Musa bin Hassan lived in the kampong that had sprouted on the plain between the temenggong’s former compound and the sepoy cantonment. Most of the Malay families living there had come down from Malacca at Tuan Farquhar’s request. Musa’s father was a boat builder, an occupation very much in demand in the early years of the settlement. The boy, who had just turned ten, was learning the trade, and seemed to have a special gift for carpentry and design. A gift from God, his father said.
Tomorrow was the day of his bersunat.[1] His hair had been trimmed, and he was dressed in baju and kain samping––a long sleeved shirt and short sarong made of gleaming red silk with gold and silver threads. He sat upon the pelamin couch that had been specially made for the occasion, and laid out on the verandah of his father’s house, where he greeted the invited guests before joining them in the ceremonial feast. When the guests left that evening, Musa’s father presented them with a bunga telor,[2] a dyed red egg pierced with a stick and crowned with paper flowers.
As he lay in his bed after the feast, Musa was filled with fear. He was not afraid of the pain of circumcision, but of the shame he would feel if the cockerel made no response to his penis. It would mean that he would be impotent and unable to pleasure his wife when he became old enough to marry. One of the older boys, Abdullah bin Ahmad, had teased him one day, when as young children they had been swimming naked in the sea. When they had rested on the beach, Abdullah had taunted him about his small penis, and warned him that it meant he would never be able to satisfy a woman or sire children. Musa had fought Abdullah to demonstrate his manhood, but he had lost, and all the other boys had laughed at him. But tomorrow would be the real test, and he dreaded it, for he had already seen the girl he wanted to marry. She was Rashidah, the daughter of Ali bin Osman. She walked with the lightness of a young deer through the kampong, and she had smiled at him some days as he passed by her house.
Early next morning, just before sunrise, Musa bathed himself and waited for the mudim to arrive. When he did, the mudim bathed the boy again with water from a bowl that the family had left out for him, along with a small bale of white cloth, the stem of a banana tree, a sireh-box containing betel nut, a live cockerel, and three dollars in payment for his services. Then the mudim led Musa to the top step of the stairway to his father’s house, and made him sit astride the bamboo tree stem. The mudim laid out the boy’s penis carefully on the stem, and then stretched out his foreskin. Musa tensed in anticipation of the pain. But it all happened in a flash––the knife suddenly appeared in the mudim’s hand, and the mudim sliced off the end of his foreskin. It was painful, but not as much as he had anticipated. But now came the dreaded moment. The mudim snatched up the cockerel, and pressed the birds’s head toward his penis. The cockerel screeched so loud he was sure that everyone in the kampong must have heard it, including Abdullah! It puffed out the feathers around its neck, a sure sign of his sexual potency! The mudim dressed his wound with the white cloth, but Musa no longer noticed the pain, and paid no mind to it when the mudim returned each of the next three days to check on his progress. He was full of his own manhood. And when Rashidah walked by him a few days later, he was sure she smiled a special smile.
* * *
Raffles, Sophia and their nephew Charles Flint arrived back in Bencoolen in July. They were dismayed to learn that the first ship available to take them home, the Indiaman Fame, would not arrive until January the following year. Sophia gave birth to their fifth child, a daughter named Flora, in September. Almost immediately she went down with a fever, and was treated with leeches and heavy doses of laudanum. She recovered, but over the next few months more of Raffles’ staff and friends died from dysentery and cholera. Then baby Flora was carried off in December, and joined their three other children in the European cemetery. Raffles and Sophia felt their spirits broken. They were desperate to leave, to get away from the morgue that was Bencoolen, before the disease took their nephew Charles. Raffles’ headaches become more intense, and came at shorter intervals. He wondered if he would make it home alive.
* * *
Colonel Farquhar, who had stayed on as a private resident after Raffles had taken over from him in May, departed in late December. At a farewell dinner hosted by the principal European merchants, they presented Farquhar with a set of silver plate, whose value was estimated at three thousand rupees. The Chinese merchants presented him with a silver epergne, crafted by London silversmiths.
On the day of Farquhar’s departure, the troops formed an honour guard from his house to the waterfront. Most of the European and Chinese merchants, and the Malay, Bugis, Indian, Arab and Javanese communities, followed him down to the river mouth, and it was hours before all the presentations and speeches were made. Farquhar, who loved the native peoples, was deeply moved. As Munshi Abdullah wrote in his diary, the scene on the waterfront was like a ‘father among his children, till all were weeping; he wept also.’ They had respected Sir Stamford Raffles, but they loved Tuan Farquhar.
As the longboat took Farquhar and his wife and children out to their ship in the harbour, it was followed by hundreds of native craft decorated with flags and streamers, whose occupants waved, sang, played their instruments, fired their guns and set off firecrackers. As Farquhar boarded the Alexander, they called out to him: ‘Salamat! Salamat! Sail with a fair wind! Long life that you may return to us again!’
Ronnie was sorry to see him go. The colonel had been a good friend, and Ronnie knew that he would not return.[3]