Three and a half minutes felt like a lifetime.

He sank still lower in his seat, as if trying to make himself so small that he would eventually disappear from view. The lingering cool of the steel-coated monorail seat was probably designed to give a soothing effect to whoever sat on it, but all he could feel was the stickiness of his own sweat. The sheet of glass behind his back, misted, threw the rest of the horizon gliding past into a melting blur of lights and colour, indistinguishable. And still, the people stared. They pierced almost effortlessly, through the sea of faces, watching, gazing, shooting silent accusations at him, tormenting him, laughing at him, interrogating him with questions he could not answer. They were the ones in power. He was utterly helpless.

As if in response to his sudden surge in insecurity, he shifted a little in his seat, unexpectedly allowing the side of his right hip to brush against that of the man seated next to him. Flinching, he quickly drew back, heart pounding.

"S-sorry."

The word, still alien to him even after hours of practice, sounded dry and insincere coming from in between his cracked lips. In return, he received a particularly hostile glare for his efforts. He didn't mind. It was miles better than what he was used to. After all, he had made his way across minefields unscathed only a week ago, with him perched on his mom's shoulders, arms encircling her neck while she told him to close his eyes, hold on tight, and to run away as fast as he can if he heard a loud boom. She even reassured him she would be right behind him if he ever needed to do so. He believed it, every word of it.

And they had made it here. Here, where they would be no soldiers milling the streets, where people could walk around freely after midnight as they pleased; here, where the women didn't cower in fear at home, or screamed late at night when men forced their way into their rooms; here, where the shops sold more than just overpriced sacks of beetle-infested rice and beer, and where kids his age went to school with textbooks and clean uniforms instead of being conscripted into the army. To him, this was heaven on earth. The only flaw was the way he was stared at like an exhibit wherever he went.

It was odd, the more he thought about it. Malaysia, said the poster behind the wary-faced woman with two children opposite him. Beneath those words were photos of three beaming kids with their arms round each other, one light-skinned with slit eyes, another with yellow skin and a headscarf, and another almost three shades darker.

A quick glance noted similar features on the people around him. So why was it, then, that he was not treated as a friend, the way the poster seemed to suggest? Why had they singled him out even though they were all of different skin color and appearance, like him? He was sure he didn't look any more different than the three children in the picture. He was just like everybody else, wasn't he? But nobody volunteered an answer; the questioning voice in his head was his alone to hear, an outcast, just like he was to the rest of the crowd in the train.

But then, wasn’t this precisely why he volunteered to go out alone, away from the tiny tent he had called home for the past one week, just so he could return some semblance of dignity to his mother’s way of life? He knew she didn’t like being left to her own devices in the tent, although it was definitely way better than the life of fear they had led where they came from. Inwardly, however, he knew his mother came here to lead a life of purpose, just as she had always done. Once, when the dreaded soldiers raided their neighbourhood homes, raping women and killing their husbands, his mother would creep into their houses at night while they were still trembling and weak and teary, and take care of them the best she could.

Now, all she ever did was sit in their tent, hidden amongst the trees in the fringes of the hilly jungle, amidst a cluster of other crudely constructed makeshift shelters that travelers like themselves called home. This wasn’t the freedom they had come all this way for.

------

“Masjid Jamek.” A female voice droned through the speakers coolly, interrupting his thoughts a split second before the train juddered to a sudden halt, throwing him off balance and this time full-on into the man next door, who quickly got up, brushed him away like he was nothing more than dirt, and disembarked.

He quickly followed suit after confirming the name of the station through the characters he had memorized repeatedly the night before on the scrap of tattered paper his mother had handed him, back in the forest, in the makeshift tent they had christened as their temporary home. This was where he had been told to go.

Slowly, tentatively, the thirteen-year-old boy sniffed the air. It was warm and smelt of something fragrant from the nearby makeshift stall, and as the train began to move away, leaving a cloud of mingled dust and carbon in its wake, he craned his neck in search for the woman from the agency who would take him to the building where he and his mother would be offered a job.

Before he could move in the direction of the benches, however, someone’s hand rested on his shoulder and gripped it, tight. Startled, he turned around to face the figure behind him, a strapping middle-aged man with rather weary-looking eyes and wearing what looked like a navy-blue uniform.

