Growing Up In Trengganu

Growing Up in Trengganu #12151

2004-12-17T22:27:00.000Z

Sometimes on loose end days, when adults looked pretty well-disposed towards us, we went up the spiral stairs to the loft of the Masjid Abidin, where the big drum was housed. Actually, we did not need adults' permission at all to go up there as the son of one of the muezzins was a friend of ours, and he had the freedom of the loft because he beat the drum that announced the prayer times when his father did the azan call-out.

I remember the spiral staircase well: it was metal and painted green, and clinging on its winding cork-screw hand-rail on the way up filled me with dread. We walked round and round its central pole as if on a journey to nowhere, then suddenly, before us, lay the well-lit dusty, spacious, drum chamber of the Masjid Abidin, with its elongated drum on props, lying horizontally, its hollow end facing out to the Kuala Trengganu rooftops. Our guide, Dolloh, son of the Bilal or muezzin was a street-toughned lad with a tougher nut to crack. Behind his back he was called Dolloh Ppala Besor (Dolloh with the big head), and he had a forehead that protruded out, straight jet-black hair, and a skull that had probably withstood many knocks. Like many a tough lad I knew, he was a softie when his heart-string got tugged; and he sometimes spoke wistfully to us of a love he'd left behind in Mersing on Johor's east coast.

Mersing was then the El Dorado of Trengganu fisher folk, a place they sought for gals and gold, and Dolloh was there all right, for six months he said. He'd been in many fights and had a side-kick known as Mat whom I never saw in the Masjid. I met him a few times though, in the street, and he indeed had a slight scar in one corner of his mouth, an adornment that gave him the Malay sobriquet of birat. Mat Birat reminded me of those characters in Malay movies who had the attention of the heroine for only a bit, and then spent the rest of the footage being trod upon by P. Ramlee or Ahmad Mahmud.

The mosque stood among a cluster of houses and little shops. My uncle had his house on one side of the mosque perimeter, outside a huge wall that fenced in the graves and the outhouse that was called the marja' where mosque hands adjourned to in between prayers and where the Imam often dropped in for a chat or a nap. The marja', I was told, meant a place for consultations but it always had the smell of left-over food, or the sweet scent of hair pomade that drifted in the air after someone's had a hair cut. Just outside the 'spear' railings behind the Mosque was a photo studio called Lay Sing, run by a stern man with a square jaw and a son who never wore a shirt, whom we knew as Ah Leng. When I was in upper primary at the Sultan Sulaiman School, it was from Ah Leng that I learned the rudiments of photography, from his diagnoses of my under-exposed shots, or those overlapping pictures when I forgot to wind the camera, or those dark ones taken against the light. He hired out cameras to me at, I think, just over a dollar a day, and took in the film to develop. I still have pictures taken in those days with the Lay Sing Rolleiflex — mother sitting on top of the stairs of our house, my old friend C.H.Lim who once told me in earnest while we were being trishawed to school that he once ended a prolonged blackout by singing O Jesus Loves me, and K.K.Soh, who caused much annoyance because, some days, whilst waiting for me to be ready for our early morning journey to school, my father would walk up to him to broach some of my slothful secrets.

Just before I left Kuala Trengganu I heard that my friend K.K.Soh had died in a road accident, and that one day, as Ah Leng was tending to his work in the photo studio, a man walked in and plunged a knife into his shirtless top. He died instantly in his father's shop.

The Masjid Abidin was very much the centre of my life in Kuala Trengganu not only because it was the only place Father went to after work — oftentimes with me tagging along — but also because of my uncle's proximity to it, and an auntie lived just a shouting distance away down the road. I knew the Mosque and its people very well, ate with them during the mosque feasts, listened to their adult talk in between evening prayers, and sometimes, I'd stay there to listen in to the Imams when they gave their long talks.

One day, after an afternoon prayer, while the leading preacher Imam Haji Wan Hassan was giving a discourse on some aspects of a kitab, a slightly unbalanced man sitting in the front row produced a wad of $10.00 notes which, with one mighty burst of strength, he tore to shreds. I was terrified as I feared that he'd soon run amok — which he didn't — but was equally impressed by the Imam who batted not an eye-lid. The police arrived soon afterwards to take the man away in a strait-jacket, leaving a trail of confetti money on the carpet.

Later in life, when we were all suited for adult talk, Father shared with us his observation from a life-time of mosque-going. It's a place, he said, that attracts many types: the devout, the wayward, the scrounger and the desperate.

December 17th, 2004

Growing Up in Trengganu #12150

2004-12-11T22:24:00.000Z

The Grand White Mosque of Sultan Zainal Abidin dominated the centre of Kuala Trengganu by its size and height and by the reach of the calls of its muezzin. The locals knew it as the Masjid Putih for its gleaming whiteness, but I remember it as a Mosque of many colours.

A child remembers its cavernous interior, the massive pillars that reached great heights, and the depth of its mihrab in the inner reaches of its west facing front that was out of the reach to a young novice. This square forward position that jutted out from the vast rectangular body of the Mosque was the sanctuary of the Imam who led the prayer, local dignitaries when they graced us with their presence, and of men with flowing cloaks and heads wrapped in dangly-tailed white turbans, and a local learned with a head-gear that looked like it'd been made from reeds, a man we called Ku Haji So-and-So of the serban bakul, the headgear of woven basket; a Ku by title he was, scion of the local royalty. When he passed on, his eldest son came to the Mosque in similar headgear, so we took it to be the regalia of office of some esoteric order of local dignitaries.

In the quiet after the Friday congregational prayer I often wandered to the front of the Mosque, to the mihrab niche where the Imam led the prayer. It was a confined quarter without the wide ambience of the main back chamber, and in this limited space one could presumably focus better on meditation and prayer. From this forward position which projected out of the main body I could see — not through windws, but portholes — the tips of tall tombstones outside in the burial ground of members of the royal household.

The Masjid Abidin as I remember it was a 'living' mosque that attracted people of many miens and disposition, and these were just those of my age. There was Ku Teng, who was reputedly born in a bottle ("beranok ddlang botol"), there was Pe'ee, who lived in Kampung Dalam Bata, and Cik Wa, whose father had one of the early motor cars in Kuala Terengganu. Some of the people I knew actually stayed the night there after the last 'Isha prayer, to be awoken again at the crack of dawn by the resounding beat of the Mosque drum or geduk as we called it, and the gentle lilt of the pre-dawn tarhim that was followed by the thunderous azan that bellowed out of speakers in the four minarets. There were people who worked in the mosque, people who slept in the mosque, and a brave, lone man who stayed the night behind a closed door in the annexe that housed the mausoleums of past Sultans and their close family members. His job was to tend to those tombs and offer daily supplications for the souls of the departed. Once in daylight, I saw the door slightly ajar and peeked inside to see him fallen among the pallisade of tombstones of the royal dead, fast asleep. Those supplications in the dead of night must've made him quite tired.

The muezzins were known to locals by volume and name. Bilal Sa'id, a handsome man with a mellifluous tone, lived in the vicinity of the Mosque; another, Bilal Haji Deraman, lived in the middle of a padi field not far from a romantic place called Paya Bunga, the pond of flowers. He was a bluff man with a gruff though not unpleasant voice that reached parts that other Bilals couldn't, even with benefit of the mike. Once on a Radio Malaysia play, I was listening to the nattering of Raffles' scribe, Abdullah, when Bilal Deraman's unmistakable voice boomed out in the background just as Abdullah reached the shores of 18th century East Coast Malay States. Father told me he remembered seeing the man from the Radio at the Mosque, recording Bilal Deraman for posterity.

My father set his daybreak routine by the sound of the tarhim in the morning when he rose for his ablutions, then, by the sound of the geduk he'd be dressed in his sarung and baju, to start his brisk walk to arrive just in time for the end of the azan. Regulars to the Mosque knew this routine very well, and timed their journey to the movements of the bilal, taking the gap between the sounding of the geduk and the azan to be roughly 8 - 10 minutes — the time the bilal took to walk from the loft of the Mosque, where the geduk was housed, to the foot of the stairs, where the microphone was placed. It worked out very well for Father unless it was Bilal Deraman's turn, for then he'd rush out muttering something about Bilal Deraman being at the helm. The reason was that Bilal Deraman had a muscle-rippling, silat practising son called Dolloh who did the geduk for him as he waited patiently at the foot of the stairs. As soon as the beatings of the geduk ended, Bilal Deraman went straight to the azan without pause, sending many a faithful scurrying and jumping down the stairs of their homes.

Picture Note: The picture of the modern Masjid Abidin (above), is completely different from the one I knew. Additions have been made without regard to the old architecture, and it has been completely modernised, even taking on the 'rocket' minaret of the Masjid Negara in Kuala Lumpur.

December 11th, 2004

Growing Up in Trengganu #435926

2004-11-14T22:26:00.000Z

'Eid day or Hari Raya would suddenly come with the pealing of the genta — the big brass Trengganu bell on the hill overlooking the harbour — a sudden shift of tone in the Masjid 'Abidin, from tarawih prayers to the takbeer, then perhaps an announcement on the radio. We had a radio with a lit up dial Tuang-tuang dan Puang-puang, esok Hari Raya di sana sini.that carried the names of many cities of the world. A long needle travelled across its face to pick voices that came from distant parts — New Delhi, Ljubljana, Moscow, Warsaw, probably even Gdansk and Timbuctoo. From each stop came sounds like voices of ghosts from afar, but mostly they were just the high-pitched gurglings pouring out across the ether.

Radio Malaysia was the clearest of all, and if the Hari Raya announcement did come on the radio, it would have been based on a sighting of the birth of Shawwal from Teluk Kemang, which was the best place for sighting the burgeoning moon.

But Teluk Kemang and the radio notwithstanding, Hari Raya came in those days much like the rain in those fabled reports on the Malaysian weather. The Trengganu genta may have pealed and clanged so ecstatically for 'Eid, but there'd probably be a state or two that'd be holding on to Ramadhan tenaciously, and push back 'Eid for another day. Hari Raya sometimes came like that — like the rain in those Malaysian weather reports — falling only here and there.

Soon as the news settled in, Mother would hasten to the kitchen to boil a huge pot of rice which she'd leave aside to cool awhile. Then when she'd done all her other work, she'd wrap it in banana leaves, and again in an outer layer of cloth; and then she'd call out to us to come to the kitchen to help her lift the heavy slab of grinding stone — batu giling — which she'd place atop the parcel. And there it'd stay till 'Eid morning when a miracle would unravel before our eyes. Carefully she'd unwrap the rice that had compacted overnight into a huge slab of cake, and cut it into little cubes to eat with her peanut sauce. This was the nasi himpit, or the nasi kapit as we knew it in Trengganu.

The nasi kapit was de rigueur for Hari Raya, as was the ketupat pulut, glutinous rice wrapped in triangle shaped packets of palas leaves, then fried in coconut oil. There was also another ketupat wrapped in little parcels woven from the long shoots of the coconut tree. This was another way of making the nasi kapit, Ketupat pulut in palas leaf but instead of resting the cooked rice overnight under a massive slab, raw rice was poured into the woven containers, then sealed and boiled in a pot until the rice fluffed out and pressed itself into a cake under the pressure.

