Fatimah in the early 1950’s, holding a niece.
The memory of her takes me back to the most frightful day of my life in Kampung Lukut, somewhere in the heart of Kota Tinggi, Johor, where my family had taken refuge from the Japanese occupation of Malaya in December 1941. I was 8 years old then.
When Muar fell to the Japanese on Jan 18, 1942, the people in Batu Pahat began to panic. Many left their homes in a bid to escape from the Japanese atrocities.
My father, Bahar Abu Rasip, decided that we would be safer in Kota Tinggi. And so, it was with much sadness, we left our big house in Jalan Limpoon, Batu Pahat.
In Kota Tinggi, we settled in a fairly remote village called Kampung Lukut and occupied an abandoned house at the end of the road leading into a rubber estate.
Perched on high wooden stilts, it was the biggest house in the area.
There were nine of us in the family -- our father, whom we called Bapak, our mother (Emak), elder sister, Zaleha (Kak Ha), elder brother, Halim (Abang Halim), myself and my younger siblings, Shaidah, Rashidah, Gaffar, and Firdaus.
Bapak's main concern was the safety of his family. He forbade us from going out of the house unless it was really necessary so as not to draw the attention of the Japanese soldiers who were known to take away young women to their quarters.
Every night, Abang Halim had to take Kak Ha to hide somewhere in the area. Later, after the soldiers finished making their rounds, Bapak would go out to tell them that it was safe to come home.
My younger sisters and I were too young to really feel the hardship and danger that the war had brought upon us.
We had some fun with the seesaw-like rice pounder under the house.
Unfortunately, the fun was cut short when I accidentally "pounded" my sister's head.
We would also trek along a narrow path between the trees and undergrowth to a spring where Kak Ha and other womenfolk gathered to wash clothes.
Here, my younger sisters and I caught small fish trapped in small pools of water.
In retrospect, Bapak, Abang Halim, Emak and Kak Ha must have gone through extreme hardship and trouble to ensure that food, water, firewood for cooking and other necessities were available to the family.
Adversity seemed to bring out the best in 14-year-old Abang Halim at the time as he never failed to bring home food for the family every day. At the same time, Bapak displayed true courage, and Emak and Kak Ha deserved praises for their fortitude.
Another day dawned. And it proved to be the most frightful day of my young life.
The din of an approaching lorry was heard. As it grew louder, we began to tremble and remained very quiet in the house, windows and doors closed.
Peeping through the cracks in the wall, we saw, to our horror, a big lorry carrying Japanese soldiers armed with bayonets passing about 18 metres from our house and stopping a short distance to the right.
The soldiers jumped down from the lorry and disappeared into the rubber estate.
Fearing for our lives, we stayed indoors, except for Bapak and Abang Halim who went out to get some food for us.
It was late in the afternoon when the soldiers returned with a long line of Chinese captives, dragging them towards the parked lorry.
We could hear piteous wailing and pleas for help, then chilling screams followed by silence.
No one in the village dared to come out for fear of their lives and the lives of their families. It was sunset before we heard the lorry lumbering out of the estate.
Dusk began to fall, and darkness soon enveloped the village. Bapak, with a torch in hand, went out to investigate what had happened.
He told us later how he saw bodies dumped into a freshly dug grave.
Upon hearing faint cries from the hole, he looked closely at the pile of bodies and saw a small boy and an older girl moving.
They had apparently been shielded by their parents' bodies as they fell into the hole. He brought them back home and raised them both as part of our family.
The girl, whom Bapak named Fatimah, was about 8, and the boy, Mohamad, must have been around 2.
However, Mohamad's stay with us hadn't been long. As soon as news of the mass killings spread, his elder brother came to the village in search of his family members, and much to his delight and relief, found Mohamad in our home.
Bapak was happy to hand Mohamad to his brother, who was so grateful that every day, we were presented with fish and vegetables.
Shortly thereafter, we left Lukut for Johor Baru where we stayed in a large single-storey house. It was there that we had a conversion ceremony for Fatimah to welcome her into Islam.
Being in the same age range, Fatimah, my sisters and I played together and learnt to read the Quran.
She had adapted well into the family, doing her part to help with the household chores and joining us in our games of congkak, enjit-enjit semut, batu seremban and teng-teng.
Fatimah also enjoyed singing Tepuk Amai-amai, Buai Laju-laju, and the melodious song Sayang disayang as much as we enjoyed listening to and singing the song she had taught us.
I remember how she would ask us to stand up and follow her actions as she sang Hao hua bu chang kai, hao ying bu chang zai.
At the end of 1943, our family left Johor Baru to return to Batu Pahat where Bapak found that the fleet of buses he used to own, Naim & Co., had been plundered by the Japanese.
Life remained hard and uncertain, and since food was scarce, we helped Emak to grow tapioca and vegetables in the garden, as well as rear chickens. Bapak, innovative as usual, experimented with soap making.
Kak Ha and Abang Halim started school again, and Fatimah joined me and my sisters at the Batu Pahat Malay School in the morning, and Sekolah Ugama Bandar Tinggi in the afternoon.
News of the Japanese defeat and their surrender on Sept 12, 1945, was received with much relief by the people of Malaya and Singapore.
In 1958, Fatimah married a man called Mohammad and they moved to Johor Baru, and lived happily. The couple adopted a boy, Jo, and a girl, Ayu.
As the years passed, she remained fairly healthy apart from the chronic knee pains and passed away on Sept 15, 1998, leaving behind her husband, children and us.
Of the beautiful song she had sung to us, I always remembered the first two lines. It has a haunting tune and I have always wondered which song the lines came from.
Recently, with the help of my friends Tan and Christine, I learnt that the lines came from a Mandarin song entitled He Ri Jun Zai Lai, sung by the famous singer Teresa Teng.
The writer is a proud mother of three -- Ariffin, Firoza and Hafriza -- and a grandmother of seven. Her favourite poem, which she learnt in school, is Sohrab and Rustum from An Anthology of Longer Poems.
Read more: Japanese soldiers came http://www.nst.com.my/nst/articles/16fatt-2/Article/#ixzz1b0C6MCFR
Just wanted to share with you all this story, excerpted from The New Strait Times 2011.
