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.