It was the surprise Hari Raya that made it for us, the surprise arrival of a joyous day. But even so, preparations for it would've been made throughout Ramadhan. Cakes were ordered from the specialist makers: putu kacang or the apit-apit made from flour mixed with stuff, then thrown onto a flat, hot round pan, then rolled again when slightly browned and pliant, into cigar shapes with a hole running down the centre. We used them as edible straws for drinking hot Milo. Rokok Arab was my favourite treat, ordered from Mak Nah who lived behind the walls of the palace or istana. Rokok Arab was apit-apit with College education; it was rolled like a cigar and solid like a stick, not hollow like the apit-apit straw. It was greased with Trengganu ghee — our minyak sapi — smothered in Mak Nah's devotion and love, then fried to the right consistency as required to transport a child to another world.

Around mid Ramadhan mother would lay down her ingredients of long pandanus leaves, sugar and agar-agar, magical dyes in little bottles, and the merest hint of essence vanilla. She'd throw them all into a thick brass pot over a wood fire then stir and stir till the agar-agar and the mixture was transformed into the sweetest smelling goo which she poured into a tray with rims about an inch high. Then she'd start again with the same ingredients, but another colour. After iftar and her dusk prayer she'd sit on the floor beside her trays of congealed colours, to cut out crinkly edged, diamond shaped beleda which she'd arrange again into neat rows on many trays.

The task was set for father for the following blazing Trengganu day. He'd reach out of the window and place the trays one by one to dry in the sun on the only slightly sloping roof of the surau next door. The sun-dried beleda were the tones of our celebration: sugar-coated shapes of green and red and golden yellow, shining translucently like stained-glass on our Hari Raya.

November 14th, 2004

Growing Up in Trengganu #93756

2004-11-03T22:22:00.000Z

One day one of our neighbours went to the circus and came back with a man. There was all talk and excitement in the neighbourhood as this was no ordinary man in leotards doing tricks on a trapeeze that she got hitched to, but someone from Circo Brasil, a country which most of us hadn't known. We've had many circuses come to town those days, but they were mostly manned by folks from further East, and I hated all of them as circuses weren't my favourite pastime, and all those motor-cycling up and down in a rounded cage and animals doing things at the leg-end of an upturned chair were just irritating distractions that adults insisted in foisting on us. I hated most the clowns, who were just sad, painted men.

But the Circo Brasil man changed all that for, besides my cousin who married an Egyptian, not many from our community were paired up with anyone else from across the oceans. We knew that Brazil was a faraway place and that marriages were made in heaven, but how was she to speak to him and what if he drank our budu neat, thinking it to be a drink? Those were questions that bothered us when we heard about our neighbour's impending marriage. I soon became interested in Circuses and all that went on beneath the tents.

Circuses came to town during the holiday season in those days, so someone in Brazil must've been keeping a close watch on the time-table for our school terms, just as turtles from beyond knew to swim our shores in August, as August was the month when everyone in Rantau Abang stayed up all night to look for them. That was how things worked in Trengganu then, according to motions and time: just when the shopkeepers raised their stocks in algae green paper umbrellas, the December monsoons would come a-lashing down, and it'd rain for weeks and weeks on end.

It rained on us too in our hot enthusiasm for the Brazillian man for, when our neighbour took him home, he turned out to be no Brazillian but a man from Batu Gajah perhaps, and Batu Gajah was just over the hill from us, not across the wide ocean. So we just let them get on with their married life, and the Circus too did the same, for, when they upped tents and headed out of town, our bridegroom from Circo Brasil became a Kuala Trengganu townsman.

Our Brazillian let-down notwithstanding we had quite a cosmopolitan crowd in our town even then. There were folk from over the hills whom we called the orang luar or outsiders who soon became very much like us local folk, eating ikang and walking the jalang. We had Pak Loh Yunang the booksellers, of course, Muslims from the province of Yunnan in China, but they soon adopted our ways right down to the batik sarong. There were of course the local Chinese who'd been in Trengganu more than a hundreed years, and whose best expression to me was Pak Awang.

Pak Awang was a necromancer with a silver tongue who'd walk the streets in his Chinese trousers, and in his hands, a green umbrella and his office-in-a-bag. He spoke Trengganuspeak like a native, and so he was, and appeared most afternoons at Wan Mamat's and spoke and spoke while the kerepoks boiled in the cauldron. Wan Mamat was one of two kerepok makers in our part of town. Each day, after the sound of the late afternoon geduk — the call-to-prayer drum — the fish would arrive in basket loads and Wan Mamat would supervise his wife and daughters in the cleaning of them while he continued to speak on various subjects to Pak Awang. Once I overheard them talk about the dark business of spirits, and Pak Awang, who was also a ghostbuster necromancerman, confided in him that spirits were put off by the bones of pigs, so whenever he did a spot of exorcism he'd prod his patients — some of whom were Muslims — with this handy object which he always carried in his little bag. "Lepah tu aku samoklah pulok,*" he told Wan Mamat who was reassured.

Soon as the kerepok was off the boil and placed in round woven baskets — hence lekor, Trengganuspeak for lingkar, the curling of long kerepoks in a round basket — Pak Awang would take his order and head home to his wife Mak Mek who was a keropok lekor reseller behind a bookshop in Chinatown.

In front of our house were Tamil shopkeepers, who were spice retailers and textile merchants, some hailing from a place called Mappilaikuppam in Nanilam, in the Tanjore district of Southern India. I know because some days I'd be diverted from my walk home from school by some of them who wanted to have addresses written on their envelopes of despatches and postal orders to their native village in Mother India. On Friday, the state holiday, a Nanilam man living in his shop in front of our house would pull out his harmonium and sing his mournful tunes to the empty market.

We could've had a Brazillian man pull out his Friday instrument to put a little Samba in our midst; but then as it turned out, he wasn't and he didn't, and he turned out to be just one of us.

--------------
*"I do the [Muslim] ritual cleansing afterwards, of course."

November 3rd, 2004

Growing Up in Trengganu #43275

2004-10-31T22:19:00.000Z

Our cousin Dah was one day knocked sideways by a Tok Peraih travelling at speed from Kedai Payang to a place in Ladang.

Kedai Payang — if you know Trengganu — is almost in the town centre, and Ladang some fifteen minutes away, maybe faster, seeing as how the Tok Peraih flew. Tok Peraihs were sinewy men often found under a conical terendak hat, and they rode sturdy bikes with a rack in the back on which was placed a rectangular cane basket filled with the latest fruits of the sea. We'd all skated or slipped in the fishmarkets of Kuala Trengganu, but cousin Dah was the only family member I knew who'd had the fish market come crashing on her.

The peraihs were middlemen who waited all day in the coffee shops then sprang to life in late afternoon when the payang boats came back to shore. They were tough cookies and hard bargainers, and wore baggy khaki shorts with draped over batik sarongs, rolled up to the knee, with the seams pulled up and tucked into the wiastband. On cooler days they'd discard the terendak and wrap their heads in a band of long material quite in the way of the Kelantanese semutar. By five o'clock, at peraih speed, the fish would be in the Ladang market opposite my old Malay school — the kembong, and selar kuning, and ikan keras ekor, ikan jebong and the occasional ttuke, probably cousin to the skate or pari — the sea smell wafting to the roundabout later made famous by the Trengganu turtle.

As it happened, cousin Dah was crossing the road when the Tok Peraih came at breakneck speed on his way to an important customer. She fell to the road in shock, but was otherwise unhurt, and her pride smelt of fish that day. The Tok Peraih merely shook his head in disbelief and continued on his urgent journey, while his one free hand pressed even more agitatedly on the rubber bulb of his handle-bar horn that went phat-phat! all the way.

Late afternoon was peraih time in the streets of coastal Kuala Trengganu, when these fish couriers pedalled fast and furious to their customer-retailers in Ladang, Pasir Panjang or Chabang Tiga, that bustling market at the intersection of roads that took us to deeper parts of Trengganu.

This occasion of cousin Dah and the middleman was one that I savoured with much hilarity — only after discovering that she was physically unscathed, of course — because the peraihs were busy and sturdy men who were only visible at speed, and there wasn't one that I knew. You only saw them dismounted among the market stallholders, and that was after their business was done, as they walked about with their sarong skirts lifted like stage curtains half-drawn when the show was nearly over. And then they'd disperse and disappear till the butt end of the following business day, with their bicycle horns going phat-phat! phat-phat! warning people like Dah of their pace of travel.

I remember Ladang not only because Dah came to grief with a basket of fish near there on that fateful day. At peraih speed, it was a good few minutes still from Ladang that she met the flying wheel: Payang fishing boats moored in Kampung Batin, Kuala Trengganu. The town of KT faintly visible in the background. Source:Dr Mat bin Zakaria, with thanks.">a place near the bend known to us as Tanjong Mengabang, in a landscape of coastal shacks and smart houses, and coconut trees all the way to the sea. Tanjong Mengabang had a peculiar hum about it, and a funny breeze that blew in a certain chill.

When Mother told me stories of Trengganu past, she often spoke of Pak Mat Mengamok, who one day went berserk after some matrimonial crisis and went on a killing spree. Pak Mat was buried there she said, among the coconut trees of Tanjung Mengabang, and funnily enough, it was near the house of another Pak Mat, a telecoms linesman in his daytime job, who was often at our house during weekends for some bits of carpentry. My father was a telephone operator at the Kuala Trengganu exchange in those days, and Pak Mat was the man who put those copper lines on poles that went for as long as you could see; so they shared a certain camaraderie.

It was near Pak Mat's house that cousin Dah had her piscatorial day, but it wasn't something that he remembered clearly. Just over three years ago, when I saw my father for the last time, we were chatting in the front of the house in Kuala Lumpur when a car drove into the driveway and out from the passenger side came a rheumy eyed man so full of smile. This was Pak Mat of years ago, who used to perch on poles among the copper wires, but now he was walking very slowly.

They had a lot to talk about as they'd not seen each other for many years. Then Pak Mat asked about a certain person, my father's friend, who used to be his boss at the Telephone Exchange in Kuala Trengganu. He'd come to Kuala Lumpur with a purpose, he said, because many years ago, the boss gave him 15 ringgit too much in his pay packet, and now he wanted to hand it back before he returned to his Maker.

Like our cousin Dah I had Tanjong Mengabang and the Tok Peraihs come hurtling back to me that day; but most of all, I was close to tears by Pak Mat's honesty.

October 31st, 2004

Growing Up in Trengganu #39506

2004-10-20T22:15:00.000+01:00

If the sound of burping was to be expected at lunch-time during Ramadhan in Kuala Trengganu, it would've come from those cubicles behind the drapes in the rambunctious cafe next door to the Panggung Mat Min. The Panggung was one of our two local cinemas, officially called the Sultana, a shortlived name soon overtaken by the fame of its own doorkeeper, a man named Mat Min, whose name — in the mouths of the public — soon became the cinema proper.

