hard not to mix the two together. It’s the best coffee and the best thing to happen to coffee in my lifetime.
Mei’s is open on three sides to the warm night air, allowing the noise of crickets to play background music to conversation. It’s at the end of a small parade of shops in the housing estate where most of Medan’s expats and well-off seem to live. The housing estate is more like a guarded ghetto for the wealthier of the city. It is full of detached and semi-detached white-painted houses, all with little front gardens and fences and placed in quiet roads and cul-de-sacs. There are security guards as you enter the estate on the main entrance, but there are plenty of little cut-through alleyways that take you out into the real mad Medan, which is deceptively close.
Here in Mei’s where the traffic can’t be heard and Europeans, Antipodeans and North Americans sit and chat, the relentless noise and fumes and overcrowded city seem a continent away. I’m not sure I like it. I feel naked, open to questions, open to reality. I’ve been New Me for over a week now, on and off, but Old Me and Laura still like to poke their heads up every now and then, wanting some attention.
‘So, what d’ya reckon? Staying?’ Marty is sat opposite me in a tattered and stained grey T-shirt, swigging the last froth out of his bottle.
‘Yep. It’s all OK so far. Takes some getting used to though.’ I stir the remaining centimetre of condensed milk into my coffee and take a mouthful.
‘You never get used to it. Always something weird and bizarre every day.’ This is Julie, the English teacher with big breasts and wide eyes from my first day in the staffroom.
‘Good. That’s what I want.’
‘It wears thin sometimes,’ she says as her fingers dance on the table, doing some sort of twitchy can-can. Her eyes dart around looking for agreement from the others in our group. She doesn’t get any so she nods in self-agreement.
‘I fucking love it here,’ says Kim, who’s sat next to me. ‘We’ll take you out and show you the night life later, man. Fucking unbelievable. Ain’t that right, Jussy-boy?’
Jussy-boy is sat on the end of the table in a white shirt done up to the collar and a Donald Duck tie. He’s another teacher, in his early twenties. He’s from Montana or Virginia or somewhere.
‘Oh yeah,’ says Jussy-boy, ‘just the way Kim tells it.’
I’m not sure I’m ready for a night out yet. Daytime Medan has already given me enough to think about. It almost completely lacks personal space and is rich with poverty. It bears no resemblance to anything English whatsoever. But I’m going to go with them. I’ve got to let New Me be free before Old Me gets control of things and turns the pair of us into a self-pitying blob. I wish I could hold Laura’s hand under the table.
—Well, I can’t do that because of these odd-jobs sitting either side of you, but how about this?
Laura puts her arms around my neck from behind and nuzzles behind my ear.
—You’re not real. Get off.
I twist my head.
—Well, I feel real and I’d like a cuddle.
I try to shake her off again.
—You’re just my sick mind messing with me, now OFF.
A sudden head jerk. She lets go.
‘You OK, man?’ asks Kim.
‘Yeah. Stiff neck is all.’
‘Just wait ‘til you get out to the jungle. We’re planning on going in a couple of weeks. Go and see some real monkeys instead of drinking with these ones, eh?’ This is Naomi. She is sat next to me. Naomi is twenty-three, Canadian, beautiful, blue-eyed with light-brown dreads. She works at another school somewhere in the city. Her knee keeps knocking mine.
—I can see what she’s doing down there. Watch it, mister.
—Not there.
—Am.
‘Yeah. Get out to Bukit and see the orang-utans. Eh?’ Kim walks over to the beer fridge.
‘Yeah, eh?’ says Jussy-boy.
‘Fucking eh, eh?’ says Julie.
‘Eh?’ says Marty.
‘Leave the girl alone, you racist twats,’ says Geoff, the worried-looking Mancunian, sat at the other end of the table.
‘Who wants a Bintaaang?’ Kim yells from the fridge.
We all examine our bottles and answer ‘Yes.’
‘What is it with the “eh” anyway?’ I ask Naomi.
She twists towards me in her chair and smiles.
‘It’s a Canadian thing. Have you never heard it before? We have this habit of finishing sentences with an “eh.” Eh?’ She smiles, all thick lips and straight white teeth.
—God, those teeth. Bleaches her bloody teeth. Get over yourself, girl.
‘Didn’t know that.’ I gulp down half my bottle of beer, willing Laura to shut up. My head swims a little.
‘Yeah, same as septics say “fuck”, we Canadians say “eh?”’ She looks at Kim when she says this.
‘Fuck. Now who’s being racist? I fucking hate being called a septic.’ Kim slides into his chair and slams two fistfuls of bottles on the table. White froth erupts out of their necks.
‘You started it, Kimbo.’
‘Alright you lot,’ says Geoff, ‘let’s change the subject.’
‘Septic?’ I whisper to Naomi.
‘Septic tank.’
‘Fucking Yank, man,’ says Kim. ‘Geoff’s right, let’s leave it.’
Silence follows for a few seconds and I wonder if, and what, the rest of the people around this table have run away from. I can feel some sort of tension from nearly all of them: Julie with her twitching fingers, Geoff with the worry lines of a bomb-disposal expert, Kim with his overuse of sexual adjectives, Marty seeming almost over-relaxed, Jussy-boy with his dodgy taste in clothes and even Naomi with her starting-to-get-annoying overzealous knee-knocking.
—And shiny bright teeth, don’t forget her shiny bright teeth. They’re annoying too.
—Yes, and those.
If she insists on being here, I might as well let her for the moment. I quite like her little show of jealousy.
‘Anyway, has Pak asked you to teach his mate’s kids yet?’ asks Marty.
‘He has mentioned it. Sounds alright.’ I answer.
‘Don’t trust him.’ Julie’s fingers pause in their dance. ‘I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Pak’s a cunt.’
Geoff
