Thus it was that the death of Maznah (Razak’s daughter) had opened Hamzah’s house to me and to many others. She was lying on a tiny mattress surrounded by mosquito netting strung from the rafters. Her body was wrapped in a new white cloth, and her face was barely visible beneath a lace shawl of the kind women wear for prayer. Beside the netting was incense and a tin plate. Each new visitor would, after lifting the netting to look at the child, place money on the plate: as little as 50¢, or as much as M$2. The contributions to funeral expenses, known as “lightening” or “instant donations,”6 were especially necessary in this case since neither Razak nor many of the other very poor villagers subscribed to a death benefit society that “insures” for funeral expenses. The money on the plate at the end of the day would provide for at least the minimal decencies.
There were perhaps twenty-five villagers, mostly women, sitting on the floor of the bare room talking quietly in small groups. A few men remained to talk among themselves, but most left quickly to join the other men outside. Razak, sitting by the door, was ignored, but his isolation was not a collective act of respect for his private grief. At feasts, at other funerals, at the village shops, and even at market stalls, the other men always sat somewhat apart from Razak. He did not intrude himself. His daughter’s death was no exception; the men [Page 4] who left shuffled around him as if he were a piece of furniture. On the rare occasions when he was addressed, the tone was unmistakable. A group of men sitting in one of the village stores having ice drinks and smoking would hail his arrival with “Here comes Tun Razak” followed by knowing smiles all around. “Tun Razak” was the aristocratic title of Malaysia’s second prime minister, and its application to this ragtag, frail, obsequious village pariah was intended to put him in his place. Whoever was treating that day would pay for his drink, and Razak would help himself to the tobacco and cut nipah leaves used to make peasant cigarettes. He was extended the minimal courtesies but otherwise ignored, just as today the village was burying his daughter but he himself might as well have been invisible.
Directly across the path, outside the combination village hall, religious school (madrasah),7 and prayer house, a few young men had begun measuring the spare boards they had rounded up for a coffin. Yaakub thought the boards were far too long and Daud, the son of the village headman, was sent back to Hamzah’s house with string to measure. Meanwhile Basir arrived with hot tea and the special canvas used for the bottom of the casket. The talk turned, as it often did in the coffee shops, to an exchange of stories about Razak’s many capers, most of which were established staples of village gossip. Amin shared the most recent installment having to do with the subsidies given by the government for house improvement and permanent outdoor toilets.8 Razak, along with other members of the ruling party—and only them—was the recipient of a porcelain toilet bowl. Despite explicit warnings against selling such material, Razak had exchanged his for Amin’s plastic bowl and cash and in turn sold the plastic toilet to Nor for M$15. Yaakub, to the general merriment, asked why Razak should build a toilet anyway, when he did not even have a house.9
Yaakub then wondered whether anyone else had seen Razak dig into the curry at the wedding feast for Rokiah’s daughter two days before, a feast to which he had not been invited. Shahnon added that only yesterday, when Razak turned up at the coffee stall in the town market, he invited him to have some coffee, it being understood that Shahnon would pay. The next thing he noticed, Razak had left after having not only drunk coffee but taken three cakes and two cigarettes. Others recalled, partly for my benefit, how Razak took payment for [Page 5] attap roofing from Kamil and never delivered it and how Kamil gave him cash for special paddy seed that Razak said he could get from a friend in a nearby village. Accosted a week later, he claimed his friend with the seed had not been at home. Accosted again the following week, he claimed his friend had already sold the seed. The money was never returned. On various occasions, they claimed, Razak had begged seed paddy for planting or rice for his family. In each case, the gift had been sold for cash, not planted or eaten. Ghazali accused him of helping himself to nipah fronds from behind his house for roofing without ever asking permission and of having begged for a religious gift of paddy (zakat) even before the harvest was in. “I lost my temper,” he added as many shook their heads.
