THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

Why I Penned These Memoirs 401
putting them on tape. I then started working on my presentation in
between my asthma attacks.
Seminar at UKM, 23 July 1974
I arrived as scheduled, and was met by Prof. Zainal Abidin and an
Australian lecturer, John Funston, who liked to use the word terpesona,
or ‘fascinating’. I was taken to a lecture hall where students were
anxiously waiting for me – an old man who had kept silent for so long.
It was now time to lift the veil and reveal the folds of history. I was
already 64 years old and might not have another chance to share my
memories. To me, the history of the Malays should not be manipulated,
for it is the people’s life-blood. To begin, I announced that I had not been
in front of a class since 1941 and had lost touch with teaching. Actually,
for someone who had been lecturing (in class and at political meetings)
for umpteen years, the audience size was no problem, the larger the better.
Explaining my asthma problem, I asked for permission to play the tape.
I would entertain questions at any time while the tape was being played.
My friend Enchik Shaari sat with me as the tape was played. This
went on for two hours until 1.00 pm, with several pauses in between for
questions. UKM taped my presentation while Abdul Malek bin Hanafiah, 3
son of a former Perak KMM member, taped it on his recorder. We lunched
in a restaurant where the food was not as good as where Prof. Zainal
Abidin had taken me on my first visit.
At 2.00 pm, the tape was continued. Not one student left his or her
seat. No one went out to light a cigarette. Almost every student was
crying. Some with tears running down their cheeks, while others sobbed.
I cried along with them as memories of my bitter and gruelling experiences
came flooding back – being a Malay Fifth Column leader during
World War II; detained in several police lock-ups and prisons; taunted
and jeered by Malays who saw me hawking food on the roadside;
humiliated by people who slammed their doors in my face; asked to leave
my rented cubicle in the middle of the night, and being labelled as the
Malay who had ‘brought’ the Japanese into Malaya.
A friend who used to call me ‘Brother’ was now living in luxury as
a Jakarta bank owner. I remembered how our hands were tightly clasped
as we vowed “One for all; all for one” in front of the holy Qur’an after
the British Surrender. But at the end of the Japanese Occupation, he had
fled with two bundles of Japanese and British currency, and much more.
And later, during the Emergency some time in 1948 or 1949, this same
friend had requested that I set up a ‘Third Force’ promising to send me