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Updated: June 27, 2025
He could swim and box, and had once gone with his father to the seaports on New Year's Day at Singapore, and his own prau had won the short-distance race. Mamat was three years older than Busuk, and they were to be married when she was fifteen. At first she cried a little, for she was sad at the thought of giving up her playmates.
Never had such presents been seen at the birth of any other of Punghulo Sahak's children. Two days later the Imam Paduka Tuan sent Busuk's father a letter sewn up in a yellow bag. It contained a blessing for Busuk. Busuk kept the letter all her life, for it was a great thing for the high priest to do.
"Allah il Allah," he would sing, and "Mohammed is his prophet," they would answer. Every night Busuk would lie down on a mat on the floor of the house with a little wooden pillow under her neck, and when she dared she would peep down through the open spaces in the bamboo floor into the darkness beneath. Once she heard a low growl, and a great dark form stood right below her.
So Busuk forgot her grief, and she watched with ill-concealed eagerness the coming of Mamat's friends with presents of tobacco and rice and bone-tipped krises. Then for the first time she was permitted to open the camphor-wood chest and gaze upon all the beautiful things that she was to wear for the one great day.
On the seventh day Busuk's head was shaven and she was named Fatima; but they called her Busuk in the kampong, and some even called her Inchi Busuk, the princess. From the low-barred window of Busuk's home she could look out on the shimmering, sunlit waters of the Straits of Malacca.
The gold of Mount Ophir was all about us. The air, the stones, the very trees, seemed to have been transformed into the glorious metal that the little fleets of Solomon and Huram sailed so far to seek. The Aurea Chersonese was a breathing, pulsating reality. The Story of a Malayan Girlhood They called her Busuk, or "the youngest" at her birth.
At evening, when the fierce sun went down behind the great banian tree that nearly hid Mount Pulei, the kateeb would sound the call to prayer on a hollow log that hung up before the little palm-thatched mosque. Then Busuk and her playmates would fall on their faces, while the holy man sang in a soft, monotonous voice the promises of the Koran, the men of the kampong answering.
There were earrings and a necklace of colored glass, and armlets, bangles, and gold pins. They all dazzled Busuk, and she could hardly wait to try them on. A buffalo was sacrificed on the day of the ceremony. The animal was "without blemish or disease." The men were careful not to break its fore or hind leg or its spine, after death, for such was the law.
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