Amok, my beloved auntie.

2.3.2015.

This afternoon, Monday 2nd March 2015, after Asr prayers, I joined the mourners who sent  Amok, my beloved auntie, to her final resting place at Kuala Jempol, Bahau. She was 87. The same age as mom.

I spent many school holidays at her house, before I went to boarding school. When Padir and I graduated from the University of Malaya, our photos in gown and mortar board hung proudly on the walls in the sitting room for many years.

When Amok got married to Pa' Bai 70 years ago, they remained childless for several years, so much so they adopted Abin, a relative's daughter from Melang, before Basit was born. Abin is short for "binti" - Pa' Bai went to a madrasah "pondok religious school" in Kelantan and was enamoured with Arabic. Her given name is Natrah, after Natrah or Bertha Hertogh of the infamous Natrah riots in Singapore in 1950.

I visited Amok in hospital about  two weeks ago on learning that she had broken her pelvis after a fall in the house. She had an operation a few days ago, and yesterday several relatives visited her at Fadillah's house in Taman Puan Chik. This morning she died.

This house next to the Kuala Jempol mosque is not the first house. I remember one Hari Raya several of us - me, my mother, Acik and others I can't remember - going in a taxi along the muddy, unpaved Terusan road to Amok's little house on pillars. Then they moved  to this present site, but it was a very modest wooden house with a low roof in front, and a rickety, swinging, wire-netting half-door. Much later this present large house was built. Amok used to have a "rumah kepok" for holding all the padi and rice Pa' Bai received as payment for teaching religion, or alms during Ramadan. So here was Pa' Bai, no padi field but plenty of padi !

I remember one particular visit when I stayed for a few days and befriended Yusof who stayed a short distance across the laterited former railway track. We rode on his buffaloes, and I had my big toe pierced by a bamboo sliver. Amok put some ointment on it and after one or two days the wound dried and the sliver came out.

I also remember an old photograph with Amok, mom and me against the flower bushes at wan's house in Bukit Temensu. I wonder where it has gone.

When dad died, Amok spoke sadly about him being more than a brother-in-law. She remembered dad asking her "Bong (short for Obong, Amok's nickname) let's look for some sweet potatoes." This was during the Japanese Occupation.

Mat Cit said, on the way to the cemetry, yesterday Amok was talkative, and gave no signs of anything wrong after the operation at  Tunku Najiha's Hospital.

Her second son, Zubit, led the funeral prayers and read the talqin. I recited the Surah Yasin from the little booklet as the shroud was lowered into the grave. Datuk Khalid Yunus read out loud the Surah Yasin from memory at the same time. Before I left the site, I just stood over the grave for a while, thinking of dear departed Amok.

Now there's only Acik left. She's 78.

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