To an everlasting friendship

Lasting bond: The writer (left) and Mahbub maintain close ties despite taking different paths in life.

LIFE has been tough for Mahbub Dayat. But, he has soldiered on without complaint. He is contented with what he has, which is very little. Mahbub is my childhood friend.

We grew up together in Kampung Sungai Balang Besar, Muar, or more specifically, a little enclave known to locals as Parit Gantung. The inhabitants initially were first and second generation Javanese immigrants from Kecamatan Kauman in the Residency of Ponorogo, East Java.

Mahbub’s father and mine were neighbours. In a village like that, the adherence to norms and societal regulations is critical. Among the poor they depended on each other to survive. Their spirit of togetherness is remarkable, the esprit de corps unparalleled, even to this day.

There were many other boys and girls who grew up together with me in the village. But Mahbub was the closest. He went to a Malay school but did not complete his Standard Six, spending more time helping his father to make sagat (sliced tapioca to make keropok). His father was also selling desiccated coconut known as gebeng (copra). His mother made tempe and occasionally ketiwul (from tapioca).

My father taught him to tap rubber very early. Mahbub helped my father permanently to tap rubber until he was in his mid-twenties.

My father was also a barber in the afternoon. Even to this day I cannot understand why my father sent me to an English school in 1960. The government started an English school at Sarang Buaya in 1958, the first such school between the towns of Muar and Batu Pahat. We were using a religious school temporarily before we moved to a new building in Semerah. The school was known as Peserian Primary English School.

English school students had to dress smartly in white shirts and shoes and black trousers. It was a relatively expensive undertaking for my father. He was teased for sending me to sekolah orang putih (literally, white man’s school).

I went to school with hardly three English words. Our teacher kept reminding us that anyone caught speaking any other language other than English in class would be fined five sen. I was mute for almost three months. I didn’t even dare to ask to go to the toilet (lavatory was the right word) during classes.

I learned English the hard but fun way. We were taught nursery rhymes, simple songs (even Gospel songs) and many dramas and play acting. I taught my friends in the village those nursery rhymes. Imagine singing “Here we go round the mulberry bush” around a banana plant, by boys and girls in heavily-accented Javanese, not knowing the meaning of a single word!

Mahbub was very much part of my rite of passage. We played together at the slightest opportunity. We swam in the river, braved the nearby forest, even hanging around the village graveyard when the rambutans were ripe. Together with Rubiah, Surip, Tuginah, Katiam, Morsiah, Masri and many others we attended the Quran reading class every night. Mak Su was a stern teacher. But there was always the joy of going and coming back together with andang (dry coconut leaves) in hand to show the way.

Mahbub and I were fiercely protective of each other. Mahbub always made it a point to provide me with whatever food his mother prepared for him to tap rubber. I took my portion to school as I couldn’t afford to buy anything at the school canteen.

One by one my friends disappeared from the kampung. The boys worked elsewhere and the girls married early. Every time I came back home someone had gone, some forever. I went to university in 1974, started working three years later and started a family far from my village.

But Mahbub never left the kampung. He got married late, in 1999. His wife was working as a cleaner at the district hospital until her contract was terminated some years ago.

Nothing much has changed for him. I try to meet him whenever I have the opportunity, which is less frequent. We will talk as old friends but seldom about the times when we were young and innocent. I am sure he knew whoever I am now, I am still his childhood friend.

This Hari Raya I visited him after more than two years. But this time I brought along three of my children and my two grand-daughters to see him. Just to remind them of how precious friendship is.

To all my Muslim readers, Selamat Hari Raya.

Johan Jaaffar is a journalist, editor and for some years chairman of a media company, and is passionate about all things literature and the arts. And a diehard rugby fan.

The views expressed here are entirely his own.