypocrisy. But I never do. I stop myself every time I want to type a response. I know that trying to reason with people who don’t want to understand is a waste of time. I also know that entering a discussion driven by anger will only drain me. Still, I can’t help but think about why our public discourse is so shallow and why we as a society seem incapable of having difficult conversations without turning them into battles. I think the answer has to do with our relationship with reading and literature.

Literature teaches us how to think, to see beyond ourselves, and how to listen to others even when we disagree. It teaches patience, builds creativity and empathy. Reading widely and deeply helps people learn to see things from multiple perspectives at the same time. They understand subtleties. They acknowledge there are no absolutes in life. In a society that values literature, debates are chances to learn and grow. But in a society that lacks interest in literature, discussions turn into shouting matches. Without the habit of reading, people struggle to form coherent arguments. They react with their feelings, not their brains. Instead of engaging, they attack. They want to be validated, not told the truth.

The lack of reading in Malaysia is not a new issue. We all know the statistics. In 2024, Malaysia ranks 6th among nine Southeast Asian countries in a survey by CEOWORLD magazine, with an average of only 5 books read per year. There are Malaysians who proudly say they haven’t read a book since school. Many bookstores close down, and libraries stay empty. People who do read often stick to light, motivational books that make them feel good without challenging them. Literature that makes us think, makes us uncomfortable, and makes us question ourselves is deemed boring or irrelevant. When we lose the habit of reading such works, we lose something crucial: the ability to think beyond our experience. And when that happens on a large scale, it affects how a nation speaks, argues, and grows.

The decline of reading is not only a cultural issue; it is a civilizational one. A society that stops reading is easy to manipulate. It forgets how to ask questions, or how to separate truth from propaganda, and how to think for itself. That’s when people start using emotional slogans and moral policing to show who’s in power. We can see this now in how some Malaysians use religion and race as weapons to silence others. The line between being morally right and being self-righteous gets blurry. People get hooked on how good it feels to be right. They use religion to protect themselves and their identity to attack others. In that environment, there is no room for contemplation or compassion. The only thing that is left is the sense of supremacy or dominance.

I often think about how literature could change this landscape. One novel or poem can’t solve racism or fanaticism, but it can help. It can make us pause and remind us that every opinion comes from one individual with a story. When we read stories from perspectives different from ours, we are forced to see the world in a wider frame. That is the beginning of understanding. Civilization moves forward not through arguments or viral posts, but through the slow work of broadening our minds.

I have learned how to use my frustration to write. Instead of arguing online, I write essays, poems, and reflections about the things that are important to me, like memory, stories, experiences, identity, culture, and belonging. I write from my Iban perspective because that’s how I see the world. I know that my writing won’t go viral, and I’m okay with that. I do work that may seem trivial to others, but it is important to me. It is my way of preserving a voice that might go unheard in the noise of bickering Malaysia.

Some days I wonder if my work matters. Even though I’ve published some art-related books, exhibited my art a couple of times, been featured in a newspaper and a magazine and two radio interviews—I’m still relatively obscure. I don’t belong to any literary groups. I only have my blogs and a small space on social media. It might not seem like much. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that literature starts right here: in small feats of expression and the bravery to write the truth even when no one is paying attention. Civilization does not develop solely from great orations. It grows from regular people who choose to share their stories, write down their thoughts, and share what they know. My poems and essays may not reach many people right now, but they carry pieces of history, language, and culture that should live on.

Choosing not to argue online doesn’t mean you’re weak. I choose to protect my peace and integrity on purpose. I don’t want to give up insight for outrage. If you have to lose your dignity to win an argument, it’s not worth it. I want to put my energy into something that will last. For me, writing is a way to get that energy back. It lets me deal with the world without getting stuck in its noise. It reminds me that silence, when it comes from being aware, is not the same as being absent. It is a form of strength.

The past week has reminded me that Malaysia is still struggling to mature in its discourse. Racism, feeling morally superior, and needing to control others through shame all show how weak our collective thinking still is. But I also think that change starts with small steps. Anyone who reads with an open mind helps make that change happen. Every writer who doesn’t give up helps society become more thoughtful, even if it takes a long time.

Literature is not entertainment for the elite. It is the basis of empathy and the record of human complexity. It is also the space where we learn to think beyond survival. Without it, civilization loses its soul. We might still have cities, technology, and institutions, but we wouldn’t have the inner structure that allows a society to reflect and grow. That’s what I see happening around me now: a country that is loud but empty and full of opinionated people but sadly, uninformed.

