Paternal and Perupok side

            My dad was a good story teller. He used to captivate his audience with his way of embellishing the story with extra gestures and sounds mimicking the characters. He took delights out of seeing me and my brother reacting to them.

            He could recall the times when he walked along the beach next to his parents’ house in Perupok. The white sand was long between the waving coconut trees and before reaching the water edge where the waves started beating the shorelines. It was ideal for a long lazy afternoon stroll. He came across British soldiers who commandeered a goat from the villager without paying or compensating him and they butchered that poor goat in front of its owner, roasted it on a stick and feasted over them. He could see the face of the villager, angry and despondent and powerless to do anything. Those British soldiers had the audacity to enjoy the meal and took little care to pacify the locals, insensitive bunch, but they ruled the country! He wondered why they started to build a series of small concrete forts, dotted a few yards apart from each other along the beaches with narrow opening facing the South China Sea. When I was a child, the locals used it as a toilet.

I brought my wife and daughter Jasmine to visit uncle Zakaria every chance we got whenever we were vacationing in Malaysia. On one of those visits, we strolled along the beautiful white sandy beach and Tracey and Jasmine managed to witness those small British-built forts that were scattered along the Perupok beach.

           It is my ingrained habit, perhaps out of familial obligations or nostalgic or to pacify my nagging insisting mother or for whatever reasons, I always ended up visiting my uncle Zakaria in Perupok whenever I am back in Malaysia. I would bring along my niece and nephews to pay homage to my uncle Zakaria. A retired school teacher who married my aunt Zainab, a younger sister of my dad, uncle Zakaria is one who facilitated my return to the United States in 1986. Soon after that he decided to retire from teaching and could no longer sponsor my education. I was left to mend for myself and the experience left me off guard, unprepared and feeling abandoned but those initial feelings soon subsidized and emerged then an awareness and realization that it is up to me to take care of myself and to live my own dreams. The unintended lesson was that I emerged ever stronger and more resilient. I also have the privilege of knowing deep within me that I have high adaptation skills. His wife Zainab did not approve of my return to the USA. She wanted me to stay put in Malaysia and continue working with the bank as a corporate banking officer. The last telephone conversation I had with her was when she visited my uncle Rahim and I happened to dial in him and he told me that his sister was sitting next to him. When we spoke, she sounded as if she was asthmatic often finding it difficult to continue talking. I have little hint nor a clue that something was wrong. She asked when I was coming home. She passed on in 1999 and it was a week after her burial that I received the news and between arranging the flights and a leave of absence from work, when I got myself to Perupok to see my uncle Zakaria and my cousins Zainora and Zainoha, it was two weeks passed her burial and when got myself to their front door in Perupok, they seemed surprise that I was home. My uncle Rahim showed me her grave. She was buried on the same cemetary as my grandma Senik and my grandpa Rahman.          

            The village was where the Japanese Red Army landed during its assault on Southeast Asia during World War II. The villagers were caught by surprise when they landed and marched across Malaya. Their experience with the former British ruler led them hopeful that something better was about to come and to their dismay and horror, the Japanese was worse. They could not believe their eyes when they witnessed the brutality and sheer wanton abuse freely dispensed by the Japanese to the locals. How could a fellow Asians doing this to their own kind?

            My dad was educated in traditional religious Malay school but was conversant in English. He completed his grade 6 and was hired as a teacher. He taught the villagers basic reading, writing and mathematics. The villagers called him “Cikgu”. I remember when I was about 10 he brought me to the village he used to teach and where he met his first wife. We stopped by the road side, the villagers recognized him and they addressed him by calling him cikgu, teacher in Malay. He readily introduced me to them. He divorced his first wife when she refused to follow him to Manik Urai, a small village in the interior part of the state where the British created new villages to group together people as a way to fight and control the locals from interacting with communist guerillas who were determined to wrestle control of Malaya. After working as a teacher, he quit and joined the State Government as a clerk processing paperworks in a grand scheme of distributing jungle lands to the population.

            My paternal grandpa, Rahman, was from Marang, Trengganu. During the time prior to the World War II, he was a crewman on a sail boat plying along the coastal South China sea from Marang to Pattani, Southern Thailand transporting grain salt. Because he sailed in the open sea, he was subjected to weather and during one of those trips, he and his crew were forced to take shelter on the coastal village of Perupok and that was how it all began. He met my grandma, Senik. All my uncles and aunts grew up in a small house on the beach facing South China Sea.

