Amidst motes of dusts and mites, I found these gems in my room while searching for A4 papers. It's an entire vintage photo album of my paternal family tree. Clearing the film of dust from the leather-bound, fabric-lined (vintage floral prints) album, I flipped through the album, exposing more treasures from the bygone eras and captured memories of my Father's family.
Fragile, browned papers with cursive handwriting filled some of the pages; the ink still vibrant as though it was just written yesterday. Some in Arabic script, some Romanized. The words a beautiful blend of archaic, and modern Malay, written informally. Some are dedicated to relatives I do not know. Others hark to future generations in the family to fill in the pages.
Some of the plastic film holding the photographs are torn, making flipping through each page all the more precarious. Most are just pictures of the old mansion in Bukit Timah. (I spent the first five years of my life in. The building was sold to make way for the Giant hypermarket. It's not really grand but beautiful nonetheless.) Even angmoh relatives I had never met. (According to my mum, the young caucasian girls are called Shannon and Kimmy)
From then on my parents told me of the tales of my paternal lineage. With one of my ancestors down the paternal line being a wali - a really holy Muslim man that supposedly able to do miracles whatever. A far cry from what I am now. Tales filled with dramas and tragedies worthy of a soap opera. From a cruel step-great-grandmother to a family curse (not being able to go to Kota Tinggi or die a terrible death if transgress. Don't think I'm missing a lot though). Below are some pictures I took (using my handphone camera. I seriously need a decent camera) of some of the happier memories captured in the photographs.
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| Aunt with Father |
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| My grandmother's family portrait (with her stepmum and a Cinderella story behind it) |
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| Grandmother |
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| Aunt Sarina |
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| Aunt Shanon, Mak Long and Aunt Kimmy |
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| Aunts Shannon's and Kimmy's family photo. |
My maternal great-grandfather, devastated after his wife's untimely death, decides to remarry so that he will have someone to take care of his really young children. So, he married a woman who would soon play the role of stereotypical stepmothers you read in fairy tales. My step-great-grandmother (jujuk) treats my grandmother and her brothers terribly. Even worse after my great-grandfather died.
One day, my grandfather, a splendid young lad that he is, laid his eyes on my grandmother and fell in love with her. Classic.
When he approached the house so that he could see her, my jujuk locked my grandmother up and lied that she isn't home.
Cut the long story-short, my grandfather married my grandmother by the time my grandmother became legal to get married so that she would be free from the clutches of an evil-stepmother. My grandmother still keeps contact with her stepmother though, to the dismay of my grandfather, because even though jujuk treated her step-children badly, she still takes care of them, hence my grandmother is still grateful and feels indebted to jujuk.
My great-grandmother died a few years ago at the age of 80 something, spending the remaining years of her life hopping from one house to another, because no one wanted her.
She did spend a good few months at my place before my parents shooed her out because she treated me and my siblings badly. I pitied her though (okay Stockholm Syndrome here) because no matter how evil she is and the stories I heard about her, I still think - like my grandmother - that there is still some good in her. Well, she made me a rather chic quilt made from leftover fabric sourced from different material. A sheer obsidian patch in one end, a rainbow-patterned cloth on the other. A batik here. A floral print there. And even a swallow-printed patch that looks like something from Miu Miu.
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