When the well-to-do villagers lament, as they increasingly do, the growing laziness and independence of those they hire for work in the fields, the example of Razak is always close at hand. They have other illustrations, but Razak is by far the most serviceable. Any number of times, they claim, he has taken advance wages in cash or rice and then failed to show up for work. As for his poverty, they are skeptical. He has, after all, half a relong (.35 acre), which he rents out like a landlord rather than farming himself.10 The general verdict is that he is simply not capable of getting ahead.11 When the subdistrict chief (penghulu), Abdul Majid, confides to me that the poor are reluctant to work anymore and now insist on unrealistic wages, he seizes the example of Razak. “He has made himself hard up, it’s his own doing.”12
By now the simple coffin was nearly finished and Amin, the best carpenter in the village, began to add some small decorative touches at the ends. “No need to add decorations,” put in Ariffin, and Amin left off. As they carried the coffin across to Hamzah’s house, where Maznah lay, someone sized up the work and said, “shabby.”13
Returning to my house I encountered a small group of Pak Haji Kadir’s wife’s friends talking about the child’s death. They all seemed to agree that Razak and Azizah were largely to blame. After all, they took their sick daughter to Rokiah’s feast the day before yesterday, fed her food she should not have had, and kept her up to all hours. “They don’t eat at all well,” said Tok Kasim’s [Page 6] wife, “they have to tag along at other people’s feasts.”14 At my urging, the details of the family’s scant cuisine emerged. For breakfast, if there was any money in the house, coffee and perhaps cassava or a bit of cold rice left over from the day before. Otherwise, only water. And Razak’s family, someone added, drank water from the same ditch used for bathing. Rarely any porridge, never any milk, and almost never any sugar unless Azizah brought some back from her relatives in Dulang. By contrast, the village headman, Haji Jaafar, usually took his morning meal in the town coffee shop, where he had porridge or fried flat bread with sugar or curry, assorted cakes and sweets made with sticky rice, and coffee with sweetened condensed milk. The midday meal, the main one in the village, for Razak’s family would typically include rice, vegetables that could be gathered free in the village,15 and, if finances permitted, some dried fish or the cheapest fish from the market. No one had ever seen Razak buy vegetables. Fresh fish, when they had it, was normally cooked over an open fire, for it was rare that they could afford the 30¢ minimum purchase of the cheapest cooking oil. Haji Jaafar’s midday meal, on the other hand, reflected both his wealth and his rather sumptuous tastes: a tasty curry made from the most expensive fish and market vegetables and, at least twice a week, a luxury that Razak never bought—meat.
Razak’s household, like its food, was distinguished less by what it had than by what it lacked. The couple had no mosquito netting, which helped explain why their children’s arms and legs were often covered with the scabs of old bites. Maybe once a year they bought a bar of the cheapest soap. They had to share three tin plates and two cups when they ate. They lacked even the traditional mats to sleep on, using instead an old cast-off plastic sheet Razak found at the market. As for clothes, Azizah had not bought a sarong since her wedding, making do instead with worn-out cloth given her by Basir’s wife. Razak’s one pair of pants and shirt were bought three years ago when there was a sale of secondhand clothing that had not been redeemed at the pawnbrokers. As Cik Puteh pointed out, the responsibility for this deplorable situation rested squarely with Razak. “He has land but he doesn’t want to plant it.” “He’s always looking for short cuts.”16 “He takes the money first but doesn’t want to come thresh paddy
.” “Now, those who are hardup are getting cleverer; there’s more cheating these days.”
[Page 7]
The sound of motorcycle engines next door told us that the body had been prepared for burial and the funeral procession was about to begin. Normally, in the case of an adult, the coffin would have been carried the two miles to the mosque with a cortege of men following on foot, on bicycle, and on motorcycle. Since Maznah was so small and light, Hamzah, her uncle, carried her wrapped in a new batik cloth slung over his shoulder like a bandolier as he rode pillion behind Basir on his Honda 70. The plain coffin was carried athwart Amin’s motorcycle by Ghani Lebai Mat. Counting Razak and myself, there were only eleven men, and it was the first entirely motorcycle-born cortege I had ever seen. The villagers and later the Chinese shopkeepers in Kepala Batas paused briefly to watch us pass.