            My earliest recollection of the house was when I was around 3 or 4. I was visiting them with my dad and I could see the waves beating the shore whenever I looked out of the window. The sound was perpetual and the house was surrounded by lots, lots of coconut trees. The wooden houses standing on stilts in the village was rather close to one another. The ground was white with fine sand which made it difficult for a little boy to chase and catch chicken or rosters that they raised openly around the house. Those animals never wondered far away from the house and to my amazement, the villages could tell which one was theirs! I remember my grandma brought me around to collect coconuts and I had to carry one or two with me back home. I am their oldest grandchild around. My older cousins were not in Malaya because my aunt Mariam followed her husband to Sumatera Indonesia. When he passed away, she decided to stay put and married Ahmad Bermawi who later was a colonel in the Indonesia army.

            My grandpa Rahman was accepted in the community. I remember I was told how he used his skills as a sailor to sail from Perupok to Rendang or Perhentian Island, now two famous tourist islands off the coast, to bring back rocks and stones to build the mosque in the village. My dad told of stories of how he and my grandpa went fishing in the deep blue sea and how they struggled and escaped the vicious shark who refused to swim away from their tiny fishing boat. There were stories when they had to dive in to hear if there were schools of fish to decide if they should lower the net “pukat tungkang” in which they tied a bunch of coconut leaves to attract the fishes to congregate only to corner them into their nets “pukat”. Often during one of those dives, they were met by unwelcome shark visitor! I am sure the stories were somewhat embellished. My dad was only to satisfy my curiosity.
Today, the love for fishing has not gone away. My uncle Rahim, my father’s youngest brother,  made sure the legacy stayed with the family. Unfortunately, none of my cousins (his children) nor my sibling were that fascinated nor interested in fishing as he was.

An Update as of December 2017:

I become aware that early in the month of December 2017, my brother Azam along with his wife, Zah and daughter, Aisyah joined my cousins Hamzan and his younger brother Azhar, and my uncle Rahim (Mariam's youngest brother) found their way to visit my aunt Mariam in Jakarta, Indonesia. Looking at the picture, Aunt Mariam reminds me of my late paternal grandmother, Hajjah Mek Senik.

After the Sukarno's Konfrontasi in the early 1960s, occasional letters from my cousin Sukmayati brought great joy to my dad and the whole family, I was in primary school then but took an initiative to write her. They were in Palembang in South Sumatra at that time. I recall that Sukmayati was a nurse. The first Indonesian family members to visit us was Shahbuddin, Mariam's oldest son and child, born in Malaya prior to its independence. I remembered my uncle Zakaria came to pick us and brought us to Perupok to meet Shahbuddin. Shahbuddin told us of his travel from Indonesia to Kota Bharu and from there he took a taxi to Perupok by telling the taxi driver about his grandma, my aunt Zainab and uncle Zakaria and the taxi driver drove him to grandma's door. There he was standing at the door, announcing that he is Shahbuddin from Palembang and a son of Mariam. The shock and surprise that came with it and how he was received was a scene too difficult to describe.

Aunt Mariam and her husband Ahmad Bermawi visited my grandma in mid-1970s. They travelled from Palembang to Singapore and from Singapore, they took a train to Kelantan. I was told that when the train arrived in Kuala Krai, my dad went and boarded the train looking for his older sister. When they first met on that train, the years apart was overwhelming and big hug, tears and kisses were inadequate to describe the emotion experiences by those two siblings.

[Will write more about my impressions and thoughts about Aunt Mariam]

From Mahligai to Pak Badol

I am her first born. The picture (left) was taken when my dad was transferred to work as a clerk to the Penggawa of Gunung Barat, now the district is known as Mahligai after the small town of the same name. Mom used to tell stories of how she was perceived by the villagers when she was first relocated to Mahligai from Manik Urai, a new village created by the British and the birthplace she shared with all her four siblings, my brother and I. Getting to Manik Urai during those days, either you travel by train or by boat to reach Manik Urai and the trips was a whole day affair. She was thought to be my baby sitter, a fact she always quickly corrected.

She was holding me facing the rented house. I remember it was too big for four of us. My brother and I used to ride a tricycle going round from one room to another with ease. The living room was practically empty as we congregated often in the area next to the kitchen, in a veranda facing the an inside well where we have to lower bucket to get water for everything.

