Every Day a Thread

By Bismillah Kader

At just 17, Bismillah made an audacious choice to marry a young Englishman, defying her traditional Muslim family and father’s guidance. Yearning to pursue studies, she embarked on an extraordinary journey spanning turbulent historic events. From surviving World War II Japanese occupation in Malaya to overcoming 1960’s British racial discrimination in Birmingham, Bismillah weathered profound challenges that shaped her unlikely destiny.

With poignant insight, she reveals the outsized influence families wield upon access to education and life chances. Through grit and grace, Bismillah surmounted societal barriers to become an education inspector in England, later hoping to contribute to Malaysia’s education initiatives, Bismillah returned to Malaysia to face unexpected challenges.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jun 21, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035822935

Bismillah Kader

Bismillah Kader was born in Penang, Malaya, in 1943. She grew up in a traditional Muslim family in Malaya. When Bismillah was seventeen, she married a young Englishman. She describes her experiences of family, social and cultural issues in Birmingham, UK, in the 1960s. Bismillah studied at Birmingham University. She taught in further education colleges and was a full-time inspector of education for the Further Education Funding Council, England. After retirement, Bismillah set up an IT company and a teacher education college in Malaysia. Bismillah lives in the UK and continues to contribute to promote opportunities for education.

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About the author

Bismillah Kader was born in Penang, Malaya, in 1943. She grew up in a traditional Muslim family in Malaya. When Bismillah was seventeen, she married a young Englishman. She describes her experiences of family, social and cultural issues in Birmingham, UK, in the 1960s. Bismillah studied at Birmingham University. She taught in further education colleges and was a full-time inspector of education for the Further Education Funding Council, England. After retirement, Bismillah set up an IT company and a teacher education college in Malaysia. Bismillah lives in the UK and continues to contribute to promote opportunities for education.

Dedication

For my children Mark and Yasmin and grandchildren, Tom, Delphi and Troy.

Copyright Information ©

Bismillah Kader 2024

The right of Bismillah Kader to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035822928 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035822935 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

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Canary Wharf

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E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

My grateful thanks to my husband, David Toeman, and my sister-in-law, Kathleen Coyle, for their support, encouragement and for reading and commenting on my drafts. I have taken their advice for the most part, but any remaining mistakes and errors are all mine.

Summary

A 17-year-old Muslim girl from a traditional family, against her father’s advice, married a young Englishman. She wanted to study. Bismillah describes family life in Malaya and in Birmingham, UK, in the 1960s, her struggle to continue her studies, to get jobs and successes. Against all odds, Bismillah became a government inspector of education in England. Hoping to contribute to Malaysia’s education initiatives, Bismillah returned to Malaysia to face unexpected challenges.

Quotation

We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honour, as though the maker and moulder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul’s judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine. (Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man)

Preface

I never expected to have the luxury of time and resources to write my story. People like me, who were from humble beginnings, rarely write their stories. I was preoccupied with domestic chores, work, business enterprises and daily physical exercises to keep fit. I was brought up to be a Muslim gentlewoman: obedient, pious, charitable, respectable and respectful. Having a career, being independent, forming your own views, which were different from the given texts, and writing your views about people and events were not part of the desired qualities of a Muslim woman. Few Muslim women are cited for their wisdom. Fewer still, speak publicly about their experiences. When they do, those who speak against repressive ideologies and practices are vilified.

On a morning walk one day, I met Mona who invited me to join her reading group. Even on her morning walk, Mona was in a hijab. She had a mobile phone and a string of prayer beads in her hands. My first inclination was to give a polite excuse and decline. On that morning, I could not think of an excuse to give to Mona. Mona said that her reading group met on Saturday mornings at her house, which was just a walk from my apartment. I was curious. In Mecca and Medina, Arab women, especially those from Saudi Arabia, were unfriendly and uncommunicative. Mona, from Yemen, was different. Mona took my hands in hers and we agreed to meet.

I was free on the Saturday following the invitation. I did not know what to expect. I knocked on her door and Mona answered, dressed as though she was going to a dinner party. Her hair was loose and long and brushed in locks that hung over her shoulders. Her dress revealed rather a lot of cleavage. I realised that I had not seen her hair or her neck and bare shoulders before.

