Nothing Wrong With Me...

When I meet Malaysians for the first time, one of the first questions I tend to get asked, apart from “what football team do you follow?” is: “Do You Have Any Children”?

This is a somewhat awkward question for me because, for various reasons, I have not yet been blessed with children. However, I have a trump card, in the form of my devilishly handsome stepson, who is named Sanul, or Sunny. So I simply proclaim to my new acquaintances, very proudly, “I have one son. His name is Sunny. He has just graduated from International Islamic University!” So there!

Nevertheless, I have met some locals, especially men, for whom this answer is just not good enough. Some men I have encountered think it of almost mystical strangeness that a man should have anything less than 10 children. Some will bring their sights down to three or four, maybe five. But only one? That’s not right. That’s not natural!

So, on more than one occasion in the coffee shop, mosque or formal function at work, when I tell a male stranger who asks that I have a son, and only one son, I have been treated as if there is something wrong with me. Very politely of course! I have, more times than I can mention, been recommended, with an absolutely straight face, to purchase various natural herbs and drinks and lotions that will put fire in my belly, oil in my loins, and bullets in my rifle. And equally politely, I always nod my head and smile, trying not to show my total embarrassment and sheer anger at having strangers raise the subject of my “masculine health” in this way.

Frankly, it’s nobody’s bloody business whether or not I have one child, no child or twenty! As things stand, I am perfectly happy being a stepfather to my son Sunny. When I married Annie ten years ago, I was aware that she was previously married, and had a son who was then about 13. I didn’t care. I accepted him, and he accepted me. He called me Dad, and I wept for joy, because I felt such unexpected honour at being called Dad by a young man I had hardly met.

Perhaps the main reason why I accepted my stepson is because I in turn am also a stepson. My mother met my stepfather when I was seven. At first, my stepfather didn’t like me very much, and thought I was soft and stupid. But I showed him just how damned soft and stupid I was by getting four degrees, one of them with a Doctor title. Now, of course, my stepfather and I get on like old friends, especially since I met Annie, who insisted I call my stepfather Dad, instead of just John.

So you see, I didn’t want to do to Sunny what my stepfather did to me at first. To me, Sunny is my son, though he looks nothing at all like me and is tall and slim and handsome and dark, unlike me.

So the moral of this little tale is simple. You should love your children, even if they are not formed of your own flesh and blood. You should cherish them, and treat them as your own, regardless of their biological origin. Ultimately, parenthood is about love, and caring and guidance. It is a social and psychological bond which is just as strong as blood. Your children can be of the same blood as you, but if the bond of love and care is absent, then what is there left?

In my case, my real father, despite being of my blood, is just a faded photograph and a name to me. Even the photograph shows him standing a long way from the camera, a tall, slim man with dark hair and an indistinct face. I never had any loving social bond with him, of any kind. He never looked after me, shaped me, saw me through my early years, guided me through university, or bought me a pint in the pub when I turned eighteen!

So I feel some sense of satisfaction now that I have managed to be there for my own “ready-made son”. I have at least helped him through school and university, often sorted him out financially (Oh! The Pain!!) and next month, Annie and I will be going to his graduation in Kuala Lumpur.

And it’ll be Mum, Dad and Son, together against the world. And nobody is going to convince me that there is anything wrong with me again!!

How Fragile We Are...

The Malaysian state of Sabah is one of the most beautiful and diverse places in Malaysia. It has miles of sandy beaches surrounded by crystal clear blue seas, it boasts the greatest mountain in South East Asia, and is home to some breathtaking animal and plant life. There are orang-utans. There are giant flowers. There are pygmy elephants.

Sadly, I didn’t get to appreciate much of this splendour during my most recent trip to Sabah last week. The reason is that I went to Sabah not to enjoy myself, but to receive yet another painful lesson in just how fragile we human beings are, and how pathetic are our attempts to plan the future. I went to Sabah to attend a funeral.

Barely more than a week after returning from our Spanish odyssey, Annie and I received very bad news from the Malaysian Peninsular. My wife’s eldest brother and his wife called saying that their daughter Dina was seriously ill in the Intensive Care Unit, with suspected dengue fever. Over the next couple of days, the news got more urgent, and more grim, until on Monday morning we received the sad news that Dina had succumbed in the night. She was 29, and only married hardly more than a year.

This sparked a rapidly arranged trip to Tawau, and emergency leave to be applied for on the fly. The dead girl’s body was being flown home to be buried alongside other members of Annie’s extended family, including Dina’s younger sister Cynthia, who had passed away in similar circumstances less than two years ago.

As per Islamic tradition, we had to be present at the funeral, which takes seven days, each day marked by family gatherings and kenduri (prayers followed by a communal feast) in the evenings. We were there for only five days, as we had to get back for work. It was a very emotionally charged time, especially for my wife, who loves her family so much, despite those frequent disagreements between siblings that an only child like me can merely stand back and marvel at.

The images of two people remain in my mind a week after the events. Firstly, there is the father of the dead girl, Annie’s eldest brother Mohammad Hassan (Kak Mad), a retired plantation personnel manager. Kak Mad was obviously fighting hard to retain self control despite his loss, sitting next to me talking politics and oil palm profits with a perpetual cigarette in one hand, mobile phone in another. In situations like this, I don’t really know what to do, or say, so I find it is best to listen, and not to be patronising by saying stupid things like “don’t worry, she is happy where she is now” etc.

However, after one of the kenduris, Kak Mad commented that God must have loved his dead daughters more than he did. What do you say when someone says this sort of thing? All I could do was to console him with Oscar Wilde’s famous aphorism that “those whom the gods love, grow young”. I hope that helped...

Secondly, I felt most for the young husband, who has just been bereaved of his wife. His name was Din, and he was a good-looking young Malay in his twenties or early thirties, wearing t-shirt and sarong, trying and mostly failing to stop himself from weeping. His countenance was constantly vacillating from a pleasant smile to the waxiness of anguished loss. All I can say is that if it were my fate to stand in his place, I don’t think I would have been able to stand and smile and play with the little kids as much as he did. He was a hero, a worthy champion for a lost maiden.

All this death and its consequences made me ruminate on the fragility and ultimate pointlessness of human existence, yet the absolute value of the life we have. It made me grateful that my dear wife is still with me and is getting better after her year of cancer, and it made me think hard about my own health issues, and about the simple, blank and unarguable fact that some day, all of us will cease to be. It might be something as small as a dengue mosquito, as fast as a speeding truck, or as big as a tsunami, but whatever form death takes, it will come.

I will end by quoting from the Holy Qur’an, Ya Sin, the verse which is normally read aloud at Muslim funerals:

“Verily, when He intends a thing, His command is ‘be’ and it is! So glory to Him in Whose hands is the dominion of all things: and to Him will ye be all brought back”.