THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

Blind Shamans and ‘Feeding’ Ghosts 23
One day, while searching for bamboo to make festive bamboo-lamps,
we came across an eerie-looking contraption that made our hair instantly
stand on end. It looked like a small mosquito net hung from a tree branch.
Inside the net was a bamboo platform on which were placed betel leaves,
dried areca nuts, cigarettes, glutinous rice, sweet cakes and ketupats
(rice cooked in small woven coconut leaf baskets). The sweet cakes and
ketupats were of miniature size. All around the platform were strips of
mengkuang leaves at the end of which were hung small woven mengkuang
birds and more ketupats.
Not only did our hair stand on end, we felt like our heads had swollen
to twice their size. Terrified by the appearance of this strange contraption,
we cut short our teenage adventure to return home. When I told my aunt,
Mak Endak Mariam, about the ‘spooky-looking thing’, she scolded me
straightaway and warned me “not to go to such places anymore.” She
then called out to my mother, “Looks like Mustapha has stumbled on an
anchak in the jungle!”
My mother ordered me to bathe that very instant. Once I was dried
with a towel, she smeared some kind of oil called minyak chelak on certain
parts of my body, on the armpits, joints and behind my ears. Minyak
chelak is actually a mixture of coconut oil, garlic, shallots, black pepper,
a tiny piece of an old mengkuang mat, a shred of an old broom, and bits
of an old umbrella and old shoes. A bomoh would then chant verses upon
the oil after which it would be kept in a small bottle.
Smeared on certain parts of the body, minyak chelak is believed to
have properties to ward off spirits like bajang (an evil spirit with long
nails which haunts pregnant women and infants), pelesit (a spirit in the
form of a vampire cricket) and orang bunian (gnomes, not necessarily
evil, living and playing in the jungle).
I later heard that one of my four friends who came across the anchak
with me became very ill upon arriving home. We were then told that the
anchak was a contraption used to ‘feed’ ghosts and spirits roaming wild
in the kampung. It was also used by bomohs to cure patients of severe
unexplained diseases attributed to the supernatural.
Another Matang bomoh specialising in curing such problems was Pak
Arshad, better known as ‘Blind Arshad’. Curing those who needed his
services provided him with a reasonable income. Another blind person,
Pak Awang, who lived near the mosque, could also cure such afflictions,
but was considered less effective than ‘Blind Arshad’.
Pak Awang was an extremely clean person. He used barrels of water
to wash just one sarong. Perhaps, it was because he was unable to see
that the sarong was already clean. For his fine manners and unblemished