Princess Play by Barbara Ismail

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    â€˜I’ve known him for a long time. We grew up together. He was always like that.’
    Rubiah asked bluntly, ‘Were you thinking of your son marrying his daughter? I heard it was being discussed.’
    He was surprised. ‘Where did you hear that? It won’t happen.’
    Rubiah probed. ‘Did you want it to happen?’
    â€˜I won’t discuss personal things here. My son needs a good strong wife, and we will find one. Aziz’s family is not for us.’
    How had this become common talk ? he wondered. This was Hamidah’s doing – his wife and her plans. He knew Aziz would never agree to a wedding between their children, and he wasn’t sure he was all that pleased with it himself. He wanted another kind of bride for his son, perhaps the daughter of his sister, Noriah. She would be well brought up, he could be sure of that, but Aziz? Who knew how his daughter would be? Hamidah claimed it would heal the rift between their families, but Murad didn’t care if that rift remained. Had she been gossiping?
    Maryam looked longingly towards the door of the house. What might she find out from the wife? If only she would come out. But, as she suspected, Murad’s wife was too well trained to show her face now, poor soul. Imagine being married to someone like him!
    â€˜Don’t concern yourself with marriages,’ he ordered them. ‘You let the police do their job. They won’t have to look too long.’
    With that, the two visitors were brusquely dismissed. He turned on his heel and went into his house, leaving Maryam and Rubiah staring after him.
    Murad walked purposefully to the back of the house, staring down the steps to the kitchen. He hated chattering women prying into his life. He preferred a simple life, uncluttered by people underfoot. Murad could not say he enjoyed the company of women; he was contemptuous of them, and never more so than when watching them work. He avoided the market, where they dominated; just watching them talk and laugh and tease each other and their customers threatened to make him physically ill.
    Like these two market women with pretensions of helping the police. He had a good mind to go to Kota Bharu and tell the police chief just what they were up to; no doubt he’d be shocked. Yes, and furious too. He’d like to be there in the room when they were called off their charade of detecting. Perhaps tomorrow …
    In this, he was very different from his wife Hamidah, who enjoyed the company of others. She privately thought he carried a damp fog about him, sucking the fun out of life with his unblinking stares and the way he tightened his lips in disapproval.
    Many Kelantanese women, faced with such a bleak husband, would have left long ago and found someone more congenial, both to themselves and their children. But Hamidah and her parents had considered Murad an advantageous match: his family had a good deal of Arab blood (quite prestigious), and he certainly took his responsibility to make a living far more seriously than just about any other man in Kelantan.
    Then too, given his fierce condemnation of drinking and gambling, she believed it unlikely he would indulge in the third leg of common vice – women – and that made a nice change from the worries of many of her other friends. And even if Murad wasn’t much fun, and forced the family to tiptoe around him for fear of igniting his righteous wrath … well, he had been away most of the time.
    That was then. It was difficult now for her to escape from her dour husband, especially since he had sold his boat and was at home more often. Hamidah had started considering escape. But she’d have to do it carefully, seperti lotong meniti dahan kayu: like a monkey making its way across a bough. And like that monkey, one wrong move could find her tumbling to her death.

Chapter IX
    OK, so …’ Aliza began, filling her mother in on the teenage news of Kampong