Land of Our Grandfather

In a way, it was grandfather who laid the foundation to the Madrasah Sultan Zain al 'Abidin, next door to the first school that I went to, Sekolah Melayu Ladang. I was not yet then of schooling age, but Father had a friend who was a teacher, so he got me a place in Sekölöh Ladang in a class that was an outhouse parallel to the road. Not being on the school's register I had my own privileges, like going to school in my own time of day, but even this privilege did not shield me from the 'dresser' in white who came to school to give us all a BCG jab on the shoulder, where I carry a scar to this day.

Later Father found another friend among the teaching staff of the Madrasah Sultan Zain al 'Abidin, the Arabic school next door, so needless to say, he found me a place there too, under the watchful eye of Ustaz Lob, and a man who, as rumour had it, fell off a camel during his Middle Eastern university days who went by the name of Ustaz Yahya. I was useless in Arabic, and even more clueless when it came to reading the texts. But I remember one line from their Arabic reader, “Thahaba fellahin...” [The peasants went...], they went to a place somewhere in Egypt, but I can't remember where, and I remember marching in the mornings in the quadrangle, and quaking when the mudir (headmaster) Sheikh Mahmud Bakarrafie' appeared in his black songkok and his chosen colour of white from neck to toe. I also remember the Saturday afternoon cinema club of Ustaz Imbab, then — and for a long time — the town's finest calligrapher. I surreptitiously quit going to the afternoon Arabic school when my 'real' school in the morning, the Sultan Sulaiman Primary School, sapped more energy from me than I could get from my early morning roti bata; but it wasn't a year before Father found out, but when he did he simply looked at me more in sorrow than in anger, knowing that I was not cut out to be an Arabic scholar.

What I didn't know then was that when I stepped into the Sekölöh Arab and marched in pairs on its quadrangle, I was stepping on land that once belonged to Tok Wan, my grandfather. Tok Wan was a man of many parts — a scholar, a traveller, a magistrate, court registrar, and District Officer. Among his many teachers when he had travelled the length and breadth of Patani, Kelantan and Trengganu to seek instruction were Tuan Haji Abdullah of Losong and Tuan Haji Muhammad Shafi'ei of Kampung Nyiur Kembar.
Tok Wan [standing, walking stick in hand, extreme left], at the ground breaking ceremony for the Madrasah Sultan Zain al- Abidin, Ladang. He appears to be addressing the crowd. Standing directly opp. him, looking down, is Sultan Sulaiman Badrul Alam Shah.
Grandfather had given his land in Ladang for the Arabic School as a way, perhaps, of returning what he had owed to Kuala Trengganu. Madrasah Sultan Zain al 'Abidin in Ladang is of course the grandfather of all those educational institutions in Trengganu that now bear the name of Kusza.

I remember very little of grandfather even though we saw him in Besut most school holidays. He was an aloof man who suffered no fools, and he had constant visitors coming to see him in his house in Kampung Raja. My brother recently wrote to say that he remembers Tok Wan having visitors who stayed long into the night to hear his take on the kitabs or to read a qasidah with him, perhaps the burda. I remember listening to him in bed, as he led the family in dawn prayer when we went there, and the sound of spray from his lips when he gave his singing birds their early morning shower. And then I used to watch him sit by the window as the day got brighter, when he read his Utusan Melayu. He had a collection of krises and badiks in the house, and other things that I find hard to relate to him: a couple of peti nyanyi and assorted music on vinyl, though I never saw him wind up the gramophone or talk about the vinyl records or hum a tune of R.Azmi. Looking back now I don't think they were his at all.

Tok Wan was born on 21 December 1885 in Pasir Putih, Kelantan. His mother was born in Kampong Atas Tol in Trengganu, into a family that had settled there to escape Siamese persecution in Patani. When the then Sultan of Trengganu took an interest in the woman who was later to be Tok Wan's mother (she was, apparently, an attractive lady) the family once again packed their belongings and sought refuge in Pasir Putih. There the woman that had caught the Sultan's eye was married to Wan Ibrahim, Tok Wan's father.