I don’t expect everyone to understand why I write or why I stay quiet when things are crazy. I do it because I believe that words have a slow power and they move differently. Words help us to remember who we are and who we could be.

I hope that when the noise dies down and the arguments stop, what is left is not anger. I hope what is left is the persistency of those who kept writing and reading. Literature may not change everything, but it is still the soul of civilization. Without it, we lose not only our stories but also our ability to envision a wiser, kinder world.

Why the Ibans Took Heads In the Past

A quick disclaimer before I begin. Some people may find this topic upsetting because headhunting led to conflict between different ethnic groups. I don’t intend to glorify the practices of my ancestors; I just want to share what I know, especially since many people, even younger Ibans, don’t fully understand the reasons behind it. Taking a life is wrong by today’s standards, and from a modern perspective I do not support it. But we can’t change history, and judging the past by our present lens doesn’t help us understand it. What we can do is listen and learn.

The Iban had their own reasons and beliefs for taking heads. One of the most significant was to end the mourning period, a practice called ngetas ulit. When someone in the community died, the longhouse would mourn for a period of time. During this time, certain rules and taboos were followed. A ritual that demanded a fresh head was performed to end the mourning period. The family of the deceased would consult the longhouse community, and the men would plan a ngayau (head-hunting expedition) together. After getting a head, a series of complex rituals signaled the end of grief. Killing to end mourning may sound strange today, but for the Iban it was part of a cultural process called nyilih pemati, a symbolic offering for the dead.

Another reason was the belief that antu pala (enemy skulls) had spiritual power. The Iban in the old days believed that these skulls would bring blessings if they were taken care of. Antu pala also played an important part in the Gawai Burung (the Bird Festival), which was one of the most important Iban ceremonies. As part of this complicated ceremony, the lemambang (bard) would use the skulls in his pengap (chants) to invoke the god of war, Sengalang Burong. This festival has probably disappeared because most Ibans are now Christian or Muslim, but it still holds a place in oral tradition.

There were other uses for skulls as well. They were used in healing rituals, ceremonies to call for rain during times of drought, and as guardians to protect the longhouse or farms from enemies and wild animals. In this regard, the skull became a spiritual servant for the person who kept it. They also carried social meaning. If a man didn’t take a head, he was likely called a coward or kulup (uncircumcised), and these men were not seen as good husbands. Iban society valued courage and bravery very highly.

Some have asked why heads were taken instead of other body parts. The answer lies in old beliefs. Our ancestors believed that the head was the center of a person’s life force. The head could be clearly identified, unlike the hands or feet. In the past, families knew exactly whose head was kept, even after years of blackening from smoke. Today, those identities are no longer shared openly. Imagine getting married to someone from another tribe and then walking into a longhouse and saying, “Honey, that skull belonged to your ancestor.” We have learned that silence is a way to protect the living while still honoring the past.

So, do antu pala still exist? Yes. Some Iban families keep them, like mine. They can be kept in the sadau (the top floor of the longhouse) or hung in groups called tampun on the roof. We don’t see them as trophies but as things that deserve respect. If you don’t take care of them, they can bring bad luck, so you must abide by strict rituals to keep them safe.

This picture shows a tampun that belonged to my ancestor, Unggang Lebur Menua, an Iban warrior from the late 18th century. It has 34 antu pala that are more than 200 years old, and is now kept by relatives at Rh. Panjang Matop, Paku, Betong. It serves as a reminder of a different time, when survival, belief, and identity were connected in ways that may be difficult for us to understand now.

I hope this helped you learn more about a part of Iban history that continues to live in our collective memory.

Image source: Youtube

Fragments of Obsession V | What Remains of Him

This fragment of obsession is a continuation of Part 4. You can find the first four parts here: part 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4.

The Victims

They stay with him. That much I know.

They weren’t merely evidence in sealed bags. They had names. They had voices. They were echoes in a room where someone had begged, bled, or died without being heard. They live somewhere behind his eyes, hidden deep down but never completely out of reach.

He doesn’t discuss them. But I can sense it in the way he moves, sometimes too still like he’s bracing for the inevitable. I wonder which one visits him in sleep. Whose case file he opens up in his dream without meaning to.

He must have a list in his head. A list of faces, some vaguely remembered, some impossible to forget. The girl with the red hoodie. The elderly man found with his hands tied. The body that no one claimed.