There was a big star fruit tree in front of the house. The bigger house directly in front of ours was the landlord. The landlord was one of those wealthy folks in the village who befriended my dad and their friendship lasted until my dad passed away. When I was around five, we moved and relocated to Kampong Pak Badol, a smaller village about 3 miles to the south of Mahligai. The five years old remembered travelling there on a trishaw with his little brother sitting on mom's lap and the trishaw was packed with pots and pans and kitchen utensils. It was on a hot sunny day and I remembered we inched at a snail pace along passing rice fields and a scattered houses along the road. Then we came across rubber trees and as we moved along we came across a soccer field and at the end of it sat a small school building.

Dad was one who retained friendships well. Whenever I traveled with him, there would be someone who approached him to say hello and he would introduced me to them.When we moved to Pak Badol, our meetings and interactions with those who befriended us in Mahligai were becoming less and lesser. Even though whenever there were occasions such weddings or funerals when we met, I could feel their warmth toward me and especially toward my little brother. He was the cute, good looking and fairer skin one whereas I was a wide eyes lanky skinny dark brownish big brother. Older girls and women would pick on my brother's cheek and often to his disdain while I was ignored. They would hug and kissed him and commented on his fair skin and long eye lashes and my brother would often try to run in circle avoiding the catches of embrace. To this day, I must say, my brother inherited my father's social skills more so than I. The irony was when some 20 years later, Haji Yusuf, our first and last landlord was there attending to my dad's funeral rites by washing his body and covered it with white shrouds.

Dad built a house in Pak Badol and his father, my grandpa, the fisherman and carpenter was helping him. I remember watching him pounding away the trusses building the roof of our new house. Later, I found out that the villagers volunteered and help chipped in building the house. The land space was offered to us for free and the house sat next to the gate of an elementary school. Dad told me later that he was encouraged by a group of village elders to move and relocate to the village. He was from Perupok, a fisherman's village some 14 miles east and mom was from Manik Urai, some 100 miles southwest, a new village built by the British administration to deter the infestation of communist elements in the populace. Malaya and Greece was the only two countries that succeeded in fending off communism and the country was turned democratic.

So, when we were in Mahligai, we were strangers and we strived and thrived. When  we were at Pak Badol, we strived even more so much so that Pak Badol remained our home town for we do not have any other to call it a home. Mom and dad were great "anak dagang" and their ability to win over local people was superior indeed. Perhaps, this is how the spirit of emigrating is alive and kicking in me.

But now, even though I chose to be spending the rest of my life in a land of my choice, the land of my birth is not that far from my thoughts and spirit. Just take a look at this picture: one represents the land where I was born and the other represents the land of my choice. And they are both beautiful and boy, am I lucky or what?

A trip to the land of thousand smiles - Thailand Spring 2010

Spring break 2010 was a good time that I brought my daughter home to Pak Badol in Kelantan. It was our first overseas trip together as daughter and dad. Both she and I had our spring breaks on the same week and we might as well spend it together visiting her Tok Mek, aunts and uncle and other paternal family members. Jasmine has not met her young cousins nor has she met her aunt's husband. This was an opportune time. Tracey could not come with us because of her work and she stayed home.

Along the way, we stopped in Bangkok, Thailand. It was cheaper to get airtickets through Bangkok from Little Rock and then take AirAsia flights to Kuala Lumpur and on to Kota Bharu. In the end, the cost of airtickets would be the same as though we fly from Little Rock to Kuala Lumpur directly except in our case, we had the chance to visit Bangkok.

We travelled to a river market and rode an elephant. Along the way we passed an area where they farm salt. Yes, they drained sea water from the ocean and let it stay and dried itself out on the land. We could see farmers harvesting the salts. They raked it and made piles of little mountains of salts similar to the way I did on weekends during autumn days when I cleaned the yard of pines needle leaves.

For some unexplained reasons, Thailand grew on me. I love Thai food and its people. I especially cherish the experience when I visited any marketplace or walking along the sidewalks window shopping. What interest me more is  the spirituality of Thai people, their brand of Buddhism. They managed to find themselves balancing the demand of modernity and traditional spiritual life without resorting to extremism and violence. This is not denying that violence happens everywhere on the surface of this earth including Thailand. But thus far in my many short trips to Thailand, I am more and more intrigued by the peacefulness that I felt. I am more myself whenever I was there and I was beginning to experience what personal liberty truly means. I was hoping to pass on the experience that I felt during my many short trip to Thailand on to my daughter who is my 'princess'. Being there, breathing the air, smelling the odors of food and fruits from sidewalk stalls/vendors and rubbing shoulders in a crowded market place is an experience far from the still air of pine trees surrounding our home in the timberland area of Arkansas.

