The
A long time ago when the kampung was young there lived a small naked house lizard. As the lizard grew she became attached to the humans living in the house and eventually had fallen in love with a tall beautiful young man with a handsome face.
Lizard Wife By Yusuf Martin
Every day the lizard watched the young man, observed his manners, listened to how he spoke with his mother and witnessed how he helped around the house. The young man blossomed every day and in no way resembled the lecherous old man that his father was. The young man’s father had eyes not just for his wife but for practically every woman in the kampung and was known to go running after any woman who caught his fancy. But the son was pure in heart and had more of his mother’s goodness in him.
Day in and day out the little lizard ached to see the young man and pretty soon was so love sick that she visited a bomoh to seek help. In those days it was well known that bomohs could not only talk to people and spirits but could also talk with animals, and especially the house lizards. The young female house lizard told the bomoh of her feelings for the young man and the bomoh explained that he might have a magic spell to solve her problem. The next day the young female house lizard returned to see the bomoh who produced a potion proclaiming that it would turn her into a human so that she could be with her love. The bomoh warned that the change would be entirely conditional, she could stay as a human woman as long as the human man was in love with her, after forty‐eight hours if the man did not fall madly in love with her she would change permanently back into a lizard, and if, once being in love with her, he should sometime change his
heart she would instantly resume lizard form. The young female lizard thanked the bomoh and with the confidence of youth assured him that once a human woman she would remain so until she died, because she had faith not only in her ability to charm her young handsome man, but also in her ability to keep him in love with her. And so she drank the potion. The air wavered, hot went cold and cold went hot and amidst a cloud of multicoloured smoke a naked young woman formed from where the lizard had stood. They chose the name Nur Liza and the bomoh gave her clothes to wear and wished her well. Pretty soon Nur Liza met up with her young handsome man and used all of her personal charms and womanly abilities to encourage him to fall in love with her, and fall in love he did. Before the forty‐eight hour period had passed Yusuf fell head over heels in love with Nur Liza and remained in love with her during their courtship, their eventual marriage and for many years later. All in the kampung would ogle the couple saying how well suited they were, two such beautiful people, well mannered and gentle
and laughed at the fact that Nur Liza always felt cold to the touch unlike her hot blooded husband. And so they lived happily. After twenty years of marriage Nur Liza was still a very happy woman living with the man she cherished, but Yusuf had begun to cast glancing eyes at women passing their wooden kampung house. Some gossips in the kampung started to tell tales about Yusuf’s father and hint that Yusuf had the same blood, and therefore..... It was one night after the holy month of Ramadan that a reluctant Yusuf followed his wife to bed, now becoming uncomfortable with his wife’s ever‐cold skin against his body. Eventually they slept and in the morning Nur Liza saw the world and her husband were huge and quickly realised that she had turned back into the lizard she was.
She had but a moment to think before she was chased by their pet cat and had to quickly run up to the ceiling where she stayed and watched her husband slowly turning into a black cockroach, and realised that the bomoh had been up to his old tricks again.
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