The sleazy cafe by the Panggung Mak Ming (as we called him in Trengganuspeak) had a frontage on the main road on the edge of our Chinatown. It differed from your common and garden coffee shop by dint of the pelayan ladies who ran hither and thither from table to table with coffee as black as sin and sin maybe, for afters. The word pelayan itself is relatively harmless if you look it up in a Malay dictionary, but in Trengganuspeak then, words were never what they seemed to be, and the pelayan was not just your lady server, just as a bujang woman wasn't your dainty spinster. If an orang bujang were to cross your path you'd quickly avert your eyes if you were mosque going people.

Ramadhan was of course a month of abstinence, but not behind those cafe covers. There were straight-backed chairs in the cafe sleaze, facing one another; with backs so tall that two chairs tête-á-tête, lined against the wall, formed a neat cubicle with the eating table in between and the entrance and exit in the broad gangway in the cafe centre. They were lined on opposite walls, as I remember, with the centre area of the cafe filled with round, marble topped tables, taken up by punters who felt no reason to be lying low. I imagine the cafe owner, on the eve of Ramadhan, scurrying to the dusty storeroom for the drapes to hang across the entrance to his Ramadhan tête-á-tête cubicles.

This sleaze cafe came back to me when I was watching an early instalment of Star Wars, when Hans Solo and friends ventured into the cafe at the edge of the universe, filled with shady types and blubbery people. Sleaze cafe by the Panggong Mat Min was a place like that: I don't think I saw anyone in there that I recognised or knew, they were people that sprang out of a Trengganu that I didn't know, with proclivities to make you gawp away the time of day. In Ramadhan they ate behind the drapes, in other months they sowed wild oats in this lively corner.

The Panggong Mat Min wasn't a favourite, but sometimes we'd hang there to look at the cinema posters. They showed Cathay Kris only over there, because Shaw Brothers productions were the privilege of the Capitol next door. One day, while ogling at the shapeliness of Rose Yatimah, maybe, we heard a loud shriek from the woman at cafe sleaze, then saw a man wearing a smirk for a face, hurrying away from her. "Cekor ***** dapat pitis samah!" she said, mocking a short chase that ended in a smile. It was quite a daring thing to say in the open air of Kuala Trengganu, but the pelayan were that kind of people.

Cekor was then — as now — an act of daring, the grabbing of something succulent, like meat, and pitis samah was worth fifty cents in those Trengganu days. I shall spare you the asterisks, dear reader, but I went home that day with my little head thinking of the wonders of nature.

October 20th, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #39472

2004-10-14T22:14:00.000+01:00

The ice blocks came a-rasping especially in those parched days when Ramadhan came to visit us. In the Trengganu of those days the fridge wasn't a commonplace of the home, so we stood in the wide space in front of Bhiku's coffee shop as the ice blocks arrived when the shadows were lengthening and the day was coming to a close.

They came wrapped in sawdust and the gunny — guni — sacks made of jute, brought to us, maybe six to eight blocks to a carrier, by a special mode of transport. These were the basikal kaki tiga, pedalled by men, whose three-wheeled transporter worked on the same principle as the rickshaw with the pedaller behind the passenger seat. But on its front the basikal kaki tiga had an open box placed on a low chassis, with the leading side left open, and a metal bar placed on the box edge in front of the pedaller for him to rest his arms as he pedalled, and to turn the vehicle left and right as he journeyed along.

The basikal kaki tiga men were a macho breed with an independent mien, yet to a man they followed an unofficial dress code. They had a batik sarong wrapped around their waist, with the hem raised above the knees; and underneath this flowery delight they wore a pair of khaki shorts. They would be shirtless mostly, or maybe they'd wear a T-shirt top, and then, by dint of some arcane rule, they had a sarong cape draped over their backs, with the two upper corners tied in a knot under their chin. These were batik sarongs of loud patterns, of leaves and flowers and Trengganu made, and there was nothing sissy about that except in the minds of the orang luar of the other coast. When we moved to Kuala Lumpur, much later, my father sometimes slipped out of the house, to the clothesline maybe, wearing the Trengganu batik, and somewhere in our family album there's probably a photograph of him still, doing just that.

But meantime, in front of the Bhiku shop there was already some loud rasping of the saw's teeth, and a sharp thwack! as the ice was sawn and broken into smaller blocks. This is, to me, the sound of Ramadhan in Kuala Trengganu, of an afternoon in the fasting month when crowds began to mill in front of the Bhiku shop for cakes, for rice and sugar to stock up with, and for the mini block or a half of that soothing ice, taken away in a page from some old newspaper, to take home and fracture again into glittery bits that bobbed and floated in a jugful of sweet, milky sirap.

This trade in ice blocks was the business of bigger boys, and the pedal transporter men with their bilhooks for hands. My father told me that those ice blocks came from a factory in Pulau Kambing — Goat's Island — which wasn't an island at all but a semi-industrial linear township on the bank of the Trengganu. A funny place for goats to be, for water to freeze to ice. The little entrepreneurs made their 'fortune' in Ramadhan from those smaller blocks that they bought and resold for a little profit. All you needed was a guni sack and a place in front of the Bhiku shop to lay it out. And then, at the first sound of the rasping and the thwacking of the ice, you rush to grab a block or three to resell on your mat for a small profit.

It was a profitable venture which begot more noise. Profits from the ice trade were used to buy a thing called carbide which, when placed in water in a bamboo cannon and lit, produced a boom that made the old melatah. Melatah is a Malay-Eskimo hysteria triggered by sudden shocks or noise. I know little about the Inuits, but among the Malays, the afflicted seem to be mostly women of a certain age. So boom! went the bamboo cannon, back came a diarrhoea of words from some senior women, taken from their store of unspoken expletives.

Puasa in our household, as in other households, was serious business. My mother would produce a special mould of brass that she'd been keeping in store since Ramadhan last, fill its boat shaped holes with a liquid concoction of flour and sugar and eggs and stuff, and cover them all up with the flat brass lid that's hinged to the top. On the top surface of this lid she'd burn coconut husks dried in the sun for months ahead, and underneath the apparatus she'd light a fire from wood; and the miracle it produced was called akok. Akoks were succulent morsels of golden dreams, moist in the hand and deliciously sweet, with the cloying taste of some distant past, lilting and dancing daintily on tickled taste buds.

There were other delights too in Ramadhan, of course. There was the nekbat, a little something drenched in syrup, and there was my favourite, the hasidah which was stirred and stirred in a cauldron of brass until the ingredients became a sticky, greasy goo of exquisite stuff. The hasidah paste is then placed on a tray or a plate, flattened to a smooth surface, then, using a special pair of tongs with saw-edge teeth, patterns are pinched out on it in ridges and dips. In the dips would be poured crisp flakes of shallots, freshly fried.

Recently we heard the sad news that our cousin Mat Tepek had died. Mat — God rest his soul — was even smaller than us when he had his encounter with the hasidah, which he started to tepek — stick — to the wall of our house. So Tepek he became, and Tepek he died.

October 14th, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #50976

2004-10-10T22:17:00.000+01:00

To move onward to Besut after the bustle of Kuala Trengganu the bus had to go down the slope and struggle up the ramp onto the ferry at Bukit Datu. It was a hairy experience, but too late to turn back now, there were scores of other vehicles big and small in the tailback, waiting to pour into the dip for a ride across the swell.

The ferry was a raft built of blocks of wood that took the weight of four or six vehicles, assorted pedestrians and people cycling into the green yonder. It was pulled by a tug across the Trengganu river in one of its most meancing phases, to the bank across, from where our journey would continue. Ferries crossed many rivers in Trengganu then, in Dungun there was a ferry point, and in Kemaman there was one at a place called Geliga. An express bus once slipped its brakes on the deep incline to the ferry over there and dove into the river. I remember that early evening in Kuala Trengganu when our poor cousin from Seberang Takir came back quite dead and sodden with many other unfortunate souls, all laid out in the back of a lorry.

The road to Besut was heat and dust over a long stretch that wound and dipped through dense jungle. In the monsoon months, seen through the condensation in the window, the view became smudgy watercolour, smearings of green against the brooding sky, and the continual swish-swish-swish of the windscreen wipers. Kampung Raja in Besut wasn't sixty miles from Kuala Trengganu, but it seemed a very long way.

We were taken there during school holidays to meet cousins and uncles, aunties and more cousins twice removed, and Toks galore. Toks were older people — grandfather and grandmother, and grand uncles, and anyone else dressed in sarong pelikat, and the Malay baju and the walking stick of senior years. Kampung Raja was dark in the night and long in the the days, but always, always there was a gaggle of people.

My grandfather had a sprawling house in Kampung Raja — village of the ruler — opposite a Malay school. It was as big a house as a child could imagine, with capacity to accommodate a few coachloads of people if the occasion called. But sometimes occasion didn't, and it'd be quieter then, with ladies rustling up things in the back of the house, and my grandfather sitting at his table by the window, poring over some dog-eared kitabs. He kept spotted doves and puffed on cigarettes made from sun-dried leaves filled with strands of tobacco, then rolled into the thin shape of a knitting needle. Kampung Raja was quiet — unsettlingly so — even in the day. There'd be the occasional rumble of a motor car over some distance, or some murmur of conversation from passers by; then the birds, bored by this life of captivity, would lament it so: kur-kur! kur-kur! came their woeful tale. The Malays call them the tekukur.

In the daytime when my cousins were distracted by their own things, I'd walk the ground and stuff myself on jambu or water apple, or star fruit that hung from scrawny trees. Or sometimes I'd walk barefooted across the soft sand in front of the house to the spreading cashew trees — known here as pokok ketereh — by the roadside. The cashews were useless to a growing child, its funny fruit inedible, and its shoots plucked by adults and served at the dining table as an ulam to be eaten with hot sambal or dipped in budu, the dark fish sauce of Trengganu.

At night, when the lampu pam came out, we sat under its bright light to dinner on white sheets spread out across the floor, then the pressure lanterns would hiss the night away, its light fading steadily as time went by. The lampu pam lit many homes and many roadside stalls, with their fabric mantles glowing brightly and miraculously under pressure and kerosene power.

Late into the night when the pressure was dropping and the light turning yellow, we'd gather around Ayah Ngah, my father's brother, and urge him to tell us a story. No, he'd say, he had to go, then he'd relent and tell us a wonderful tale spun out there on the fly, the epic journey of Pak Wé. Pak Wé was an unlikely sarong wearing — batik, of course — baju clad and ketayap topped Trengganu hero, a man who beat the odds and repelled enemies by the power of breaking wind, especially the kentut singgang, Ayah Ngah would say, the force of wind power and Trengganu cookery that turned back many mortals.

When even Pak Wé became tired and the lamp mantle grew even dimmer, Ayah Ngah would rise and pump the lamp again with renewed pressure. Brightness came back to the room, and we knew it was time for sleep and Pak Wé to go.

October 10th, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #37056

2004-09-30T22:13:00.000+01:00

Written entirely in the Trengganu tongue.

