The terminus was closed two years ago. “Yes, I’m sure,” the angry young woman behind the digital screen assures Rahman. “The sea has eroded the coast and the platform is no longer safe.” He makes do with a ticket to the station closest to his village. Kampung Pasir Berbisik was named after a local legend that during the monsoon, ghostly voices could be heard, carried from the sea by strong winds. Tales made up to deter children from playing in the rough seas. It’s been two hours since the train left town for the coast, but Rahman can hardly sleep. A jumble of images dances behind his eyelids. He vividly remembers what the old station looked like: the abandoned lighthouse, the fury of the waves and the taste of the fried fish his mother used to make. He remembers everything except his father’s voice. Only one more hour.

Sea levels have risen 27 centimetres in twenty years; vast areas of flat farmland have been submerged and turned into deltas. The government set up the National Resettlement Agency to move millions of people from coastal towns to newly built cities and camps inland. Fishing settlements like his own village have long been abandoned; the wooden house he grew up in has only three of its eight stilts left. Those who can afford it have moved to higher ground, while the rest are too poor to have any other choice and have to squeeze into tiny apartments on the outskirts of town. Life must go on. A few stubborn ones have stayed, even as the waves crash against the walls of their houses. When a resettlement agency official came to persuade his family to move, Rahman’s father said, “If it really is God’s will, then we don’t have to wait. Sea levels can rise in an instant.” There was some truth to that. Eventually the flood came and went every day, as God willed. Except for the Hajj in Mecca, his father had never left the village. Moving to the city was out of the question. Tuan Haji Baha died alone in the same house where he was born and was buried between two coconut trees less than ten meters away. Since Rahman was the only son, he was advised by the religious authorities to move his father’s grave to another location.

Finally, Rahman recognizes the endless row of coconut trees that line the road to his ancestral home. A thin, watery mirror covers the land, threatening to swallow the elevated railway line. Back home, it smells of brine, rotting fish and wet earth. Salt from the air seeps into his pores. In the old cemetery, he walks around the stones like a visitor examining sculptures in an art gallery. Present but distant. Pensive as he strains to feel. More than half of the headstones have already fallen into the sea; some still lie half-buried in the sand, visible only at low tide. Almost all the graves have already been moved. Except Tuan Haji Baha. This is how people used to be buried, before multi-storey tombs and reusable graves became common.

Rahman is reluctant to take the burden of a decision; if he wants to move the grave, he will have to apply to the State Religious Affairs Department for permission to exhume his father’s remains and rebury them in a new location. He can already hear his father’s disapproval. He lays out some flowers from the Melur tree nearby, on the tombstone and says a quiet prayer. He lies on the grass and turns on his side so that he is facing the kiblat, the same direction as his father, seven feet underground. He closes his eyes and sinks deep into the layers of sound.

First the wind.

Then the waves.

His own heartbeat.

Be silent.

He is awakened by a commotion. Several men in hard hats and safety vests are unpacking a truck and scattering equipment and tools on the road right in front of the old house. Rahman is disoriented for a moment. Had he already called the authorities to move the grave? Had he made his decision?

His thoughts are interrupted by a loud voice from inside the house. A man gestures towards the workers and waves his arms, inviting them in with hospitality but also telling them to stop what they are doing. Rahman gets up to look, hoping that somehow the decision has been made for him and he doesn’t have to worry about the logistics or – and this weighs much more heavily on him – reconcile the decision with his father’s wish to stay in the only place he knew and loved.

He had often thought about how much this land, this place, with all its sounds, smells and history, was a part of his father. Taking him away, even if everything were to be swallowed up by the waves that are already lapping at its edges, seems unthinkable. But time is running out. It had already taken him so long to respond to the letters from the authorities. If they hadn’t given him a final deadline, he would still be hesitating.

When he reaches the house, he sees four young men in work clothes huddled together on a piece of paper. He does not recognize the man standing on the veranda of the old kampung house. Pieces of wood are missing and the house is leaning dangerously.

He hears the man shouting at the workers to come back later, or tomorrow, or preferably never. They are not needed here, they should go where the people need them to build the dike to protect the coast. “Help them, they need it, we are already lost. Go. Go now, this place is lost in the sea, you are all too late.”

The man turns to Rahman. Rahman freezes in mid-step. “Abah?”

His father looks at him blankly, as if Rahman is just another worker disturbing his afternoon rest. “Go, leave me alone, there is nothing left for you to do here,” he admonishes Rahman, who feels transported back to his youth when his father scolded him for all the fun things he shouldn’t do.

“I’m sorry, Abah. I know I’m late, but I didn’t know what you wanted from me,” Rahman pleads.

“Are you still a child? Can’t decide what you want to do yet? You have your own life to live. Just leave me alone and try to remember this place. That’s all we have in the end. Memories, good and bad.”

His father reaches out his hand and Rahman feels the warmth of his fingers in his hair. A monster wave startles him. The flood has brought the water’s edge to the grave. He looks around. There are no old houses to be seen nearby; they have all fallen victim to the raging waves, dilapidated and abandoned. Some have even been taken away on trucks. But now he knows what to do.

To remember this place and his father, he needs a place, a material manifestation of this memory. He knows that he must take his father’s remains inland, to a place where he can create a monument to this history, this past that must not be forgotten.