I used to think that grief only belonged to families and those who loved them. However, there is a certain kind of pain that comes from being the last person to look at their picture, read their texts, or trace their final hour backwards. He carries that deep in his soul, mourning for people he never knew.

Maybe it hardens something in him. Or maybe it makes him gentler in ways he doesn’t realize. The truth is I don’t know. I just know that he touches the evidence gently. And he blinks slower than usual when he stares at a photo too long.

In my culture, the spirits—antu—linger when death is unresolved. Some say they roam, whispering into the ears of the living. He doesn’t fear ghosts or darkness. The ones that haunt him are printed on paper, kept in boxes, and saved on hard drives. There they remain. Always waiting. Always watching.

The Walk

He walks at night, but not every night. Only on those when sleep is a stranger and the weight on his chest refuses to lift. He seeks the hour between two and four. That’s when the world goes quiet, signaling him to step out.

He brings no phone, has no destination. Just his feet on the pavement, carrying his momentum through sleeping streets. He passed shuttered shops, empty lots, and the lonely glow of neon signs. In this slumber, the city is transformed—muted, and temporarily pacified.

Is he trying to shake them off? The blood, the tragedies, and the ghosts that cling to the inside of his eyelids? Or is he chasing the silence he can’t find inside? Or maybe he just believes that if he walks long enough, the chaos in his head will have to settle.

Hands in pockets, shoulders a permanent slope. From afar, he’s just a man. But a closer look at his eyes would tell you everything.

This is the unseen part. The aftermath, stripped of crime scenes and case files. There is no suspect to corner, no puzzle to solve. He’s a man alone with the night, waiting to feel human again.

In that moment, I don’t see the criminologist. I see a tired man who would rather move through the honest darkness of the streets than lie still in a loud, empty room.

Epilogue

All of this, I’ve only imagined. The desk. The scene. The interrogation. The victims. The walk. They’re a part of his life that I will never touch. He doesn’t talk about it much, at least not directly. A line may slip out from time to time, and that’s it. Most of it comes through in other ways, like when he gets too quiet and his hands stop moving. The tension in his jaw after a long day. The shadows beneath his eyes that no amount of sleep seems to erase.

There are nights he startles awake. He never says why, just lies there, breathing heavily. I never ask either. I simply wait for his return.

What he endures is his own. And I’ve stopped trying to reach for it. His work is an extension of who he is, bound to his bones. It affects how he sees the world and how he protects others without even thinking about it.

However, there are times when it becomes apparent. Like when he touches me and listens to me even when I say something silly. Or how he holds silence like it’s sacred.

I used to think he was distant. But now I understand: he was too full of things he could never say. I write these fragments not to know him better or to hope that he’ll find them. He won’t. The door closed two decades ago. These are the only pieces I kept.

Sarawak Folk Noir | Red Eyes at the Ara Tree

This story was inspired by a real event, a memory from my childhood. I’ve always loved noir—the sense of dread, the fatalism, the uncertainties, and the things left unsaid. But I couldn’t find any noir stories told in an indigenous voice from Borneo. So I wrote my own. Red Eyes at the Ara Tree is what I call Sarawak folk noir. It carries the core tenets of classic noir: unseen forces, a haunting past, and the slow unraveling of certainty; but roots them in a rural, post-colonial setting where belief and memory still shape the edges of reality. There is no detective here. Just a child, and the adult they become, trying to make sense of what cannot be explained. The crime is an intrusion of something ancient and watching. It’s of the unknown stepping into an ordinary life.

When I was seven years old, we lived on top of a hill in a government housing complex. It was a modest row of boxy flats nestled along the slope, built for civil servants like my dad. Thick jungle pressed in from all sides. People said that years ago, communists camped all over this hill and the jungle beyond it. I guess that rumor was true because one afternoon while I was playing near the black drain, I saw a group of soldiers going down the hill. The town lay below. It was quiet during the day, but after nightfall, it was ghostlike, as if it had shrunk back to the edges of the footpath at night.

My parents kept chickens and grew vegetables like kangkung, changkok, and daun ubi in our small backyard. There was always the smell of dirt, raw chicken feed, and shit in the air. My siblings and I played barefoot in the yard after school, with the red earth staining our soles. Life was simple and boring back then, until it wasn’t.

