FEATURE Mapui is Mizo and he is leaving for the United States. He has lived as a refugee for years in Malaysia. He is departing with this girlfriend who is a Hakha, a closely related but different ethnic group from the border of Myanmar and India.

Though their flight only leaves for Hong Kong - where they will catch the first of several connecting flights before they eventually land in Oklahoma - they have to be at the Kuala Lumpur headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees at 4am. As refugees, they cannot embark on their own.

            

They have called a few friends to their home in a dilapidated tenement in Pudu, a place mostly inhabited by Myanmar residents (especially Chins, and in particular Hakha), just a stone throw's away from Jalan Imbi and Bukit Bintang. Their friends will stay up with them until the time for departure comes.

Mapui ( left ) and his girlfriend have shared a relatively large room - at least bigger than would have been the case in Bukit Bintang, where rooms inhabited by Myanmar workers can be small to tiny. It has a balcony overlooking the street.

In fact, when I arrive with a few of Mapui's friends, he is not there but instead sitting just across the road. He is waiting for his nasi goreng from a stall on the street along with some of his other friends. It is his last meal in Malaysia.

I know almost everybody around the table. They are all guys, and they are Mizo like Mapui. There are a few girls, too, but these stay upstairs in the apartment. Every now and then, Mapui's girlfriend waves to him from her balcony, and he waves back in response. It is full moon over Pudu and the temperature is quite pleasant.

Later we all go up to the apartment through the dark, dirty stairs. We sit on the floor - there is little furniture as is usually the case. Some snacks go around and someone brings a bottle of whisky. They dilute the whisky in paper cups and add ice and water to it so that everybody can have his share (only one girl is drinking, though. The rest are having soft drinks).

Lots of joking and laughter, though I cannot follow the banter as it is mostly in Mizo. As I go to the toilet, I discover Mapui's girlfriend shedding tears in the kitchen. She is young, in her mid-20s, and has spent quite a few years in Malaysia. In all likelihood, she will never be back here.

Also, it is not impossible that she will not meet again anytime soon some of the people in her apartment tonight. It is also not altogether impossible that she may never meet a couple of them ever again.

Oklahoma is far away from the main hubs where Chins - the larger ethnic group to which both Mapui and his girlfriend belong - live in the US. Mapui has told me that there are no Mizo where he is going in Oklahoma, though there are quite a few Teddim, another ethnic group to which he also belongs through his father's side.

Ethnic networks

The geography of the US for Chin refugees is quite complex. Indianapolis and Maryland, for instance, are important hubs, but there are in fact Chins scattered literally all over the country.

Mapui himself has an aunt in Las Vegas. He wants to move there, but if he does he will lose his official sponsorship. He may then have problems with health coverage, finding a job, getting basic training, etc. In Oklahoma, he is staying with relatives of his. His companion's nearest relatives are very far away, in a town in southern Ontario, Canada.

It is a geography not so much of big cities and cosmopolitan hubs as it is one of family and ethnic networks. I believe that is the reason Mapui is considering moving to Las Vegas from Oklahoma.

Later, on Facebook, his picture at Hong Kong airport will come up, as well as his disconsolate photograph sitting alone on a large couch in the home of his relatives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, hugging his guitar, no doubt wondering what he is doing there, so far away from all his friends and anything familiar to him. The caption to the snapshot says he misses Malaysia.

I find his grief understandable and yet intriguing too. After all, he had a harsh life in Malaysia, working long hours in various tedious jobs (his last job was as kitchen help at a venue in Bukit Bintang, in a kitchen where everyone bar an Indian man was from Myanmar).

Many Chins in fact decide to go back home instead of facing the invariably long wait - usually a minimum of three years, but often much longer than that - to go to the US as a refugee. Some go back home for a while after getting their UN refugee card, and then later come back to Malaysia. Some, however, apparently never come back.

