Nur.

At school, Nur knows who sat in his spot during recess. He knows if the canteen is making rice or noodles before he walks in. He knows when someone has passed through the garden area because the smell of damp earth clings to shoes. These are data points that are obvious to him and that don't exist for everyone else. Knowing the world by smell is more like reading than like smelling — you pick up information before anyone has said it.

Aminah discovered early on that Nur communicates better with smells and touch than with language. She holds food close and Nur nods or shakes his head before saying anything. She places her hand on the scales at the top of his head to calm him — the steady, soft pressure that works better than any sentence. At night, the coconut cream ritual between his scales is what really carries him to sleep: bath, cream, Aminah's hands, silence. The skin under the scales is sensitive, dries out with the air conditioning, and the smell of the coconut cream becomes the signal that the day is over.

When Aminah is away — gone to the polyclinic, down talking with the neighbor — Nur moves through the flat looking for her trace. He goes to the chair where she usually sits. He stops in the kitchen, where the smell of jasmine rice and pandan stays even with the windows open. If someone asked him how he recognizes his grandmother, he probably couldn't put it into words. But he recognizes her before she comes through the door — by her footsteps, yes, but above all by the smell of coconut soap and the spices that stay on her hands after cooking.

The flat smells of pandan and jasmine rice. Always. Aminah cooks every day, and kuih lapis — thin layers of sweet dough, colored with pandan — is the dish Nur waits for without asking. When Aminah takes out the mold, Nur appears in the kitchen without anyone calling him. He stands beside her, serious, focused. His task is one layer — the green one. He spreads it with the small spatula, the tip of his tongue poking between his lips. Aminah and Nur don't talk while they cook. The smell of pandan and coconut fills the kitchen of the eighth-floor flat and that's enough.

Nur eats little and slow. Sweet and mild flavors. Soft kaya toast, very sweet teh tarik, tau huay. Nothing spicy, nothing crunchy-hard. He's extremely selective, and Aminah doesn't force him. What he likes he likes a lot, and what he doesn't, there's no way. Aminah's kuih always falls in the first category. Nur can tell if his grandmother changed the brand of rice flour by the smell of the raw dough, before it goes in the oven.