There was an ara jejawi tree about three hundred meters down the road, on the slope of the hill. People said these trees were old, too old, and not all of them were empty. Spirits dwelt in such trees. They were not necessarily bad, but never to be disturbed. The tree was huge. Its roots stretched over the earth like petrified pythons. In the afternoons, the tree cast wide shadows that spread to the road. Every family on the hill passed it on their way to town. Most of us walked faster around it or crossed to the other side of the road. Some others, like my mom, muttered short prayers.

Our kitchen faced the ara tree. There were two doors at the back. One was a solid wooden door with a metal latch, and the other a lighter screen door made of wood and mesh. We usually left the solid door open so the air could move through, but we kept the screen door closed to keep mosquitoes and flies out. I never gave that door much thought. It was simply part of the kitchen, like the tiled counter or the creaky faucet.

That night, everything was normal. It hadn’t rained for weeks. The heat lingered on your skin long after the sun went down. The cicadas were shrieking in the trees, and the chickens were quiet. We had dinner. My dad was at the head of the table, my mom was next to him, and the rest of us were spread out around the small table. My eldest sister sat right across from the screen door, looking out to the backyard and the ara tree beyond it.

I remember my spoon scraping the bottom of the plate. My mom asked if anyone wanted more sambal belacan. Someone knocked over a cup and somebody wondered out loud who would win the WWE match later tonight. My sister stood up to get another helping of rice.

She paused.

That’s what I remember. Her hand hovered above the rice cooker. Her face had gone still. Almost blank. She didn’t utter a word. She shifted her gaze and quietly scooped her rice and went back to her seat. The conversation went on. None of us noticed anything strange. Not then.

She didn’t say a word until later, when we were in the living room and the dishes were clean. My dad had switched on the TV to watch the evening news and my brothers were bickering about whose armpits stank the most.

She said she had seen eyes. Big, red, staring right at her from the ara tree. Right through the screen door. The eyes didn’t blink or move; they grew. Larger and larger with radial blur around the edges. Even while they stayed still, it appeared like they were getting closer. She swore they pulsed, like slow breathing.

We didn’t speak for a long time after she told us. My mom told her not to bring it up again. That night my dad closed the solid kitchen door and pulled the bolt tighter than usual. No one complained.

The next morning, it was a Tuesday and like any school day, we got up early to go to school. However, my sister complained of feeling chilly, though her skin was hot. My mom instructed her to stay home and prescribed Panadol. By afternoon, her temperature continued to rise. Her brow was sticky with sweat and her eyes couldn’t focus. Her appetite disappeared. She lay curled on her thin foam mattress, sweating and mumbling, eyes drifting in and out of focus. The doctor called it a viral fever and sent her home with Panadol. But after two more days, my parents started asking around and were given a number to contact. He was a manang who lived in a village near the town.

I remember the manang arriving late in the evening, when it was a little cooler. His rusty white Corolla E70 arrived at precisely 7PM. A balding man with two beady eyes emerged from the car. He shook hands with my parents and my dad invited him in. He didn’t say much. He took off his sandals at the door and nodded politely at us. One of my brothers started to point to a strange-looking bag he was carrying on his back. It was an old wooden cylinder bag that looked more like a box—lupong manang, his healing kit. I had never seen one before, but I knew better than to ask.

The manang sat next to my sister and opened his bag. Inside were small vials of various sizes, each one containing suspicious-looking liquid. A smooth stone that sparkled under the light—batu ilau—my mom whispered—and a small bundle of dried plants, a small bowl, and a white armlet. He softly murmured words I couldn’t understand and touched my sister’s forehead.

My parents prepared a piring on a tray with betel nut, leaf, tobacco, glutinous rice, salt, two chicken eggs, and a small glass of tuak. I don’t remember how long he stayed because I fell asleep halfway through the strange healing ritual. But by the next morning, her fever had subsided. It wasn’t completely gone, but it seemed like something had finally released its grasp.

The fever broke after five days. My sister woke up as if from a long dream. She never talked about the eyes anymore and refused to sit in that chair again. No one wanted to sit at that chair so we ended up squeezing on one side of the table, our elbows touching as we scooped food into our mouths. And after that, every time we drove by the ara tree in dad’s mung bean green Datsun, she would look at the miding sprouting above the bush along the road and never ahead.

