The Last Smile
He left me 14 years ago. I still remember a year before that, I was in UM doing Asasi Program and Abah had just bought me my first handphone. Not quite knowing how to treat a handphone, I switched it off every night because why would you need the phone at night? Who is going to call you in the middle of the night? Obviously, I was wrong. At 7.00 am one day, I received many many texts from my family, one of them from my brother, saying, “ Ajan pergi mana? Kenapa tutup handphone? Abah masuk Hospital Selayang pagi tadi, pagi nanti banglang ambik Ajan .” My heart dropped. The simplicity of that text, the deductions I could make with that one text. I was such a daddy’s girl. I cried for days when he lost half his weight to thyroid. He wasn’t admitted or anything but I cried fearing the worst. On our way to the hospital, Banglang filled me in in a way that didn’t illustrate the gravity of the situation. I only found out how bad it was when Kakgah told me how Abah was d...