She looked beautiful in her shimmering, low-cut dress. Then I noticed the other women. It was like walking into an Arabian Nights picture book of a harem. About a dozen lovely women were seated on low sofas and easy chairs, as in a saloon. They all came to greet me with hugs and kisses. Then they settled back to listen to Mona’s reading. It was Mona’s turn to read and lead the discussion. Every woman was eager to know how to be a better woman.

They had read and discussed the words of several gurus, mostly of American motivators, translated into Arabic, on how to ‘be’. That Saturday Mona was reading a chapter from Wayne Dyer’s, Your Erroneous Zones. There were no men in the house. Mona’s husband had dutifully left the house to attend to his work early, so as to allow the women to have freedom to move around without their hijabs. When Mona’s teenage son, Habib, was ready to come down for his breakfast he called down to Mona to announce that he was coming down. This was a signal to the women that a male was going to be present. The women shielded their hair, necks and shoulders in polite response from the young male in the household.

I was surprised to hear their easy admissions and confessions of weaknesses. They hung on every word in Wayne Dyer’s book, which was read to them in Arabic and translated to English for my benefit. They did not question any of it. I realised that there was a well-established habit of reading and believing in the written word. My own experience was different. I was encouraged to think for myself and to see things from a variety of perspectives. And I had learned to distrust good talkers and fancy words.

I contributed to the discussion by encouraging the women to consider the advice of the gurus from different points of view of Muslim women from a variety of cultures and ethnic groups. There were always additional or alternative ways of seeing, which I shared with the group. There were also different ways of applying Wayne Dyer’s advice, and the advice of the gurus, to their personal situation. I used insights from my Muslim upbringing and black woman’s experience.

The discussions grew lively. They shared emotions and experiences of Muslim women being married at twelve years of age; still a child in my view, to twenty-something year old men; of being teenage mothers, of betrayal, of sharing their men with other women, of hiding their intelligence and most of all of the strong Muslim sisterhood, which I felt was cloaked and protected under their dark hijabs. These women appeared to trust only the love of their fathers and sons. I felt the urge to explore my feelings and thoughts. I decided to write my story.

Once I started, I could not stop. The whole of the first part of my life from infant to retirement was drafted in three months. The words poured out of me. I worked every evening. I did not stay up nights writing. I stopped to rest and think.

I searched my thoughts. I read and re-read my words to make sure I was fair to the people I was writing about. This story is from my perspective, my interpretations and my feelings. Writing my story has been enjoyable. I hope readers find something of interest.

‘Every day a thread, in the end a fabric’ is a Malay proverb or peribahasa—Sehari selembar benang, lama-lama menjadi kain. I chose the title because it expresses best my mind-fullness of the power I had to shape my own destiny, to weave my fabric of life.

Chapter 1

Barrack Road

I was born at 41 Barrack Road, in the British Settlement of Penang, in 1943, during the Japanese occupation of Malaya. The house was part of a barrack built by the British, a type of housing characterised by extreme plainness or dreary uniformity.

Number forty-one was in a row of terraced units built on concrete stilts. There was a short flight of steps leading to the veranda, which had a door leading to a hall. Off the hall were two bedrooms and a small sitting and dining area. Another flight of steps took us down to a kitchen and wash area. There was a sink and a space for placing a stove in the kitchen.

In the wash area, there was a concrete tub filled with water with an outlet stopped with a cork for draining and a tap for re-filling the tub. There was a stand-alone toilet. There was a partial flat roof over the kitchen, wash area and toilet. We bathed with water from the tub replenished by piped water from the tap. A large back gate closed-in the whole of the downstairs. Our gate opened on to a back street. The British built barracks for their military staff and later these barracks provided housing for junior civil servants. My father was a ‘Tuan Dressar’¹ when I was born; he worked at the Penang General Hospital. He went to work in white drills, as the British required their local civil servants to wear. Barrack Road led to Hospital Road and also Jail Road. One way led to the Penang hospital and the other to Penang prison.

I was born during the Japanese occupation of Malaya. When I was born my father was away. He was travelling with the Japanese to provide medical supplies and treatment for prisoners working on the Burma–Siam Railway. The Burma–Siam Railway, also known as the Death Railway, was a 415-kilometre or 258-mile, railway between Ban Pong, Siam, and Thanbyuzayat, Burma, built by the Japanese in 1943 to support their forces in the Burma campaign of World War II. In the initial stages of the construction of the railway, Burmese and Siamese workers were used.

