Kamal Salih My Story: Chapter 1 Episode 2: The Book House

Kamal Salih Malaysia Human Development Report episodes 2

I grew up in a house of books; for ever since I can remember I was surrounded by books.  I blame it on my elder brother and sisters. I am the second youngest in a family of nine siblings, five boys, two of whom passed away before I saw the light of day, and four elder sisters.  The books, arrayed in a row of window-high shelves along two walls, and a third against another wall, this time from floor to almost the ceiling, in the serambi (lounge), seemed to be the defining character of my parent's modest traditional Malay house. Throughout my later adult life this book arrangement had been recreated many times over, not realizing that this interior design of my study was imprinted so early in my mind, for I spent many happy childhood hours lying on the floor between these shelves, flipping through those books and magazines imagining I was reading them. These books became a kind of refuge for me growing up in between the everyday preoccupations of a rural boyhood.  It was here that I first read Hamka’s Tenggelamnya Kapal van der Wijk when I was about ten (and later learned Hamka’s plot here also involved the notion of ‘immanent will’ so well employed by Thomas Hardy in his novels such as in Far from the Madding Crowd), and Harun Ar-Rashid’s Nyawa di Hujung Pedang a year later.  The books, such as those foreboding-looking titles to a child, displayed arrogantly on the shelves of my father’s house, willynally would get to you eventually, for certain.  So began my lifelong love affair with books.

Google Map of Semanggol today - My Book House

The books were accumulated from five overlapping school careers, for all my elder siblings studied at Ehya as-Syarif, a total span between them of some twenty years.  By later accounts of their classmates, all my sisters topped their respective classes, so that must somehow explain the existence of the books. Throughout my early life I never saw my father ever reading a book, newspapers yes, so he is literate.  My mother though was following the adult classes conducted by my second eldest sister, Rokiah, on the weekends for some local villagers. By the time I was able to read the first book, quite early, at six, there was already practically a library in my house. My first child’s photograph at three years old I was, was of me holding (I don’t think I was reading) a magazine beside a pineapple plant, and a hen, taken by my elder brother, Abdullah. He was an avid photographer, and popular with both the girls and boys of Ehya’ because of that.  Of the books, more must have been added after that because by the time I entered the second year of Special Malay Class in King Edward VII School, Taiping, in 1955, my immediate sister was still in the final two years of her usuluddin class.  In the collection were Arabic and Jawi books, as well as Indonesian editions; there were religious texts, tafsirs and reference books, and novels.  The books in the house were a big draw, especially amongst the girl students from my sisters’ various cohorts. I always thought that the house is too noisy for a library. But I was happy with the presence of my sisters’ friends for they never fail to tease their little brother, even after the arrival of my own little brother.  Funny, I don’t recall now Munar’s infant life, that he was even present in the house at that time. Much as I love him later in life, this memory lapse must be because of subconscious sibling rivalry. 

When I did realize the significance of these things later in my academic work on household  history and child spacing, the gaps between my siblings were seemingly evenly spread by two to three years, with the extended gap in the top and lower order of the siblings left by the absent boys.  Except for the lowest order, between me and my younger brother, who unexpectedly arrived seven years after me. The old folks say he was an accident.  I certainly was unaware that he was coming until the day I heard his wail from the compound when I returned from school that afternoon.  Looking back at it, I wonder whether this household demographic pattern is not determined by the periodic absence of my father, who was a house-builder (he was known to everyone as “Pak Leh Tukang”) and was away for extended periods of up to a month, sometime even more in the post-harvest season when people tend to spend their hard-earned money on house extensions or new building all over the Krian district and even beyond in southern Kedah.

