[Fiction] Salt Ring
Read the second-place entry for our February 2026 contest, The Fence.
Salt Ring
By Atiqah Ghazali-alKashif
Life after the invasion of the Imperial Japanese Army in December 1941 was no longer measured by harvests or monsoon winds, but by footsteps at night. They landed on 8 December at Kota Bharu, the sea coughing them onto our East Coast shores before dawn. The sky was bruised grey, as if it already knew what would follow. News travelled faster than bicycles, faster than prayer with boots in the sand, rifles slung low, a flag none of us had seen up close.
After that, the kampung stopped breathing properly. Doors closed earlier. Lamps dimmed. Conversations thinned to whispers that dissolved when a twig snapped outside. Families were killed without ceremony. Men were shot where they stood, in paddy fields, beside wells, at their own thresholds, blood sinking into soil that had promised only rice, tobacco, and herbs. Women learned to move like shadows, folding fear into their sleeves. Children became silent, as if quiet could make them invisible.
We learned new words, such as curfew, inspection, informer. We learned to swallow grief whole. Even the azan sounded thinner, cautious, as though prayer had to pass through barbed air. And yet, some houses were spared. Not untouched by fear, but spared from the first sweep, district heads, imams, and men once trusted by the British. The new rulers found them useful, or so it was said. In the kampung, rumours grew like vines: quick, persistent, difficult to uproot. When soldiers passed, certain gates were left unbroken, certain compounds untouched. And that, in times like those, was enough to build another kind of fence, invisible, yet sharp to trained eyes.
Ruzana Che We, the first daughter of the imam of Kampung Teratak Mas, was born into months of prayer and expectation, yet carried away before she could remember her father’s house. She was given to Che Ha, a childless widow whose husband had left her generous land that caught the morning light like polished brass. Coconut trees leaned over the compound. Mangoes fattened in season. The soil was dark and obedient. Ruzana grew up between wealth and longing. “Semua ni, Ruz punyo satu hari nati yo.” (All this of mine, one day, would be all yours.)
Che Ha raised her as though she were a vessel brimming with precious oil. Every cough, every fever, every wish was anticipated before it could ripen into want. When Che Ha travelled by beca, perahu, or her own feet for weeks to trade copper wares in Kelantan and Siam, Ruzana remained behind, not idle, but cultured. Teachers came as though summoned by prayer. An ustazah taught Jawi, Arabic, English. The mak bidan taught herbs, roots, and the pulse beneath the skin. Yet she was reminded she was still a woman. She learned to gut fish, slaughter chickens, and portion beef with precision. Blood did not frighten her. Heat did not daunt her. Responsibility sat invisibly on her shoulders.
She grew unlike the eleven siblings left with Imam Che We. Where they ran barefoot, she stepped carefully in soft cotton baju kurung, hair coiled neatly with ornamental copper pins. Lace kebaya caught the light like spider silk, paired with hand-drawn kain batik. Her polish, in a rough kampung, invited suspicion.
By thirteen, whispers coiled around her. Rumours travelled alongside Che Ha’s returning copper wares, they said, she was too beautiful, her skin gleamed like burnished metal, her eyes did not lower quickly enough. “Dio kecek denge laki, dio pandang mato tepat, mace anok panoh.” (She talks to men, she looks us up in the eyes like an arrow.)
She was crowned, without consent, the gold standard of Kampung Teratak Mas. And gold, everyone knows, invites hunger. In a village bruised by war, beauty could be mistaken for power, and power, when it rests in the body of a young woman, unsettles the world around it.
Che Ha’s return from her trade in Siam was hurried when she learned that Ruzana’s fever had persisted for a week. She summoned tok sheikh, bomoh, and even a British doctor, all who could be found were brought to the house. After eighteen long days, Ruzana was finally able to sit with assistance and eat half a bowl of rice congee. While Ruzana recovered, Che Ha ordered kampung workers to erect a high wired fence around the house. From that day onward, no one could approach, not even for a fleeting glimpse of Ruzana, without Che Ha’s explicit consent. Not even Imam Che We and his wife were allowed past the gate. Her protectiveness knew no boundaries, she smoked the house with bukhoor purchased from the holy city of Madina, and every inch of the fence was lined with white salt, inside and out. Life within Che Ha’s compound continued under a security more stringent than that outside the Japanese headquarters.
By the time Ruzana turned fourteen, another ordeal arrived to test the fence. Delegation after delegation came with marriage proposals, but most were turned away before they even crossed the gate. The ustazah and mak bidan, now housed in small kampung dwellings within Che Ha’s compound, became the arbiters, declining offers on her behalf. For a young lady who already wore Japanese cotton, Dutch East Indies lace, and limited hand-drawn batik from Terengganu, her mother refused to lower her standard of life. Soon, the kampung began to whisper: Che Ha was selling her adopted daughter to the highest bidder, as if Ruzana were some prized imported cow.
On a full moon night, Kampung Teratak Mas was roused by piercing screams of women from their homes. By morning, whispers had taken shape. Each woman had dreamed the same vision of a young lady in red lace kebaya, standing by the well, slaughtering girls just entering puberty. When they tried to approach her in their dreams, her face had shifted to that of Imam Che We’s fourth wife, Merriam. News travelled quickly to the Japanese officers, and Merriam was shot, declared the bringer of black magic into the kampung. Soon after, whispers turned again. Some claimed Merriam was innocent, others suggested Che Ha had somehow seeded the suspicion, her reasons known only to her. By then, Che Ha had told the villagers that she and Ruzana had been elsewhere that night. Ruzana, now Madame Brooke-Pepham, had already left the kampung. Yet even as villagers spoke of relief and safety, the coincidence, the timing, the dreams, the deaths, hung in the air like smoke, curling around the fences and wells, and no one could say what had truly happened, or how much had been seen, or imagined.
A Note From Our Guest Judge, Eleanor Anstruther
I adored this piece. Lines like this: "The soil was dark and obedient." Stopped me in my tracks again and again. The author has a gift for words, the play of them, how to let them fall onto the page so that they dance. The story is beautifully constructed, its movement through time is perfectly handled, and with choice scenes and details that invite us to conjure the emotion behind it without being told what to feel. A rich tapestry and a work of real beauty and power.
About Atiqah Ghazali-alKashif
Atiqah Ghazali-alKashif is a Malaysian writer and poet, weaving lyrical narratives that explore identity, femininity, and memory. Her work blends Southeast Asian influences with inspirations from Arabia, often touching on history, heritage, and the hidden threads of everyday life.
This piece was written in response to the theme The Fence.