The Japanese advertised for workers in Malaya, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies, promising good wages, short contracts, and housing for families but they failed to attract sufficient workers so they rounded up workers from their work place and sent them to Siam. The Penang General Hospital was taken over by the Japanese administration. My father was among some medical workers at the hospital who were assigned to work in Siam. Approximately 75,000 Malayans worked on the railroad. The railroad was completed in December 1943, a month after I was born. My father returned when I was a few months old.

I am the tenth child in a family of fourteen. My father was 40 and my mother was 27 when I was born. I joined a crowd of four sisters and five brothers. I grew up never experiencing the hush of an empty room. I grew up thinking that the world was made up of the British, or the Orang Puteh, Whites, Malays, Chinese and Indians. Our family did not fit into any of the ‘races’ that the British assigned. However, race was not an issue in my family. My second sister had on her birth certificate ‘Bengali’ for race. Mother’s brother, Muhammed Islam, registered her birth and my uncle considered himself to be a ‘Bengali’. Another of my sisters had ‘Chinese’ on her birth certificate in the section requiring the race of the baby’s father. This odd entry was because my father was too busy to register the new baby and had asked his assistant, Chok Sam, to register my sister. The registrar saw that Chok Sam was Chinese and assumed it was his daughter.

My father spoke Tamil, his mother tongue, and his spoken Malay language had a Tamil structure. Father would be classed as Indian or Indian Muslim. Mother spoke Malay like a native. Mother’s family language was Urdu and she communicated in Urdu with her father and siblings. My mother’s mother, our Nani, was Malay. She spoke Malay and communicated in Malay with my mother and her siblings. We call our mother ’Mak.

I asked my mother one day, "’Mak, Kita orang apa ’Mak?" (What kind of people are we, mother?).

Jawi-Peranakan, mother replied without a pause.

The Jawi-Peranakans or Jawi-Pekans were children from Arab-Malay and South Asian-Malay marriages. The Jawi-Pekan of Penang maintained their mixed and distinct identity in formal expressions of art, in music and architecture and in their everyday life, in their cuisine, clothing and jewellery. They chose their marriage partners based on status, wealth and healthy genealogy not on caste or race. They placed a strong emphasis on education and were conservative in their political allegiance. They were pro-British during the Colonial government and many held government jobs.

The Jawi-Peranakans were enterprising and progressive and not showy in their consumption. They emphasised hard work, discipline, frugality, good intent and trustworthiness. Like Weber’s Protestants², who through their enterprise and frugal living represented the spirit of capitalism, the Jawi-Peranakans accumulated considerable wealth and status and contributed to Malaya’s economy as merchants and landlords.

The first Malay language newspaper, ‘The Jawi-Peranakan’ was financed by a group of Jawi-Peranakans. It was written in Jawi script and made its first appearance in Singapore in 1876. Until his death in 1888, Munsyi Mohamed Said Bin Dada Mohiddin was its editor. Dada Mohiddin was like my father, a South Indian Muslim. The names Munsyi Mohamed and Dada Mohiddin were household names in our family. ‘The Jawi-Peranakan’ published social events, government notifications, advertisements, letters from readers and the weather.

After Munsyi’s death, the paper struggled to be published. It finally floundered in 1895 but not before making a significant contribution to the preservation and development of the Malay language and the intellectual growth of the Malay-speaking people of Singapore and Malaya.

The lack of clarity of our ‘race’ gave us the freedom to choose. It gave us the flexibility to locate ourselves within boundaries of race and nationality. When we were young, we could bring whomever we liked to our home. When we were older, my parents were open to admit sons-in-law and daughters-in-law from all groups. I was brought up in a family which had not experienced racial or cultural prejudice.

I was a curious child and enjoyed my father’s attention because I learned fast how to please him. My father encouraged us to speak up and to speak in full sentences. None of us had soothers when we were babies. Father thought soothers ’puting’ in Malay, stopped a child from speaking and listening well and spoiled the shape of a child’s mouth and teeth. Father had little patience with shyness. I was always ready to show our father, ’Ba, what I had learned and was not shy to demonstrate when called upon to perform for guests. At an early age I was on a cycle of being rewarded by attention for good behaviour and for being a fast learner. I needed little else to love learning and performing.

After the return of the British administration in Malaya, ’Ba was promoted to the position of Hospital Assistant and was given responsibility for heading the General Hospital in Balik Pulau. We moved from Barrack Road, in George Town to Balik Pulau Hospital Quarters when I was four in 1947. Balik Pulau is a small town on the southwest part of Penang Island. Families of smallholders grew rubber, tropical fruit, spices and rice in the villages surrounding Balik Pulau.

