What the Picture Reveals

My father and his adopted family member

1. The picture above is very significant. All these years I had failed to appreciate its importance. I am familiar with the individuals in the picture but hardly ever knew the events that had brought about close relationship between them. Maybe it is my attitude – I was not bothered to find out about the story behind the picture. 

2. I recognize only two of the individuals in the picture; my late father, Md. Ismail Merican, in official uniform and Darus bin Samaun (abang Darus), the man sitting on a chair. I was told that the individual standing beside abang Darus was Hamid, my father’s adopted son, and the child on abang Darus’s lap was Mohd Noor, Hamid’s son. I have no idea when and where this photograph was taken. It might have been taken several years before I was born. 

3. I knew everyone in the picture except Hamid. Hamid might have passed away before I was born. Abang Darus looks very much younger in the picture. I used to visit him in Kangar during school holidays and as far as I could remember, he was already in late middle age then and suffering from asthma. By the time I was old enough to remember things, Mohd. Noor was already a handsome young man. Abang Darus died in 1964 and Mohd Noor passed away in 2006. 

4. That much I knew until recently when I visited abang Darus’s sons, Ismail and Mohd. Hasbi, to find out about how the connection had come about. According to them my father married Chik binti Hassan of Setul (Satun) in the early 1900s. They referred to the latter as Tuk Chik. Chik had a sister, Fatimah, whom they referred to as Tuk Timah who was their grandmother on their father’s side. 

5. My father and Chik did not have any children. It might have been during this time that my father adopted abang Darus and Hamid, possibly also a nephew of his wife. Chik binti Hassan might have passed away in 1937 or earlier.

6. Hamid married Hamisah binti Saad, a girl from Kubang Gajah, Perlis. The couple had three children, Mohd Noor, Maimunah and Noordin. Later when Hamid died at an early age, Hamisah was married to abang Darus. They had six children; Fatimah, Ismail, Balkis, Sabariah, Mohd Hasbi, and Latifah. 

7. This is the story of my father’s first marriage.