Birth of a nation

LEGACY by Shahriza Hussein (Editions Didier Millet, 359 pages, 2008).

Last week, we looked at how Kee Thuan Chye’s play We Could **** You Mr. Birch deconstructed Malaysian history by taking the infamous Perak Resident’s murder as its starting-point.

It seems that JWW Birch will not leave us alone, as this week’s novel Legacy has a lot to do with him, too. True, he kicks the bucket after page 18, but his spirit (sometimes quite literally) haunts the rest of the book. The novel, written in a more conventional style than the play, aspires to the ‘sweeping’, multi-generational scope of a saga like The Thorn Birds.

And what an entertaining read it is! I finished it in less than 48 hours, and I’m normally such a slow reader.

Shahriza Hussein is 65 but this is his debut novel. I hope we don’t have to wait long for his next one.

The main character, Mastura, was the young widow of Perak’s Sultan Jaafar. She also had a great fondness for Birch. Although the author is discreet about just how far this fondness went, she is greatly affected by his death. She comes into possession of his time-piece, and she vows to return it to its rightful place. This novel literally takes us right to the moment when this becomes possible, over eight decades later.

In the intervening years, Mastura took another husband (a commoner!) and presided as matriarch over the next two generations. The final vow is not actually fulfilled by her but a descendant.

I actually found the business of the time-piece to be one of the less interesting things in the novel; it is an unusually arbitrary McGuffin. But what really resonates in Legacy is the rich portrait of how a family progresses along with the nascent nation.

Mastura and her husband Mansur form the moral centre of the story. Enterprising and generous, they chafe at the restrictions of Malay feudalism, form alliances with Chinese tycoons, and regard the British as mostly benevolent protectors. Theirs is as essentially conservative worldview that has no time for the ‘radical’ and ‘impatient’ left-wing politics of the time.

What a main character posits is that the British made Malaya. Without the intervention of Birch and his like, people here would continue to be victims of petty conflicts between Royal or clan despots. The way the British eradicated Malay slavery within a decade is one example of progressive politics.

It’s not fashionable in Merdeka month to have a sentimental view of the colonials, but Legacy has a generosity of vision, at least when it comes to capturing the sympathies of this particular landed Malay family.

We get a real sense of the nation being physically built – being hacked out of the jungle, as it were: the roads, buildings, plantations and water systems all bring dramatic momentum. And of the attitudes being shaped, too: It’s wonderful to read of rich Malay families relaxing over port and sherry, and of Mastura’s daughter valiantly attempting to become the first local woman to drive a car in public.

The obvious historical landmarks would be the two World Wars and the Emergency, and we also get smaller but locally significant events like the sensational murder trial of Ethel Proudlock in 1911, the Touchang Riots of 1912 (where people were killed because of hair) and the devastating KL flood of 1926.

Actual historical personages walk in and out of the drama. Aside from Birch, you get to meet Frank Swettenham, Loke Yew, Chin Peng, counter-intelligence expert CC Too, as well as Victoria Institution’s first headmaster Bennett Shaw. Oh, and The Malay Mail is heavily featured, too.

I’ve said that this novel has a conventional style, but that’s not to discount something remarkable it does: It moves episodically, with each chapter separated by a few years. These ellipses mean that important events such as deaths always seem to happen off-screen, and we get only references in conversations later. I think this is what makes it so unputdownable: You‘re always trying to catch up.

That, and the fact that some of the characters are so wonderfully drawn that you miss them when they’re gone. Because they – with all their imperfections and ticks – have become family.

(Malay Mail, 27 August 2008)