..clogs..

..there is a mosque in Bachok, Masjid Pak Pura, that have several pairs of clogs for use by the jemaah...and whenever pakmat stopped by for solat, usually solat zohor, pakmat would used them, going clong-clang for a moment as I made my way to the wuduk area...and for moment pakmat would be transported back to those time when he was just a child of 5 or 6, staying with his mother in Kampong Sirih, Kota Bharu...

...she would be at her sewing machine, keeping an eye on me as I clogged around the house, shirtless but a pair of shorts tied with a gunny sack rope, tali guni, as they called the piece of rope then...nearby was a house rented by some ladies who worked nights in some place mysterious nearby...and they would sometimes sent me on errands like buying food packets, nasi berlauk, or toasted bread, roti bakar, from a coffee shop situated along the main road, a hundred yards from mother's house...unlike my mother and stepfather, these ladies almost always woke up late, usually just before noon...

..later, when I was a bit older, Form One, Clifford School, Kuala Kangsar, my uncle, to whom I had been fostered, would take me home during the school holidays...and left me there by the main road on his way to Banggol...and I would hurried to my mother, took off my shoes and slipped on the clogs..and just sat there on the wooden steps of the house...enjoying the feel of wood against my soles...

...inevitably, my brother Adnan would come on his bicycle...and  I would placed the clogs carefully on the steps next to the tempayan, and cycled barefoot around the kampong...and my mother would peer through her glasses, warning me to be careful and not to fall...

..indeed, love is the flower that passes...and memory the fragrance that lingers...

..

..my brother, Adnan..

...we were a sibling of three, sharing common parents, Aminah Sulong and Hamid Daud...Johan, 74 is the eldest and I am the youngest...in between there was Adnan...He must have been 71 when he died that day on the evening of a Thursday, 21st of March, 2013...

...we were on the way to town that fateful evening, my wife and I...and it was rather uncharacteristic of me to make that short trip...it was Thursday night, after all... a malam Jumaat....I would normally be at the mosque in Kampong Sungei, reading the Surah Yaasin in congregation after solat Magrib...but that evening I persuaded my wife to accompany me to town, for some arrands...and drop by Johan at Sri Kenangan Old Folks Home..he was strapped for cash...

...but fate took over as we neared Kubang Kerian....it was 6.30 in the evening...Lina, my second daughter called and told me about Adnan's death...I remember being numbed for a second and being disorientated for  a moment...my wife said something but I did not hear...I just drove around without an inkling as to where I was going...sometimes I wonder at which point, at which particular part of our lives that fate leaves us alone...for we are never in complete mastery of anything...we plan and propose...and God disposes...

..unlike most siblings, we did not grow up together...our father's untimely death in early 1945 left mother, Aminah, widowed with three sons..it was unsettling time, the Japanese Occupation nearing its end...the future was uncertain...and she was too young a mother to be without a husband...she must have struggled to survive..and so it was that Adnan was in Singapura, Johan in Tanah Merah and me everywhere...

..it was only later, in our adult years, did we get together....there were no childhood memories among us...we grew up apart and distance...but we were and are brothers, nonetheless..and that night as I read the Yaasin over him, I tried to control the tears that welled...forgive me, brother...May Allah grant you peace...and put you in one of His Edens...

..the legacy...

..events made these old man feels unsettled...even though Bachok is as serene and as peaceful as ever, pakmat cannot help but gives the scenery a second glance...even though he used to iterate that life is fragile, as also his health, as also his wealth, there was always this confidence that the next day will be a tomorrow...and ayam will wake me up at 5.30 am and I will be able to walk out of my house and pray in congregation to my god, buy nasi berlauk for breakfast, jog along Pantai Irama, fondle my cats, kiss and hug my grandchildren, admire the sunrise, take a drive to town and all those other things that I am used to do without worries and hardly a care in the world...without nary a thought to my safety..I have always been a peace loving man...and this is a peace loving country that I am in love with...and I like to think that when I am dead and gone, when others from my generation are dead and gone...and my children's children have children of their own, they would be able to do the same thing that their forefathers had done...and maybe more...and they will look back to their forefathers and thank them for this legacy...