Wala pong di Teganung dulu takdok banyok tepak nak gi, maklong saje lah, dulu mane ade panggong wayang canggih macang le ning. Komputer pong takdok, ape lagi mainang-mainang laing hak ade le ning tu.

Tapi orang Teganung adelah jugok benda-benda nak buat tiak-taik hari. Budok-budok dak lah nde poteng, nde poteng ke hulu ke hilir tiak-tiak hari, sebab ade bende yang boleh buak. Ada yang pegi panjak bukik — bukik Puteri (Tteri), biasanya — ada yang pegi jjalang di tepi Pata Teluk atau tepi lauk Hujung Tanjung. Di Pata Teluk tu kenalah jage-jage sikik sebab banyok ikang belukang. Kalu ppijok ikang belukang ni sakit bedo'oh, sapa tubek air mate, sebab bise sunggoh duri dia. Satu lagi, kalu jjalang di Pata Hujung Tanjung, kena bbaik sikik sebab banyok orang naka yang pegi dudok ccakong ssitu, selok kaing je, terus buak kerje, buak dok pulok tu. Bila kita ppijok baru sedor apa yang dia buak tu: kalau penyu ttelor, orang pong ttelor jugok. Satu hari saya jjalang ttepi lauk dengang sorang kawang, tibe-tibe dia jjerit, mmaki besor panjang. Rupanya dia ppijok benda tu, dah nak buak guane, sebab di pata tu rama sunggoh orang hak dok jjuruh.

Atas Bukit Tteri ada loceng besar sebutir, nama dia Geta. Barangkali Genta kok, tapi kami panggil Gete. Gete ning bbunyilah bulang Puasa — teng! teng! — waktu bbuka denge waktu sahur. Saya kenallah budok yang puko Gete ni, name die Wé, orang panggil Wé Puko Gete. Wé ni berani sungguh sebak dia buleh naik bukit tu ssorang je, dalang gelak gelemak, dak takut setarang. Di atah Bukit Tteri tu dia buak keluar batu Gete tu dari kocek dia, dia pasang ke Gete, dan bile sapa mase dia pukul kuak-kuak sapa habis reng. Teng! Teng!

Pada masa tu Bukit Tteri ni bukang nye ceroh, takdok lapu setabok ssitu. Tamboh lagi, atas Bukit tu ada kubor, bedil beranok, tepak Tuang Puteri duduk, macang-macang. Bila gelak dang sunyi tu seria jugok. Budak-budak, kalu naik ssitu, bbunying sikik je, tupa ke, ayang hutang ke, habih tembor lari, kecik ppale. Sebenarnya takdok hatu pong ssitu, sebak Wé kite ni masih ada lagi le ning, sihak walafiak, molek-molek ade. Saya rasa dia dudok ccokoh di Tanjong lagi le ning.

Satu masa saya dengor Mufti Teganung dak benor orang puko Gete sebak kate dia macang orang ugama Keristiang. Jadi Gete pong dak bbunyi lah. Cuma yang dengor nye bedil dari Bukit Besor je. Bedil tu bbunyi, dung! dung! waktu ggarib dua tiga kali, waktu sahur dua tiga kali. Dung! Dung! bising bbangor, habis kkejuk kelecak barat orang-orang Bukit Besor.

Nati satu hari saye cerita pulok pasa bedil beranok.

September 30th, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #29036

2004-09-28T22:11:00.000+01:00

It's been a week of topsy-turvy. I saw a pontianak, but only on celluloid, and she turned out to be a real banshee. Why don't pontianaks fly properly, I wonder. The one I saw came down vertical and went for the jugular; but I'm happy that this Malaysian film's raked in 3 awards in Estapona, Spain, and another in Tokyo. Respect, as they say in hip-hop circles. Since seeing this banshee I've not wronged ladies nor trod their painted toes. I can't bear to think what they'd come back as if wronged by me.

There weren't many pontianaks in Trengganu, but pelesits seemed to roam quite free. Pelesits were creatures apart and were kept mostly by some crones of the community. I remember my mother telling me one day that so and so had a pelesit handy. Only a few days ago I met a Captain with the Malaysian airlines who said that when he was growing up in Trengganu he'd lived in a house in Hiliran with his parents and brothers and a few other things that did the bump thing in the nocturnal hour.

Oh, I said, I know the house because my cousin lived there when it was still painted yellow, and there was a lady who never looked you in the eye who used to do the chores for the wife that he'd just wed. This was before the Captain grew up in the house of course, and what's interesting about elderly ladies who didn't look you in the eye was that in Trengganu they were believed to be harbouring little companions beside themselves to do the chores. And of the many things I heard when I too was little was that this lady had kept a pelesit which she was anxious to be rid of. Pelesits came to you in many ways but I shall not bore you with that right now.

Do you think that was the same thing that was bothering us? The Capt asked. Funny you asked, but I don't know.

I've not seen ghouls but many fools on my way to where I'm now. All the ghouls I've seen are made on celluloid, and the fools they go where wise men fear. There weren't many ghosts in the Trengganu that I grew up in and the ones I knew I never saw. This pelesit of the little lady was the whispering type that kept whispering this and that to her ear. That's from what my cousin told my mother one day. My cousin was a religious man who spent many a year in the al-Azhar of Cairo, so he must've exorcised the little lady of her trouble. Funny that the little fellow chose to stay on to visit the man who'd one day fly our national carrier.

There was another ghost that we heard of vaguely but never got to know as we were never allowed to roam about in the bewitching hour. That was the hantu kangkang of the gateway to the Istana Maziah in the Kuala Trengganu harbour. The Istana Maziah was the ceremonial palace that sat in the back of a sloping span of green that was known to us as Padang Malaya, but later it became the Padang Maziah. It had a couple of flaming trees of the forest — the delonix regia — as I remember, and a row of tall palm-like trees that we called the pinang gatal. The pinang gatal was a handy tree for pranksters who were so enamoured of the fruits they bore. They were small pellet-like seeds covered in soft reddish skins that made your friend itch badly if you rubbed one hard enough on his exposed parts. Well, you wouldn't do it on your enemy, would you, or on a total stranger. So there we were, returning from a day in Padang Malaya, cheering and jeering while a friend scratched and scratched the back of his neck, which was the favourite spot for an attack with the pinang gatal..

But back to the ghost of the Palace gateway now, the hantu kangkang of the late hour. To do the kangkang on the palace gate was a feat even for ghosts, as it involved the parking of one foot on a foothold on one side of the gate and another on the other, a span of at least four or five yards I dare say. It was said too that the hantu kangkang came out at midnight and bestrode the gate in this curious and rude way for no reason that I know.

One day someone came and told my mother that so and so the pelesit keeper had died, but my mother, a woman who never missed a funeral, simply made don't know as we English speakers used to say in Trengganu. You just don't go to the funeral of a pelesit keeper.

September 28th, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #51732

2004-09-16T22:09:00.000+01:00

The dah-dah-dum man peddled apam balik in the far end of the market, close to the smelly bay. The apam bailk was a thick pancake in a roundish brass tray, put to heat on a coal fire. The dah-dah-dum man sprinkled sugar, raisins and sweetcorn into the simmering goo as the sweet smell wafted over the heads of children passing through. By the dah-dah-dum man was a huge cauldron made of hefty metal, it rose about knee-level, and in it he'd pour his apam balik ingredients: flour maybe, some yellowing material, an egg or two perhaps. He'd stir it and beat it with a stiff brush specially made from lengths of thin rattan — eight or ten pieces together — folded midway in two. Just under the folded loop he'd wrap a length of twine to hold the bundle together, then he'd place his striring hand there, and he'd stir and stir and sang his merry song, dah-dah-dum, dah-dah-dum, dah-dah-dum. Mother came home one day and told us of that, and so he became, to us, the dah-dah-dum man of the Tanjong Market.

There was more to this jolly man in mother's amusing story. One day, said mother, as she was moving about the shops, the dah-dah-dum man was stirring and singing and stirring, when a billy goat took an interest in his cauldron of liquid goo. But the dah-dah-dah man continued stirring as he fixed the billy goat in his sight. When the goat finally approached to sample the raw and sweetly stuff, the dah-dah-dum man swung his hand aloft and beat it with a whack! With his stirring bundle of sticks, of course, that dripped liquid apam balik onto the Billy's hairy coat. Then back he went, unperturbed, to his stirring job of work, dah-dah-dum, dah-dah-dum, goat beater beating the apam balik mix.

Mother had an eye for comedies like that whenever she'd gad about. She walked with face covered in a long and broad headcloth, quite in the manner of the chador nowadays worn by women of Iran. She was in Makkah in her teens with her parents whom we never met, but little details of Makkah life sprang up in our daily lives. Clumsiness in our household work? We became, to her, the Orang Judah, the rough and ready labourers of the Jeddah port who must've spilled things in their daily, labouring wake. Sometimes when we grew careless with the sarong around our waist, we'd be the dhow Arabs who were ever displaying their wares. Mother's Hajj visit must've been filled traumas like that. She must've seen many things, many troublesome sights.

But mother never bought the dah-dah-dum apam balik, nor the comestibles sold by the stallholders who came out in the night. She cast no aspersions on anyone, but she wanted things to be right, by her own rigorous marks. If unsure, she wouldn't patronise a food shop, because she'd want to know if the shopowner was an observer of the solat.

I'd sometimes slip out in the night to look at the rows of lights dancing around the wicks of the oil burning lamps, in the stalls that were heaving with this presentation of Trengganu delights: cakes, and fried noodles, and specially prepared rice. There was nasi ulam, and nasi dagang, hati sukma and lompat tikam, and beronok and Cik Abas demam, puteri mandi and perut ayam, and piles of fried noodles thick and thin, and hasidah; savouries galore and sweetmeat. They came piping hot on wide, flowery trays, soon after dusk. Then, as their quantities began to diminish with the night, the lights of the kerosene lamps — the pelita ayam as they were called — were also beginning to fade, and slowly the vendors would pull away, back to the kampung, into the deep of night.

September 16th, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #50742

2004-09-14T22:06:00.000+01:00

In front of our house stood a Flamboyant tree, also known as the Flame of the Forest. It was a barren tree that never flamed for us, but goats loved to feast on its bipinnate leaves. One day men came with tools and spades and dug a deep, wide trench just a few feet form the tree, so we braced ourselves for a suprise.

I looked down from our window to see men working hard, nailing together planks to line its sides, and then another wall of planks within, with a gap of some six inches in between. When the cement mixer arrived, they laid a hard floor on the trench bed, then poured molten concrete into the gaps between wood and wood. When it set all around, the planks were stripped, and the trench was a wide, open tank, an impermeable layer of concrete in its bottom and on the sides. They came back and covered the top again in thick cement, leaving two square openings in that, covered by two heavy slabs that lifted by two stout metal rings.