The one thing that bothered more than anything else is the experience I have during my interactions with others when they begin to proclaim in the context of a casual conversation that they are so and so such as "I am a ____". Instantly upon such revelation, I found myself stuck in how to process the pronouncement and equally puzzled as to its purposefulness in the context of a casual conversation and making acquaintance with literally a stranger. I do not know how to proceed, how to go on with such pronouncement and proclamation. But for one thing, it was a boundary setting in a rapport building efforts that I interpret to mean "because I am such and such, these are my limits or because of that I am somewhat different or worse, superior than you especially in the context of religiosity and morality". I experienced this more when interacting with others in the South of the USA and in Malaysia but amazingly and refreshingly, not in Thailand! I often questioned the needs for such statement or labeling or defining oneself in a casual interaction. To me such transaction is of little value if not a complete turn off. So in return and consequently, I am turned judgmental in reverse and I despised the fact that I got myself caught in that circular homeostatic dynamic. I think the world would be a better place if we do not wear our religion on our sleeves because religion is personal and it is between me and my maker and no one else. Or perhaps I am overly sensitive when it comes to existential issues and overly defensive when confronted with the ambiguity and subjectivity of relating to others over issues such as in your face imposition of a lame missionary type wanna be.

2010 Spring break

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience traveling with my daughter, Jasmine. She is a great company and a good sport. We flew from Little Rock Arkansas to Dallas and Tokyo and finally to Bangkok. When we reached Bangkok, it was almost midnight local time. Still feeling hyper and wild awake, we strolled around the marketplace next to the hotel soon after we checked-in.

Local people still milling around and we approached one of the many roadside stalls for an authentic seafood tom yam. Of course I ordered it "hot" forgetting the subjectivity and context of the term. "Hot" in Oriental restaurants in the States is definitely not that spicy nor hot when compared to this dish. Nevertheless, I devoured the soup, sweating like crazy. The owner showed concerns and gestured if it everything was alright. At least that was what I interpret and inferred. For all you know she might not give me a hoot! But the main point was I enjoyed the authentic tom yam right from the land it originated. I wonder how people like Andrew Zimmerman of Food Channel can digest let alone stomach such diverse and unique dishes. Perhaps, it was a sense of adventure mixed with openness and willingness to accept others, whatever "others" mean or happen to be at that particular moment in time and willingness to use self to relate to them.

When we walked on the streets in downtown Bangkok and whenever a hawker pulled cart full of food, I focused my eyes to look for fried insects and other such delicacies as I watched Andrew Zimmerman explained in his bizarre food show. Of course I could easily recognized fruits and on several occasions, stopped and bought a sample simply to taste. Yes, when we came across such hawker, I did point it out to Jasmine  by reminding her of what I thought it was. In the excitement of getting ourselves closer to the cart and in deciding if I was brave and gutsy enough to sample it, we forgot to snap pictures like normal tourists would do. We were too busy giggling ourselves away at out idiosyncratic experience of making a television show come alive. The only difference was that we were experiencing not just sights and views but also the panoramic view brought out the smell and plus with tropical heat and humidity of metro Bangkok, all in all, that was somewhat difficult to explain but we knew it was unique and different than what we had experienced before. The awe I had for my daughter was her willingness to be in the moment, her attitude of accepting differences and diversity without a hint nor an ounce of that typical difficult moody teenager persona. I am feeling very lucky and blessed and I am pretty sure if she retains that attitude, she will go further and accomplish more in her future life endeavor.

The next day we dined at a tourist place, meaning, a place where overwhelming number of guests/customers were non-Thais and most of the waiters/servers were Thais. Of course we ordered seafood and were entertained by a group of performers of Thai traditional dancers and musicians. While enjoying the evening, I came across a situation where my understanding of the term "ugly American" came to light. A few table away, a few young individuals were making a scene, hollering and talking overly and seemingly and purposefully loud disturbing others from enjoying the cultural show with their rude comments and I would not be surprised if they were somewhat intoxicated or under some kind of influence. The term "redneck" does not quite fit. Still, stupid is as stupid does. After a while they were escorted out by uniformed personnel, either security personnel or the city police but the atmosphere was better after they were gone. Those jerks had the audacity to protest by claiming that they are Americans as if being one exempted oneself from acting and behaving appropriately especially in a foreign land or perhaps by announcing their nationality in the face of arrest would frightened local law enforcement officers from carrying out their duties. A few others even clapped in approval of the security personnel. Jasmine handled the experience very well. I don't think she noticed the commotion as it happened a few table away and she was fixated with the dance performances.

 [more to come]