After all these decades, it’s likely that the tree is still standing. I never returned to that town, though my siblings had visited on their various work trips. None of them bother to check on our old neighborhood or the ara tree. The last time I looked on Google Maps, the area had been cleared and developed. More houses and buildings. The surrounding jungle is still there, but less menacing, somehow tamed. Even now, as an adult, I don’t try to explain it away. Maybe the fever would’ve broken on its own. Maybe the manang did nothing at all. But something changed that week—and I’ve never looked at shadows the same since.

Whether the tree still stands or not, in my memory it always does. It stands motionless with its thick trunks and aerial roots guarding its inhabitant.

Watching. Waiting.

Note:

Kangkung – water spinach
Changkok – pucuk manis (popular leafy vegetable native to Southeast Asia
Daun ubi – cassava leaves
Ara jejawi – banyan tree
Sambal belacan – shrimp paste
Manang – shaman
Lupong manang – shaman healing/medicine kit
Batu ilau – divining stone used by Iban shamans during healing rituals.
Piring – offering
Tuak – rice wine
Miding – a type of fern, Stenochlaena palustris, a popular edible plant in Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries.

The Tale of Endu Engkejemu and Endu Engkejuang

This is an Iban folktale I grew up with. I translated this old Iban folktale in my pursuit to preserve the Iban oral literature in my own little way. The Iban version is available online, but as far as I know, no English translation has been made. I translated this in hope I can share my obscure culture with the world. I didn’t profit from this work, and I plan to translate more stories in the future and make them available on this blog. This is the story of two women, one patient and one impulsive, and how their choices led them down very different paths.

Long ago, in a place called Lubok Meram, near Lansar Kerangan Betumpu Man and Rantau Rutan, the sacred domain of Raja Ganali (King Ganali) and Bunsu Ikan, the fish god – there lived two young women named Endu Engkejemu and Endu Engkejuang.

Both were beautiful, but Endu Engkejemu’s beauty stood out. She was graceful and brilliant. Aside from her beauty, she was wise, skilled, and thoughtful. Her calmness and ability to do things well were her strengths. Endu Engkejuang, on the other hand, was full of life and quick-tongued. She was usually the first to welcome guests and try new things. She hated being second, but her impatience showed in the fact that she didn’t always do things right. For her, how quickly something was completed was more important than the quality.

One day, as they were bathing at the river, Endu Engkejuang admired her friend’s long, beautiful hair and asked, “Wai (dear), your hair is so lovely. What’s your secret?”

Endu Engkejemu replied, “Eh, no secret, wai sulu (dear friend). I just use tilan fish bones to comb my hair.”

That evening, Endu Engkejuang found a tilan fish bone and combed her hair while chanting, “Comb my hair, oh tilan fish bones, comb it to the very end.”

But she had not spoken the request properly. The bones obeyed her words exactly, and by the time they finished, she was completely bald! Crying, she ran to Endu Engkejemu for help. Her friend gently explained, “You must ask kindly. Say, “Oh, bones of the tilan, I ask you to comb my hair well so it will grow long and thick.”

Endu Engkejuang followed her advice, and slowly, her hair began to grow again.

Not long after that, Endu Engkejuang saw a handsome man sitting at Endu Engkejemu’s ruai, the communal space of the longhouse. Curious, she rushed to her friend and asked, “Wai, who is that handsome man?”

“He appeared after I pounded some rangan lime leaves,” Endu Engkejemu replied.

Without hesitation, Endu Engkejuang gathered some leaves but picked them carelessly, including old and rotten ones. She pounded them, hoping to summon someone like the man her friend had met. Instead, an old, wrinkled, and scarred man with warts appeared!

Horrified, she ran to her friend again. “Why is yours so handsome and mine so ugly?”

Endu Engkejemu answered simply, “Because you didn’t choose the leaves properly. Only pick the young and nicest leaves. Good things come from good intentions, wai.”

Later, while working in the paddy fields, the two friends were swarmed by mosquitoes. Irritated, Endu Engkejemu said aloud, “There are so many of you! If you love me so much, why not take me as your wife?”

To her surprise, the mosquitoes lifted her gently and carried her to Raja Nyamok, the Mosquito King. There, she became his wife.

Life in the mosquito kingdom was difficult. The mosquitoes fed on blood, and Endu Engkejemu could not eat what they ate. But she never complained. She continued to treat her husband with kindness and respect, even though she was silently suffering.

Eventually, she pretended to be ill. Raja Nyamok, concerned, summoned a manang (shaman) to heal her, but she only became worse. Finally, she pretended to die.

