#sarongstories

[shazlinrahman]

“Pasar Besar” (Big Market) Kota Bharu in the 1950s. This was one of the main hubs of trading in the city where Mok worked alongside her mother (my great-grandmother) at a food stall. This was also where she met her husband, my grandfather. She’d hire a rickshaw to get to and from the market, and Tok Ayah was one of the drivers. He’d just come from Selising, a rural village about half a day’s drive south of Kota Bharu, in search of better prospects and somehow landed a job as a rickshaw driver. I often pause at the thought of how, on one sunny day, Mok stood on the side ke the road and waved her hand at the many rickshaw drivers looking for fares and my grandfather happened to see her first. How differently things could have been had another driver noticed her first. . #hersarong #sarongstories #grandmother #history #memory #kotabharu #kelantan #malaysia #pasarbesar #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephoto #blackandwhitephotography #malaysianarchitecture #malaysianhistory #lovestory (at Pasar Besar Siti Khadijah dan Bazar Siti Aisyah) https://www.instagram.com/p/BrS_HOqBULp/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=jymo4pzebe17

[shazlinrahman]

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Siti Zubaidah Rahim’s hands move deftly as she methodically attaches multi-coloured rhinestones to a piece of batik chiffon fabric at S. Wan Batik, located in Bazaar Buluh Kubu in Kota Bharu. The bazaar is a tourist hub, particularly if you’re looking for high-end batik fabric and apparel. The shop lot where Zubaidah was working appears to be used primarily for embellishing and storing batik fabrics. The embellished fabrics will later be sold wholesale or retail at another location in the building. . #hersarong #sarongstories #batik #batikkelantan #batikmalaysia #malaysianbatik #malaysia #kelantan #kotabharu #batikfabric #fabricart #cuticutimalaysia #textile #textileart (at Bazar Buluh Kubu) https://www.instagram.com/p/BrLM3N4BC2A/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1pbpqtm5qo2hg

[shazlinrahman]

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Mok’s house started out as a simple cube with walls made out of woven strips of rattan, similar to the houses in this archival footage of a new “kampung” forming in Kelantan in the early 1950s. As the family fortunes improved, the rattan was replaced with wooden planks, the cube was partitioned and expanded to include more rooms, glass louvres were added to windows and, finally, electricity and plumbing came indoors. Unless you’re someone with significant fortunes, building a house was largely a small-scale DIY endeavour. It’s funny to think how DYI-ing a house of your own is now largely a luxury for the financially well-off. . Footage courtesy of @britishpathe. . #hersarong #sarongstories #history #archive #kotabharu #kelantan #malaysia #malaya #tanahmelayu #malaysianarchitecture #vernaculararchitecture #rumah #rumahkayu #flashback #flashbackfriday #fbf #blackandwhite #sejarah #sejarahmalaysia (at Kota Bharu) https://www.instagram.com/p/BqiNdXZBUpL/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=403bwf41ls2w

[shazlinrahman]

Eyes forward, one hand on the young’un. There was never such a thing as “me” time or self-care; labour and leisure went hand-in-hand. . #hersarong #sarongstories #batiksarong #womenatwork #labor #kotabharu #kelantan #malaysia (at Kota Bharu)

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 14: Siestas on the verandah.

Dear Mok,

Beranda, as we say it. It must be the last major improvement we did to your home since its humble beginnings as a rudimentary wooden box. First it was made of wood, like the rest of the house. Then it was redone in brick and mortar and the stairs were covered in smooth cement. I remember when we finally redid the three steps and added tiles to match the veranda. They were blue the colour of the sky on a day when the air was so still that not single leaf stirred on the jambu air tree.

On those days the house would get so hot that blasting the old table fan straight at my face didn’t even help because it was just blowing hot air. I remember how you’d sometimes roll out the small straw mat with green borders out on the veranda for a siesta. Tidur petang. I don’t think I ever actually fell asleep there; I was always too excited by the prospects of napping on the veranda.

I don’t think you ever napped there either, at least not after we replaced the wooded enclosure around it with wooden balustrades, giving it a little less privacy from our neighbours. Instead, you’d lie down inside the house with your head in the doorway, with your long hair hanging down the stoop onto the veranda.

You’d tell us—whoever was around—to pick out the grey strands from your hair. In the days after your cancer, you’d also remind us to be gentle and careful not to pull out anything but the greys because the chemo therapy didn’t leave you with much hair. How we’d rush to be the ones to do it because there couldn’t be more than two or four of our tiny hands sifting through your delicate locks. As you drifted off, you’d mumble about not really caring about the grey hairs; having us play with your hair helps you relax and fall asleep.

Sometimes a neighbour would pass by on their way to or from the grocery shop or some other place; they’d say hello and ask what we were up to with a casual but not dismissive, “Wak gapo  tu?” They might joke about us sleeping on the verandah or exchange some news or gossip as they walked by. Sometimes they’d ask who we were by way of asking how we were doing, and you’d explain which of your daughters’ children we were and which city we were returning from.

My heart always sank whenever you rolled over and got up with a sigh or a groan. Those siestas with you were never long enough for me. I remember feeling a slight desperation as I watched you sweep your hair up into a knot at the base of your neck and slowly walked down the hallway to the right heading for your room or the kitchen, untying and retying your batik sarong at the waist in preparation of whatever task was ahead of you.

I wanted those moments with you to stretch forever but they were so precious precisely because they were so transient.

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 13: I couldn’t find batik sarongs like the ones you made.

Dear Mok,

I don’t think they make batik sarongs the way they used to anymore.