---

Malaysians born during the British administration are familiar with the term ‘Tuan Dressar’. The British introduced the profession, ‘dresser’ in Penang in 1823. During the colonial days people appointed to this profession were called ‘Sub-assistant Surgeon’, which refers to the person who assists the surgeon in dressing up surgical wounds. The Malay community turned ‘dresser’ to ‘Tuan dressar’. The position doesn’t exist anymore.↩︎

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Unwin Paperbacks, 1985.↩︎

Chapter 2

Balik Pulau

My sister Aisha and I rode in the lorry that carried our furniture. Aisha is two years older than me. We did most things together until we left school. The house in Balik Pulau was large. It was old. It had seen better times but for me it was the grandest house I had seen. There were two large stone pillars at the entrance to the drive. At one time these pillars must have had grand iron gates hinged on them that could close, to keep unwanted guests out. Now they were worn stone pillars marking the entrance to the drive.

The drive was made from the original material of the land surface, known as sub-grade material or gravel. It probably had a tarred surface in pre-war colonial days and during the war for official and army vehicles when the house was used as an administrative centre. Now, except for a hard red earth path and some gravel in the middle, like a dirt road suitable for vehicles and for pedestrians, the rest was loose sand. As children this was the biggest sand pit you could want. We made mud pies and dried them in the sun.

There was a small lawn at the front of the house. On the lawn were a mango tree and a mature gardenia bush and some hibiscus bushes in neat arrangement near to the entrance. The mango tree and bushes hid us from the passers-by on the road in front and from inmates and outpatients of the hospital that was directly across the road from the house. It took ’Ba less than two minutes to walk from our steps to the hospital steps. On this small lawn there was also a large rectangular granite slab on granite stands, for a table. Around the table were six individual granite stools. The table was the first item that excited me as I could stand on it and jump to the soft lawn below. This spot became Mother’s favourite place in the evenings as she waited for ’Ba to come home.

There were two other lawns, one on each side of the house. On the right lawn was a huge tamarind tree. Two of us could hide behind its trunk without being seen. The tamarind tree must have been nearly a hundred years old when we moved there in 1947. It was full of fruit. The fruit were green and the size of my little finger when it first emerged from the tamarind flowers.

The fruit would grow to have a brown and brittle hard shell the size of a broad bean pod in three or four months. Every year we had a full harvest of tamarind. Beyond the tamarind tree, there was a small henna bush and a few coconut and areca-nut palms. A little distance away on the same lawn was a durian tree, the only one, and two fan-palm trees. The pair of fan-palms marked the beginning of the lawn, separating the lawn from the sand and gravel drive.

A well-trimmed privet hedge, six-foot high, hid the kitchen area and what were once the servants’ quarters, from previous colonial families enjoying a picnic on the lawn. During one of his trips home from boarding school, third brother Abdulrashid, pole-vaulted the privet hedge using our clothes’ prop for a pole. From a short run in the yard in the kitchen area, Abdulrashid cleared the privet hedge and landed on the lawn. I was most impressed. Abdulrashid could skip with a rope, making triple-turns ending with a twist, roller-skate round the tightest of corners and do repeats of pull-ups and chin-ups from the beam in the main hall. Third brother Abdulrashid was the most fitness-conscious person in the family.

Towards the front of the lawn there was a cluster of banana trees and a large Syzygium jambos or Jambu Mawar in Malay. There was a flagpole with a Union Jack, bright, colourful, red, white and blue. Nadesen, the hospital quarters’ gardener lowered the flag at sunset and raised it every morning. Nadesen kept the lawns trimmed, green and lush; he scythed the fourteen to fifteen thousand square-feet of lawns regularly. I used to watch him swing the scythe expertly.

Every now and then he would stop, run his right forefinger across his forehead from left to right and a neat stream of sweat would drop on the grass. Nadesen was lean, strong, brown and shiny. His teeth were red with the areca nut and betel leaf he chewed. I watched in admiration when Nadesen put his forefinger and middle finger to his lips and shot a neat jet of red spit on the cut grass. Aisha and I would try to do the same with water. We measured our attempts on the dry sand.

