THE MEMOIRS OF MUSTAPHA HUSSAIN - Malaysia Today

Circumcision Ceremony 51
thing, to make sure our ‘most precious asset’ would heal well. After the
initial shock, I began to feel pain, which later intensified to excruciating
levels. Upon hearing a few of us crying and sobbing, the elders came to
console us with nothing more than words of sympathy.
“It’s all right. That pain is due to the cut. You’ll be all right soon,”
they said with great compassion.
Nowadays, boys are luckier; there are painkillers and other soothing
lotions. We did not even have any lotion or ointment that could help
prevent the wounds from turning septic. The Tok Mudim had not left us
with anything to reduce the pain.
There was, however, a traditional medicine, a very fine powder
obtained from the branches of young coconut palms. This we put on our
wounds to speed up healing. My father also brought home blotting paper
from the office. Torn into two-inch squares, the blotting paper was used
to clean our wounds, to absorb blood and pus. It replaced cotton wool,
which was either unavailable or was unaffordable.
We were forbidden from eating any meat or eggs. We were permitted
to only eat fish cooked in a bland sauce and a certain variety of fried
dried fish not considered detrimental to the healing process.
My main problem was that this ‘prized asset’ of mine was always
‘stretching’ itself, as if taking a look at what was happening around it.
This made me scream in pain. I whispered to my oldest brother Ahmed
about this ‘rising’ problem, to which he responded, “Oh, that problem! It
can be easily dealt with.”
He disappeared to the back of the house for a while and returned with
half a coconut shell that had been scraped clean and smoothened. He
handed the coconut shell together with a tip: “When ‘the thing’ begins
‘to rise’, use this shell to knock your kneecap. Keep knocking on your
kneecap until ‘the thing’ goes down again.”
It was a most effective tip. I thought I was the only one experiencing
such a problem, but soon, I began to hear ‘tok, tok, tok’ tapping sounds
coming from all the other three suffering my fate. I knew then that we
were reacting naturally to the challenges of male adulthood. The still of
the night was soon broken by the ‘tok, tok, tok’ sound, like that of the
woodpecker which used to perch outside our verandah window.
When I was still far from fully healed and school was about to reopen,
my brother brought home a lotion that was smeared on my wound. Soon,
it began to heal properly and new skin began to show. The elders came
to my bedside to assure me, “Not too long from now, you can return to
school. Then, you may eat whatever you like.”
While we were lying down on our own allotted mattresses, sometimes