Boomtime Hills

The genta that clanged at sunset to signal the breaking of the fast (iftar) during Ramadhan was once the amok alarm. I don't know if the people of Trengganu were amok prone, but the last amok in folk memory happened probably in the early years of the last century. He was known as Pök Mat Ngammok (Pak Mat the amok), who, after some unhappiness in his domestic life, went completely out of control. We were told, in bedtime stories in our childhood days, that he was shot and buried under the coconut trees by the shore, in a place called Tanjong Mengabang, which in our day, was also known as Ladang Batu Satu after the milestone before the bend in the road that took us to the Ladang of the two schools and the roundabout of the turtle.

The genta rang bells in many memories [see The Sound of Heavy Metal, below] especially as it is now puasa, the fasting month. But what's unsettled in my mind is the cannon that boomed from distant hills. We were shoreline people in Tanjong, ever looking out to sea and the Bukit Putri, and the hill did the same too, looking to the sails and flags of ships in the horizon that brought to us Admiral Cheng Ho (Zheng He). But that was a long time before the genta clanged or the cannon boomed on the hill. But which hill? Looking to the hinterland from the shore I always thought that it was Bukit Besar (Big Hill) that gave our bbuka time its flavour of the 1812 Overture. But Syafiq, so proud of his corner of town that he has spelt it out in capitals, a BUKIT BESAR BOY, [see Comments, below] puts the blame on neighbouring Bukit Kecik or Bukit Kecil (the Small Hill), whilst Karim Omar (whose 13-year old daughter writes a fine blog) says it's Bukit Pak Apil. Can anyone help us here?

I am grateful to Wangrohing for having found hasidöh's distant cousin in Ambon, in the Maluku (Moluccas) archipelago where the natives have been chomping on it since — perhaps — time immemorial. But the introduction of hasida kantang intrigues me, would that be like sweet, greasy mashed potatoes? But hasida is defined by Chaumont Devin, compiler of the Ambon Dictionary as “ a sweetmeat made of raw dough, sugar and spices”; that's hasidöh to the core. Speaking of Ambonese, these other hasidöh people remind me of Bachok, our agile coconut tree cutter of Tanjong Pantai. Bachok, from Celebes, to the West of the Moluccas archipelago, came adrift to our shore in his boat and stayed with us till the end of his days. How he must have longed for his faraway home, and when he saw our hasidöh did we see a hint of a tear in his eye?

For more hasidöh memories, please go to Comments, but afore ye go please remember that hasidöh the sweetmeat is not qasidah that sometimes wended its tuneful way on Radio Malaysia with its “Ya lail, ya lail, ya lail.....” (“O night, o night, o night...”) in the Songs of the Desert slot.

For the photo below I am grateful to Ajideol of Kolang who sent it with his caption to salute the youth of Pulau Wang Mang and in memory of Bachok, the great Sulawesi man who lived among us and our coconut trees. Thanks Ajidoel. Thanks everyone for your memories. Selamat Berpuasa!

Diamonds & Paste

Akök in the akök mould that we called the acuang, bottles of sirap all in a row lined up for the month, red and sweet as the day was long. Dried dates in slabs, compacted for travel from the ports of Basra or Izmir or perhaps the desert parts of Hindustan; and the fluffy pastry of nekbat, bland and light and drenched in syrup of the strength to curl the toes even of the most sweet-toothed of the sugar-bingers — Ramadhan was the sweetest of months.

From beneath the stove, in a dark corner that had been quiet for many months, Mother pulled out her heavy brass pot for the ritual scrub with asam. A stirring time was there to come, and time to make the hasidöh, for Ramadhan without hasidöh would have lost the taste that made the month. Hasidöh as I described it once, was more paste than cake, a tooth clinging sweetmeat in the literal sense, rich and fat, laid flat or rolled up by little kids, or pinched with the special hasidöh pinchers that laid grooves into the putty mix for the nestling of shallot bits, fried to golden brown and crisp as the morning with singing birds and trees waving in the soft sun. Our cousin Mat once took hasidöh and kneaded it and threw it and beat it to a pulp, then he stuck the resulting paste on to the wall of our house. We forgave him as he was very, very young.

Unlike the air strop or the beleda kering that were shaped like cut diamonds — to name but two plots in the dreamwork of little children — hasidöh was an adult’s idea of fun. It was ghee that gave hasidöh its luscious richness, flour that glued all that mingled in the merry mix, and sugar of the sweetness that peek-a-booed with the fat and wheat gluten that made that teeth clinging, angst ridding, cloying taste to satisfy a host of ancient longings — and then, ah, the savouriness of the crisp bawang (shallots) to blunt the sickly and the sweet. I mentioned air strop because who remembers now this mix of yore? But somewhere in a Terengganu house, someone must now be stirring and stirring some hasidöh in the pot while humming the joys of Ramadhan.

As Mother rolled the sticky paste in the deep brass, we waited for the heat to rise and the hasidöh to land with a plop on the tray, and then, spoon in hand, we scraped the hasidöh crust that came off like wood shaving, crisp and brown, and better than fried egg-dipped bread.

These were trying moments, when children clung to every crawling minute and the clock seemed to have warped and turned laggard like the persistence of Dali’s time. It could have been five in the afternoon, when plates were laid out and the ice had come back in a block from the ice merchants on the tarmac in front of Bhiku’s coffee shop. Pök had closed his shop and had probably joined the iftar crowd still waiting beneath the henna tree of the masjid, and fish was going cheap on the slab of fishmongers dying for a fag.