Tracing My Ancestors :: Final Part

So I had so far traced up to my great great grandfather, Musa and his wife, known only as Limah from stories told by my grand-aunt, Sepiah. I wish even now that we Malays have family names -- it would make looking up lost relatives much easier, wouldn't it?

Hmmm... if I were to use my great great grandfather's name as a starting point and using the usual convention, everyone in the family would all be Musiyyis. Or we could all be bin-Musas which sounds better but going through airport checkpoints could be a bit of a bother though.

Anyway, I met Sheikh Zainal Abidin Awab, an old friend from Penang, when I was living and working in subang Jaya many years ago. Zainal was one of my colourful friends (more about him later in another posting) and our coffee-shop talk progressed from the good old times to communicating with genies.

Genies? Yep, not everone had access to the Internet or hi-tech investigative equipment in those days and genies had been frequently summoned to help out with missing persons, stolen property, remote diagnosis, etc.

That gave me an idea! I asked him, "How about tracking down ancestors?"

He went quiet for a while and answered, "Yes, it's possible. These invisible guys live for hundreds of years and I'm sure they would have access to records beyond our reach."

Wow! Who needs Google when you have genies at your service! So, on the following weekend at his house, we set out to do a little sniffing up the family tree with the help of our invisible legless Kojaks with Hare Krishna pony-tails.

A short disclamer: the following procedure was done by a trained professional, so don't try to do this at home.

Zainal used one of his fancy rings tied to a thread hung above a piece of paper on which we have drawn a table of Jawi characters. Then we configured the ring's swinging movement to indicate the multiple-choice answers -- up-down for "yes", left-right for "no" and no movement for "none of the above." It reminded me of the Spirit of the Coin stuff we did in school but I decided to go along with him since I asked.

Up to then, I had never told Zainal the name of my great great grandmother, Limah. As a test to verify the reliability of the information yet to be obtained then, I asked Zainal to do a search for her name first. He meditated for a while, and the suspended ring began to swing like crazy while I jotted down the letters. It spelled in Jawi: S-A-L-I-M-A-H!

Wow! All this while I thought, her full given name would probably be Halimah. Salimah sounded kinda modern, or even foreign for a woman who lived all her life in a kampung four generations before me. From my list, girls younger than her were using names like Sepiah and Kechik. She had a daughter-in-law (my great grandmother) named Kechik and her own daughters (my great grandaunts) were named Tossa and Mek Nah.

I prodded further: What's her last name? The ring swung into action again and spelled out: P-I-R-B-H-A-I. Tok Limah was actually Salimah Pirbhai, or if they had used Romanised characters in those days, it would possibly be spelled as Saleema Peerbhai! That figures, I thought.

Back to the ancestors: the enchanted ring swung more letters for me to spell. Before Musa, I got Abdullah, and before him, Abdul Rahman, both of them lived in Pattani, Southern Thailand. Abdul Rahman's father was called Faaik al-Jilani a.k.a. Qadi Badir from Sumatra, Indonesia.

"Al-Jilani? Does that mean he and/or his fore-fathers are from Jilan, Persia?" I asked Zainal.

"We'll soon find out," he replied, equally surprised.

So, back to the ring. Next name was Khair al-Anwar al-Jilani from Khurasan. Just as I thought we were really rolling, the ring stoppped. Zainal stopped. Now what?

"Let's go down for a cup of coffee and a cigarette," Zainal suggested. Intrigued, I just nodded and followed him downstairs to the living room. He asked his Thai wife to make us some coffee and I sat down waiting anxiously for an explanation.

After a sip of the hot coffee, Zainal said, "We were stopped. Entry denied."

Huh? First, a supernatural search engine operating on an out-of-this-world wide web, now we had stumbled on a spiritual firewall! I thought maybe we should just call it a day; after all I have had more than I asked for. With that three names, I already had a string of ancestors much longer than most people. But, who or what was stopping us from going further?

Apparently, according to Zainal, our 'courier' was stopped by a more powerful genie who was entrusted to guard anything that belonged to this mysterious ancestor, the father of Khair al-Anwar. That gave me an idea. I was determined to find out more, and with the right password we were going to hack our way through.