My father was of smallish build, with darkish skin, a little roundish face; later in my adult working life I was amazed by how much the late Tun Ismail Ali, the central bank governor and my first boss at the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research, MIER, reminded me of my late father, both equally stern looking. But, there is no mistaking those strong and knarled hands, the kind you might expect of a hardworking carpenter worn down by season after season of sawing, planing and carving planks and heavy lifting of timber. It must have been a hard life, and I never saw in all my early life a spontaneous smile from him. But I know he is a kind man, a religious man, with fierce unspoken ambitions for his children.  The newspaper, Utusan Melayu, and Mastika, the magazine my elder brother Abdullah worked for as a photographer when he was in Singapore eventually after leaving Ehya, were the main sources of my father’s worldly knowledge, there being no Internet or Google then yet! The one true evidence of his love for me that stuck in my mind, for he did not show his emotions easily, was when he carved, after much childish tantrum led him to accede to my demand, my first wooden pistol to take to show-time in Darjah Satu at the Sekolah Rendah Melayu, Gunung Semanggol. 

Kamal Salih Malaysia Human Development Report episodes 2
There was never any doubt in my mind that my father provided sufficiently for his family, though not always constant because of the seasonality of his vocation. But I remember the eager anticipation of his return especially during the high building season, when family meals eaten on the floor were spread with additional dishes of extra fish (with eggs!) and occasional chicken. Such meals were taken with such gaiety that a passerby might not realize that this is a household often bobbing between variable meals around the poverty line.  When he was around at home and not away working, it had been my father's habit to go to the pekan after ‘esya prayers, and bersembang with his friends in the local café, equivalent to an English pub, one could say.  He normally will not return home till almost after everyone was asleep. Except my mother.

My mother is the one who held the family together.  In her younger days she must have what in modern times could be called stunning good looks; taller than my father, fair skinned, and with a kindly but no-nonsense face around not-so-thin lips – years later when I was myself pursuing my career I saw a photograph of her hung over the inner door to the kitchen of my elder brother’s house. The later to my view still stunning face was marked by stress lines, for my mother was a chronic asthmatic right from the days of my childhood till her death when I was in Form 2 in Victoria Institution in Kuala Lumpur.  My mother was 48 years when she passed away.

During her time, my mother was the calm centre of an often confusing, boisterous and enthusiastic household.  My eldest sister Zawiyah was already married and living in her husband’s family seat in Pantai Remis, Perak, themselves rich land owners including a sizeable coconut plantation. Her own eldest daughter is just one year younger than me, and Ehya-educated as she was, was destined to raise a large family herself. When my father and mother uprooted the family to join my brother in Kuala Lumpur in the year of Independence in 1957, I had stayed back in Taiping to carry on for another year in Standard 6 in KE before joining the family in Kg Baru in 1959.  During this one year, I was on my own staying at a cousin’s house, occasionally being visited by Zawiyah after school when she followed her taxi-driving husband to Taiping.  She thought she needed to give me family support while the rest were in KL.  My next sister, Rokiah, having graduated from Ehya, had in 1956 already left to pursue her studies in Jogjakarta.  My third elder sister, Rahmah, married a fellow student from Ehya who had on graduation joined the Royal (British) Air Force based in Hong Kong, but stayed behind in KL to look after my parents, especially my ailing mother when they migrated to KL.  I had served as their postman during their courtship as I did my daily rounds in the male hostels hawking kueh my mother had made to supplement the family income.  My youngest sister, Rafidah, three years older than me, also left Semanggol to enter the Islamic College in Klang, just a few months after our parents departed to complete her term at Ehya, and carrying with her aspirations to one day go to Al-Azhar to continue her studies.  

As for me, it was during one of those days when he was sawing away at a carved indoor awning or something at the makeshift workshop below the house, that out of the blue my father said, “I think you should go to Aligarh University in India.”  Huh? The first spoken statement from my father of his quiet ambition, reserved for the youngest then of his offsprings. I could not have been more than eleven at that time, and had just been circumsized that year!  I can only think now, that by then the books in the house must also have gotten to him, the blessed soul of my father.

I do not know what happened to those books in our house after my family left Semanggol and migrated to KL in 1957.  I imagined that they have been given to Ehya library. The house itself was sold lock stock and barrel (without the books I think) to my schoolboy friend Ghazali Tain's family who already had a house of their own nearer the pekan, who I was told subsequently had my family home dismantled  and reassembled somewhere. Today, on the very spot of our old (and my book) house, is built a brand new surau (little mosque).

Kamal Salih Malaysia Human Development Report episodes 2

Chapter 1 Episode 3: Crossing the Canal