Heartbroken, Raja Nyamok arranged a grand funeral for her. He ordered her body to be placed on a high altar, as was the custom for royal family members. He provided her with new clothes, jars, traditional musical instruments like setawak, dumbak, bendai, menyarai, engkerumong, and gong. There were many other valuable items to accompany her in the afterlife.

When the mourners returned home, Endu Engkejemu quietly unwrapped herself and took everything back with her to her longhouse. Her return amazed everyone. No one could believe what she had brought home.

Endu Engkejuang heard that she was back and she was filled with burning envy. Determined not to be left behind, she hastily went to the paddy fields and let herself be bitten by the swarming mosquitoes. “Take me as your wife if you want me so badly!” she yelled.

The mosquitoes carried her to Raja Nyamok, who accepted her as his wife. But unlike Endu Engkejemu, Endu Engkejuang couldn’t hide her disgust. At the sight of blood everywhere, she whined and complained, “My father never raised me to drink blood like this. I could never be married to someone like you!”

Insulted, Raja Nyamok declared, “You have humiliated me in front of my people and insulted our food and our way of life.”

He ordered his followers to tie her hands and feet and leave her in a part of the jungle where no one would find her. Alone in the middle of the jungle and covered in bruises and mosquito bites, Endu Engkejuang eventually freed herself and stumbled back to her longhouse.

Her family was shocked to see her when she arrived. She looked terrible: her face was swollen, her clothes were ripped, and she was crying pitifully.

Endu Engkejemu, on the other hand, lived on with quiet dignity. Her story, which has been passed down through the generations, reminded everyone that being wise, patient, humble, and caring pays off, while being envious, petty, and rushing often leads to disaster.

Note:

I translated and adapted this story into Malay (shared on Threads) and English (here on my blog), based on the version originally shared by Gregory Nyanggau Mawar on the Iban Cultural Heritage website.

The Cry of the Koklir | An Iban Ghost Story

Before I share my experiences, I’d want to clarify who the koklir is and what she represents in Iban belief.

People often think of the Iban people of Sarawak as headhunters, which is a part of our history, but it tends to eclipse the deeper aspects of who we are. However, our culture is not only based on headhunting. We have a strong spiritual connection to the natural world, which is rich in stories about spirits that live in rivers, lands, mountains, and dreams. Our folklores are alive with omens, taboos, and the spirits of people who have departed. Some spirits protect, some guide, and others, like the koklir, are said to return because something in their death was left unresolved.

In Iban culture, the koklir is one of the most feared spirits. She is believed to be the spirit of a woman who died during childbirth or shortly thereafter, specifically during the vulnerable bekindu period, which lasts for forty days of healing and recuperation. Her death is known as busong mati, or a spiritually unfortunate death, and her soul is considered to become jai (malevolent). Her soul is malevolent not because she did something wrong in life, but because her death was unnatural and tragic. Her spirit doesn’t cross over to the other side in peace; instead, it lingers behind, transformed by pain and grief.

As a ritual precaution, lime thorns (duri limau) are poked into her hands and soles before she is buried. It’s a symbolic act aimed at weakening her spirit and preventing her from becoming a koklir. Some people allege that her tongue is also pierced.

Then a prayer is being offered, asking her to rest and not come back to bother the living. But if the ritual isn’t done or if the death is really violent or sudden, people say she might still come back to haunt, seek, and punish.

The koklir is believed to target men. Most of the time, you can hear her presence through a chilling cry that starts out like a hen calling her chicks: “kok, kok, kok…” and ends with a piercing, terrifying “haiiiiii waiiiiii!” Before she attacked her victim, she would scream “kokliiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrr”. She sometimes takes the form of a beautiful woman, hiding her face with a tanggui serawong (woven sunhat) or a kubong leaf. Sometimes she manifests as an enturun, a shaggy, nocturnal bearcat with long claws. Some men say they’ve heard her voice in the jungle or by the river at night. Some people say they’ve seen her scratch at windows or doors with fingers that look like claws. The stories are shared quietly among men, usually late at night, and sometimes with fear or bravado.

I’ve never seen her. But would you believe me if I told you I heard her twice? And I remember it very well both times.

First Encounter

I was fourteen. It was the first day of the school break. Because my flight home was later that night, I was the only student left at the girls’ hostel at my boarding school. Everyone else had left throughout the day. The hostel was quiet and empty.