The lorries arrived again and men laid underground pipes to another site four or five yards from the vault, just by the main road, and back to back with the fish market. There, a narrow concrete structure soon rose, some sixteen feet long. In it were cubicles, covered by wooden doors. And behind these doors were holes in the ground, with footpads for the squatting position, and an overhead tank with a chain that pulled and flushed the detritus along the pipes that were now laid in the ground, to the innards of the concrete tank by the tree that never flamed for us.

A good day for folks with loose bowels, but a very bad day for us. Our house now overlooked a septic tank, and the fish market had an additional whiff, all wrapped in tarffic noise. About a mile from us, towards the roundabout which later housed an erstaz greenback turtle, they'd already built another jamban, — the toilet — of a more period build; mostly corrugated iron sheets, I think, standing there, squat by the roadside, and they painted it a ghastly green. Folk soon began to call the locality by its jamban. They called the place Jamban Hijau, Place of the Green Convenience. We were slightly more fortunate, our place name remained intact, noise and nose notwithstanding.

So there it stood, our public jamban, mute, I'd rather not say, because oftentimes there came from within, a loud report. And it became a public monument, a privy and private place, unkempt and uncared for by the fisherfolk, by all the passers by who were caught short, and by users of the fish market. I shall not venture into its interior for fear you're still enjoying a snack.

That then was a stinking gesture by the Town Council for visitors to our parts. It wasn't for the folks of the neighbourhood, of course, for we had our own private places which I shall not talk about just now as you may still be munching a repast. But suffice it to say that for most of us it was an outhouse, normally placed in the back of the premises. Ours was a large, tall, family house built on hefty wooden stilts, probably twenty of them, standing some ten feet apart. We had to walk between them, with torch in hand if the call of nature came after dark, to go to the back for some business. For a small child it was a terrifying walk, then a quick dash back again after that, to the upstairs comfort of the house, relieved that there was no chance meeting with ghouls or ghosts that lurked behind each pillar and post.

Ghosts, as you know, lived in the depths of darkness, and had their own special scents to counteract the stench of the outhouse. But better the latter than roses in the dark, was our uppermost thought, as we ran, and ran back to the house. But once upstairs, as the clock struck one, there came a swishing, swishing noise, and an overwhelming aroma that made us giggle in the dark. It was the unmistakable hour of the night soil man.

The night soil man wore a pith helmet, and carried a little tank in the back of his bicycle, into which he'd empty the slops. And the slops came in the bucket that lay beneath the hole in the floor of the outhouse. Poor, little night soil man as he went swish, swish, with his brush of coconut leaf spines, pouring water into the bucket to make it clean for users who would fill it up again for another time.

The night soil man, with a little torch in his helmet, then moved again as mysteriously as he came, sometimes muttering a little something to himself, decrying the residents of the house for inconsiderate use. And he left, and he muttered, and we'd be pinching our noses.

September 14th, 2004

Trengganu Redux

2004-09-08T22:01:00.000+01:00

A few people revelled in my being thrown into the kolah, albeit a long time ago. [Growing Up in Trengganu #38952]. A fellow blogger phoned in from Lancaster to say that in Kelantan it's called the kolah too; and another asked me to translate the little ditty of Pak Leh that I used to hear.

Pak Leh was an itinerant Imam who moved from one surau to another on a weekly rota and probably sang his doleful tune wherever he went. I heard it many times, as he taught it to female members of his congregation who sang it out loud while waiting for the 'isha prayer, the last one in the day. This is how it'd translate —

Remember o remember and think it daily
You will in your grave be lying so lonely
Your big house and your estate's vast spread
Will all leave you once you're in the ground dead

I have also realised that the man in the blog that I'd placed in Kuala Lumpur, the one who made asam gumpal that's simply wicked, to use today's parlance, isn't Pak Leh's son, but a fellow villager. So I've now taken him out of the story, but he'll probably return someday, in another, with his asam gumpal still intact, still piping hot in a sea of coconut milk and everyday ingredients concocted in a secret family recipe.

Kuala Trengganu was a village, and we were all villagers. The area I lived in was a kampung, and my kith and kin lived in other kampungs in this little, big kampung by the sea. There was once a turtle on a mini roundabout perhaps a mile and a bit from the shop of Abdullah al-Yunani (yes, many remember it as Kedai Pak Loh Yunang), now I'm told it's been replaced by a replica of the Batu Bersurat, the Trengganu Inscribed Stone, as a reminder of Trengganu's history and introduction to Islam many centuries ago. If only the chengal could talk, it'd tell us many tales.

And it'd be able to tell us if Trengganu was indeed Taring Anu in the beginning of history.

September 8, 2004

Growing In Trengganu

2004-09-07T21:58:00.000+01:00

When I was still a weedy lad, trying to grow up, a chengal tree was quietly growing old in the forests of Trengganu. The chengal, or the Neobalanocarpus heimii, is a hefty, resistant, hardwood tree that grows in Malaysia as well as in India, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, and is a much revered tree in Terengganu where it is used in house-construction and boat-making.

The Trengganu chengal, believed to be 1,300 years old, is in the district of Dungun, and now ranks with the Jomon Sugi in Japan and the Giant Sequoia in California as one of the giant wonders of nature. It stands 65m tall; requiring 13 people linking hands spread out if the state of Terengganu (as it is now spelt) were to pass a law requiring citizens to be thankful and proud and go and hug this tree daily. They'd also be under the watchful eyes of the guards of the Pasir Raja Forest Reserve who now think that this is undoubtedly the biggest chengal tree in Malaysia if not the world. The forest reserve is located in the romantically named Gunung Mandi Angin — Mountain Bathed by the Wind — in Terengganu. The tree was discovered by forester Omar Mohammad in 1999.

"This is a big tree, "he said," rubbing his aching neck, "if this were to be felled, it'd require 27 lorries to transport the timber, and it'd be worth RM1 million."

But perish the thought, because that's not what he's got, for our old chengal tree.

Then, while everything else was still and quiet, and the old chengal tree was dozing dreamily, came a great flapping noise from the forest of the Mountain bathed in the Windy-dee-dee. It's the flapping noise of elephants' ears, no a tree, also called Elephant's Ears, or the Giant Alocasia of Terengganu (as it is now spelt).

Another Forestry officer spotted something so big and quickly informed the Museum Board (strange people they answer to, these foresters of Terengganu) who soon sent not one but 150 researchers to examine these great, big flapping leaves of Gunung Mandi Angin.

Soon a pronouncement was made, and Terengganu (as it now is) was well on the way again to another record. The biggest Alocasia plants in the Malaysian peninsula.

"I've not seen the Alocasia grow this tall," said Datuk Dr Abdul Latiff Mohammad of Malaysia's National University. "They're normally about 1m high."

The Terengganu Alocasias are more than 2.4 m tall, a growth attributed to the fertile soil of the Mount of the Windy-dee-dee.

September 7, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #38952

2004-09-07T21:53:00.000+01:00

One day, caught in a mood of merriment, I was thrown into a kolah in our neighbourhood madrasah or surau. A surau is a devotional place, much smaller than a mosque, and in the kampungs of Trengganu it served as more than a prayer hall. It was the centre of activity, the meeting place of young and old, and was, more often than not, built of wood, with a prayer chamber and a narrow ante-chamber in the rear where old folk would sit outside prayer times to doze off, or to chat about the price of fish, or merely to nod and gape at all and sundry. The youth of the village would gather there too for a puff of the rokok daun taken and rolled from the pouches of the old, and the rokok daun, if you must know, is a tough dry leaf, rolled into a long thin smoke after it's been filled with a string of tobacco.

Like most Malay houses, our surau was built on stilts, raised some five feet above the ground, and in the ante-chamber, the floor planks were nailed with gaps in between, about half an inch maybe, so they could spit through them easily. To engage in the solat or Muslim prayer one had to be pure in body and soul, hence the pre-prayer ablution, with plenty of water; and before making supplications to one's Maker, the mouth, like the heart, had to be be pure and true. So there'd be hemming and hoiking in the back chamber just before the start of prayer, by men spitting out impurities from their mouths, of some tiny bits of curried chicken, or the ikan singgang, stuck between their teeth, or a pleasant after-taste lingering still in their throats of the gulai. Before finally going in for prayers, all these sediments were spat out through the gaps in the floor. The ones who chewed betel nuts were the most accomplished in this endeavour, of course, for their spits were of the brightest hue.

I've mentioned the ablution, so I must turn now to the kolah. which every little surau had in those days. It was an open topped water-tank, normally quadrandgular in shape, though they could also be shaped like a square. The four sides, built up to the level of an adult's waist, were of concrete, and from what I remember, the kolah was always placed by the steps of the surau.

Our kolah was medium-sized, about four feet deep, and had interesting mosses and lichens lurking beneath the surface of the water. Worshippers would dip their hands and arms into it, and wash their face, and then scoop the water in a large tin can to wash their feet before finally going up to the surau. My father always warned me about using the kolah, which, he said, contained the remnants of sleep from the eyes of early-morning worshippers. I never could make out if he was saying this in jest or for real, but I always, always religiously avoided the kolah outside a surau.

So it was for my thoughts perhaps that I was one day thrown in there with a great big splash and a lot of joy from bystanders and passers-by. They were two big boys, who threw me in, so there wasn't much I could do but walk home with my clothes thoroughly drenched, and little expectation of similar merriment from my mother or father. But unbeknown to me, my father was watching the proceedings — and my humiliation — from a window which looked down on the surau, and he'd already prepared some encapsulated wisdom for his returning son from the water. "Familiarity breeds contempt," he said to me, from on high. Well, I was a little lad then, and he was looking down at me and talking about those lads who'd chucked me into the kolah of our little surau.

Those words of his jolted me more than my unexpected meeting with the aqua surau, remnants of worshippers' sleep, green moss, and all. I don't hear the expression much any more, but whenever I see it or hear it uttered, I'm reminded of my dear, late father and the surau.

Our surau was a merry place and a lively centre. It had a large communal well where gathered the lads and lasses of the village and their mothers and fathers every day at dusk for the communal shower. In the surau was a grand geduk or beduk, an elongated drum covered taut with cow-hide at its business end, and left open in the other. It was hung horizontally in the back chamber of the prayer hall, by the stairs, and at prayer time, someone would hit the drum so hard in a prescribed rhythm so that the faithful would all come to prayer.

Pak Leh was Imam of our surau, a pious man of quiet authority; who passed on last year at an age that must've been close to ninety. Sometimes, from between the thunderous sounds of the old geduk and of men hoicking and retching through the gaps in the floor, I can still hear the voice of Pak Leh, sending up to our house the lilt of that melancholic tune that he'd perhaps devised himself from inside that old surau. It was a reminder of fleeting time, and our mortality, and it's playing in my head right now —

Ingat, ingat, serta fikir sehari hari
Kamu duduk dalam kubur seorang diri;
Rumah besar, kampung luas, itu ia
Akan tinggal itu juga akan dia...

