Isa.21 Nov 2013.
Harry AvelingLa Trobe and Monash Universities
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REVIEW
Isa
Kamari, 1819, rendered in English
from Malay by R. Krishnan. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish Books, 2013.
ISBN
978-983-3221-42-4.
Isa
Kamari, Rawa, rendered in English
from Malay by R. Krishnan. Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish Books, 2013.
ISBN
978-983-3221-43-1.
Isa
Kamari, A Song of the Wind, rendered
in English from Malay by Sukmawati Sirat and R. Krishnan. Kuala Lumpur:
Silverfish Books, 2013
ISBN
978-983-3221-44-8.
Isa Kamari is a major
Singapore Malay author. Born in 1960 in Kampung Tawakal, his family moved to a
Housing Development Board apartment in Ang Mo Kio while he was still in his
teens. After studying at the elite Raffles Institution, he went on to take the
degree of Bachelor of Architecture (with Honours) from the National University
of Singapore in 1988 and now holds a senior position with the Land Transport
Authority. Isa has also earned a Master of Philosophy degree in Malay Letters from
the National University of Malaysia, 2007. He is a prolific writer and has so
far published two volumes of short stories, eight novels, six volumes of
poetry, one collection of stage plays, and several albums of contemporary
spiritual music. Isa’s literary work has been widely honoured: he received the
SEA Write Award in 2006, the Singapore government’s Cultural Medallion in 2007
and the Singapore Malay literary award Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang in 2009. He is
married to Dr Sukmawati Sirat, a graduate of the University of Southern
Carolina, and the couple have two daughters. In 2001 he completed the
pilgrimage to Mecca.
Isa’s novels are
increasingly being translated from Malay for wider audiences. Satu Bumi (One Earth, 1998) was
published in Mandarin in 1999 as Yi Pien
Re Tu and in English in 2008, under the title of One Earth (translated by Sukmawati Sirat). Two other novels
appeared in English translations in 2009: Intercession
(Tawassul, 2002, translated by Sukmawati Sirat and edited by Alvin Pang); and
Nadra (Atas Nama Cinta, In the Name of Love, 2006, translated by Sukmawati
Sirat and edited by Aaron Lee Soon Yong). In 2013, four translations have been
released: The Tower (Menara, 2002, translated by Alfian
Sa’at); A Song of the Wind (Memeluk Gerhana, Embracing the Eclipse,
2007, “rendered in
English from Malay” by Sukmawati Sirat and R. Krishnan); Rawa (Rawa: tragedi Pulau
Batu Puteh, Rawa: The Tragedy of White Rock Island, 2009, “rendered in English from the original
Malay” by Sukmawati Sirat and R. Krishnan); and 1819 (Duka Tuan Bertakhta,
You Rule in Sorrow, 2011, “rendered in English from Malay by Sukmawati Sirat and R.
Krishnan”).
1819, Rawa and A Song of the
Wind have been published by the same publisher, Silverfish Books, Kuala Lumpur, and
packaged as belonging to the genre of “historical fiction” so that they appear
to form a natural chronological progression of books “about Singapore”. 1819 deals with the foundation of
Singapore by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles; Rawa
describes the changing lives of three generations of the one orang seletar (sea gypsy) family, from
the1950s to the 1980s; and A Song of the
Wind, presents a lively account of a young man’s coming of age in a rapidly
developing newly independent nation, from the 1960s to the 1990s. The books
were, as we have just noted, originally written in the reverse order to this.
Nevertheless, for present purposes we shall continue to follow this order as it
will be a natural one for English readers who come to the works for the first
time.
The approach to
history varies with each volume. In 1819,
the great events of international colonial expansion take centre stage. The
major characters are the colonialists, the Malay Sultan of Singapore and the
Temenggung (chieftain), and two communal leaders, Habib Nuh, a Muslim holy man,
and Wak Cantuk, a traditional healer and teacher of the martial arts. The
transfer of sovereignty over the island is presented as the result of
deviousness and treachery on the part of the British, and stupidity and an
addiction to opium on the part of the Malay aristocracy. The community leaders
are figures of respect but do not have the necessary skills to help their
followers navigate the new political circumstances. Lesser, but extremely
lively, characters are the young people: Nuraman, Wak Cantuk’s leading silat student, Marmah, Wak Cantuk’s adopted daughter, and the three
“boys” Ramli, Sudin and Ajis. Much of the latter two-thirds of the work is
given over to their involvements with Habib Nuh and Wak Cantuk, and the various
stories of their own adolescent experiences, their relationships and their love
for Marmah. These characters of ordinary Singapore Malays are a strong feature
of Isa’s writing in general and become increasingly prominent as the Singapore
story develops in the other two works.
