At home with a modern Malay Muslim family

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — With a slight nod to modern Islamic fashion, the scene at KLCC Suria, a six-story shopping mall in the Golden Triangle district, could be played out anywhere.

Women glide by in business suits, saris or silky tunic and pants ensembles with matching headscarves.

On the patio at Starbucks, a boy with spiked black hair and a young woman in a long-sleeve T-shirt and black-and-white basketball shoes share coffee and work at a laptop.

Two doors down at Santini, the Malaysian version of an Outback Steak House, a group of businessmen don't wait for service. They press a button on their table labeled "water," "bill" or "waiter."

Western Malaysia can feel at times like a corner of India or China, or even Europe or the United States. This is especially true here in the capital of Kuala Lumpur where oil money keeps Prada and Gucci in business, and skybars and swimming pools top five-star hotels.

The official religion is Islam, but this is a country with a large population of Hindus and Buddhists, and reminders are often as subtle as an arrow on a hotel-room ceiling pointing toward Mecca or the sound of the call to prayer coming from a nearby mosque.

I didn't know what to expect when I signed up for a homestay in the Islamic village of Hulu Chuchoh, a few miles from a Formula 1 racetrack and the Kuala Lumpur airport, but what I found was something that had eluded my husband, Tom, and me during the week we had so far spent in Malaysia.

We'd eaten in Indian restaurants, wandered through several Chinatowns and had dinner with a couple from Hillsboro, Ore., working for Intel in Penang, but we had yet to get to know a Muslim Malay family.

That changed when we moved in with Partiwi Zainal in the pink stucco home she shares with her husband and daughter in a village surrounded by tapioca and rubber plantations less than an hour's drive from the city.

Checking out of our high-rise hotel across from the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur and into Partiwi's guest room meant spending the next two nights in the 90-degree-plus heat without air conditioning. Sleep didn't come easily. But in this post 9/11 world, to be sitting in her living room and playing a game of marbles with other guests — two Muslim teachers and a high-school student — was a special opportunity.

"Follow me"

Partiwi, her husband, Mohd Hilel; and their daughter, Lena, 12, the only one of five children still living at home,are a thoroughly modern family.

At 49, her black hair, long neck and angular face hidden most of the time behind one of her dozens of brightly-colored headscarves, Partiwi looks more like a woman in her late 30s, especially when she switches to her black scarf with a built-in visor and climbs on her motorbike to take her daughter to school.

Lena starts regular classes around 7 a.m., comes home for lunch and then goes back for Islamic instruction from 2:30 to around 6 p.m.

Her uniform is a white scarf and tunic over a long, green skirt. At home, she relaxes like any preteen, in T-shirts and sweat pants, and spends her time reading, watching television and text-messaging her friends on her cellphone.

Mohd, 52, teaches at the local elementary school. He suffered a stroke a few years ago, and now Partiwi does all the driving and most of the household chores. A few years ago the village chief came up with the idea to organize homestays as a way for the local people to supplement their incomes and introduce foreign visitors to Malay culture.

Partiwi signed up and did some remodeling to the house where she raised her family. Little by little she's been making improvements. There's an ironing board set up in the prayer room. Last year she installed an air conditioner in her living room. "Maybe next year, the bedroom," she said.

Many families operate cottage industries in their backyards. Partiwi showed us hers: a small bakery where she makes tea cakes and snacks from homegrown tapioca. The chickens running around the driveway supply the eggs.

"You want to follow me?" she asked us on our first afternoon. The village chiefs often organize programs such as fishing or rubber-tree tapping demonstrations for visitors who come in groups, but we were on our own, and nothing was planned. Partiwi's upbeat invitation was the cue for getting in her Toyota and tagging along on impromptu errands.

The first stop was her aunt's tapioca chip and snack factory. Partiwi opened her truck, and we helped her unload big plastic bags filled with snacks she delivered for packaging under a brand called "Mr. Rizac" that the family exports to Singapore and Dubai.

Several women sat in a small room sorting and bagging chips, "like Pringles," Partiwi said, only made from tapioca, a root vegetable that resembles a long sweet potato. This was a start-to-finish operation. An older woman and man sat peeling mounds of tapioca by hand. Another ran the peeled roots through a hand slicer, while, inside, men fried the chips in vats of boiling palm oil.

Next, it was a visit to Sam J Frozen Foods for a look at women stretching and molding dough into rôti canai, an Indian flat bread, curry puffs and other breakfast foods people used to make at home when they had more time. Sam J looked to be in her 60s. By now, I was beginning to notice that most of these businesses were women-owned and run.

"In an Islamic country?" I asked Partiwi.

"Of course. Women here don't stay in the house."

Other highlights from our two days in Hulu Chuchoh:

• Going to the car wash — two guys with a hose and buckets set up in a parking lot.

• Shopping for headscarves with Partiwi and her friends at an outdoor market. How many does she have?

"Many, many."

She takes hers off in the house, but going outside without one would not only violate her religious custom, it would be like going out without lipstick or makeup, she explained.

"I wouldn't feel pretty."

• Sharing amazing Malaysian meals with the other homestay guests. They ate with their hands; we with fork and spoon.

• Figuring out how to brush our teeth without using a sink. The bathroom was otherwise well-equipped with shower and western toilet.

• Wandering around the village, flagging down an ice-cream man with a freezer strapped to his motorbike, and watching families on their way home from work and school. Everyone greeted us and asked where we were from.

"What do you think of Malaysia?" everyone wanted to know.

"Very nice country," I said. "Especially the people."

Carol Pucci: 206-464-3701 or cpucci@seattletimes.com