September 7, 2004

Jalang-Jalang Makang Ikang

2004-08-30T21:46:00.000+01:00

Many thanks to those who've written in to say hello, and to S who wrote an interpretation of my recurring childhood dream (Morning Chiaroscuro). My Growing Up In Trengganu series drew special interest, especially from people who remember some of the things I recall. To AO who asked about the Kedai Yamada, (Growing Up In Trengganu #28401) the name wasn't my mother's invention. I remember her telling us that just before the Japanese Occupation, the shop was actually owned by one Mr Yamada. And my father used to speak of another Japanese person in Trengganu who was a food vendor, but soon as the Japanese administration came in, he became the Postmaster. I'm not suggesting anything about Yamada-san of course, he could've been an honest broker, but from accounts I heard (and am trying to remember), some Japanese forward soldiers were in Trengganu before the Occupation, playing seemingly innocent roles. I was very young when the stories were told, and now my brain aches to remember.

I was last in Trengganu more than 15 years ago, and the last I saw of the Abdullah al-Yunani, it had metamorphosed into another, and the name on the doorway was of someone who'd married into the family. The Yunanis, as I said, were long time Chinese-Muslim residents of Trengganu. As the name shows, they came from Yunnan, and later became Trengganuers in both language and culture, give or take a few slices of the celebratory cake during Chinese New Year. They had roots in Trengganu too in a most literal way for, just two doors away from the Abdullah al-Yunani was another shop, Ali al-Yunani. Ali was a Chinese herbalist and had jars and jars in his shop of herbs and roots and things that fascinated me so . I have an image still of Pak Ali, standing in the doorway, wearing his Muslim skullcap and Chinese trousers (just like Pak Awang), and wagging the strands of greying beard on his chin as he spoke to passers-by. He would've been the one person in Trengganu who could've transmuted metal to gold.

I'd like to record my thanks here to Sangkelate who drew my attention to a very interesting blogsite that also dabbles in matters Trengganu (though he spells it Terengganu, in the modern way). You may want to go there too, to read accounts from someone who was there when I was still a twinkle in my dad's eye: it's called — in true Trengganu style — Di Bawah Rang Ikang, and a fine site it is too.

Senyung sikik gok! as we used to say in Trengganu; just smile, smile a little.

Note: The Trengganu that I grew up in lived on ikang, fish. Our neighbours were mostly fishermen or kerepok makers, and everyday, around us, was the smell of fish. This was before off-shore petroleum, palm oil, and lumber. So, if you're wondering what the blog-title means, it's simply, Walking and eating fish, and I know you're sniggering, some of you posh orang luar people out there.

August 30, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #28401

2004-08-28T16:09:00.000+01:00

My father, God rest his soul, was a reading man who made straight for the Abdullah al-Yunani from the Masjid Abidin soon as he'd finished the 'Isha' prayer. The Abdullah al-Yunani was the sole distributor of newspapers when family businesses still held sway and the Yunanis were a prominent Chinese-Muslim family in Kuala Trengganu. It stood in a street of textile merchants and photo studios, and next door to it was a shop that my mother always referred to as Kedai Yamada (Yamada's shop) even though the man in it was as far removed from Yamada-san as the mangosteen from a pineapple. He was in fact, of Indian origin, and went by the name of Mr Fernandez. Mr Fernandez kept clocks and watches in his shop that was out of bounds to little boys who couldn't tell the time of day.

Father would wait patiently every evening outside the Abdullah al-Yunani for the arrival of the Pahang Mail, the lorry service that brought goods to Kuala Trengganu from Kuantan in Pahang, or Kuala Lumpur on the other side of the world. That was how newspapers were delivered to us in those days, at the fall of night, after the Isha' prayers, when folks on the other side had discarded their daily rag and were settling down to their evening meal. Outside the Abdullah al-Yunani people would be chatting and waiting for their first glimpse of the day's headlines while the types were being set, and the presses rolled in Kuala Lumpur for the another day's pages, another day's paper.

Sometimes when I followed father to the Mosque I'd be standing there too with him, in my kain pelikat and baju Melayu, sometimes in windy, monsoony weather, waiting for the day's delivery. While waiting for the lorry to arrive I'd creep into the shop to look at the stock of books and comics and the old kitabs that the Abdullah al-Yunani was famous for. Kitabs as I knew them, were Muslim books, written in the Arabic language and script, or sometimes they were Malay books written in Jawi-Arabic characters. I remember some, like the Taj-ul-Mulk, which contained invocations and recipes for poultices, and the book of Tibb which was the Materia Medica of the local Muslim bomoh.

But in daylight, when father was at work, I'd walk further up the road to Kampung China, the Chinatown of Kuala Trengganu. I had a friend there right by the Chinese butcher, and a school-teacher who lived across the road; but my constant delight was the Chee Seek store. The Chee Seek was as precious as the Abdullah al-Yunani, but represented a different spectrum of our reading matter. It stocked Chinese books, of course, and it stocked comics, and the US Reader's Digest which was heftier and jazzier than the British edition, and it had a little surprise in the back of the store.

Cramped behind the stacks and the shelves and the magazines that dangled from the overhead wires was a little business run by a middle-aged portly Chinese lady called Mak Mek. She could've been Chee Seek's mum, or his only daughter, or an aunt or mother-in-law, but she was the quintessential Chinese Earth Mother lady dressed in batik sarong and baju kebaya, whose deft hands manufactured the ceranang and the keropok lekor chinoise that was different in texture and looks from the ones made by the Malays on the shore. The keropok lekor was the specialty of the Malays of Trengganu, but only the Chinese made them from shark meat or ikan yu. The ceranang, I forgot to say, was a salad of blanched kangkong, (water glorybind), deep-fried tofu and diced hard-boiled eggs, doused with a creamy peanut sauce flavoured with dollops of the hottest chili.

Mak Mek's husband Pak Awang was seldom there as she tended to her customers in this tiny store that was open by secret arrangement with local officers at the Town Hall. Pak Awang was a roving ambassador, a wheeler dealer, a Taoist man in Chinese trousers who roamed the streets on some special errands or urgent matter. He was a medicine man (bomoh,) and a soothsayer, perhaps even a necromancer. I saw him once at the house of a neighbour, exchanging homilies with the man of the house while his wife and sons were busily crushing fish for the day's kerepok lekor. He spoke fluent Trengganu Malay, which is as foreign to out of state persons as Swedish is to a Swahili speaker. Once I heard Pak Awang say to this neighbourhood kerepok lekor man that for a house to receive maximum blessings it must be facing the Kaabah in Makkah.

The Chinese have a long history in Trengganu, dating back to the time of Zheng He (Cheng Ho), the eunuch Muslim admiral, who visited Trengganu in the 15th century, or even earlier. In the 19th century, prominent members of Trengganu Chinese families were given special dispensations to issue coins in return for services to the local Sultan, but this was abolished by the British when they took control of the state's coffers.

August 28, 2004

Morning Chiaroscuro

2004-08-22T16:06:00.000+01:00

I took this picture in Sabak Bernam, Selangor, Malaysia, at about 10.15 in the morning. We were waiting for a boat to take us to a kelong about 6 nautical miles out at sea. The river, Sungai Besar I think, was quiet, there was a solitary bird perched on a branch, and the opposite bank looked unfriendly and inaccessible. It wasn't too early, but the morning was gentle, still: the sun wasn't yet too bright, there were scaly clouds in the sky, and shafts of light were coming through in a most wonderful way. If you look closely at the sky you'll probably see some of that in the picture.

When I was a child I had a recurring dream of waking up early morning in a house by the sea in Kuala Trengganu. It was always very early, as the weak grey light was just coming into the house through the open front door which I couldn't see as there was a screen between it and me. But I could see the light coming in from the sides of the screen into the room, slowly lifting the remaining darkness of the previous night. It filled me with extreme melancholy, sitting in that semi-darkness,looking at a burgeoning day.

Looking at this picture now I feel a bit of that old melancholy creeping out from the cervasse of memory. Funny how the past can suddenly appear in a picture that was taken years later.

A kelong, by the way, is an off-shore structure built by fishermen to house fishtraps, and was built from tree-stems or bamboo. I was half-expecting to see that when the boat came to take us out to sea, but as we approached this structure at sea I realised that it was not made of wood but concrete, and was poised out there like an oil rig standing proud in a rough sea. This kelong actually called itself a Resort, with dorms and suites for people who fancy a few days out there listening to the ocean waves. The people I saw there were mostly fishing enthusiasts, with rods and all, and they looked very happy.

August 22, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #37920

2004-07-31T16:03:00.000+01:00

In his head he carried songs from a very long time, from his hands came the fruit of recipes long forgotten. In the morning he baked roti paung, a sweet roundish bread baked to golden brown, and the beluda, which is probably best described as the local Trengganu muffin. There are people everywhere who bake sweetish buns as golden and as brown, but I have not seen a beluda since.

Pak Mat's beludas were baked in cigarette tins, if you remember what cigarette tins were like. They were roundish, about three inches in diameter, and stood as tall as the cigarette was long. It had a lid which had a catch that had to be prised open to keep the contents fresh, and once emptied of its contents, Pak Mat filled them all up with his secret recipe, scores of them, brimming with the dough that rose in the evening and now pushed well back into his wood fired oven.

I sometimes wonder about the fate of those Trengganu men and women who smoked those nefarious cigarettes that gave Pak Mat his beluda tins by the dozen.

The beluda, when pulled piping hot from the oven, had a spongy consistency and a mien that delighted a child's fancy. I ate many beludas on my way to school, and if I was lucky, there'd be some left when I returned home from school. I'd stood many hours, before school time, waiting to be served while Pak Mat sweated in his baking shed, pulling this tray out, shoving another in, and all the while giving orders to his kith and kin to wrap this up or take the money from somone who's had his or her turn.

The beluda in a cigarette tin was the stuff of childhood dream, and the art was not just in the baking, but also in the ability to make it pop out of the tin, still steaming and unbroken. Even when cold the beluda was still the bolster of dreams.

Maybe, in my recollection, I've beludad Pak Mat for too long, and made light his other talents. Pak Mat baked two varieties of bread, maybe seven, it was a long time ago, you understand. Then he also stirred a huge pot of a Trengganu gulai with bits of meat bobbing up and down in a thin, darkish sauce which was also his other feat of renown. The sauce was poured over his nasi minyak, rice cooked in a quantity of grease, gleaming and steaming in the cauldron, then made merry with grains that were coloured red and green.

Some mornings Pak Mat would rise at the crack of dawn and to the occasion, and baked beludas and buns, then, at other times when the mood took him, he stirred the gulai in his pot, and doused a little of the sauce onto portions of steaming rice portioned out on papers lined with the banana leaf, waiting to be adorned with chunks of meat and chillied condiments, then wrapped and taken hurriedly to the famished at the breakfast tables of many a home in this littoral town.

Then one fine day someone found an old gamelan in the recessess of the Palace of Kuala Trengganu, but no one to beat out the tunes from this ancient instrument. So Pak Mat pushed aside his boiling cauldron and his oven that was wafting with the smell of burning wood and the aroma of the beluda and the paung, and made merry music for a while on this ancient instrument with tunes that he must've learnt when he was young. Pak Mat, I haven't told you, was also known far and wide as Pak Mat Nobat, a royal player in the nobat ensemble of old Trengganu.