I told Zainal to try and connect to this guardian genie and ask for permission to enter. He said can try that but doubted if we would be allowed to pass. I asked him to try anyway. We finished our coffee, put out the cigarettes and scrambled to the upstairs room again.

He did it and we exchanged pleasantries; even found out the big guy's name -- Kassim. But he wouldn't disclose who he was working for. I told Zainal, "Ask him again, tell Kassim I am family!"

And Bingo! That was the abracadabra password and I waited for Zainal to narrate the information. According to Zainal, as told by Kassim the bouncer, his master was called Qushair who served the royal house of an Ottoman ruler. He didn't give any actual job description nor mentioned which Ottoman Emperor. Or how his son, Khair, ended up in the Persian border-town of Jilan.

Stunned by what we may call today as information overload, we ended the session and never bothered Kassim again. So I have it now:

YOURS TRULY bin OTHMAN bin HUSSAIN bin ALI bin MUSA bin ABDULLAH bin ABDUL RAHMAN bin FAAIK bin KHAIR AL-ANWAR bin QUSHAIR.

Maybe if I should start naming the whole clan as Qushairi now...

That encounter with Kassim made me wonder if I ever really have inherited the magic lamp. I sure could use another two wishes granted.

Marrying Time

We were in KL Saturday before last, attending SM Nordin's son's wedding. It rained but the afternoon was enjoyable; the food was great and there were some great company as we got to catch up with some of my old classmates.

We? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know some of you guys have been jabbing persistently about it in the tag-box. I hope you people are happy with the next papragraph.

I went there with Tiff and she was pretty excited about it because it was the first social function we attended as a couple. So excited that she went there wearing her headscarf the wrong way up. Luckily, the taxi driver missed a turn and that gave her ample time to do a quick-change act.

Back to the wedding. SM and wife, Rahimah, looked resplendant in their traditional dresses but I could sense a father's apprehension behind his face, then clean-shaven for the day, as it was the first wedding in the family. I could really relate to that as I have a grown-up son myself.

Later that day, we went to see my daughter, Dana, at Sogo where she worked as a salesgirl and wished her good luck as she was leaving for Kelantan that night to get her SPM results. Well, the girls haven't met one another before and Tiff needed to get some casual clothes anyway. (Dana obtained 8 A's as we found out the following day.)

After dinner, we went to watch my son, Reza, perform at the Curve, One Utama. Couldn't hear a word he said (or sang) but we sat through the whole gig. As I sat there watching him on stage, my own apprehension just faded away in sighs of relief. Rock singers are simply not the marrying kind, are they? There's no wedding, no daughter-in-law, in the works -- not just yet. I hope.

Except my own?
p.s.
Do come back and I'll tell you about the "we/us" stuff.
I think it's about time I do that.

What a Way to Go...

Just got to tell you all about this. You know that I work on that part of town bordering the seedier old town where interesting things happen. Things that would never be even mentioned on the "more respectable" side of the town.

Yesterday, the usually boring atmosphere of Fatimah Cafe became charged with mixed feelings. And old man died while enjoying the services of a sex worker in a rented room above a Chinese coffee-shop. The kopitiam has several middle-aged women offering cheap services and is usually patronised by lonely local labourers and foreign workers from Nepal, Bangladesh, etc.

Almost everyone in the neighbourhood flocked to the shop to see who the poor guy was when his body was taken into the ambulance. Of course, his female partner was nowhere to be seen; it would have been bad for business. Toh-pooi, the lady who supplies Chinese Viagras to hopeful old men in the area came back quite relieved because the dead man was not one of her customers.

The Ma-piao guy (he sells four digit betting results) came back very excited, shouting "K*ngk*k sampai mati!" and started to distribute the appropriate number to anyone interested on the street. I think it was 1022 or something. (The punters had compiled numeric equivalents to objects and situations for betting. "K*ngk*k sampai mati!" means "to copulate until death!")

Well, the number came out for the minor prizes but it was re-arranged. Maybe they did not take into account of the position of the couple at the time of the incident. There will be red faces at the funeral today but I hope the old man died smiling.