I have heard many complaints about life in Malaysia. Even though young people normally tend to complain a good deal, I must admit life for a refugee is hardly a garden of roses.

Though the prize at the end of the tunnel is big - no less than an American green card or permanent residence in Australia or another western country - the sheer dreariness of the long years of work and cramped living in dilapidated buildings, in which hardly any Malaysian would now want to live, is disheartening, to say the least.

Yet, all the same, I can understand why Mapui's girlfriend is crying (probably all the way from her kitchen to the UNHCR office where they both go by taxi), and why Mapui looks disconsolate though he is now at long last safe among his trusted relatives in Tulsa.

In Kuala Lumpur, they lived in an intimate community environment, surrounded by people who spoke their languages and who became their friends. Mapui and his girlfriend in fact met only in Malaysia, as they shared the same apartment where they eventually, from what I understand, decided to share the same room. Many of Mapui's childhood friends from Myanmar are also - or were until recently - in Malaysia.

He is therefore leaving behind a good many people, who will no doubt remain his Facebook friends for many years to come. It is however unlikely he will meet any of them in the near future, even if they make it to the US (one of them in fact is bound to go quite soon, while two other friends have been waiting to be called, as they have already done their medicals. None of them is bound to Oklahoma).

Prep school for refugees

What Mapui is leaving behind is not exactly an ethnic enclave in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, in spite of the denseness of Chin residents in the area. Nor is it a mere echo of his homeland, the last one he will see for quite some time - or perhaps the last time ever, unless he goes to live in one of the Chin hubs in the US.

Rather, he is leaving behind a network of close friends and acquaintances that is multiethnic in terms of the Chins (this is not always the case back home in Myanmar); and that shared a common experience of exodus and exile in a country where they are impermanent residents.

Though none of them is Malaysian, the country has clearly left a mark on them all. After all, Malaysia has provided them with a temporary haven that may have nonetheless left an indelible mark that they will take along for the rest of their lives in the US.

In US, for the second time in their young lives (sometimes for the third time as many have also lived in India or Singapore), they will have to adapt to a new society.

            

It is intriguing to think that their impermanent residence will not be a mere bridge between Myanmar and the US, but in fact will have a formative effect on them, especially considering that they often come to the country as comparatively inexperienced youngsters or teenagers, and depart as relatively seasoned young adults.

In a way, Malaysia is a bit like a school. Someone who is now in Indianapolis used to tell me his people - the Mizo - learned how to walk (sic), how to behave, how to dress, how to work in Malaysia. He meant it.

He could have added the importance of an intimate acquaintance with the Internet as well, and all that this implies (Myanmar is still a country with very low levels of connectivity, though the situation is apparently improving quite fast). Malaysia has therefore been a kind of preparatory school for them. It is in this sense that it has had an important formative influence.

Back at the apartment, before departure, the general mood is buoyant rather than sad. Nobody is singing, however. Instead, they are just telling jokes and making fun of one another.

Eventually the time comes and everybody helps the couple haul their heavy luggage down the stairs. They also hail a taxi for them. Their former television set goes into another taxi with its new owner, and a third taxi takes a group of Mizo young women back home. Everybody else walks back to Bukit Bintang in the quiet of the early morning. Mapui is gone.

As Eden, a friend, always reminds me, one is gone and yet more are to come. Eden tells me he never lacks friends and acquaintances from home in Malaysia. We could stretch his opinion a little, and venture that, strange as it may seem, Malaysia has also, alas, become home. No wonder Mapui's girlfriend felt so sad close to her departure, and Mapui himself is now sitting forlornly in his living room in Oklahoma, at least for the time being.

But he is young, and soon he will no doubt get up and get on with his life, in Tulsa, Las Vegas, or anywhere else he may fancy.

FRED ROSEN has been gallivanting around South-East Asia for quite some time now. He is interested in foreign communities in Malaysia's large cities. He has also been writing about Malacca, both in the present and the past, as well as other ancient port cities in the Indian Ocean.