The nobat, you see, is royal music, played only on special occasions by men who beat a drum, blew on a Malay trumpet, and a few other insturments that I've now forgotten. Only a few states in peninsular Malaysia had the nobat, and Trengganu was one - and the nobat gave some quaint lamentations that have been attributed by some to mysterious sounds heard by men far out at sea. The nobat music was not written but kept in the heads of selected men.

So you can imagine our Pak Mat pulling out the beluda and the bun while, in his head, ran the wailing and the bleating of the nobat winds and its wild, ancient drums.

July 31, 2004

Bloomsday On Trengganu Shore

2004-06-16T16:01:00.000+01:00

YES TRENGGANU I SUPPOSE IS A LONG WAY FROM NOW as was in the distant past quite a while ago in the shimmering time in the hottest day in the morning of fish enmeshed in nets pulled ashore by men darkened by tanning sun doing their business of tugging on their piscatorial past present and now then came grumbly old scold Mak Som doing her rounds to sell nasi dagang en papillotte for men quenching thirst in her soul greatest miser ever no cash no food for ye now and mamak pulling tea by yard length to milky brown consistency in tumblers for fisherfolk lips gullets and all sweetness sluicing down past nasi dagang half chewed post half cradled in sweaty leathery palms of men returning to atavistic shore but I suppose even the goats now chewing the papillotte are luckier for not having to listen to the mewling tales of Mak Som telling too much about Pak Mat here and Pak Mat there swinging his measure in idleness and ennui while fisherfolk sick to the bones of work and debts to pay and debts to pay then she held her hands aloft and intoned:

--Enjut enjut semut

Halted he looked into the snotgreen sea of turmoil and laughing with delight because hed not heard songs like that since the mating song of the lesser rorqual tell me Mak Som he said quietly.

--Yes my love tis Bloomsday now.

June 16, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #4721

2004-03-17T15:58:00.000Z

The sounds you grew up with always remain no matter how far you've travelled, how changed your circumstance.

I grew up in Kuala Trengganu to the sound of Singaporean beauties waddling duck-like in the afternoon sun, sultry women of light ebony that caused heads to turn. They came in lyrical adulations, straight out of a blaring horn-shaped speaker that was placed in the upper storey window of the Bhiku Coffee Shop that was the meeting place in our community of fishermen and market vendors, petty clerks from government offices and even the occasional hajis with their skullcaps wrapped in tailed turbans. Children were there too from the neighbouring houses, but my parents were of the strict type who'd never countenance this business of being at a loose end around the marble-topped table of the Bhiku establishment. My visits there were short and business-like, mostly in early morning, to do the family errand of buying the roti canai (Malaysian pancakes) that were lifted piping hot from the plate and rolled up in pages of yesterday's news, most likely the Jawi version of the Utusan.

Some afternoons I'd walk past the Bhiku coffe-shop from some other errands and would hear those songs again, sung by R. Azmi in his enormously popular, teasing tone. Hitam manis, hitam manis, pandang tak jemu, pandang tak jemu..., that sweet dark lady, always a joy to behold. And then the disc would turn again on the radio requests programme: it would be R. Azmi again, singing Macam itik, pulang petang, dia jalan melenggang...itu dia Nona Singapura. Duck-like she waddles in the afternoon, this lady of Singapore that is mine. I knew them all by heart because the requested songs were played out loud, and our house was in the direct blast of the Bhiku magnum-sized megaphone.

Today, scouring at eBay I found an image that took me back to those sounds - a pre-printed song-request postcard that a listener sent in to the Penang Branch of Radio Malaysia, requesting a song called Senyum Dalam Tangisan, (A Tearful Smile) by Mahani Rahmat. As I'm familiar with neither singer nor song, no tune came lilting into my head as I read details of the request with great fascination and looked at those stamps of the — please note spellling — Trengganu that I knew and loved. A post-card that came from Kuala Besut, a tiny town not ten miles from where my father was born, now put out in auction by a company at the other end of the earth, in Columbus, Ohio.

Looking at the title of the requested song I expect it was a little doolally doo-lah of a heart forlorn, and a smile for all that, even when the object of your love's gone. How sweet and sad the sound.

This was - and still is to a large extent - the plight of the Malays in song: pining always for some lost love, or for some unreachable one admired only from a distance. But until very recently, love wasn't the only thing that afflicted them. They were underpaid for a start, and they did what they did for, well, a song; and R. Azmi was no exception. In song he sounded like an easy, playful lad, but life was hard for him as an itinerant person. Soon after our family moved from Trengganu I was told that he'd died at a young age, not in some comfortable home among a family he loved, but in the home of some kind soul who'd given him room for the night. He was a man who lived in a suitcase which contained all he had, which included a fresh shirt still wrapped in cellophane. How could a man whose voice came so liltingly sweet from the loud-speaker in the Bhiku place, one who gave so much joy to my little town, have met such a tragic end? My heart was ripped when I heard that.

How the sounds came rolling back when I read that song-request postcard that's resurfaced in - of all places - the eBay web-page. The coffee-shop, the little town where I grew up, the lilting voice of R. Azmi, and the many faces that still live in my mind. Kuala Trengganu was a hybrid place of many faces, of many sounds - Tamil music from the radios of the Southern Indian spice vendors, Hindi music from open windws; the raucous banter of the fish-mongers, and the bustle of the Tanjung morning market that brought down the orang darat (people from upstream) with their firewood, their handicraft, and their vegetables, and baskets of fruits from the Trengganu forests.

There was a sound for each part of day that went regularly like clockwork - and the most reliable of this time-keeping was the azan, the call to prayer, that drifted in the wind at certain times of day. At dawn, when the streets were empty but for some stray dogs and when the air was fresh and quiet, my father would be the first to rise in preparation for his early morning walk to the Zain al-Abidin Mosque. He'd go about his business to the early sound of the tarhim, and then, just at the start of the azan he'd start his walk to reach the mosque just in time to join the early-morning congregation.

The azan of the Bilal Sa'id was especially sonorous and melancholic in turn, and I remember occassionally walking with my father to the Mosque as the wind carried it fade and loud in the crisp air of the morning. My mother once told me that a friend of hers would be reduced to tears by the weight of introspection every time she heard the sweet, mournful call of Lebai Sa'id urging the faithful to prayer at the break of dawn. O God is Great! Better to be in prayer than sleep!

[Note:Bilal is the name given to the muezzin in a mosque in honour of Islam's most famous black convert, Sayyidina Bilal Ibn Rabah, a freed slave who became the Prophet's caller to prayer and his constant companion.]

Notes On A Card:

I cannot read the date-stamp on the envelope, but from the spelling, my guess is it's probably the sixties, though knowledge of the song would take us closer to the actual date. Someone, probably the producer of the "Teruna Dara" (i.e. Youth) request programme, had scribbled "Chinta Sejati" (True Love) on the card. The requested song, Senyum Dalam Tangisan was probably not available, hence the substitute. What I also find interesting is that you had to give your Radio Licence (Lesen Radio) number to request a song! [Right, R.Azmi]

Please contact me if you know anything more about R. Azmi.

March 17, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #3942

2004-02-16T15:55:00.000Z

Last Saturday another link with my past was severed when news came that my cousin had died. He was a cousin, but was more of an uncle to us as he was much older and was already working when we were too young to tie even a piece of string, let alone the dreaded shoelace. The last time we met must've been ten years ago, maybe more years than that.

When news came that he'd died, all I could think of was the dark tunnel and the heat, and people walking about in a colony on a hill so removed from the mainstream that it took hours to reach by train. We were all standing there at Sura Gate in Dungun, a little town described then - as now - as a sleepy place in many pages that I've read. But Dungun then was the outlet for all the iron ore of Bukit Besi, a town on the hills that produced iron from the earth; and my cousin worked there for an employer named - if my memory serves - EMMCO, the Eastern Mining and Metal Company.

Our journey would start from Sura Gate in Dungun which only had two rows of shop houses. The heat was intense, and the trains were a long time coming. The journey upwards, to the hill, was even longer, with the train going chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug around the next bend, and upwards into the green forest of the next incline. And it stopped and it stopped at every station that appeared along its journey in this wild, isolated terrain, and at midday in Trengganu the heat was intense. I heard someone say once that it was the heat of all that iron in the hills.

Sometimes it'd stop between stations for no apparent reason, standing there on the tracks in the eerie silence of the jungle with additional anxiety brought by the occasional hissing of the engine. And then it'd move again into the deep, dark tunnel, chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug with the anxiety overload. My auntie cautioned my mum once to hold tight to her handbag in a hushed conspiratorial tone. "Hold on to that, hold on to that, this is the tunnel of the roving hands," she said.

When Bukit Besi came within sight it was a great relief. It was a strange place, an artificial town built to serve the company, with workers living in lines and lines of company-built houses, uniform wooden structures on the terraces of the hill. It must've been a great place for the workers in this community of much camaraderie, fun even for the children who lived and grew up in this unique tin town unlike any other in Trengganu. It was because of this perhaps, or the long tedious journey that wore my patience, or the mists of isolation that hung over Bukit Besi that it never won a special place in my heart.

But this isn't to say there wasn't fascination enough. Anyone journeying there would return home with a piece of Bukit Besi ore to use as paperweight, or to show to disbelieving friends, and they'd always talk about this community on the hill that was so different from the rest of us. My late cousin, as I could see it, enjoyed his work, took an active interest in the welfare of his fellow workers (he was a union officer), and took a serious interest in photography whenever he could.

I was - and have always been - fascinated by trains, but cannot remember much else about the journey to the Bukit and back, except that it was arduous and tiresome, and I was always glad when it ended. But in having the train Bukit Besi was unique among Trengganu towns, as no train line runs anywhere else in the state by the royal order of the Sultan Zainal Abidin (d. 1918) (also known as the Marhum Haji), a devout man and one of the great Trengganu Sultans of modern time. He saw it only as a transport for the intrusion of all that'd corrupt the religion and the way of life in the state. And as for the social upheavel that it'd bring? No thanks, he wouldn't have any of that. And so it is that until today Trengganu is the only state in peninsular Malaysia that's not linked to the railway track.

I remember Bukit Besi now, and my cousin, with great sadness. Tin mining has ended in Trengganu, and Bukit Besi is no longer there to re-visit. And as for my cousin, I'm grateful to him for the memories he gave us of this unique place. God rest you dear cousin, may you be among the righteous and your life's works be rewarded.

February 16, 2004

Growing Up In Trengganu #9513

2003-11-27T15:48:00.000Z

One day, at the precise time of the noon prayer, there was a rain of agar-agar on our little community.Life's a beach, then you fly. Courtesy:journeymalaysia.com

This was no ordinary agar-agar but of the finest variety. They were green and red and yellow and blue, crinkly cut in bite-sized diamond shapes. It sent Mother rushing out in her prayer shawl, punctuating her rapid movement to the window with words that I still remember: "My beleda! My beleda!"

