5 am. The call to prayer echoes through the morning-silent city.

I creep into the living room barefoot on cool marble floors, and watch the dark sky slowly yielding to first light. At dawn, the mountains are clear: broken, jagged tops rise in layers on all sides of the city. As the light grows stronger, the mountains disappear slowly. Clouds sink from the sky to meet mist rising from the valleys, and the curtain of smog closes to obscure both.

By the late afternoon, the mountains are shadows, darker silhouettes against a backdrop of cloud. Thunder heralds the coming downpour, and sheet lightning in the dull daylight is intangible, like the blink of an eye, though no one has blinked. My ear catches the rain before my eye can make it out – a rushing noise like fine grain pouring from a bag, slowly at first but picking up speed. The storm is windless here, still and vertical, ferocious only in its sound.

After the first few minutes of watching the rain, listening, waiting vainly for the deluge to cut through the cramped humidity, I retire to my room.

*

“Another slice of life in KL,” my father says, wryly, each time he sees my reaction to the latest ex-pat function. I suppose I’m not all that skilled at hiding my discomfort. One afternoon, we sign up for high tea at the former residence of the British Governor in Malaysia, now known as Carcosa. I squirm through the meal, feeling like a voyeur inside a Forster novel. Here I am on the verandah, sipping Twinings Earl Grey from Wedgwood bone china. The conversation drifts by as I stare out over the manicured lawn, the flagpole at the point and the sharp slope down to a moat of palms and tangled vines.

The house has a grand sprawling feel, wings jutting on all sides, white-plastered and tile-roofed, surrounded by gardens and well-pruned hedges. A high iron fence runs the perimeter. We sit in wicker chairs in the shade with electric fans whirring overhead. We eat strawberries, little cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and scones with jam and clotted cream.

We are discussing the cost of admission to the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, which according to some in the group is exorbitant. Someone else says, “Yes, but if it was lower there would be so many more locals using it…”

*

Kuala Lumpur is hot. The city sweats and sprawls like a fat woman exhausted by the heat, limbs flung in all directions, a tangle of humid discomfort. But unlike the woman, who stays as still as possible, the city is always in motion, foaming forward on a sea of asphalt and concrete, going nowhere in particular, kicking up sprays of dust and road-worn grit in its wake. This city seems always to be pushing its needle into that red danger zone on the speedometer of life. Even more than the choking smog, the pace takes my breath away.

One Saturday or Sunday my father, off duty for the weekend, takes me for a drive into the hills surrounding the city. We climb through what seems like endless jungle in the close, recycled air of the car, and I feel a little sick. I can’t shake the idea that I am passing through a landscape that is rotting as I watch. The trees, top-heavy, form a greenhouse canopy of sweat and mist. The jungle heaves with life; it spews over cliffs and across the narrow gravel roads venturing through. Exotic plants ripen, grow heavy, fall, and ferment. The mass of dead plant life feeds the new growth.

Our short drive has taken us worlds away from the interior of the shiny metropolis. The city’s borders have pushed back the over-ripe foliage.

*

My stepmother comes home from the market one day with two large potted plants and a smile on her face. ‘On the train home,’ she says, ‘they all smiled at me, and a woman moved her bags so I could sit.’ She laughs as she set the pots down. They are the sort with long plastic lines meeting at a hook, for hanging on the balcony. ‘It was the plants,’ she said. ‘They knew I lived here. They’re alright once they know you live here.’

*

Every Thursday my father takes a long lunch. He leaves the office and walks up Jalan Tun Razak, sweating in dress pants, short-sleeved shirt and tie, to Ampang Plaza, and upstairs to Jimmy’s, a tiny restaurant that attracts a Chinese business crowd. Every Thursday he is the only white man eating at Jimmy’s, and every Thursday he has the same thing: a prawn and noodle concoction in broth. He’s not sure what it’s called – the menu is not in English – but he is pretty sure that it’s one of the best meals he’s ever had.

Some weeks my stepmother and I walk up from the condo to meet him. The waiter understands the word ‘vegetarian’ and I invariably end up with a mixture of tofu and vegetables, and either noodles or rice, alongside a tall glass of iced lime juice that I sweeten with syrup from a small pewter jug.

This week my stepmother offers to pay. She hands over a few bills, but when the change is brought back it’s handed directly to my father. The waiter leaves, and my father passes the tray across the table to my stepmother without comment.

*

Most days the sun goes down soon after the rain stops. There is a brief, grey, damp interlude, and then darkness descends, hidings mountains and skyscrapers, mist and smog alike. From my place by the window, on the seventeenth floor, I can see the red and white lights of the cars passing below. If I step out on the balcony, I can add the noise of their passage, and the smell of exhaust, to the blurs of light. The darkness appears to have no effect on the volume of traffic; if there is a pause in the rush of small hatchbacks and motorbikes below me, it occurs long after I have stopped watching, and gone to bed.