Suara Hati Ayahku

salam

I found it a great pleasure to visit my grandma Mok Esoh in Kota Bharu once in a while.

That time I lived in Jerteh Barrack Police.

the mode of transport was the Net bus ..old and unreliable bus.

2)  Usually the ride from KB to Jerteh ..70 km took about 4 hours.  No air cond that time.  Many passengers stood up all the way from KB to Jerteh.  Packed sardine if you took the ride on Saturday afternoon.  Not only the packed sardine , but the smell from human bodies under the hot sun was another thing to take ..  it was horrible.  Sweltering heat plus lots of dust.

3)  I usually stayed in KB for 2 nights only.  The thing I enjoyed most was to learn quranic reading from my own grandma. She beat all her learners every night except me of course.  Why?  Because I just arrived at her house.  So it was common to hear girls crying and crying for being beaten hard by my grandma.  That time readiing Quraan was like .. going for war because it was so frightening .. it took just 10 - 15 minutes to read a portion of Quraan but .. the reading session with my grandma was so scarry. She used rattan and sometimes ..  she threw something on our faces ..if we try to be naughty with each other.  quraan is in arabic. We have to read the surah carefully.  each alpahabet of the quaraan has different meaning if it pronounced wrongly.  Since we read Quraan in our daily prayers .. my gandma has to make sure we read the Quraan carefully and exactly.

the girls were seated on one corner and the boys on one corner.  We faced each other.  But I saw that the girls were bigger in size than the boys.  The girls must sit properly.  there was no legging yet that day.  Else ..  (XXX) ..  something came out free for the boys to see. (laugh).  So crying ..  by big girls was always a joke among us immediately after the 'ngaji' session.

That time if the girls were good at reading Quraan .. it took them litttle time to find themselves ..gotten married to a soldier, policeman, a teacher or a clerk.  Bonus?    The teacher was always the saught after son-in-law.  He..he.. he.. why?  bigger pay.  Do you believe graduate pay was RM700 a month.


4)  the thing i like most about the 4 hour trip was - i always find somebody who looks so clever at talking big things. He will talk about NEP, why malays are poorer than other races, why 13 May happened ..  and so on.  You know what ?  most of this story tellers  were Maktab Kadir Adabi or Institut Pendidikan students.  From conversation, this was their 4th attempt at STP (STPM) .. one of their subjects was History and Malay Literature.  No wonder all those stories ...

4th attempt .. then entered UM etc etc. That time if you scored 1 Principal or 2 Principals ... D and an E .. you were given the title ..very clever boy.

But I learnt to listen to this big brother.  Ha..ha..  how?  i just kept my mouth shut up and opened my ears wider.

That was many decades ago ..
but I enjoyed that time.

Now ..  when I looked back .. I think .. Allah has given many nikmat .. I took Net bus, then I took QANTAsS to England .. then I tok PAN AM ..and finally ..last few weeks I flew Thai Airways.

My beginning was quite humble but .. Allah can change that ..any time right?

All stories that I had .. I think I had passed to my former students in SM Tumpat, SMK Kota, Polytechnic KB, KUiTTHO , UTHM and many more.

He..he..

so the moral of the story is ..  don't judge a book from its cover.

Tq.

Wasallam