The left lawn had a guava tree, a quinine tree, a rokam tree and a star-fruit tree. There was a large hornet’s nest in the quinine tree. There were many small trees and bushes, native to Malaysia, too many to remember. On the far side of the lawn bordering on the next-door neighbour’s land was a marked-out badminton court with posts for the net and a solid granite bench for the referee. Also on the left lawn was a fishpond in the shape of a club or clover or the French, ‘trefles’ in the game of cards.

Nadesen kept the trees pruned, the lawns trimmed and the fishpond cleaned and stocked with fish. There were pink and purple Bougainvillea mixed with bright pink Mexican Coral vine, with lime green crepe leaves fencing all along the front to shield us from the main road.

Our house backed on to about three acres of unfenced land full of fruit trees, coconut and areca nut palms. The land dropped to a riverbank. The water was shallow in the dry season and we could wade and walk on the sand bank. We discovered many clay sites along the riverbed close to the bank. Aisha and I often collected the smooth grey clay and carried it home to sculpt clay figures of all sorts. We wore down a trail from our house to the river.

Despite many warnings from our mother not to play in the river or in the unfenced jungle, Aisha and I went to the river every day after school. In the rainy season the river was a hazardous place for children. We could not swim and were sensible enough not to go to the river when it rained. A few hours of monsoon rain can turn a slow flowing river into a dangerous rapid.

The British civil service administration in Malaya was a copy of the British civil service in England. How many inches of oak or mahogany an officer was entitled to, depended on their grade. One could tell the grade and seniority of high-ranking officials by the size of their desks, the size and location of their quarters and the class of their travel warrants.

Our house was once the quarters of a white District Medical Officer during British Malaya, before the Japanese occupation. It stood on brick stilts that were about four feet high. We played under the house when we were small. As we grew, we had to stop playing under the house as we used to hit our heads on the beams.

Another reason we stopped playing under the house was because we saw toads cooling off in the sections between the joists and beams. Where there were toads there were usually snakes. Nadesen, a Hindu, revered and respected snakes. He was in the habit of leaving two eggs for the resident cobra.

The architecture of our house was the familiar colonial middle grade government civil servant housing design. There were three large bedrooms. Two bedrooms had en-suite bathrooms. There was a five-foot wide veranda all around the bedrooms so that the bedroom doors opened onto the veranda. In addition to the bedrooms there was a large lounge, a dining area and a reception area for visitors.

Annexed to the main building, built on the ground level were the servants’ quarters and the kitchen. The annex was linked to the main house by a covered hallway. There was a short flight of steps connecting the main house to the annex. Two large access doors closed off the steps at night so the back of the main house was secured. As children we had to wait for an adult to unbolt the doors before we could run outside.

At the front of the house, to accommodate the height of the brick stilts, a grand flight of wide granite stone steps, seven of them, led to stair gates that opened on to the veranda. The steps had a flat stone balustrade. At the top of the balustrade were two flat stone half-piers, one on each side of the steps. On the wall above the right half-pier father hung his nameplate. It read M. A. Kader. It stood for Mydin Abdul Kader. Mydin was my paternal grandfather’s name.

My father was proud of living in this house. It was recognition of his commitment, dedication and intelligence in carrying out his work as a Hospital Assistant. The then Penang Medical Officer, Dr Abdul Wahab Mohd Ariff had approved father’s transfer to Balik Pulau and the allocation of the quarters for father’s family.

Soon after we settled in, my sister Aisha and I were playing on the stone steps, one of the places we were forbidden to play, when Aisha fell from the right half-pier. She hit her head on the stone floor below and was unconscious. I saw her from where I stood at the top of the steps, lying still. I ran to tell my mother. Aisha was rushed to hospital, not the Balik Pulau hospital but the General Hospital in George Town.

I wondered if we were going to be punished. My parents did not do that; they never punished the girls. I worried about Aisha. I asked about Aisha every day. Mother stayed with Aisha at the Hospital. When Aisha came home, she showed me all her gifts. Aisha was tall for her age and thin. She had pneumonia when she was a baby. My parents named her Khadijah when she was born but they changed her name to Aisha, as was the custom when a baby became very ill. It was a common belief that a baby may be sickly due to its name not being suitable for it. I was round and short for my age, asthmatic and prone to getting rashes.

