Tok Wan's birthday

Tok Wan sat alone at his dinner table. There was a far and nostalgic but contented look on his face. It has been a long busy day, quite out of the regular for an old man like him. So many people had wished him happy birthday today, both at home and earlier this evening at the mosque where there was a special 'doa' for him. He felt grateful and blessed.

He reluctantly finished his food that the maid insisted he eats and went to sit in the porch. On the way he passed Mak Nah’s photo on the side table and looked at it and smiled. How good she had been to him, he thought, and although it had been many years since she died, not a day passed that he had not missed her and her loving ways. He had to stifle his tears this morning when he visited her grave.

Strange though that it was not really her that he was in love with in those early days but her younger sister, Zainab. Nab was then the more attractive, lively and independent woman of her time in comparison to Hasnah’s serious and conservative ways. As a schoolgirl Nab used to take maths tuition from Tok Wan. And even then he was already attracted to her charming obstinacy. Nab had ambition and was headstrong – she wanted to be a teacher. They had a rather tempestuous relationship, and as it grew they saw no way that they could live together with their strong temperaments. He was willing to try but Nab kept deferring giving an answer to his proposal, afraid to lose her her independence and in zealous pursuit of her career.

Tok Wan married Hasnah, in some way to spite Nab, and to fulfill his parent’s wishes. Nab thereafter refused all other proposals of marriage, pursued her teaching career with a vengence and is today a retired headmistress, still unmarried and a little mellow. But each time she and Tok Wan met, they meet they still found things to quarrel about. Like at today's lunch, over of all things, her diaspproval of a new cologne he was using (a birthday gift from one of his grandsons), which she thought was too young for him. He let her have her say and did not mention her tinted hair and the bright orange baju kurung too showy for her age...

The gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the mango trees nearby as softly as the way Mak Nah would put a hand on him when he fell asleep on the porch to get him to come to bed. Twelve long years have passed without her. It was a very lonely period in the beginning. “Bagai berkurun lama kesepian...” (like a hundred years of loneliness) was a line of a song he often hear on radio these days and it just about summed up how he felt at that time.

Tok Wan closed his eyes. He could hear the sweet voice of Rafeah Buang from the maid's transistor radio. She too had long departed and Tok Wan remembered how Mak Nah used to love to hear her sing and thought that other female singers should emulate her descent image.

What had a man to celebrate his seventy-eighth year for, Tok Wan thought. He was the only one left from his own family of one brother and three sisters. Thank goodness for his own family, that was all a man at his age could claim. Mak Nah bore him six children who gave him twenty two grandchildren and three great grandchildren so far. Alhamdullilah, they are all alive except for his eldest son.

There were indeed few regrets in his life and he had a lot to be grateful for instead. He had been relatively healthy all his life except for minor ailments. He was still able to live on his own with the loyal Indonesian maid and her husband, refusing all invitations of his family members to move in with them. He could still go to the mosque and visit Mak Nah's grave on his own.

His friends wandered why he never remarried as most widower would do, if anything, for someone to look after him. And there was Nab, still single and matured, his very first love and the woman he had continued to love secretly for a big part of his married life. What would be more acceptable than to “salin tikar”(replace a carpet).

But no, he would not give Nab the satisfaction of being asked a second time by him. They were comfortable with their present canktankterous relationship. And Nab was quite set in her own life already having adopted two children who were now married and have children of their own. No, it would not be the thing to marry Nab, though Tok Wan sometimes thought that Mak Nah would have approved it. Tok Wan knew that Mak Nah was always discreetly aware that she was a second choice as his wife, and that her husband harboured an unfulfilled love for her sister.

At her death bed Mak Nah had whispered something to Nab, which Nab had kept a secret until today. Tok Wan would like to believe that it was Mak Nah’s will to Nab that she should marry Tok Wan if asked....

But now he would never know, and he would not ask the proud custodian of the secret either questions....