Rawa is “the name of the
land” where the sea gypsies live, between the north coast of Singapore and the
mainland of the peninsula, and of the main character himself. The story
describes how Rawa and his family (his daughter, Kuntum, her husband, Lamit,
and their son, Hassan) are steadily caught up in the relentless modernisation
of the Republic, including their settlement in the confines of an HDB apartment
block. Besides the opportunity to live their life in a huge multi-tenanted but
anonymous building, modern Singapore offers them the conveniences of “a car, a
big television and fridge, air-conditioning in every room, and expensive
furniture”. It offers the parents steady, although somewhat insecure, work, and
it offers the grand-son a good education and the chance to follow a highly
regarded profession of naval architect. Yet they no longer have the freedom
that the original inhabitants had. With this relentless rationality of human
existence, comes a loss of the links with the environment, and indeed with the
simplicity and purity of human nature itself. They are also increasingly
assimilated into the opaque ethnic category of “Malay”. And the Malay
community’s position in Singapore, Isa suggests, is one of severe disadvantage.
“The Malays now are not what they used to be,” Rawa muses, watching the
television in his daughter’s flat. The newscast confirms his worst fears:
“Divorce is highest among Malays. The number of Malay addicts in rehab centres
is not decreasing. There is a rise in gangsterism, and births out of wedlock.
And there is no shortage of ‘forums’ to address these issues” (p. 93). Both 1819 and Rawa, in their different ways, are stories of the difficult
transitions of the Malay community in a wider society that is indifferent to
their special needs. In 1819, the
community is betrayed by its leaders; in Rawa,
the community has no clear leaders, only an old man who represents increasingly
anachronistic values in the midst of vast and amorphous changes. The task for
Malays is to learn to be proud citizens of a complex multi-racial society and
to keep “in touch with their essence, the spirit” (p. 94).
A Song of the Wind fits easily into the well-established category
of a young man’s growth to maturity in the turbulent setting of a newly
independent Singapore, through the experiences of childish playfulness in a
narrow domestic setting, formal education, first loves and National Service, as
brilliantly developed by Goh Poh Seng in If
We Dream Too Long (1972) and Robert Yeo’s The Adventures of Holden Heng (1986). Isa’s novel can be divided
into these same themes: childhood in Kampung Tawakal and Ang Mo Kio, education
at Whitley Primary School and Raffles Institution, and National Service in the
Police Force. The novel touches on many of the themes of the Malay culture of
disadvantage dealt with in Rawa and other
works by Isa: poverty, economic discrimination, lack of education, drugs,
teenage pregnancy and hooliganism. Unlike the works by Goh and Yeo, A Song of the Wind also explores the
role of religion, specifically Islam, in the development of the main character.
Told in the first person, the second half of the novel describes Ilham’s
involvement with a heavily politically committed form of his faith at a time of
the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the
Middle East, and a fear in Singapore of secret organisations whose intentions
might be to overthrow the government. Ilham is arrested for his naïve
involvement with a group that models itself on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood
and studies not only the scriptures and the hadith
(traditions relating to the life of the Prophet Muhammad) but also the
controversial works of Syed Qutb, Hasan Al-Bana, Maududi, M. Natsir and Maryam
Jameela. Still only 21 at the end of the novel, Ilham is slowly leaving behind
him the darkness of the “eclipse” into which his experiences have taken him (as
clearly indicated by the title of the original Malay novel). He writes:
I was surprised how quickly
I had matured. Not many youths were ‘fortunate’ enough to have had my
experience.
My teenage years were ending ominously, everything was happening too quickly, spiralling out of control, and I was emerging into adulthood, crippled and alienated. (p. 234)
Despite this gloom, Ilham has the promises of a positive future that
includes marriage, entry into the university, and a worthwhile career to come.
His faith has been deepened and shaped in the direction of an Islam that is, as
Isa writes elsewhere, “a tolerant faith that is based on goodwill, consensus
and humanitarian love” (Intercession,
p. 162).
“Hope and harmony” are the
keystones for Isa’s vision of a racially integrated Singapore (“Some Personal
Reflections on Political Culture in Contemporary Singapore Malay Novels”, p.
67). These three novels struggle with disharmony and tension within the Malay
community and beyond, and their historical and sociological origins. They are
deeply important works and a sure sign of the growing recognition that will be
paid to his significant literary analyses of “the Singapore dilemma” and the
choices for a peaceful way forward.
Harry Aveling
La Trobe and Monash Universities
Isa Kamari: Intercession,
translated by Sukmawati Sirat and edited by Alvin Pang. Marshall Cavendish,
Singapore 2009.
Isa Kamari: “Some Personal Reflections on Political Culture in
Contemporary Singapore Malay Novels”. In Reading
the Malay World, ed. by Rick Hosking, Susan Hosking, Noritah Omar and
Washima Che Dan, Wakefield Press, Kent Town SA 2010, pp. 66-76.
Lily Zubaidah Rahim. The Singapore Dilemma: The Political and Educational Marginality of the
Malay Community. Oxford University Press: Kuala Lumpur 1998.