Chapter 3

Vernacular Malay School

I started school when I was four years and two months old. My sister Aisha was six years and three months old. We started school together. Aisha started eight months before compulsory schooling and I started two years and nine months before my seventh birthday. This worked well for me. Although I was four years old, I was taught and guided to do the work of a seven-year-old. However, I performed; it was going to be good for my age. Whatever I did was above expectation. I learned to accept that my performance was always above expectation. This early start gave me easy goals to achieve. I cannot remember having an ambition. I cannot remember having to make a special effort or having to exert myself. A four-year-old was performing as a seven-year-old and I carried on having the advantage of an early start until I left school.

Aisha and I attended the Vernacular Malay School in Balik Pulau, Kongsi. Penang. The British established ‘free’ schools in Malaya to have a supply of administrators and professionals literate in English to work in the British administration. The word ‘free’ meant free from distinction of race and religion. Free schools were established in Penang, Malacca and Singapore. Admissions for Free schools were for selected boys. Other children in British Malaya were not expected to learn English. They were educated in Vernacular Schools: Malay Vernacular, Chinese Vernacular and Tamil Vernacular.

A minder walked with us to school for a few months until we knew the way. Then we were allowed to walk to school by ourselves. When we walked on our own, we took many short cuts through the land of the kampong folks. Kampong land was rarely fenced. One person’s land spilled onto his neighbour’s land and hedges, bushes and trees marked boundaries. Our route to school took us in and out of private land. No one seemed to mind. We usually stopped to gaze at monkeys, cows and fruits on trees. We were scared of cows. In avoiding them, we would deviate from our normal track and sometimes ended up late for the start of lessons. We would be punished. Sometimes we would be caned. When the teacher was kind, we had to weed the garden. Sometimes we had to stand on our chair, pull our ear lobes and count. Once our teacher left us standing on our chair for too long. Aisha’s feet swelled. She swooned and fell off the chair.

Teachers at the Malay Vernacular school practised favouritism openly. Both Aisha and I had brown skin, much lighter than our father’s but a few shades of brown darker than that of the majority of the other Malay pupils. Jariah, the daughter of the Penghulu, the Village Chief, had fair skin. Her mother was of Chinese origin and Jariah had skin-colour and features of a Chinese. The teachers regarded her as beautiful and thought she deserved special treatment. She was never caned. If she was late, did not finish her work, talked or ate in class, our teachers did not notice. Jariah was always selected to present bouquets or baskets of fruits to important visitors. Jariah was not among the top performers but she was always selected for special prizes, especially when her father, the Penghulu, officiated at the school’s events. I learned about unequal treatment early.

When Aisha and I were in Year Three, we became eligible to sit the test for entry to the Catholic Mission School, Saint Georges’ Balik Pulau. We all had to sit for the test. Saint Georges’ was an English-medium school. After the test the teachers asked each pupil if they wanted to study in an English Catholic school taught by Catholic priests. Aisha and I said, No, no, not us, we don’t wish to study in a Catholic Mission School.

When the names of pupils who were selected for entry to the English-medium, Catholic Mission School were announced our names were not called. Jariah’s name was among those going to the English school. When I got home, I could not wait to tell father that we did not pass for entry to the English school.

Did you ask your teacher why?

Yes, we did, and the teacher said that there was no result for those who said they were not going to the Catholic Mission School.

Did you say you were not going to the English school? My father asked.

Yes, we said we did not wish to go to the Catholic school by the Church, we replied.

My father called my brother Abdulkhalid. The next day, Abdulkhalid took us out of the Malay Vernacular School and enrolled us at Saint Georges’ School, the English-medium Mission school by the Catholic Church in Balik Pulau.

They can do the test again if necessary. He told our teacher.

At the Vernacular Malay school Aisha and I were top achievers of the class for every subject. Sometimes I did better than Aisha. I learned through reading and through listening to stories. I loved stories. My brothers and ’Mak told stories. Stories took me to worlds beyond the home and the village. Stories about families made me understand the relationships in our family. I was child number ten in a family of fourteen. When our brothers told us stories of kings and their princes and princesses there was a place for the first child and the youngest. There are stories about three children, like Cinderella. I never heard stories about the tenth child.

Number ten child had no special role, no special love or expectations. Few families in Malaya had a number ten child. I discovered that being the tenth child of a large family was a gift. I was not under a microscope. I was off the radar of physical and spiritual control. I was free to roam. Free to be. There were few restrictions when I was growing up. My mother did not even realise when I reached puberty. I bought my first bra myself.

I read about puberty to understand the changes in me. These self-examinations and self-discovery were my blessings. I learned early to reflect and to