“I grew up here, my grandpa brought his family here to start a better life. My father, I mean my late father, was a famous tradesmen within the Malay Archipelago.
It got harder when the British opened up the trade but my father still pulled through despite the huge competition.
He passed away about two years back and it’s taken quite a toll on my family. My mother locks herself in her room, she almost never leaves the room ever since then. My brother has learned to cope through other, supernatural way, and its upsetting.
As for me, it was hard at first I think I wasn’t too different from my brother, coping with father’s death through “other ways”, but ever since being married and becoming a mother that has changed me.
My husband is a big impact in my life, he’s a British lieutenant, so his views of the world are different than my people. He has never ignored an opinion of mine, he continues to remind me that my voice matters. That wasn’t something I learn growing up under a Bugis household.
No woman really had a say in anything. In fact, when my father found out about me and Rick, my husband, he banned me from seeing him. I went against that of course, behind my father’s back, then my son came along the day my father died and that’s where my new life truly took off. It’s confusing being a woman with a traditional heritage.
I’m the eldest in my family but my brother is the next in line to lead this family. I have ‘elder sibling’ responsibilities which is generally to lead, yet I am never always the leader, so no matter how I lead, right or wrong it barely matters.
I love my new little family with my husband and son, but it’s hard not to admit that this was my way of coping with my father’s death, allowing myself to be lost in a totally different world and finding myself along the way”.
Photostory by Mushamir Mustafa
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HOKL went and interviewed the cast (as their characters) of ‘Malaya Relived: The Fall of Singapore’ theatre/play, which tells the story of Zubaida and Zabir, two siblings of Bugis ancestry living in Singapore under the British empire coping with their father’s mysterious death. Their relationship is conflicted when Zabir blames their father’s death on Zubaida’s courtship with a British soldier, while Zubaida is convinced that there are ‘black magic’ forces at play.
The next play, ‘Malaya Relived: Merdeka’ is playing from 19th – 21st April. For more information please visit http://www.liverandlung.com/malayarelived — with Putrina Mohamed Rafie.
(This post was first published on April 10th 2019)
