Rites

The buzz had sounded 10 or 15 minutes before. There was no reason to leap for messages now. Ten years ago the message had always needed to be read promptly; now there was no need.

​            A little shock to have Zee messaging, but she had not known about the trip to Jakarta.

​            Relations had cooled somewhat in the last number of months with Zee, since the Christchurch attack in fact, when there had been some differences. The young woman had sensed the matter and been a little sheepish at a couple of shy approaches at the Wadi table.

​            Hey P

                  8:39PM, when in SG it would be an hour later.

​            Have you heard about Muttalib?

                  8:39 still

Zee had been introduced to Mu at the Wadi table on one of the sheepish calling rounds. Her mother was a student at the Foundation Mu had established for the study of the Qur’an down on Changi Road.

What about him? He mailed me this morning

                  8:48. It had been under ten minutes getting to the phone.

The terrible news came through like in B grade TV drama. There was no way to deliver gently. Zee’s mother had just gotten word.

I immediately thought of you

                   8:56

TV drama reaction. Nothing else was possible in the moment, only raw shock. The terrible news hurt the brain and caused a wincing like a muscle in spasm.

Coming mid-afternoon, the death had left insufficient time for the funeral same day, as was the usual Muslim practise. It took place next morning, the prayers over before 9, Zee reported. For some reason best known to herself, Zee had attended, accompanying her mother perhaps.

Zee’s mother had been attending the Qur’anic classes at Mu’s Foundation for a number of years and thought the teacher was outstanding. Relaying that news at the time was of course welcome for the Director, Muttalib. The teacher concerned, a woman now in her early eighties, had been with Mu from the outset, seventeen or eighteen years. The Foundation barely broke even, but Mu had kept it up all the while. Two full-time teachers, rent on the facilities and special events. The local Muslims needed all the help they could get with the Holy Book, Mu thought.

Carried you in my heart throughout the funeral

                  8:59AM

Zee had meant the service. She sent an accompanying photograph of the hearse loaded for the trip to the cemetery. They mostly used little utility vans in Singapore.

The shock lingered in the days afterward, all through the day and into the night. On the first night Mu had come in a dream. We had returned from an outing to the Jakarta hotel door, where excuses were made at parting, Mu being obliged to go his own way.

Ni was understandably surprised at the reaction. I not hear his name before.

It had been an intense friendship, albeit one of only nine or ten months. Over the term Mu had come with Yola most mornings to the Wadi table. Sometimes he could not be joined for one reason or another. Altogether there had been well over a hundred sits at the tables on the edge of the outer passage opposite the hotplate, often of long duration.

Mu was a people watcher too, a man with an eye for the ladies; an acute, indulgent judge. A compassionate man of understanding, with depth of feeling in his case that was mixed with a good deal of resilient tough guy. Short of stature, Mu could easily be credited in his stories of confrontation and fisticuffs in younger days in the kampung down the road just past his Foundation, where he had grown up. After fisticuffs there had been blades too—a scar remained over one eye and another was on the back. The latter had been received while the perpetrator was getting his own in some dangerous place on the body that was now forgotten. There was still plenty of fire in the belly as Mu approached his mid-Seventies.

Over the seven year stay Mu had not patronised that corner of Geylang Serai. Mu had his own corners around the place, most of them over at the top end of town. For a couple of years he had run a café on the other side of Sims Avenue near the Post Office. Mu had been the silent partner there; an associate ran the place day to day. With his other much larger concerns, mostly involving trading oil, wood and sand, the café was a sideline.

Mu had done pretty nicely. Up until a recent accident he had driven a stylish late model Jag and lived in a condo opposite his Foundation.

Like speed dating, ours had been speed friendship. Frank, venturesome exchange had made our progress rapid, nothing being out of bounds. There was a great deal in common. In spirit we were both kampung boys, Mu of course having lived it and the hard edge of it too for a good while after earlier family fortunes had declined.

Mu’s English was among the very best encountered in Singapore. It came from extensive reading begun in the early merchant marine days and later augmented in business. The politics was shared. Relish—respectful and courteous relish—for the ladies was shared.

Mu came from a notable local family of Indian-Malay traders. A grandfather had been a bookseller and then the father it may have been moving to high-end porcelain, lamps and suchlike. A prominent older brother had been a writer and filmmaker connected to all the upper crust of the early days of the Republic.

Being one of a dozen children and toward the end of the line, Mu had suffered numerous losses. On top of widowhood some years before, Mu had had the terrible misfortune to have lost a daughter in early adulthood.

