Introducing my siblings

Ahmad Taufik as a child

This photo was taken in 1959 when I was in form 2 at Methodist Girls School, Malacca

When my father passed away 2 days after I returned from US, before his burial, I remember my whole body turned jelly and I crumbled down crying. I felty my body disintegrate into nothing, I was in the dark. I heard voices consoling me but that was far awayyyyyy. Then I underdstood what grief is, what loss of one you love means and what pain of regret is.... It happened a long time ago but the memory was still fresh in my mind even though my grief was over a long time ago.

This is how I understood what my mother went through when my eldest brother, Ahmad Taufik Abdul Rahman, passed away in 1962. I was young and self-centred. I was sitting for my Senior Cambridge Examination that year. I didn't understand why my mother suffered so much. After all he was dead, wasn't he? When he was proclaimed dead, I saw my mother lost her consciousness at the steps of our old house in Tg. Kling. She just returned from finding a cure for him. She went to see a bomoh to get some air jampi for her first born, hoping he would be cured. That was mother's love, who never gave up hope that her child would be OK. You see, my brother died of brain tumour. My mother suffered depression and grief after that and nobody understood her. She suffered alone. Thank God, she had 9 other children which helped her to recover.

At that time medical knowledge and expertise were not easily available in Malaysian hospitals. A year before he died, he has undergone surgery to remove the tumour In Kuala Lumpur general Hospital. It was fortunate at the time he was hospitalised, a foreign visiting specialist was there and immediately diagnosed and operated on him. After a successful operation he was brought back to Malacca Hospital. To my mother's delight, for a while he was OK, then the relapse started. She tried so many different ways to find a cure him. You just had to say that some bomoh or dukun can help cure him, she would take all effort to find the person. Now, having children of my own I understood fully what mother's love is.

As her first born, I know my mother had special love for him. My brother, Taufik, was a loving son but I remember he also caused some heartaches. I didn't remember much about him actually. I remember him as a brother who loved to go to the nearby forest reserve at Sungai Udang looking for pucuk cemperai. I loved pucuk cemperai, cooked in coconut milk - can't find it anymore now. He also showed strange behaviour, not knowing he was sick. One vivid memory in my mind was because of his strange behaviour, he was scolded by my parents. He was hurt and disappeared from the house. When night came, my parents were in panick looking for him. Together with the neighbours, they combed the seaside which is near my house, fearing the worst. My mother cried her heart out and kept calling 'Topek...Topek... where are you?' Then, to everyone's surprise, we heard a distant ' Yeeeeee ' way up on a tree near my house. My brother expressed his hurt by climbing up that tree, hiding and crying silently.

He worked in Johor Bahru for a while and stayed with my oldest sister, Zawiyah. Then he moved to Segamat, working in a rubber estate where he met his wife, Kak Timah. They married on April 20, 1960. I have lost touch with her as she remarried not long after my brother passed away. They had no children. I remember him as a loving brother who cared for my study and always checked and asked what I was studying when I was at the study table. He used to cycle around the village, peeping at girls and sometimes became inbalanced and fell down. The villagers thought he was mad. He staggered when he walked and they thought he was drunk. They talked bad about him which angered me. I became his tounge-slashing defender. The villagers feared my tounge more than my parents. When he was diagnosed sick, then everyone understood and stopped persecuting him.

This old photo showed my deceased brother, Ahmad Taufik as a young child (left). Right is my second brother, Ahmad Saifuddin with oldest sister, Zawiyah, holding third brother, Ahmad Fuad.

That's my oldest brother. May Allah cucuri rahmat ke atas rohnya. Alfatihah.