I am trying to continue the Story of Rasuawahi from the State of Juburti from now as time permits. 😀. Since it has been so long you may want to reread the last chapter 5 (click) . Or you may want to read all the short five chapters first to get a feel if you are new to this - click here: https://jahaberdeen.blogspot.com/search?q=rasuawahi .
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Dr Rasuawahi from Juburti – Chapter 6: Writing Destiny
I did not realise I had spoken my thought aloud.
“Eliminating the enemy?” I had muttered under my breath, more to myself than to him.
His eyes, sharp as a hunting bird’s, immediately locked onto mine.
“What did you say, my friend?” he asked, with that dangerous calm I was beginning to recognise.
“Nothing, Sir. Just… thinking aloud,” I replied quickly, cursing my tongue and whatever part of my brain that had decided to bypass the usual filter.
He leaned back, studying me as if I were one of his economic reports.
“Thinking can be dangerous,” he said slowly. “Especially when done aloud. In Juburti, people have disappeared for less.”
He smiled after saying that, as if it was a joke.
It wasn’t. I wondered if that was a threat or a show of power.
I looked down at the newspaper cutting again, pretending to be absorbed in the badly written article about the “failed assassination attempt”. The photograph showed a young, handsome Lepaki in handcuffs, his face turned away from the camera. The caption underneath read:
“TRAITOR SON SAVED BY PRESIDENT-IN-WAITING”
What a convenient headline, I thought.
“Sir,” I said after a while, “do you ever… miss them? Your wife. Lepaki. Even the President.”
He took a deep breath. It was the kind of deep breath politicians take just before a campaign speech, not before an honest confession.
“Of course I miss them,” he said. “I am human, you know. I am not a machine, though many would prefer their leaders to be machines… efficient, emotionless, obedient.”
He paused, then added in a quieter tone, “I visited my wife every week for seven years. Every Sunday. 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. The media was there for the first six months. Then they got bored. That’s the problem with the media. Compassion has a very short shelf life with them.”
“Does she… respond?” I asked gently.
“No. She breathes. That is all,” he replied. “Her job now is to breathe. My job is to carry the burden of her breathing.”
I did not know whether to feel sorry for him or suspicious of him.
Both felt unsafe.
“Sir,” I ventured, “there are people who say that the entire episode—the bomb, the attack on your house, the trial—was… orchestrated. That the President was cornered emotionally and politically. His son condemned, his daughter in a coma, public outrage, no room for mercy.”
I forced myself to maintain eye contact.
He stared at me for a long time and then did something unexpected.
He laughed.
Not the mocking laughter I had seen before. Not the arrogant laughter. This time, it was a tired, amused, almost philosophical laugh.
“Let me ask you something, lawyer,” he said. “When a man is drowning, do you ask whether the rope you throw him is from a halal factory or a non-halal factory?”
I blinked. “I don’t understand.”
“That is precisely the problem with people like you,” he said. “You want moral purity in an immoral reality. You want democracy without blood. You want stability without sacrifice. You want clean hands while standing in mud.”
“That’s not what I—”
He raised his hand. “Let me finish.” That sent a chill down my spine !
He got up from his chair and walked to the window. From the 30th floor, the city lights of Kuala Lumpur stretched out like a motherboard of capitalism, pulsing and blinking without conscience.
“In 1999,” he began, “Juburti was collapsing. The economy was broken, the people were angry, the military was restless, foreign powers were circling like vultures. The President was weak, his son was unstable, his cronies were greedy. Do you understand? There was no centre. A State without a centre is a corpse waiting to be eaten.”
He turned to face me.
“Someone had to decide whether Juburti lives or dies.”
“And that someone was you,” I said.
“Who else?” he replied, without a trace of modesty.
“Did you plant the bomb, Sir?” I asked suddenly.
The question surprised even me. Apparently my mouth had resigned from its post and was working freelance.
He did not answer immediately.
Instead, he walked back, sat down opposite me, crossed his legs, and lit another Havana cigar. He exhaled slowly, letting the smoke form a kind of curtain between us.
“In politics,” he said at last, “there are three kinds of truths. Truth as it happened. Truth as people remember it. And truth as it is written.”
He pointed at the newspaper cutting in my hand.
“That,” he said, “is truth as written.”
“So it may not be truth as it happened?” I pressed.
He shrugged. “Does it matter? The people believe there was an assassination attempt. They believe Lepaki betrayed his father. They believe I saved the country. That belief is more powerful than what really happened in the dark of that night.”
