THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

Batu Gajah Prison 305
that shut with a thunderous clang. We were immediately in a corridor with
cells on both sides. A warder on duty told me to enter the one on the
left, while my good newly found friend, an Indian Police Inspector, was
allocated the cell opposite.
So, one by one, Tahir, Raja Omar, Eng Bah, Abdul Ghani, Mansur,
Ibrahim, a few Chinese and several Punjabi Japanese Police Inspectors
entered their new homes. For how long, no one had a clue. The Punjabis
no longer kept long hair and beards; the Japanese Occupation had
obviously brought social changes to Punjabis who served the Japanese
Police. During the British era, under stringent Police laws Sikh members
could be dismissed for cutting a strand of hair or beard. My cell door
was shut with a loud bang. Had the door been shut by anyone else but a
warder, I would have shouted. In the dark, my knees bumped into a low
wooden platform. Unable to do anything in the dark, I had no choice but
to sleep on the platform with my head on a cement slab pillow.
When the sun introduced its faithful self into my cell the next morning,
I began to inspect my new surroundings. But what was there to
inspect? The cell was only twelve feet by six feet; I recalled canaries held
captive in cages. Along one wall was a platform of rough, unplaned
planks and at its end a ledge of cement that became my pillow for
several months. It was in this prison cell that I recalled a Muslim cleric’s
description of a grave as ‘narrow, dark and completely silent’. In this cell,
I experienced all three. Apart from being dark and stinking, bed bugs,
mosquitoes, cockroaches, ants, and rats the size of my arm roamed freely.
The rubber pail we brought in with us was for our personal waste
products. A bath was allowed once a day and with not more than one
pail of water each. The cell’s wooden door, about four inches thick,
featured a tiny opening which we called a ‘spy-hole’. Through these
openings warders could take a peep at us. And through them we could
see the eyeballs of our friends blinking away in the opposite cell if they
happened to be peering out too. A small window with thick rusty bars,
located high above our heads, was the only other opening. I was unable
to climb up to look out the window as my legs were feeble, but some of
my friends could even perch on the window ledge.
Therefore, my view of the outside world through this window was
limited to that of coconut fruits and shoots, but not its trunk. On clear,
balmy nights, I could see stars, bright and not so bright, drifting past the
window as they silently crossed the night sky, the sky and everything
there that was God’s creation. Although the plank-bed we slept on was
coarse, this was a far cry from the Kuala Kangsar lock-up where our beds
were tables of brick and cement, exactly like tables on which fish were