— Man had a heart like a baby, Zainuddin commented, who was close to the youngest brother.

Mu was a great fund of information on the local scene. Like Zainuddin, his Islam was beautifully allowing and non-dogmatic. For the Friday prayers he avoided the rabbiting of the sermon, always turning up late.

Mu regularly visited the graves of his wife and daughter. There was some guilt at the treatment of the devoted former—that of the usual kind for the alpha male.

That Mu had been a wild, pistol-carrying guy during the wheeling and dealing period was a trifle difficult to imagine. The plentiful booze and carousing likewise. Younger days there had been abundant weed too. In the Vietnam generation the Malay lads had gravitated in that direction, when the Chinese and Indian recourse was the beer.

In younger, more innocent days the kite flying competitions better fitted the man Mu had become in mature, reflective years. The former political Titan LKY had reported enthusiasm for the kites in boyhood. It was Mu who finally explained how the aerial combat was undertaken with the glueing of glass fragments onto the strings that enabled opponents to be cut down.

Mu in the pack of boys scrambling madly over the mud to claim the fallen kite was more like the Wadi morning presence.

Ni was surprised at the lingering shock. There was no photograph to show her of Mu. All the engagement had been far too intense to think of photos.

The grieving could not be shared with Ni. How to begin? On the return Zainuddin would be good for that. Unlike some of the firm and stout Muslims, Zainuddin would allow grief its proper term. The speed of the funeral and burial was one of the circumstances that deepened the anguish, especially when none of it could be witnessed personally.

Ni had attempted a premature return to our pleasures. It was not possible. Ni had immediately understood, though surprised again.

Among all the rest, it had been Mu who had described the odd particulars of Muslim burial. No doubt it had not been easy for him to do so.

Not all the details however had been seized; at least in that matter it had not been possible to drill down to the last details with Mu. Ni it was who was enlisted for that now that it was needed.

The dead being wrapped in a shroud had of course long been known. They were laid in the ground and the head turned partially to one side. That much had been clear in Mu’s account. Oddly, Mu had not mentioned the direction of Mecca. (Wikipedia was subsequently consulted.)

The other particular Mu mentioned had been striking. Particularly striking.

For the Malay funerals some earth was placed on the face, it seemed. Indeed, it had specifically been on the mouth. Mu had mentioned the mouth, stoppered up with earth it had sounded like.

At the Wadi table Mu had been watched many times at his breakfast. A careful, delicate eater who relished his prata and keema. Fried and oily Indian bread with mince was not exactly ideal for a diabetic.

— Once in a while, the Malays rebuffed challenges to their diet. In Mu’s case all the pleasures were not to be shunned. (Smoking and alcohol had been successfully eliminated.)

It was important to clarify the matter of the rites now; there was no getting away from it.

We had open caskets for Orthodox Christian funerals. Nothing whatever like this use of earth had been mentioned among our Muslim hill cousins.

Some land, Ni termed it when she detailed their own funeral arrangements in Central Java.

Ni had attended only a single funeral in her life, in her late teens when of a girl her own age had fallen from a jambu tree. From below Ni had watched her friend picking the fruit.

—   Yes, in the mouth.

On the mouth it was perhaps.

Then the chin, Ni indicated.

The earth was placed particularly. Just a small handful, Ni explained. (Wiki had three fist-sized earthen balls formed by the gravediggers for the tilting of the spine, shoulder and head in the direction of Mecca.)

It was difficult to understand. Mu of course had noticed the reaction. Soil, he may have called it; just a small handful.

A wooden board was finally placed over the corpse before the covering of the earth proper. Again, Mu could not be grilled on the particular.

It took a short while to get clearly from Ni.

Strips of split bamboo were laid across the graves in Central Java at least, then the earth, the land loaded up on top of that.

Strictly speaking, the corpse was not buried in the ground at the funeral. Not at least in Central Java.

Over some time the weight of the earth would collapse the bamboo, Ni explained. Thereby proper burying of the deceased.

Strange. Ni had nothing to say about the heat of the Tropics acting upon a body left unburied. (Wiki reported prompt earth cover for Islamic rites, supervised by a male relative.)

However you looked at it, the procedure was exceedingly rapid. Breakneck speed in fact. Too rapid a disposal of the dead involved, it was felt in the kampungs of Central Java certainly.

​​​​​​​    ​                                                                                                                   Jakarta, Indonesia