Pisan Zapra

Pisan zapra—Malay for “the time it takes to eat a banana”

- Josh Pachter

Luxuriating in the early morning heat on the veranda, with the Titiwangsa Mountains looming high above the leaves of the pokok pisang trees that ringed their property, Madeline Steele selected a banana from the bowl of fruit on the glass table, peeled it slowly, and savored that first delicious bite. There was no need to hurry. She had nothing to do today. Truth be told, she rarely had anything to do, out here on the edge of Kuala Lumpur, except for those occasional evenings when Roger brought a colleague home for tea. Even then, Cook prepared the meal, and their ayah Sarah set the table and cleaned up afterward. Madeline’s only job was to be decorative, to smile and laugh at the men’s jokes, and to pretend that she and Roger were happily married.

There were ripe bananas in the kitchen, but Cook knew that Madeline preferred them just before they ripened, their skin still veined a delicate, almost translucent green.

She chewed the firm flesh, not yet begun to soften, and a memory from the distant past tickled the back of her mind.

She had been a child in the Lake District of England—six or seven, perhaps, certainly no more than eight—and she had pinched one of Mummy’s sewing needles and carefully stuck it through the skin of an unopened banana, again and again, each time working it left and right as gently as she could, edge to edge. Later, when Daddy finished his eggs and bacon and reached for a postprandial banana and peeled it, as he did every morning— “Potassium!” he announced without fail, as Archimedes must have announced “Eureka!” in the bath—the fruit fell into his hands, already sliced into inch-long sections as if by magic. He had been absolutely amazed, and when Madeline showed him how she had accomplished the miracle, he had hugged her close and petted her and called her his little Houdini.