Gone are the days when batik sarongs are stamped with motifs in wax and filled in with colours individually. All the ones I found in Kota Bharu are either printed en mass in factories like any other printed fabric, or are Indonesian made. So were the ones I found in Alor Setar. The batik wholesalers and retailers I spoke to couldn’t tell me where I’d find such batik sarongs. Neither could the staff at the Kota Bharu Tourism Centre. Everyone’s looking for batik tulis now, the lady at the information desk told me. All the workshops I visited on the way to Pantai Cahaya Bulan were also solely making hand-drawn batik.

Hand-drawn batik, or batik tulis, can be custom-made to be very exclusive and fetch higher prices, like the ones at the Nordin Batik show room. Cheaper ones can be made quickly with simpler designs and minimal colour variations. Block-printed batik sarongs, on the other hand, vary in price based on the quality of the fabric; the labour that goes into producing each piece remains the same. Batik sarongs are also worn more as every day wear rather than as occasional wear. It’s just too much work for something you’d wear at home, I suppose.

It’s a sad and surprising discovery for me. I remember the growing feeling of despair as I went from store to store sifting through stacks of plastic-wrapped factory-printed batik sarongs, feeling the coarse fabric against my finger tips and staring at garishly coloured hibiscus and roses in such precise detail that can never be produced by copper stamps.

As usual, it’s a case of survival of the fittest. The art of block-printing batik sarongs is dying because it couldn’t withstand capitalism’s test of economy and efficiency.

I know you went into colouring batik sarongs purely to bolster the family’s income; all the same, I wonder if you feel strongly, one way or the other, about the trade that helped you break us out of the cycle of poverty.

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 12: He arrived wrapped in a batik sarong.

Dear Mok,

Do you remember when Pak Li knocked on your door and handed you a bundle of fragile limbs wrapped in a batik sarong and still bearing a hint of newborn fragrance? He was barely a week old. By Mak Long’s estimation, it would have been around 1957, the year Malaya got its independence from the British, just before she started school.

Mak Long said he was the unwanted child from the family of one of your brother’s managers. Pak Li had heard about the young lady’s pregnancy and that her father, his manager, didn’t want to keep it. They needed it gone as soon as it was born.

So Pak Li took pity on the little newborn, bundled him up as securely as he could, and took him on the bus from Temangan where he was working at an iron ore mine to Kota Bharu where you lived. It takes about an hour and a half to drive from Temangan to Kota Bharu today. I imagine the roads and public transportation were much worse in the late 50’s; it must have taken them hours to reach you. How did Pak Li, a single working man, manage to make that journey with a newborn?

The hours on the road must have weakened the baby, because he became ill and died few days later.

What made you and Tok Ayah take him in? You can barely feed the three little mouths you already had. I imagine the mother in you saw no other option.

Mak Long says she doesn’t recall seeing the baby being buried. You were all living at Jalan Gajah Mati at the time, and he was buried at the cemetery in Kampung Kubur Kuda. Mak Long thinks you might have taken a rickshaw—Kelantanese call them teksi—with Tok Ayah and the baby’s body to the cemetery.

You all named him Rahimi. Do you remember him?

Pictured: Mok with my cousin Intan Salwani. January 5, 1980 at Taman Jepun, Ipoh, Perak, Malaysia. Archival photo courtesy of Hasiah Kadir.

[surat-hersarong]

Letter 11: Your house misses you.

Dear Mok,

I fear your house may not be around much longer. It breaks my heart to say it. I suppose it’s the nature of things, no matter how much we cherish them. We took lots of photos of your house when we visited and I think we have enough to preserve it in drawings later. I hope we have enough.

Everything I know of you starts from there, and I’ve been going back to that place in my mind over and over for the past seven years.

Perhaps its best that you don’t see how your home has aged since you left. I found myself stepping gingerly around your kitchen—not because I feared it would collapse, but because the weight I carried strained each aging floorboard beyond what it could bear.

It misses you. The humble wooden box with rattan woven walls that you, Tok Ayah and Mak Long scraped enough money to build and later grew to make room for three generations: it misses you and I felt it. It misses your gentle hands sweeping away onion skins off its floor boards, opening and shutting its windows, leaning against its walls. It misses you as much as I do.

I feel like H.G. Wells’ The Time Traveller or the ghost in A Ghost Story as I stood in the middle of your house, rooted in one spot while everything around me changed, stretched, evolved or decayed and disappeared altogether. The Chinese family with the dog in the house behind yours has been replaced by another. The yard in front of their house that used to be nothing but undergrowth with the occasional grazing cow is flat, dry and houses a massive TNB substation. The school next door gets so noisy that Mak Cik Ni keeps the kitchen window closed most times for privacy. Even though most of the fruit trees are gone from your front yard, I can’t imagine ever playing hopscotch or galah panting or selipar toyol there.

There is now constant hum of traffic from a massive freeway—Jalan Maulana Khurasan—to the south of  Kampung Kubur Kuda that’ll take you straight to the gigantic AEON Mall (I tried to bypass it by navigating through serpentine jalan kampung to get to KB Mall when I stumbled upon your house. Can you believe it? I stumbled upon your house). I can park my car KB Mall’s massive new parking lot to go visit your grave. An outdoor eatery comes alive in the evening right across the lane from the cemetery. I wonder what it’s like to be casually dining with music playing in the background while gravestones sit silently within view.

I thought that’s where all my memories of you live; that’s why I’m trying to preserve as much if it—of you—as I can. If your house is no longer there, if Kampung Kubur Kuda morphs into something else, if Kota Bharu grows into another metropolitan city, I fear my memories will feel like figments of my imagination and nothing more.