This path to disaster began ordinarily enough some hours back when Mother was labouring over her hot stove, peering and stirring in a brass kuali that contained a transparent and bubbly goo. Trapped in it, like a fly in ember, was the long green leaf of the pandan tree. The scented, blessed pandan of the ubiquituous presence in Malay cookery.

When the mixture was ready, with the desired viscosity, she poured the fluid in as many trays as she could pull from the kitchen cupboard (which wasn't many), and into any other tray-like things that'd serve her purpose. These being mainly old Huntley & Palmers biscuit tins, food-trays painted with a smiling nyonya extolling the virtues of some local tea, or the lids of any old tins that could contain her gelatinous stuff in sufficient depth and quantity. Before pouring them out into the various trays she'd mix in just the right amounts of her magic drops as would make the agar-agar glow in transluscent gold, or red or green or blue, filling the whole kitchen with the sweet scent of vanilla.

Early in the morning, just as the sun was rising, I watched her use a serrated cutter to slice the jelly into into inch-long shapes which she arranged neatly in two large food trays to put out in the sun to dry. For the children, the agar-agar kering - the sun dried sweet with the crystallised sugar coating that wrapped the internal translucent jelly - were the colours of the Trengganu Hari Raya, the feast Eid to end the fast, the bulan puasa, (fasting month) of Ramadhan.

A window in our house looked out to one aspect of the local community, especially the surau, the musolla or the prayer hall, that stood cheek by jowl with our house in the huddled way that kampung houses stayed together. Ours was a tall house, much taller than most, that literally looked down on the daily life of the community. In the moonsoon months there peered through the window a menacing sky and the belinjau trees swaying from side to side looked extremely supple. As a child I stood for hours looking out of this window, listening to the roar of waves on the distant shore.

Mother looked out of the window too but with a purview of shorter remit. It was the corrugated iron rooftop of the surau that she was interested in, especially as it was sloping gently past our open window, and within easy reach. When she looked to the sky, her mind was set: it was a right, bright day for putting the agar-agar out to dry. Out went the trays onto the sloping rooftop, held in place only by their tenuous hold on the protruding heads of the roofing nails. The midday heat would crystallise the agar-agar pretty quickly.

But with noon-time also came the call to prayer, and in Trengganu then (as now) it would start with the beating of the beduk, a massive drum of cow hide hung with stout ropes to the lower end of the roof in the back of the surau. Beaten with growing intensity, it preceded the muezzin's call, the boom-boom-booming sound that shook the rafters, awoke the dozy, and sent the trays tumbling down from the rooftop, agar-agar and all.

I happened to be in the back of the surau just when this technicolored rain began to fall, sitting by an old curmudgeon who was a distant blood relation. He was a surau regular who was quick on the draw with acid retorts about the slightest thing that irked him so. When my mother's distressed call was heard between the booms of the beduk, he deigned to give the briefest look at the scene of devastation. Then, without batting an eye, he walked silently back to the inside of the surau to prepare himself for prayer.

It was not the sight and sound of my poor mother in her prayer shawl that became the defining moment for me in this comic episode but the unbemused expression on the old curmudgeon who bothered to even look at all. You needed to have lived on this earth for quite awhile to be able to look at diamond-shaped jellies of many hues showering down from the sky on a clear day and yet be able to dismiss it without so much as a sigh.

November 27, 2003

Growing Up In Trengganu #3273

2003-11-11T15:44:00.000Z

Rose Syrup, sweet since the 1930s. By late afternoon the pavement in front of the pasar was lined with blocks of ice, some covered in saw dust, others wrapped in gunny sacks. The rasping sound of the sharp saw-teeth meeting the shimmering face of ice, cutting deep cuts in parallel rows in the ice block, then another line cutting the rows in half again in a cross-cut. Then a sharp hack with the cleaver down the clefts would break those smaller blocks free, to the delight of street urchins and errand boys sent out to buy this essential balm for the dry rasping throats of adult fasters; and ice too for the milky, syrupy drink that'd quench the thirst from a long day's fast.

Children fasted too, but most of them were given special dispensation to break at noon. In our household this was considered infra-dig, so we braved it out in a full day's whine, salivating fiercely as the afternoon drew on, when the aroma of the akok or the bubur lambuk bubbling in mother's kitchen became just too irresisitible.

This was Kuala Trengganu before the 'fridge became the white good for the plebs. Selling ice blocks by the road-side was a source of extra income for the boys for Hari Raya (Id) clothes, for a jaunt after Raya prayers to the Capitol or the Sultana, two local cinematic flea-pits that incessantly rolled out old films from the Shaw Brothers and the Cathay Keris stables.

By those ice-sellers in the Tanjong market as the shadows were lengthening and the sun was turning a different shade of yellow came the kuih sellers. These were womenfolk who worked over their hot stoves since the break of day, incessantly stoking the fire with coconut husks or fire wood, brows dripping in sweat and eyes ever watchful that the products of their labour were not burnt to cinder. By 5 o'clock in the afternoon they'd be ambling out of their domestic workshops, round woven baskets balanced precariously on their heads and filled to their brims with veritable delights, and fancy cakes. There were stalls and stalls for these sellers, all arranged in a row.

This is the roll call of Trengganu comestibles - Nekbat, Apam Sakar, Beronok, Perut Ayam, Wajik, Lompat Tikam, Asam Gumpal, and of course, the Puteri Mandi, the Princess in a bath of shaved coconut and palm sugar. In this age of the fruitcake, who remembers them now? Recently, while sampling the Turkish Imam Biyaldi, so good as to make the Imam (person who leads the prayer in a mosque) faint, I was reminded of the Trengganuesque Encik Abbas Demam a culinary product so good that the eponymous sampler (Encik Abbas) ran hot and cold.

But not everything was sweet and sickly. There was rojak (a Malaysian salad) of green papaya shaved into thin strips, covered with a sauce of fish and chilli and coconut sugar mixed in vinegar, there was of course the famous Trengganu Rojak Kateh, not strictly a salad, but a chilli-hot vinegary preparation of cow's trotters, and the ceranang, a true salad of blanched vegetables (mainly kangkong), bean sprouts and tofu, covered in a thick dollop of peanut sauce.

Just before sunset, before lilting cries of the muezzin came forth from various little prayer halls in the community, before the cannon roared from distant hills, before the Trengganu Bell, the Genta sounded out its doleful chime from the Bukit Putri by-the-harbour to mark the time for iftar, the breaking of the day's fast, the kids would roll up their gunny sacks for the day, stash the day's takings in a Milo tin, and head for home to unravel a fierce weapon, the bedil buluh - the bamboo cannon - that fired volleys of carbide power, much to the consternation of elderly village women who'd be shocked by the booms into a fit of uncontrollable verbal diarrhoea (mostly pertaining to the pudenda).

To melatah is a peculiarly Malay and Eskimo affliction, and is recognised as the Eskimo hysteria. All that ice on the pavement, there must be something there.

November 11, 2003

Growing Up In Trengganu, #306

2003-10-29T15:53:00.000Z

At some point in her life, my mother must've looked up to the rafters and decided that something was amiss. She ordered the best lempok that ever was stirred on this planet earth, put the whole big clump in a metal pot, and hung it up there from a beam. This was a traditional Trengganu house which we lived in, and like other traditional Malay houses, did not have a ceiling. So a view of the rafters, with the strutting beams, and the Singgora tiles that made the roof was clearly visible to a child lying below on a mengkuang mat. In some houses, a few tiles would be taken and replaced by a sheet of clear glass so that a beam of light would shine through into the house at any time of day. I remember waking up at night to the silvery glow of the moon shining through the skylight, an eerie thought considering what we we'd been regaled daily with stories of ghostly forms emerging in the night with legs straddling from beam to beam.

This encapsulates for me the essence of my Trengganu childhood: lempok in the pot, pane in the sky. Sweetness and light.

This is light from the past, sweetness of old. The lempok was stirring stuff, made from fresh durians thrown in a thick mass in a Trengganu brass pot, flesh and stone, and stirred and stirred with bonding and sweetening ingredients, and coconut milk perhaps - to a beautiful crust. The resulting paste bore the thread of dreams, unlike the erstaz goo wrapped in cellophane, now masquerading as 'durian cake'.

Mother had neither the patience, nor the skill nor the manpower to make sweetmeat herself. She'd order her lempok from Batu Rakit, then the world centre for duriany cococtions, and her Rokok Arab from a lady living behind the walls of the Istana Maziah, this dream so perfect its maker had to be confined within the walls of a royal palace. The Istana Maziah was an istana like in olden times, with an imposing front, and a colony of royals, and servers and hangers on living in the back, on the foot of an old Bukit - the Bukit Puteri - Hill of the Princess. It was - and still is, probably - a ceremonial palace, entered through an arch of old Malay design - the Pintu Gerbang - which, as word had it, had a little apparition straddling its legs from one side of the arch to the other, long after the sun had sunk below the horizon. Trengganu apparitions had a predilection for things like that.

Our Nasi Dagang came from only one woman called Mak Som who plied her trade at the crack of dawn and was already packing up to go by 7 o'clock, when her rivals were just about to break even.

I'm reminded now of the Bukit Puteri as it's Ramadhan, a time when some Trengganuers will wax lyrical about its purpose; the Hill I mean. Atop this hill is an old bell, cast by Trengganu makers from sturdiest brass. It hangs on a strut in a shelter-house made from bricks, a mysterious place built perhaps by some old Sultans as a spot to while away an afternoon while watching the Perahu Besar, the Trengganu junks, sailing in, laden with salt, and Singgora tiles, and exotica from old Siam. Beneath this brickwork is a dark, deep cellar, from which has emerged many legends. But back to the bell - the Trengganu Genta - which was struck every day during Ramadhan at iftar time, the breaking of fast. And then again and again just before dawn in a fit of boisterous chimes to mark the beginning of a day of fast.

My father used to take me to the Masjid Abidin - the White Mosque - after iftar, a little boy lining up in the back row with other little boys for the tarawih prayer of many raka'ats performed only during Ramadhan. The repetitive movements of the prayer was exhausting for a little boy, but the atmosphere was bewildering, and a valuable experience for imbibing the spirit of Ramadhan.

One night, after prayers, I met the man who struck the genta in the jama'ah (congregation), who insisted that my friends and I should see his place of work, an offer that was both cruel and kind. The footpath up the hill was unlit, and it cut through many wild bushes from which lurked many dark creatures of our imagination, and the quiet places of repose of people who died in the distant past. When we finally reached the 'bell' and the brickwork resting place with legends emerging from its darkest pit, Kuala Trengganu glowed brightly in the distant and there we stood, silently, apprehensively in the dark. The ringer shone his torch at the bell and then looked over to the other side. "That's an old arch to the Istana," he said, "and from beneath it hangs, every night..."

"Oh do shut up!" we all said.

Far below at the foot of the hill, behind the istana, I saw a tiny light flickering from the window of a little house. And I was sure it was Mak Nah, making her famous Rokok Arab and other scrumptious native cakes.

October 29, 2003