THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

Teaching at Serdang 111
Notes
1. I am writing this based on my experience. I was then working for the British
administration in colonial Malaya.
2. Translator’s note: I inherited the stack of correspondence between my father
Mustapha and Mr Mann, reflecting the undying faith and loyalty between the two
friends. Despite the fact that Mr Mann had suffered almost four years of mental
anguish and deprivation in internment, there was still room for warmth and love in
his heart.
Mr Mann died in England on 12 June 1980. My father cried upon receiving the
news from Mr Mann’s only daughter, Mrs Doreen Fletcher. She had come across
the correspondence between the two men as she was clearing her father’s belongings.
For several years, Doreen carried on writing to ‘a friend of my late father’ without
knowing the background to the relationship. Doreen was born in Batu Gajah, Perak,
Malaya, but had left to go to school in England before World War II. She, her mother
and brother thus escaped internment in Singapore. Doreen generously kept corresponding
with the faceless Malay who once worked with her late father in faraway
colonial Malaya. Then, in 1987, it was my turn to lose my father. Out of courtesy, I
wrote to Doreen in England, informing her of my father’s demise. This second
generation friendship has blossomed, and we have become good friends.
Doreen visited Malaysia, her birth country, in 1989, when she visited her childhood
residence on the breathtaking campus of the Agriculture University of Malaysia
(formerly School of Agriculture of Malaya) and even visited the hospital room she
was born in, in Batu Gajah Hospital, Perak. Our two families are very close, and we
hope to cultivate a third generation connection. Doreen’s daughter Alison seems
interested to keep it going.
I must state here that my father was a true nationalist with undiluted anti-colonial
sentiments, but he did not bear personal grudges against individuals who served the
colonial authorities.