In the graveyard next to the mosque, Tok Siak (caretaker of the mosque) and his assistant were still digging the grave. Maznah, covered with a cotton winding sheet, was taken gently from the batik cloth and placed in the coffin on her side so that she would be facing Mecca. A large clod of clay from the grave was lodged against her back to prevent her position from shifting. Tok Siak was now bailing water from the grave with an old biscuit tin; the burial plot was on reclaimed paddy land and the seasonal rains had begun. The prayers, led by Lebai Sabrani, took less than ten minutes and it was over. Most of the men then entered the mosque to pray for Maznah’s soul. When they emerged, Basir handed them envelopes containing a dollar, as is the custom.17 The six men who had prayed returned the envelopes. Villagers believe that these prayers help lighten the burden of sin and speed the soul on its way to heaven; the more who pray, the more rapid the soul’s progress. On the way back to the village, I asked Amin why there were so few people at the burial. He replied that, since Maznah was so young, her sins were few, and thus it was not so important that many people pray on her behalf. But it was a sensitive question, for we both remembered the burial of Tok Sah’s infant granddaughter a month earlier when two or three times that number had come to the graveyard.
That night, again at Hamzah’s house, there was a small funeral feast.18 Not more than fifteen men came, and Haji Kadir led the brief Islamic prayers and chants. The expenses, for coffee, flat bread with sugar, and the makings of [Page 8] peasant cigarettes came to less than M$ 12 and were partly defrayed by minute donations of coins. Razak, as usual, was ignored, invisible. Later, as Yaakub and I walked back home along the village path, he asked if I had noticed how the tobacco had run short because Razak had pocketed some for later use. “Shabby,” was his summary.
Early in the morning, three or four days later, Razak appeared at the foot of my steps waiting to be asked up. Whenever he came to see me it was always early enough so that no one else was about; if someone else did happen by, he would fall silent and take the first opportunity to leave. Despite the fact that the gossip about him had long aroused my curiosity, I had already found myself avoiding much talk with him in public, having sensed that it could only set village tongues wagging. Was he taking advantage of me? What tales and slanders would he put in my ear? Did I actually approve of this good-for-nothing? Razak had come to thank me for my large contribution to the funeral expenses. I had made a discreet donation directly into Razak’s hands the day his daughter died, knowing that if I had put M$20 directly on the plate near the body, I would have received no end of scolding.19
Before long we passed on to the topic I had been raising recently in conversations with villagers: the enormous changes that have come to Sedaka since the beginning of double-cropping eight years ago. It was clear to Razak that things were generally worse now than before irrigation. “Before it was easy to get work, now there’s no work in the village and the estates (rubber and oil palm) don’t want anyone.” “The poor are poorer and the rich are richer.”20 The trouble, he added, is mostly because of the combine-harvesters that now cut and thresh paddy in a single operation. Before, his wife could earn over M$200 a season cutting paddy and he could earn M$150 threshing, but this last season they only managed M$150 between them.21 “People weren’t happy when the machines [Page 9] came.” “You can’t even glean anymore.”22 What distressed him about the machine as well was how it removed money from the village and gave it to outsiders. Money that might have gone to paddy reapers and threshers from the village and in turn been used partly for local feasts within Sedeka was now paid directly to the owners of these expensive machines. As Razak put it, “They carry it away for their own feasts.”23
Not only was wage work harder and harder to come by, but it was almost impossible now to find land to rent. In the old days, he said, landlords wanted you to take land and hardly bothered about the rent. Today, they farm all the land themselves or else rent out large plots under long-term leases to wealthy Chinese contractors with machinery. “They won’t give (land) to their own people.” “They won’t even give five cents to someone who is hard up.”24
Razak has begun to warm up to one of his favorite laments, one he shares with many of the other village poor: the growing arrogance and stinginess of the rich. It is reflected in what he sees as their attitude toward charity. Little wonder that Razak—with a tiny patch of rice land, four (now three) young children, and a frail physique (and many would say a reluctance to work)—should be concerned about charity. The official poverty-level income for a family of Razak’s size would be M$2,400.25 Their actual income, not counting charity, last year was less than M$800, by far the lowest in the village. It would-be misleading to say they get by, for Maznah’s death may be evidence that they do not. Without the small amount of charity they receive, without Azizah’s frequent flights with the children back to her parents’ village of Dulang when the food gives out, and perhaps without Razak’s capers, which offend the village, it would be hard to imagine the rest of them surviving at all.
