i went back to my kampong ~ ipoh ~ last weekend for moreh. despite having a copy of my own at home (nampak sangat laa da tua kann ..), i came to realise that i DO have a pic of myself when i was small when i looked at it hanging on the wall. taken in 1966, that made me only 4 yrs old then ...
in the centre is my granddad, habib abdul samad. i was too small to know & remember much about him, but i heard my brothers telling stories that he spoke very fluent arabic. he used to "go back" (we are of arabic descendents) to saudi often with his dad on business trips. he passed away when i was 8.
this is the house i lived in when i told about "orang potong kepala" in my earlier entry ~ a govt quarter bungalow house right smack in the middle of ipoh. my dad was a penghulu daerah kinta masa tuh.
ok, back to the pic. at this time, walaupun i am the youngest in the family, i called my elder siblings by their names ~ cham, cik, chin, et, lee. no abangs or kak. one day, my brother pak lee (today everyone calls him that), pointed to himself in this pic & asked me who he is. i answerd, "lee." then he pointed to his younger brother & asked who is that. i answered, "abang olan." he repeated the questions a few times, & i still answered the same. finally, he gave up, & i never understood why, until many years later. u see, that brother i called abang ~ the only one i called abang then ~ did not live with us. so, i grew up not knowing he is one of my brothers, except that whenever we want to take family pic during raya, we have to wait for him to come.
now back to me not calling my siblings abang & kak. after my dad retired, & we moved to live in our kampong house, of coz he spent all day at home. only then he noticed that i have not addresed my brothers & sister properly. at the age of 11 was when i started to call them abang & kak ~ abang cham, abang cik, abang chin, kak et, pak lee (coz by now we have all started to him call that). the brother right above me, intan, is another story.
& it was at this age jugak la i baru nak tau the positions of my siblings, from eldest to myself. then baru la i tau that pak lee is the elder brother to abang olan. now i know why pak lee asked me the question repeatedly ~ why i panggil adik dia abang, & i called him by his name only. you see, whenever abang olan came to our house, i was told to call him abang, but nobody told me he IS my abang.
since many, many years back, we have all grown very close ~ even among the children & grandchildren. we have had gatherings makan2, gone for holidays locally & abroad, ramai2. & as usual, we rock the place, even at & during weddings !! no family is without some kind of conflict kan, especially a big one like ours, but all of us manage to bridge that. i know my mom & dad would have been very happy & proud to see how we are today. i wish they are with all of us now.
miss you sooo much, abah & mak .... my sedekah alfatehah everyday.
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