READING ASSIGNMENT: TIRANI
I have a reading assignment. I am reading Tirani by Beb Sabariah. The 352 pages novel is Beb Sabariah’s first novel and one of the 20 novels recently published by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, and would be launched sometimes in June. I will be presenting a commentary paper during the launching, so I was told be Beb Sabariah.
Wow. Swell. It would be a great honour to present a paper and be amongst some 20 other Malay literature researchers and scholars though I will not be the first time I present such paper. I have on a number of occassions presented papers at state and national seminars and forum on literature and culture, and some of those papers are now included in some books published bt Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.
However this time it is special because the writer is a nearly sixty year old respectable lady who had started producing fiction pieces after attending my writing classes in the 1999 a few years prior to here retiring from a teaching profession. She had attended every one of the weekend classes organised by Gabungan Persatuan Penulis Sarawak (GPPS) (now defunct), and conducted by me and other local writers such as Jais Sahok, Hazami Jahari, and even the SEA Write Award winner Jong Chian Lai. And I am proud to say that she is one of the most prolific participants of the programme.
I came to know Beb Sabariah or Hajjah Bibi Sabariah binti Abang Awet while I was in Form Two in the Binatang Government Secondary Schoool (now SMK Meradong) and she was amongst the second intake trainee teachers at the neighbouring Rejang Teachers College (now Institut Perguruan Rejang). The school and the college are only separated by a small Bakong River. Of course I was just one of the kids in a new school in the middle of the jungle then, and Bibi Sabariah was well known as one of the beauty queens admired by all the male and envied by the lady trainees at the next door higher learning institution.
Well, I only know of such name and had seen her from some distance on a number of occassions, but I am sure she never know about my existence until she followed and become interested in literary writings for which I have curved some succeses for myslef later. We only met and knew what each other’s had been through when we met in 1999 in the writing workshop and I told her about myslef being the product of BGSS. She laughed gleefully when I told the class on the first week of the writing workshop that she was a beauty queen in the college.
Beb Sabariah, (one of her two names in her identity card) went on to have her puisi and cerpen to be punlished in the local paper Utusan Sarawak.
Beb Sabariah didnot stop learning and later on she registered and undergo various courses and workshops through the recommendation of the local Dewan Bahasa dan Pustala branch and on her own, including those held in Semenanjung, including the Kepezi workshop conducted by the well known novelist Zaharah Nawawi. And I am proud to say that Kak Beb (as she is fondly referred to by many) since then had won a number of awards and competitions. Her cerpen and puisi had been published in papers such as Mingguan Malauysia, Berita Minggu and even the prestigeous Dewan Sastera.
I feel very proud when she rang up and sent me an e-mail inviting me to present a paper on Tirani. Thanks, Kak Beb. I will be commenting on Tirani as a study in Feminism. How about that?.
Bravo Beb Sabariah, you proved that age does not really matter if one works hard enough to achieve something outstanding as you did.
(Updated according to the latest data from Beb Sabariah)