"Boy, IC mana?"

From his mother's hurried warnings just before he set off on his own, he made a rough guess that the man was a policeman, and that he was asking for some form of identification.

"No have. No," he muttered uncomfortably, trying to wriggle away from his iron grasp. "I...Myanmar. Thuang Lao."

A look of impatience crossed the man's face. He still hadn't let go. "No IC? Are you an illegal immigrant?"

He had no idea what that meant, and so stared blankly at the man, pleading silently for him to be let free so he could do what his mother had told him to. She had warned him for this possibility, but he could never be prepared for it, not while knowing so little of the language.

He tried again, hesitantly. "I...come, Ma-lay-si-a. I meet...girl. For work."

The man frowned deeply at this statement, and watching this, Thuang Lao’s uneasiness increased. Before he could say anything more, however, the policeman clamped another hand on the boy’s other shoulder and began steering him away, through the turnstiles, past the crowd of ogling people, and towards a waiting car. Evidently, he had made up his mind as to what to do with him. Shocked at this, Thuang struggled against the man’s grip but was soon bundled into the car even as he attempted to make some sense of why he was being treated this way.

"I see girl! Let go!"

His pleas went unheeded as the car smoothly picked up speed, hitting the highway without another word from the two blue-clothed policemen in the car. Where were they taking him? He wasn’t supposed to be leaving this place! His mother depended on him to meet the woman! Why wouldn’t they understand?

Eventually, after much protesting on his end and ignoring on the other, he subsided and stared blankly ahead as the car wound across the heavily congested streets. Once or twice, the policemen exchanged words in low voices, or the radio would crackle with the a gruff-sounding voice announcing strings of numbers and letters, until they were turning at long last into the compound of a blue-and-white painted building and slowing to a halt. After the car had completely stopped, the first policeman got out and beckoned for him to follow. Thuang merely complied.

They led him through a whitewashed room and up a flight of stairs where he was ushered into another whitewashed room with a single chair and desk. A man in a similar looking suit was already seated opposite the empty chair, and as he watched, he beckoned him to sit down and spoke in a low, deep voice.

“What is your name?”

“Thuang Lao,” the boy answered slowly, having thankfully picked up the word ‘name’ in the sentence and guessing, once more, what it could have meant.

The man nodded. “Age?”

He was stumped for a moment, and shook his head blankly.

“Age?” the man repeated impatiently. “Ten? Eleven? Twelve?”

At this, he understood somewhat, his face brightening up for only the slightest moment at this flicker of recognition, and spoke, “Three, ten.”

“Ah. Thirteen. Where are you from?”

Again, a blank stare. He was fidgeting now, avoiding the man’s penetrating gaze and hoping desperately that it would be over soon.

“Well come on, son, where do you come from?”

“I - Thuang Lao! I see girl…for work!” he blurted out suddenly, remembering the words he told the first policeman at the train station and deciding to repeat them as some semblance of an explanation. I want to be let free, so hurry up and release me! he thought at the same time, trying desperately to find the words to convey them properly.

An odd look of comprehension dawned on the man’s face, but he still remained unsmiling. The line of questioning seemed to be over at that point, though, as the man strode towards the door and whispered something to the other person hovering outside, while Thuang Lao sat stiffly in his cold, cramped chair as his fate was being sealed.

------

They would always be alone, alone in their little void of nothingness with nowhere to go. Robbed of solace in their own homeland, forced to flee the soil they had toiled and reaped from, and finally thinking they had found the perfect refuge in an alien country, they came in expectant, only for their hopes to be dashed. Where was the justice? Where was the liberty they traveled all this way for? Where was that semblance of dignity they had tried so hard to retain?

Sooner or later, it would all just be wishful thinking. And, like many other refugees who had come into the detention camp before him only to be deported back to their strife-rife countries from which they tried so hard to leave, all Thuang Lao could do was pray. And hope. And wait for a better day.

------As at June 2007, there are approximately 37,000 Refugees registered with the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) in Malaysia. Malaysia has become a particular destination for refugees from areas of Burma that do not border Thailand, the traditional first stop for those who have fled Burma. However, some asylum-seekers are sometimes mistaken for illegal immigrants and detained in the same holding camp, before being deported to their home countries by the local authorities.