If others blamed Razak’s situation on his own moral failings, he hurled the charge back at them. “There are lots of Malays who are not honest.”26 “Now, Malays who get wages of even three or four hundred dollars have become arrogant.”27 [Page 10] “They don’t help others out. In the village, they don’t even give you a single cup of coffee.” The charge is not strictly true. As nearly as I could calculate over a year, Razak’s family received enough gifts of paddy and rice (milled paddy) to feed them for perhaps three months. At the end of Ramadan it is the duty of each Moslem to make a religious gift of rice, called fitrah. In addition to the customary gifts to the mosque, the imam, and the village prayer house, rice is often given, one gallon at a time, to poor relatives and neighbors, particularly those who have worked during the season for the farmer making the gift. Razak was given nearly ten gallons of rice as fitrah, although not without a residue of bitterness. Rather than waiting politely to be summoned to collect his fitrah as is customary, Razak went from house to house asking for it. Only a few refused;28 after all, a family ought to be able to eat rice on the major Islamic feast day, and such gifts are seen as a way of cleansing one’s own possessions. Razak collected smaller gifts, in the same fashion, on the second major Islamic feast day a month later.29 The third occasion for religious gifts is at harvest time, when all Muslims are enjoined to tithe 10 percent of their harvest (the zakat). Despite the fact that official responsibility for zakat collection has recently been taken over by the provincial authorities, informal zakat payments along traditional lines persist. It is given in paddy, not rice, and is an important supplement to the income of poor, landless families. Razak received a gunny sack of paddy from his eldest brother in Yan, for whom he had threshed, and four or five gallons from within the village, by using his usual aggressive methods. From time to time, Razak also asks for small gifts of rice from likely prospects. Usually, he puts it in terms of advance wages, using language that masks the nature of the transaction, but the fiction is paper thin. Those who are importuned say he is “begging for alms.”30
Being pushy has its rewards. Razak receives a good
deal more food than many [Page 11] of the other poor in the village-more than Mansur, Dullah, Mat “halus” (“Skinny” Mat), Pak Yah, or Taib. The additional cost to his reputation is minimal; his standing is already virtually the definition of rock bottom.31 On the other hand, he does not do nearly so well as his younger brother, Hamzah, who is often held up as an example of the deserving poor. Hamzah is an acknowledged hard worker, as is his wife; he serves as caretaker of the madrasah and he unfailingly appears to help with the cooking at feasts, to assist in house moving,32 and to help repair the village path. After last season’s harvest, and partly out of sympathy for a month-long illness that prevented him from working as usual, he received eight gunny sacks of paddy from villagers and relatives. Basir calls him the “zakat champ,”33 contrasting the results with the meager return from Razak’s more aggressive style. “We don’t want to give alms to Razak, he’s a liar-only to honest poor like Hamzah.”34 Fadzil, another influential villager, echoed these sentiments. “There are lots of poor who lie, cheat, and are lazy.” “They look for a shady tree to perch on.” “They want to gobble up the well-to-do.”35 In a reflective moment, however, he noticed the potential for a vicious cycle here. “If we don’t give them alms because they steal, then maybe they have to keep stealing.” This was as close as anyone I spoke with ever came to recognizing explicitly the importance of charity for the social control of the village poor.
On the political front, Razak has done what a prudent poor man might do to safeguard his and his family’s interests. Four or five years ago he paid the M$ 1 subscription to join the village branch of the ruling party, which dominates politics and the division of whatever loaves and fishes filter down to the village level. “If you go with the crowd, there’s a lot to be had. With the minority, it would be difficult. I used my head. I want to be on the side of the majority.”36 [Page 12] Razak’s logic, shared by some but by no means all of the village poor, has paidthe expected dividends. When a drought, a year earlier, forced the cancellationof the irrigated paddy season, the government created a work-relief program. Politics weighed heavily in the selection of workers and Razak was a winner. The local Farmer’s Association office hired him to take care of their poultry forforty days at M$4.50 a day, and he was paid M$50 to help clear weeds from asection of the irrigation canal. None of the poor villagers who were on the wrongside of the political fence did nearly as well. The wood with which his housewas partly repaired came through the political influence of Basir. More free woodand the toilet bowl that Razak sold were part of a subsidy scheme that, in Sedaka at least, was available only to followers of the ruling party. If the figureof speech were not so inappropriate to the Malay diet, one might say that Razakknew which side his bread was buttered on.
Weapons of the Weak- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance Page 3
