THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

Blind Shamans and ‘Feeding’ Ghosts 21
With compassion in his eyes, Pak Yit looked at my skinny body, which
was visibly shaking under the grey felt blanket. He then told my mother
to prepare a list of items – seven freshly plucked betel leaves, seven dried
areca nut chips, some gambier (a condiment made from gambier tree
leaves), a daub of lime, a beeswax candle prepared from a hive already
deserted by its bees, an earthen incense-burner with charcoal embers, a
wide-mouthed earthen jar filled with water, some kemenyan (benzoin, the
aromatic resin of a type of tree) and eleven cents as token.
Carefully tucking his checked sarong under his legs, Pak Yit sat down
cross-legged on the mengkuang (screw-pine leaves) mat next to my
sleeping area. Then, we slept on mattresses made of burlap cloth, filled
with kapok (a cotton-like substance), placed directly on the floor.
Ahmed nipped into our backyard to pluck the betel leaves from a
flourishing vine that twined wildly around a bamboo framework. Every
Malay home had a backyard, and most backyards had betel plants
alongside ginger, turmeric (a type of rhizome used as a yellow colouring
substance and for flavouring), curry-leaves and pandan (long fragrant
leaves).
Between my brothers, aunts and mother, the requisites were ready in
record time. These were reverently placed in front of Pak Yit, who had
already started to repeat incantations, some Arabic sounding, some in
Malay, while dropping bits of kemenyan on top of the smouldering
embers in the earthen incense-burner. The room began to smell exotic as
the kemenyan melted with a low hissing sound on the bed of glowing
charcoals.
Pak Yit then lit the beeswax candle and dropped the molten wax on
to the still water in the earthen jar. The low wide-mouthed jar was sitting
on a lekar (woven rattan pot-stand). With an earnest expression on his
face, he studied the formations made by the wax droplets; these cloudlike
formations would indicate the answer to my problem. After scrutinising
the white molten candle-wax patterns on the water, his face grimaced,
as if in pain. It was such a grim look that I held my breath. Did he not
see anything in the water, or worse, did he see something terrible?
Next, he rubbed his palms vigorously together. Soon, his crinkled
fingers begin to tremble, followed by his sinewy hands; finally, his sweatcoated
body was also trembling. He had entered another world. In his
deep trance, Pak Yit asked in a quivering voice, “Why did you chop and
slash our house (tree stump)? You have injured many of us. Some of my
children fell down and broke their legs.”
Since Pak Yit was speaking Malay with a strong Siamese accent, my
mother played the role of a translator. I nodded my head in agreement,