KUALA LUMPUR – For a culture long prone to speaking of the personal in hushed and, at times conspiratorial, tones, the wave of recollections published within a single month must prove somewhat overwhelming to an unanticipating public.
From Datuk Seri Nazir Razak’s What's In A Name to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s Capturing Hope, and – from a contrasting position – Final Reckoning by Romen Bose, a former close aide of Datuk Seri Najib Razak, these published memoirs have opened another avenue for the recording of the nation’s history – the personal memoir.
Spearheading these is Datin Marina Mahathir’s The Apple and the Tree: Life as Dr Mahathir’s Daughter, which, really, is less about being Dr Mahathir’s daughter and more a well-crafted narrative of the life-chart of a principal voice of the post-independence generation.
From responses to recently published excerpts, however, it would seem some of the public have different expectations of what the art of the personal memoir is, concluding that Marina Mahathir’s recollections serve as a validation of her father – the country’s two-time Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad.
“The main motivation, really, was that I had completed a Masters in Creative Writing (at the University of East Anglia) not so long ago, and I really didn't want the studies to go to waste. Naturally I wanted to come up with a book, but when I got back, I didn't have a book deal, an agent, nothing,” Marina says in an exclusive interview with The Vibes.
A subsequent book commission with Penguin Southeast Asia gave already written parts the form that would lead to the completion of The Apple and The Tree.
“I had not particularly thought I should write this book to stir things up. I just wanted to write what was close to me, which I knew quite a lot about, and that was basically it.
“Quite a simple reason, really,” she explains.
A figure that continues to loom over much of Malaysia’s public life, Dr Mahathir’s rise to the prime minister’s position was initially largely unexpected.
As often pointed out by historians and analysts, Dr Mahathir was the first prime minister not from the political aristocracy or from the legal profession.
A headmaster’s son and a medical doctor from the small town of Alor Setar, Dr Mahathir’s fortunes were also uncertain following his defeat in the election of 1969 and his expulsion from Umno after his infamous open letter to Tunku Abdul Rahman following the events of May 13th.
“I grew up as a small town doctor’s daughter; as a doctor in a small town there was some element of being well known and all that, but ours was a pretty normal childhood, and really we never dreamed we would end up where we did,” Marina says.
Recalling an incident that illustrates the changing fortunes of Dr Mahathir, Marina recalls: “Some years ago I did something for (the Five Arts Centre’s) Marion D’ Cruz – it was a series of two-minute plays where she gathered a few people to narrate stories. My story was called ‘K…..’
“It was a story of how I went to a school reunion – I had been in Sultan Abdul Hamid College for a short while, my dad’s alma mater. At the event we all had to get up and say what we were doing now and all that...
“And there was this one guy – who I had totally forgotten – who got up, laughed and started telling this story of how his father had been a classmate of my dad’s and how he then had been mine, and that both father and son had done the very same thing – which they both thought was really funny – which was to call my father and me ‘K…..’ because we had some sub-continental blood.
“It was then that I sort of remembered how much he had tortured me then, and of course, at that time, neither father nor son thought that anything would become of either of us, so it was ‘okay.’ Now he thought he was trying to make up for it by telling this funny story, which I didn’t find funny at all.”
To further illustrate the capriciousness of fate, Marina remarks: “Which just goes to show that you have to be nice to everyone because you never know where they’d wind up.”
The Apple and The Tree – Life as Dr. Mahathir’s Daughter weaves the personal with personal insight into some of the political developments involving the nation, especially involving the personal rupture and the personal toll during the Reformasi period.
“I think it was a big toll (on Dr Mahathir),” Marina remembers. “For one thing, when the initial rumours began circulating, he dismissed them. My father is like that – he doesn't like gossip, he doesn't like rumours, he has to be shown proof.
“For the longest time, people were whispering things to him, and he just refused to believe it. This was his blue-eyed boy. This was the position he took until the police got involved, and then…” – The Vibes, December 18, 2021
The Vibes’ full and exclusive interview with Datin Marina Mahathir will be published tomorrow.