That morning, the warden told me to turn off the lights and close all the doors before I left. I said I would. After dinner, at about 6 PM, I took my bags outside and waited for my cousin to pick me up. It was getting dark already.

Before leaving, I went back in to do what I promised: turn off the lights and close the doors. I went up to the first floor, strolled through the empty corridor, and did what I had to do. The only sound was the rustling leaves blowing in the breeze. Everything else was still and quiet.

I heard something as I came back down, near the bathroom on the ground floor.

“Kok… kok… kok…”

It was soft and faint, exactly like a hen calling its chicks.

But this was a school compound. No nearby houses, no chickens. Just trees and a greenhouse. I stopped and listened again. I thought maybe I imagined it. I finished what I was doing and went back to the entrance. I stood there in the light of the corridor, looking out at the road. Everything else around me was dark.

Then, around 7PM, I heard it again.

“Kok… kok… kok… kok…”

It was slower and closer.

I felt chills and goosebumps all over my body. I was too scared to look around. I just kept my eyes on the road, expecting to see my cousin’s headlights. He came soon after that. I hastily loaded my bags into the car and drove away. I never looked back.

I didn’t see her, but I know what I heard. We believe that the koklir doesn’t harm girls or women because she only targets men. That gave me some comfort, but the sound stuck with me for years.

Second Encounter

I was still living in the same hostel a year later. I didn’t hear her voice this time, but I did hear something else. My bed was next to the door. Sometimes, I would wake up to a loud scratching sound at the door. I believed it was stray dogs trying to get in, so I went back to sleep.

However, I looked at the door one morning because I was curious. There were scratch marks, but they weren’t at the bottom where a dog could reach them. They were higher up, around chest height. That detail stuck with me. What kind of dog can scratch that high?

I didn’t say anything to anyone. I didn’t want to scare the others, especially the younger girls. But I remembered what the elders used to say: the koklir scratches at doors and windows with her long nails to find a way in.

After that, the scratching happened every now and then. I didn’t say anything about it until much later. I told the story years later in our WhatsApp group for former dormmates. I was surprised to learn that I wasn’t the only one. Others remembered the same sounds from the same door and that same feeling of unease. However, we all stayed quiet, but we were all scared.

Some people might not believe these stories. They can argue it’s merely animals, wind, imagination, or ridiculous stories from the natives. But I don’t think I made anything up since I know what I heard.

These encounters aren’t just stories about ghosts. She is a reminder of how deeply the Iban people see death and life as intertwined, how even grief has a place in our stories. As Iban people, we understand spiritual realms that involve death, grief, and the things that linger. The koklir is a reminder of women who died too young or too soon, often forgotten or feared, yet still searching for peace. She didn’t show herself to me. But I heard her cry and have never forgotten it, even after decades have passed.

The Ritual of Water | An Iban Ceremony for New Life

Last weekend, I found myself standing knee-deep in a shallow river in Janda Baik. The sunlight came through a canopy of trees above, casting soft streaks of light on the water’s surface. Everything felt quiet and peaceful. My kids splashed further upstream, and their laughter echoed off of rocks and trees. I stood still, closed my eyes, and let the water swirl around my legs as it flowed downstream.

It reminded me of the Iban traditional child-naming ritual. I’ve never seen it with my own eyes, but I learned about it from the elders and through reading. This ritual was held following the naming of the child and to formally “introduce” the child to the river.

In the Iban way of life, water is more than a physical element. A body of water like a river is also a spiritual space. It gives life, but it is also a source of danger. We wash with water from the river, and sometimes, when the water is clear, we even drink and cook with it. It carries our boats to other villages, fields, and faraway places. However, it’s also where crocodiles and other dangers live. No Iban has grown up without hearing stories about someone who was attacked at the river. When a child is born, we don’t just give them a bath. We also hold a ritual to beg the river not to harm them.

After the child is named, the bathing ritual begins. The night before the ceremony, the father informs the longhouse community of his intention. At dawn the next morning, the whole longhouse community walks to the river in a solemn procession. A flag bearer is at the front, and a man carrying a fowl follows him. Both of these men are chosen from among the respected elders. Two women walk behind them. One carries offerings and the other carries the child wrapped in handwoven pua kumbu. The rest follow, beating the gongs as they walk.

