My late grandmother
Maria bt Mohamed had related this story when I was very very young and my mother had patched up the pieces. Zabedah bt Hassan came from Java, Indonesia at a very young age maybe at seven or at the most nine into the Elias household. As she blossomed into a fine young lady, one of the Elias siblings was smitten with her and she was later married off to Mohamed, one of the sons in the Elias family. At that time, she was only nine but the marriage union was only after she reached puberty. She bore the stately Mohamed nine children out of which one died as a child.
The era was before the Japanese Occupation and Mohamed was working as an officer or interpreter of the Court during the British rule in the than Malaya. Mohamed’s grasp of languages must have been superb – hence a number of Language lecturers in our family. My uncle another Mohamed pointed out to me as we were studying the picture of Zabedah and Mohamed that Zabedah was wearing shoes when most ladies of that era could only afford slippers. What I remembered was my late grand auntie Saodah telling me that she had a Chinese ‘Ah Soh’ to dress and comb her hair before leaving for school each morning. Well, I guess the Mohamed family was very well heeled or so to speak.
During one of my visits to an uncle’s house, right after our Mohamed Hj Elias 2007 reunion I had enquired after an old dining ware as I remembered that it was presented to my husband as one of the ‘balasan’ or gifts during our engagement ceremony. I will search for my old ‘engagement pictures’ to have the crockery displayed in this blog. That piece of crockery stands as a testament of the Mohamed house being used as one of the stations during the Japanese Occupation. The crockery was buried in the ground and later dug out after the Japanese had left the country and was handed down from family to family. My late mother-in-law wondered why my side of the family had placed ‘nasi briyani’ in that particular piece of crockery that was very well lined and aged or in Malay ‘retak seribu’. To my mother, it was a lot of sentiment that goes into that piece of crockery as it was used as a ‘balasan’ during her wedding and her mother’s, a gift from Zabedah and far more valuable than any Royal Daulton or Queen Anne’s China and silver cutlery. It was bought through mail-order catalogues from the than very famous Robinson Store in Singapore. Unfortunately, my uncle told me that the heritage was stolen when my grandmother’s house was once broken into. Despite the Islamic teachings that we must not hold to earthly goods, that piece of news had somehow made my meager collection of crystals paled and meaningless as I too like my mother is a very sentimental person as history is somehow lost along with the missing crockery.
Crockery aside, I guess preserving part of our history in this blog will open up a floodgate of memories that may help our younger generation understand their roots and to hold true to Islamic beliefs and the saying that ‘Family First’ as well as ‘Charity begins at Home’ will become an adage worthy to be passed from generation to generation.
Zabedah, the “Iron Lady’
Mohamed passed away at a relatively young age, slightly above forty and Zabedah was than hardly in her thirties. With no government pension, Zabedah raised six children including a special child single-handedly. When Mohamed died, Mariah, than later Safiah was married and had their own families. Mariah was living next door to Zabedah’s mansion while Safiah was in Kluang, Johor with her husband who was than with the Agriculture Department.
Zabedah came from Java and had no siblings at least in the than Malaya and the Elias-in-laws had already passed on. There were only some family property and part of the Mohamed’s mansion that she had rented out to support her and her family. I remembered my mother telling me about Zabedah’s chicken coup and the small banana plot that may be her other source of income. Life must be tough for Zabedah but she persevered. Her well-known highly disciplinarian style of upbringing had ensured that all her children were well-placed in society. The mansion was build by Mohamed but it was Zabedah’s legacy. She could have put her children in an orphanage or squandered away the wealth but her children’s wellbeing and the mansion as the Mohamed Hj Elias legacy was supreme in her mind. That ‘Power of Love’ for her children and the ‘Strength of an Iron Lady’ magnified every time I passed the old house in Lorong Lima, Yahya Awal which alas is now no more.
My brother remembered her as the bedridden lady while I only remembered the helpless kindly face where part of her blood now flows in my body. She was forever enticing me to come near her by offering me candies or coins. After all am I not her first great grand-daughter. I called her ‘Tok Bawah’ - a name my mother used to call her as my other great-grandfather was ‘Tok Jantan’ and not predictably ‘Tok Atas’ as his house was just next door and on a higher ground.
There are many wonderful and some heart wrenching stories I would like to share with the younger group that I feel if I put my true heart to it - if the stories does not bag me a Nobel award, it will at least have Shuhaimi Baba or our Yasmin Ahmad, our film industry greats begging for more stories. However, sensitivity aside I must thread carefully.
Zabedah bt Hassan was indeed a very very fine lady and in fact a very very fine example to emulate as a wife, mother and a personality worth mentioning in any history books especially our family history blog as ‘Mother of all Mothers’ – at least in our family.
Al Fatihah to Allahyarhamah Zabedah bt Hassan. May her soul be at Peace and be placed among the ‘Shuhadas’ and ‘Salihin’. Amen.
