Adibah Amin & As I Was Passing

I have to thank my daughter for the gift. Not because she gave me anything but because of her persuasive ability and persistence to get me out of the house and taking her along on our father-daughter’s hanging out session at Ampang Point. The sessions that always start with Sushi at the Octopus and end with a visit to the Popular Bookstore and they wouldn’t be complete until we spend at least 2 hours lingering in the bookstore. I never complained though. I am happy and proud to have kids that are willing to sit on the floor of a bookstore for hours. And, I won’t panic if they are lost in a bookstore. I mean, what’s the worst thing that could happen in a bookstore? Your kid won’t be bullied by a rotten-to-roots spoiled book. Your kid won’t be kidnapped by a gang of bad-assed books. Unless, the Myanmar couple moved their operations from Sogo to the bookstores. If that really happened, the worst thing that could happen is I would have a daughter with a Skinhead hair-do (Ooopss…did I say that?). More than anything else, I want my kids to love books more than they love their PS2 and Barbie dolls. And, thank God, because of her fascination for books, I was reunited with my childhood idol. Not in person but through her books.

Because of my daughter, I had a privilege of picking up Khalidah Adibah Binti Amin a.k.a. Adibah Amin’s As I Was Passing and As I was Passing II, the 2-volumed precious collections from her column of the same title. I must have read them earlier. I knew I have. After all, I was the biggest fan of hers. Maybe I read them straight from the newspaper or maybe from the earlier collections. I knew I have read them all. After all, I was her biggest fan.

As I was going through sentence by sentence and line by line of the books, I could smell Adibah’s writings although I didn’t remember reading any of them before. A weird but amazing feeling indeed, much like being with your wife of 15 years but feeling like it was your first night together.

It’s funny how a book can affect you. Any innocent little book could be the ‘Fitness First’ and aprodisiac for your brains and memory banks. As I Was Passing series were simply magical, even to a 40-year old brain like mine.

As I was going through the pages, I remembered when I was growing up. Reading was always my favourite past time. And every time, the newspaper man arrived on his motorbike, no matter where I was, no matter what I was doing, I would run to the front door and jump down to meet ‘Pakcik Suratkhabar’. He was my superhero. He was the saviour that save me from my boredom. And, one time, when he had an accident and missed a few days of his delivery, I was having the worst time of my life.

Well, I was a kampung kid. I grew up in a farmers’ village with huge padi fields, about 10 miles from Kota Bharu. But, unlike other kids who were drawn to kampung boys’ activities like making and flying kites, hunting and trapping birds, fish-fighting or having natural 'mandi lulur' (mud-bathing) side by side with a gang of buffaloes in the padi fields, I was attracted to books, comics and newpapers instead. And, Adibah Amin was always my favourite writer. To me, she was the goddess.

I never knew Shakespeare like I knew Adibah Amin. Well, I was never exposed to English literature when I was growing up. Not where I was from, anyway. I did know who Shakespeare was, though. I knew Shakespeare not through his ‘Hamlet’, ‘Romeo & Juliet’ and his other masterpieces. I knew Shakespeare as Shakespeare. I knew that Shakespeare was a writer, and, that’s pretty much it. And, throughout my pre-adolescence years, the image of Adibah was always bigger than that of Shakespeare. It still is, even today.

I have high respect for her ability to write. Her stories were always about things that happen around us, although I must admit that I couldn’t relate to some of her stories when I was a kid. Not because of the stories but because who I was and where I was from. I was just a naïve and plain kampung boy who was never exposed to or experienced some of things she wrote about. Or, maybe because I was too little to understand some of the things. Nonetheless, her magic touch never failed to suck me in to her world through her stories. Armed with a thick Longman’s dictionary, I was a boy on a mission.

I learned English through her other column, too. Long before I knew Betty S. Azar. Long before I was in Dr. Whittfeld’s Linguistic 101 class. In a way, she was one of my first English teachers I remembered, besides Cikgu Nik Rosni who gave me 3 books, ‘Cinderella’, ‘Rapunzel’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ as a present for getting the highest marks when I was in Standard 1 or 2 and Mr. Chung Han Teik who taught me songs when I was in Standard 3 and whom I met again when I was in Form 5 at Sek Men Ismail Petra.

Adibah Amin was a big part of my life growing up and with the two books that I bought, she will always be. Reading products of her creativity is a great pleasure to me. And, I will always be her biggest fan.

Thank you, Adibah and may God bless you with happiness and great health for years to come, Amen.

Chazz