The Scar 2 – a true tale of old Malaya

Yussof Condred

My late father had a crescent-shaped scar, just above his left eyebrow, that tells a story of Third Degree interrogation.

The year was 1948, the start of the Malayan Emergency, when a guerrilla war was fought between the Commonwealth armed forces and the Malayan Liberation Army, a military arm of the Malayan Communist Party. It was after World War 2, after the Japanese invaders in Malaya had surrendered.

Fear and insecurity were the order of the day for ordinary Malayans, in particular the Chinese community. They were caught between the two warring factions — the Commonwealth armed forces under the leadership of the British colonial government and the communist  terrorists. The Special Branch (made up of Britons and local Malays, Chinese and Indians) were generally wary of the Chinese. They suspected that most of them were sympathetic towards the terrorists, which was not entirely true. Most, like my father, were apolitical and in fact just wanted to get on peacefully with their daily lives. On the other hand, the terrorists, who were mainly Chinese youths, demanded, sometimes with the barrels of their Enfield rifles, the cooperation of the Chinese, especially in the forms of food and monetary donations. So if you donated, you would incur the wrath of the British law enforcers; if you don’t, the terrorists might harm you and your family members. And woe betide those (the terrorists called them ‘running dogs’) who betrayed them to the British. They were infamous for being extremely vindictive.

It was under these circumstances that my father operated his coffee shop (kopitam in Hokkien) in the small town of Sungai Bakap, Province Wellesley (now called Seberang Prai). It was an end lot of a row of shop houses typical of any small Malayan town at that time.

Bear with me a little longer while I digress. I can’t resist telling you about how my father’s kopitam was patronised by all races of our kampong. In those days my father made it a point to serve halal food. I still remember Cikgu Othman, a teacher, whose son was my primary school classmate; Muniandy, the coconut harvester who always wore a ‘ten-gallon’ hat and a red scarf around his neck looking like John Wayne (a western movie cowboy-hero actor of the 50’s), with his work tool, a long bamboo pole at the end of which was affixed a curved knife; and Ah Hock the poultry farmer from the nearby ‘New Village’. They were regulars at our kopitiam. And then there was this Mak Cik, of very fair skin and pretty smiling eyes, who came every morning to deliver 15 packets of nasi lemak, wrapped in banana leaves in the shape of a pyramid. If you unwrapped Mak Cik’s packet of Nasi Lemak you would see a medium-sized unshelled curry prawn, slices of cucumber and sambal belacan sitting at the apex of the pyramid of coconut-santaned rice. And the cost per packet? Sepuloh sen sahaja. Where have all those days gone?

It was 6.00 pm on a Saturday evening when Special Branch police inspector, Ronny Ho, who was feared by all for putting away many terrorist suspects, decided to have a few rounds of billiard games with his friends. It was to be the last time he could play billiards again.

At exactly 6.30 pm my father heard a loud explosion. It went off in the billiard saloon. Instinctively, he went to close the shutters of the shop. Simultaneously, residents of all the shop houses were frantically doing the same. Experience had taught them that explosions spelled trouble. They had learnt their emergency drills well.

But unlike the modern roller shutters, the shutters of old were made up of several pieces of long, heavy wooden planks that could slide along grooves cut out on the wooden lintels at the top and bottom of the main wide doorway. Piece by piece the planks had to be fitted to the grooves and slid along them until the planks were standing  in juxtaposition and the shop entrance was shut. It took time to shutter up. Before my father could complete closing the shop, a Chinese youth of no more than 19 years of age rushed out of the billiard saloon screaming, half hobbling and half running towards our coffee shop,  leaving a trail of blood on the five-foot-way. He darted into the shop, to my father’s chagrin.

At precisely 6.32 pm, Special Branch police inspector Ronny Ho lay dead on the cold cement floor of the billiard saloon with half his belly blown off. The inexperienced youthful terrorist, who had taken refuge in my father’s shop, had detonated a hand grenade (A Mills Bomb “pineapple” hand grenade) and in the process injured himself.

My father summoned all his persuasive skill and pleaded with the injured youth to flee from the shop for he knew the place would soon be swarming with British soldiers and members of the Special Branch and a bullet to the head would end it all for this misguided young lad. My father’s safety would be jeopardised too for ‘harbouring ‘ a terrorist. And there was no way he would hand the terrorist to the British soldiers. The subsequent revenge by  his comrades would have been horrendous. A war was in progress. No one could hope for any form of protection.

Finally, the wounded terrorist left through the back door of the shop and disappeared into the dark jungle beyond our backyard.

My father then hastily mopped up the trail of blood from the billiard saloon to our shop and those tell-tale stains within the premises and the backyard. He shuttered the shop entrance, slumped on a chair and heaved an enormous sigh.

Soon after, at 6.50 pm, two truckloads of British soldiers led by an army officer arrived at the scene and immediately condoned off the row of shop houses. The soldiers carried out a house-to-house search.

The army officer (probably Sandhurst-trained and looking like the late actor Peter O’toole of the ‘Lawrence Of Arabia’ fame), a sharp fellow with a gift for sorting out details, made straight for the scene of the crime. He looked at the body and then turned his gaze to a line of blood stains running parallel and close to the billiard table. The trail led out towards the shop entrance and disappeared abruptly at the door step. He stepped out of the shop onto the five-foot-way. Semi-wet smudges on the pavement  leading to our shop! In the damp monsoon period of Malaya, evaporation rate is slow. Too slow! Drawing out his revolver (Webley Mark VI) he made a beeline for my father’s shop and gave an order to his men to surround it.

How did my father survive that long interrogation by the army officer? I cannot imagine. But I see clearly even now how the frustrated officer had made the butt of his revolver come crashing down with the full might of his anger to stamp, permanently, a crescent mark on the left of his forehead.

Through it all, my father stuck obstinately to his story. The terrorist was never in the shop. Thankfully,  he was given the benefit of the doubt.

I admire and hero-worship my father. Looking back to those days I see again that little skinny boy that was me. Whenever my primary school friends visited our shop they never failed to ask me about my father’s scar. And I always told them boastfully, with childish mischief, that he was injured fighting the Japanese invaders!