A Place To Live (2)

My housemate, the father with one son had left earlier this month. It was a sudden move on his part because he said he was planning to stay at least for a year, and we had just entered our 11^th month since the day I signed the tenant agreement with the house lord.

I requested him to find a new tenant to replace him, but he said that that was out of the question since he was already at his hometown in Sarawak.

I asked him if he quitted his job, and he told me he was sick and now he’s undergoing treatment.

A few weeks leading to his resignation, he frequently updated his status on WhatsApp lashing out on his colleagues who accused him of using ganja. He even did urine test to prove his innocence (and he updated this all on his WhatsApp status). Me, the ever Malay ass of course think he was being sihir-ed by his colleagues.

So I posted an ad on mudah.my for his room. A few prospective tenants contacted me, but none fits the criteria I had in mind. One was an Indian lady when I specifically advertised that the room was strictly for male.

Finally a police officer who now works in KL messaged me, quite persistent since he contacted me through WhatsApp and SMS. He wanted to have a tour and I told him the room was not ready since my housemate hasn’t clear his belongings. Then he keeps digging about everything like why my housemate left, does any of you smoke, is there an aircond in the room, do I have to share bathroom, is the room fully furnished?  

It could only mean he was dead serious about the room. Even when I told him the room would not be ready before 5^th of November, he kept sending me messages to ask me if I were home and if he could come.

My housemate’s brother and father came on 5^th of November to pack all his stuff. I was in the bathroom when they entered the house. I was out of the bathroom door when they saw me and I greeted them and excused myself to get myself clothed.

I entered his room after I was clothed. This was the first time I get into his room to help them pack. They told me they had come a week previously to take his guitar, but nobody was home. They had used my housemate’s key to enter the house.

I asked his brother if he knows what my housemate suffers from, and he told me it was depression.

“The divorce took its toll on him. We should have known; there were signs.” The brother quite politely explained. I was half disappointed to learn that it was not black magic.

“Has the divorce been finalized?” I asked him because my housemate never properly explained his status. He didn’t even address his wife as his ex.

“Yeah, a long time ago.”

We chatted a bit. His father was a retired teacher who taught at my hometown but his wife was Sarawakian. He knows where I live after I explained the location. I asked him if he knew my late grandfather, the great Cikgu Sulaiman? And he was pleasantly surprised to know that I was his grandson.

“We are more or less the same age.” He told me in glee.

“Yeah, but he died in 1994.”

My housemate’s brother found his nephew’s toys. “This is Wafi’s.” He exclaimed. I was quite shocked to learn his nephew’s name, it was the same as my nephew’s. The boy was here once a week but I never learnt his name. His father – my housemate would take him from his ex-wife and brought him home on his offday. The boy was not afraid of me even though I never talked to him, but he was a crybaby and sometimes it disturbs me when he screamed at his father.

As they were cleaning, I noticed there was a photo album on his cupboard.

I realized moments later that it was his wedding album. It was quite a sad moment, I realized that he still hadn’t moved on.

There were a few paper slips on the cupboard as well, proof that he had undergone several treatments with some ustazs. Some receipts and a paper containing some Quranic verses with prescriptions how and when to read them.

I asked his brother if he found the aircond’s remote control, and he called my housemate. They talked in Sarawak dialect. “Sik ada, sik ada” were the only words that I understood. He said the controller was in the room, we did some excavating through his stuff but we couldn’t find it. The brother told me they would pay for the controller.

After they finished cleaning, I sent them to their car.

The prospective tenant – the police officer came later that day, just before Maghrib and he liked the room. He also liked the fact that we do not smoke.

Then he told me his wife would come a few days every month, but the wife would stay inside and won’t come out. At this point, I have no objection because it’s super hard to find a new tenant, let alone who would obey all my rules.

The Iranian did bring his girlfriend(s) home, we even found used condoms under his bed when we had to clean his room. Luckily my housemate spotted them first because me the virgin didn’t know what in the world were those or else I was going to touch them. That was when I learnt that used condoms looked like sweet wrappers.

The other housemate, the one named Fahmi also brought his wife home. This was even worse because we shared the same bathroom. His wife wouldn’t stay inside the room, using the living room and the kitchen as she sees fits. I lost count how many times I had to go out of the house because her presence made me uncomfortable.

Just like before, I studied all my options. I just want to have a proper place to live with no drama. But my bank account vehemently disagrees with me.

So there’s that.