----------------------------
*One film they screened was “Hawk of the Wilderness”, it played for many weeks, in many chapters.

Singing for the Sultan

Cik Gu Muhammad Hashim bin Abu Bakar standing before the Istana Kolam in its glory days, leading a group of schoolchildren in the first performance of what was later to be the Trengganu state anthem before Sultan Sulaiman Badrul Alam Shah on his birthday [see, Music in the Rubble]. Some of the children, I am told, were from Sekolah Paya Bunga, a school that must have stood close to a pond with pretty flowers, but not in the days when Father was there. And I don’t think Father was among the young people who stayed back after school to do the solfeggio in preparation for the big song on the big day.

If as Peter Newmark* says, imagination has two main faculties: sonorisation and visualtion, then we’ve all been there and there. I’ve replayed in my head many times our hot mornings in Padang Paya Bunga (which is some distance away from the Sekolah), us parading schoolchildren, songkoks on heads and probably flags in hands, listening to speeches and more speeches and then singing. In sonorisation, says Newmark, you normally hear voices in your mind, of people dead and living, and you hear your own voice too. It's all part of memory.

My sonorised memory of those days on Padang Paya Bunga consists of some distinguished voices, of Buya Hamka, the Indonesian writer and religious scholar speaking and wiping tears as he narrated the story of what I now think was most certainly the Qasida Burda, the Poem of the Prophet’s Mantle. Father took us there one evening, and all I could hear were hypnotic words (Hamka was a formidable speaker) that I could not relate to any everyday thing, but I remember him saying selendang (a cloak, veil or scarf) as he wiped his eyes. There were many dignitaries who spoke there, and once we heard the voice of a lanky man with thick glasses who was known widely by his pen name of Misbaha, the distinguished amateur historian of Trengganu.

I began sonorising yesterday when a Trengganuspeaking friend sent me an email to say that he felt ssebök when he saw on television the installation ceremony of the Sultan of Trengganu as the thirteenth Yang di Pertaun Agong of Malaysia and the third Agong from Trengganu. Ssebök is the more evocative Trengganuspeak version of the standardspeak tersebak, that welling up of the emotion, that swelling in the chest and that tissue moment for the eye, in sadness or happiness or a mixture of both.

And of course I remember the state anthem of Trengganu, but only in my sonorised way that went, for a long time, like this:

"Allah peliharakang rajakang mi,
Memerintah Trengganu negeri...**

That was probably how I (we) sang it on the Padang, and looking back now on that first line, how wonderfully alliterative it falls in its Tregganuspeaking way, what sonorous memory!

We were taught that at school, not from a song sheet, but from listening to the words as poured from the mouth of our teacher. Mine was in Sekolah Melayu Ladang, built on colonies of Cik Ru on sandy Ladang soil. Traffic went past our front gate, the red and yellow of the Trengganu Bus Company, the tarpaulin covered lorries of the Pahang Mail Transport Company, the Tok Peraih middlemen with their cone-shaped terendak hats cycling at speed from one fish market to another, with their trade mark fish baskets in the back-rack of their bicycles. Fish odour and diesel fumes and dust wafted into our grounds at playtime, and the occasional Arabic noises from the Madrasah Sultan Zainal Abidin next door. Walking home via the footpath through the village in the back of the school, we met the putrid smell of dried shrimps pounded, with sea salt and the sweat of labour, into grainy looking dark brown paste that now lay in slabs on the belacan racks that were put out to dry in the sun and air.

"Allah peliharakang rajakang mi..." how wonderfully apt the sound, how evocative the rhythm of Trengganu.

____________________

* Professor Peter Newmark, occasional lecturer in translation studies, University of Surrey, in The Linguist magazine, Feb/March 2007.

** Allah peliharakan Raja Kami, God save our King.