At the riverbank, the flag bearer cuts the water with a knife. The man with the fowl recites an invocation to call upon the spirits of water, earth, sky, and all the creatures that swim below the surface. He asks that the child be given good fortune, sharp vision, and safety. He calls the crocodile, the soft-shelled turtle, the barbus fish, the semah, and the tapah. He calls each one by name and tells them to regard this child as family, not food. He says,

“If this son or grandson of ours happens to capsize and sink while he is visiting, you are the only ones who can lift him up and keep him afloat.”

It is not a metaphor but a real request, born out of fear and hope.

After the invocation, the child is bathed and the fowl is slaughtered. People make noise on purpose, like banging gongs and laughing, to drown out any bad omens. If the child is a boy, one wing of the bird is tied to a spear with red ribbon. The wing is attached to a heddle rod if it’s a girl. A bamboo basket full of offerings is then hung from a leafy pole.

After that, they return to the longhouse and sprinkle the child with sacred water to get rid of bad omens. A feast is held and the gongs ring out to mark the ritual’s success. The child is now considered truly part of the community, and both the people and the river know it.

As I stood in that river at Janda Baik, I began to think about the rituals we’ve forgotten. What would it mean to reclaim a gesture like this, perhaps not literally but in spirit? The Ibans don’t all live in longhouses anymore. Some of us reside in cities and raise our kids as urbanites, but water still calls us. Maybe part of why we seek places like Janda Baik is because something in us still longs to make peace with the river. Rivers still take us places. They still give and take. And we too are still vulnerable to things we can’t see.

Maybe modern mothers need more moments like this, when they can recognize their fears, their prayers, and their desire to protect the people they love. We might not need to cut the water with a knife, but we can still offer a prayer, still whisper a blessing:

“We beseech you to confer on him fortune, give him sharp vision so that he will be fortunate, wealthy, and blessed with good health throughout his life.

We can still speak to the river, and certainly we can still be heard.

First Image of a Black Hole | Looking Across Space and Time

I didn’t think I would cry. I just wanted to watch something that wouldn’t make my grief worse. Netflix’s documentary, Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know, wasn’t supposed to make me weep, but I wept anyway.

I lost it as soon as they showed the first image of the M87 supermassive black hole. It was an image of a dark center with a faint, perfect ring of light around it. Such an event had never happened before in human history. We used to think we could never capture it. And there it was. It was no longer just theory or math but something we could finally see and name. We could finally see the unseeable.

It wasn’t the mind-blowing science that got to me. It was the time it took for that image to travel to our planet. That image of light we saw in 2019 had been traveling for 55 million years from the galaxy M87. We somehow caught that image of the black hole in this present day during our lifetime. What we were really looking at wasn’t just a region in space. We were looking back in time.

Image source

Fifty-five million years ago, the Earth was in the early Eocene epoch, which was only ten million years after the dinosaurs vanished. The world was warm and tropical and teeming with early mammals. Forests covered much of the land. Our distant ancestors were small, curious primates who climbed trees and lived on a planet that was still recovering from extinction.

The light began its journey somewhere in that ancient, lush world. It left behind a galaxy that no living thing on Earth had ever thought of. It traveled through the universe quietly and steadily as life on Earth evolved. It kept going as continents shifted, species came and went, and the first humans learned to make fire, sing songs, build temples, write poetry, and wage wars. It travelled throughout millions of millennia and arrived in our lifetimes.

That’s why I cried. So poetic. It felt like divine timing, a cosmic coincidence that was too beautiful to ignore. Our existence coincided with this fleeting moment in history, marking the completion of that ancient light’s journey. That all of human history had aligned so that we could see the shadow of something that used to only exist in the realms of physics and imagination. A black hole is a void so complete that it bends reality, and the light that falls into it makes it visible to our eyes.

I felt small and humbled. I reflected on the countless generations that had lived and died without ever being aware of this. In the grand scheme of things, our stories are extremely small. But somehow, we were able to look back 55 million years and make sense of what we saw. We were able to see it because we had the courage to ask questions and persistently search for answers.

I think that’s what stayed with me. It’s a reminder that certain things we perceive as unknowable may not remain so. Sometimes, truth comes like light from far away – slowly, patiently, and without fail. And sometimes, the edge of everything we know is just the beginning of the realm of future discoveries.

I wonder how many more truths are coming our way right now. If we keep looking, I wonder what other things that seem impossible we might discover.

Olivia Atelier offers printables, templates, and art designed to inspire reflection, healing, and creativity. Visit Olivia’s Atelier for more.