EXTRACT FROM MY BOOK A JOURNEY THROUGH PROSE AND POETRY, DBP/IIUM PRESS, 2018.

 On issues in my poetry and short stories,

I joined the literary circle in the  seventies  and met great writers like Usman Awang and Kassim Ahmad who spoke about poets being  the voice of society. They were my idols  and I wrote poems on poverty and suffering of farmers and fishermen. In one of earliest published poem entitled Rebolusi (Revolution) I questioned  why are we not prospering  in agriculture while it rain all the year round and when our soil is fertile and not barren like the Sahara Desert.  These questions were asked in my early poems mostly published in  the first collection of poetry, entitled Sesayup Jalan (The Long Road).  In a poem entitled  “Pelukis, Aku dan Pantai” (The Painter, Me And The Beach”  first published in Berita Minggu 1969, I  recorded my observation of the poor fishermen selling their catch to the middlemen after hours and even days of risking their life in the open sea, in the unpredictable weather.

 Poets are often labelled as nature lovers as they speak against pollution, environmentally damaging projects and the depletion of water sources. I have written quite a number of poems on this issue. An example is The Klang River  and The Flash Flood both published in 1994. The Klang River is about the river being rubbish dumping place of the people of Kuala Lumpur.

 THE FLASH FLOOD

“Kuala lumpur,

you are born out of our mating

But you grow out of hand,

 

The burden of your growth

Lay heavy on our body

 

Are you forgetting us, your parents

As we bear the city’s waste

Quiet and patient

Only after a heavy rain

We rise up

To demand attention”

 

THE KLANG RIVER

The Klang River is trapped in rubbish stack

It has lost its track under crowded shacks

The water brushing the floor

A spread on the squatters bed

As they lay their tired head

Until they come to shatter his dream

With a campaign to keep the city clean.

Newer poems portraying more current issues are included in my collection, Cerita dalam Cerita (The Inside Story), ITBM 2014. There are 62 poems in the book grouped under two subtittles.  The first is  Cerita Rumah kita  (The Tale of Our Home). They are poems on Malaysian life and of things that happen everyday, told in simple words and simple story telling.

The importance is in the  word Home. Home is the place of our own. Home is associated with everything that belong to us including  the land and traditions of our inheritance.  This is our homeland. But coming down to earth, our utmost worry and prime concern is that  more and more of our people cannot afford to own a house. The price of houses are soaring high beyond the reach of our race. Can we build a home without a house? Trees are being felled, hills are being flattened , lands became barren, houses and condominiums are being built but they do not reach the house hungers for the speculators will come first to grab the units  to sell them later for a higher profit. They are called property players. They are playing properties and  playing with our future and the future of all  human beings. Without a home, our people would not have a  place to bring up their children into proper citizens. So I cried out to those in power to act wisely and sincerely  to save our people and the future of our generations. They should be responsible. We have   elected them  to take care of us and to safeguard this land of our ancestors. If they do not use their power wisely we could become a homeless  race. (Cerita Dalam Cerita,2014: 3,4).

The rift between the Malays  is another grief of the heart as we are torn apart.  A poem out of this grief is “Penjual CD” (The CD seller). Cerita Dalam Cerita,2014: 46). The simple, unpoetic tittle carries an ordinary story of Karim who sold pirated song  compact discs to earn some money as he did not have a fixed income. His earning  was disrupted when Ah Seng, the master minder stopped copying and printing cds  for fear of copyright enforcement. Karim who did not understand much about  intellectual property, loss a mean of getting money and was bitter with the authority.  But lately Karim gained a new opportunity  with the activity of the opposition leaders making speeches slandering those in power. The opposition leaders are eloquent and humorous as they unveiled what they called  evil activities of those running the country and deceiving the people.  The compact disks  emerged as a new entertainment in Malaysian life. Karim was happy as he could  buy  rice for his family and milk for his baby. He would not understand if you tell him that he is actually an agent  that  expedite the breaking apart of his race.

 SHORT STORY AND NOVEL.

Besides poetry I also write short stories and a novel touching on women issues. Most of them evolved around my personal experience particularly the obstacles in pursuing my ambition of becoming a good writer. I have written about the customary and domestic obligations, the burdens of child bearing and rearing that suppressed  artistic talents. I  have had the experience of having to stay home with my little toddlers, during which period it was impossible to produce anything of literary standard. Later, when I managed to break away, I summed up those depressing situations in a short story entitled Catatan Di Meja Makan (Writing on the Dining Table), first published in 1983 in our national newspaper, Berita Minggu. The protagonist in the short story,  Hamima, was an upcoming short story writer who left her job to look after her small children. She became desperate when the routines of a housewife took her away from her writing, and from herself. When Hamima had no choice but to take an resign from her job, she thought she could manage her time. She planned her schedule properly. She tried to allocate time for the various tasks of a housewife, working the hours and minutes needed for cooking, sweeping, ironing, washing plates, tidying up the kitchen so that she  could have some time left for her writing. She was determined not to lose her footing in the field of writing or to  die off like  many women writers before.  