“That’s dangerous,” I said.
He smiled. “That is power.”
“I still don’t get it,” I said, shaking my head. “If you loved the President like a father, and his son like your son, how could you allow this to happen? How could you not… stop it?”
“Who says I did not try?” he replied quickly. “I pardoned Lepaki, did I not? I kept him alive. I could have let him hang and the people would have cheered. But I sent him to Sweden instead. I kept him far away from Juburti’s poison.”
“And from your throne,” I whispered.
“What?”
“Nothing, Sir.”
He looked annoyed now. His patience with my middle-class conscience was wearing thin.
“You Malaysians,” he said abruptly, “you are too sentimental about politics. You think it is an extension of your family values. It is not. It is an extension of war by other means. Power must be held by those who can carry it, not by those who inherit it like a piece of jewellery.”
“But did the people choose you?” I asked.
He laughed softly. “My friend, the people choose what they are given to choose. You of all people should know that. You have elections, yes. You also have stage-managed choices.”
That stung.
“Tell me something honestly, Sir,” I said. “If the President had not tried to remove you… would you have still become President?”
He thought for a moment.
“No,” he said simply. “He would never have let go.”
“Then the crisis was… necessary?” I asked.
“It was inevitable,” he corrected. “I merely… accelerated destiny.”
I wrote that down. Accelerated destiny. That’s one for the textbooks on political euphemisms.
There was a silence between us, filled only by the faint hum of the air-conditioning and the traffic far below.
“Why are you telling me all this?” I finally asked. “Why me? I am just a lawyer. I can’t restore you to power in Juburti.”
He smiled, a slow, measured smile.
“You listen,” he said. “Most people talk. You ask questions, but you still listen. And your mind is… conflicted. I like conflicted minds. They are useful. They understand complexity but still want to believe in morality. That makes them dangerous to me but also… entertaining.”
“I didn’t know I was enrolled for entertainment,” I replied dryly.
“Also,” he added as if it were an afterthought, “I might need legal advice soon. Exile is a messy business. Assets to manage. Enemies to neutralise. Stories to control.”
“Stories?” I asked.
“Of course,” he said. “Do you think power is about guns and money alone? No. Power is about narrative. The one who tells the story, rules the memory. The President ruled while he controlled the story of Juburti’s independence. Now, I rule as long as I control the story of Juburti’s survival.”
“And Lepaki?” I asked softly. “What story does he get?”
“He gets to be the tragic prince,” Dr Rasuawahi said. “It is a noble role. Many will sympathise with him. But no one will follow him. Sympathy without power is… harmless.”
" People love the opportunity to sympathise. It makes them feel good", he continued.
My head was spinning.
I had come thinking this might be a straightforward case of illegal removal of a president by “subversives of the State”. Now I was not even sure who the subversive was.
“Sir,” I said, “if I were to represent you… what exactly is it you want?”
He smiled, leaned forward and lowered his voice.
“I want,” he said, “my legitimacy restored. Not in Juburti. That will come later. First, in the eyes of the world. I want to be seen not as a dictator thrown out, but as a statesman betrayed. That is why I am here. That is why I talk to you. Lawyers are good with words. Words are good with the world.”
“And in the meantime?” I asked.
“In the meantime,” he said, “I invest. I move money. I build alliances. I support certain politicians. I undermine others. I keep my options open. A man like me is never truly out of power. He is only… off-stage.”
The way he said “off-stage” reminded me of his early days as a theatre actor.
Perhaps he had never left the stage at all.
As I got up to leave, he put his hand on my shoulder.
“Take your time to decide whether you want to act for me,” he said. “But remember this: in every country, there are people like me. Some are better actors, some worse. I am at least honest enough to tell you that I play the game. In the interest of Juburti of course.”
“Honest?” I almost choked on the word but managed a polite smile.
“And lawyer,” he added, “if you do decide to work with me… your life will never be the same again. You will see how power really works. Not the version you read in your law books.”
I didn’t doubt that.
As I walked out of the hotel, the night air felt heavier somehow. My mind was heavier too.
Was I, an ordinary lawyer, about to be pulled into the orbit of a man who believed he had the right to “accelerate destiny” – even if entire nations pay the price?
And worse, a small part of me – the part that fantasised earlier about being “Chief Legal Advisor to the President” – was disturbingly… tempted.
The devil in my mind whispered: History is written by scoundrels… with the help of lawyers.
I prayed I would not become one of them.
Next: Chapter 7 – The People’s Love (and Other Useful Illusions)
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