THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

Continuing the Political Struggle 361
refined elderly performers sometimes took my children to the opera and
sat them down in the reserve seats. Another was the Baba Hock Ronggeng
dance group from Penang, whose pretty young performers adorned my
shop nightly. The last two groups always hanging around were politicians
and Special Branch officers. While the first group was there to disseminate
political ideas, the second was there to quash them. There were also
students and UMNO members brought in by Hamzah Alang, a KMM
member already in UMNO.
I was a very lucky person. Is there another place, apart from the Left
Bank in Paris, where so many artists and performers from all walks of
cultural pursuit gather at a dilapidated stall?
Notes
1. Translator’s note: My father had moved house twenty-three times in his seventyseven
years. I myself had attended seven schools in thirteen years before entering
the University of Malaya.
2. I had repaid his kindness by sending food to his family and also assisted him with
money during my better times.
3. The Selangor General Agency was a small KMM concern set up during the Japanese
Occupation.
4. My wife deserves the praise.
5. I repaid my loan with fried noodles as dividends. I owe this man a great deal.
6. Translator’s Note: Deputy Health Minister in early 2004.
7. Amjah was so fond of using the word ‘secret’ that Saaim once said, “To Amjah,
everything is a secret. Maybe he is a secret agent!”
8. These Palestinian Inspectors were honest. Whenever they were posted out on short
notice, they would send money from England to their friends in Kuala Lumpur to
cover their debt. They loved to nibble my pickled onions like nuts, just like the Arabs.
9. ASAS 50 stands for Angkatan Sasterawan 50 (Literary Movement 50) established
in Singapore in 1950. Although it was essentially a literary body, it participated in
some social reform and political commentary.