Hamima found out later that there is no such thing as time tabling in a housewife job because it is full of the unexpected. There was no way of telling when the child would get sick, at what time he was going to slip and fall, or when anyone would smear tomato sauce on the floor. She felt empty and depressed for not being able to write. She envied the men because it is so easy for them to do anything. For instance, a male writer could sit at the table with his books for as long as he wanted to.

She read about a male novelist  who was a big name. He said he was lucky to have such an understanding wife who help to keep their children away from his writing table. Can a woman writer have the same privilege?  What would happen to the children if she locked herself up in the room to write? The children would cry for her. They demanded attention and disturbed her even climbed on her writing table.  They have been disturbing her even when she was hungry and needed to eat, and even when she was sick and could not lift up her head.

The short story is an example of how personal experiences are put to literature. The protagonist,  was an image of myself and other women writers struggling to steal sometime to be ourselves.  It  expressed  my  own desperation in a life that offered no sense of satisfaction or purpose. Those were the times when I considered myself a failed poet and a failed person. During the period, I almost could not hold a pen,  partly due to the fatigue of household chores and attending to small children’s constant needs, and the fatigue of suppressed anger and dissatisfaction. I lost contact with the world and the contact with my own being.

I was also disturbed by the fact that women were usually isolated from their surrounding.  They were usually confined to domestic affairs. A short story entitled Seperti Ibu (To Be Like Her Mother) relates how a village girl, Tijah, was brought up to help her mother and to become just like her mother. She got up in the morning and followed the routines set for her. She looked after the younger siblings and was responsible for everything that happened at home while her mother worked in the padi field. Tijah sometimes questioned why her elder brother Ahmad did not have to do anything, and why their parents did not treat their sons and daughters equally.

How lucky to be Ahmad. He is older but need not wash plates. Ahmad need not carry the younger siblings. Ahmad can play as he likes and can go anywhere he likes. Ahmad will not be scolded if the house is messy and dirty. Tijah will be blamed for anything wrong or not to expectations.  Mother always nagged at her and mother said all is done for her own good because Tijah is a girl. Tijah will one day get married. She will be a wife and a mother with a house and children to look after.”

Tijah observed that whenever the people from the government office came to give a talk at the open space near the village headman’s house, her father would go with the men folks to listen to them. She envied Ahmad because he was free to follow them. But her mother and the other women never go since they had so much to do at home. 

            There are other short stories  that touch on obedience and submission as the symbol of decency, dignity and womanliness . A common stereotype phrase dedicated to women is “No matter how  highly educated you are,  a woman’s place is in the kitchen”. This almost discourage women to pursue further studies. Mothers and grandmothers advise their girls to marry young. The  elderly ladies  are worried of their daughters not being able to find a husband which mean they will have no children and no one to take care of them in later life. Somehow they manage to instil fear and unnecessary worry among the girls causing some of them to forgo further studies and career opportunities for the sake of settling down. I depicted this   in several short stories including “Anita”.  Anita was a brilliant and beautiful girl. While studying in the university she was active in community work including helping to teach voluntarily Malay students who were weak in Mathematics and Science especially in the rural areas.   She was too occupied in student activities to take up serious relationship with the opposite sex. Furthermore boys prefer quiet and low profile girls for their potential wives. Anita graduated to become  a school teacher, determined to do her best to help the students and to help the society. She organized programmes and asked for commitments from her fellow teachers. But Anita became a victim of prejudice and misunderstanding and even rumoured of trying to steal somebody’s husband. This happen because Anita was still unmarried even though she was close to thirty.

Beside the short stories quoted above, there are more stories on the problems of being a woman, and the problems of being a woman and a writer. Siti Hawa Dan Pengembara Yang Singgah (Siti Hawa and the Traveler Who Stop By) is about a student and a promising poet named Siti Hawa having a  relationship with Andy, a visiting lecturer who is himself a poet and a literary critique. Andy assured Hawa of her talent and encouraged her to pursue her artistic aspirations. To be a successful writer, she should travel and see the world and break away from social and cultural bondage. Hawa finally decided against it because she could not leave behind a beloved and sickly mother.