THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

400 Memoirs of Mustapha Hussain
important is a person’s effectiveness. Someone can leave his mark merely
by whispering into the ears of his listeners, one after another. One listener
becomes two, two becomes four, and so on – to become tens, hundreds
and thousands. So, can one judge if someone is no longer active with
just the naked eye? Only time can tell.
I was, however, not inclined to disappoint Prof. Zainal Abidin and
his Fourth Year history students. After some discussions with my wife, I
decided to meet with the professor to discuss several issues before
accepting the invitation. I wanted to discuss the part about being ‘no
longer active’, and pre-record my presentation because of my unpredictable
bouts of asthma attacks. I also wanted more time, to see the place
and the audience, and to know if the seeds I would sow would be
beneficial to the students. Stocked with my asthma medication, pills and
the inhaler, a friend drove me to Kuala Lumpur.
During the six-hour drive (younger travellers would probably have
done it in four), many thoughts came to my mind. At long last information
and secrets I had kept buried in my chest for over thirty years would be
out in the open. This was God’s will. This was good. My grandchildren
would know that my struggle for national freedom was true and right.
This was a struggle from the heart of a nationalist aspiring for national
independence and sovereignty. Would my talk have negative effects? What
I would present would be the truth, but it would contradict claims made
by another ‘prominent figure’. 1 All his claims had been accepted as truth
and chronicled in full, without detailed research to verify them. In fact,
many of his claims were self-serving concoctions, not facts. 2
In my first face-to-face meeting with Prof. Zainal Abidin, I found him
to be rather tall for a Malay, fair-skinned, gentle and extremely polite not
only to me, but also to the students and his faculty colleagues. I was
impressed; in the past, I had been in touch with his brother, Tan Sri Haji
Ainuddin bin Abdul Wahid, the Vice Chancellor of Malaysia’s University
of Technology.
Following a brief introduction, we moved to the issues at hand. After
some discussion between us, the phrase ‘no longer active’ was withdrawn.
It was also agreed that I could pre-record my delivery. Perhaps it was
the Professor’s smart shirt, the traditional Malay baju teluk belanga, that
made me accept his invitation. I also saw students wearing traditional
Malay sandals and walking in groups of the same gender. Clearly, Malay
etiquette was observed here. I agreed to speak on 23 July, even though it
was only eighteen days away. The truth was that all the material was
already in my head. It had been stored there for over thirty years! It was
just a matter of pulling out the pages and chapters from my mind and