Off the beaten track
DINA ZAMAN ON THE PURSUIT OF GOD, RELIGION AND IDENTITY
IN the village of Bau, Sarawak, author Dina Zaman climbed the steep rickety ladder stained with the blood of a slaughtered wild boar, up to a Baruk — a ceremonial house where rituals by local shamans are conducted — and found magic. “The almost conical roof made of palm leaves, branches, and its circular structure which housed skulls of beheaded enemies of the ancient Bidayuh,” she described of the ancient architecture and her curiosity led to one of the most profound experiences she has ever had in her quest of documenting Malaysians and their faiths.
This tale and other pursuits of her insatiable curiosity led to the publication of her recent book, Holy Men, Holy Women: A Journey Into The Faiths Of Malaysians And Other Essays. With a title like Holy Men, Holy Women you can bet that this narrative conceived and written by Dina isn’t afraid to ask the big questions: What’s the purpose
“We’re a nation of believers. It’s wonderful that everybody celebrates and worships God. Can we look at our commonalities and similar values instead of our differences?” Dina Zaman
of religion? What is our faith about? And, of course, where do you find God?
“The adventures were unforgettable,” she agrees, with a laugh. “I got into all kinds of situations and scrapes, and sometimes wondered ‘what am I getting myself into?’” But she admits she’s no stranger to putting herself out on the line to find answers to age-old questions about God, religion and identity.
Not too many years ago before this idea took shape, Dina authored I Am Muslim —a compilation of her articles for Malaysiakini, an independent news portal — which surprisingly was well received. It sold more than 13,500 copies and made the bestseller lists of several local bookstores. The unorthodox compilation of stories chronicled Dina’s journey in seeking out the Malay Muslim community to find out what Islam and being Malay meant to them, while in turn, discovering her own spiritual journey in the process.
“It wasn’t planned!” she insists, waving her hands emphatically to make a point. “To be honest, if anyone asked me how I planned my future... even my columns and the subjects I wrote on, I’d tell them it wasn’t planned at all!”
She shares that she had just joined Malaysiakini at that time, and was told she had to be a columnist. “It was my interest and my curiosity that led the way. I wanted to write about what it meant to be a Malay and a Muslim. For two to three years, I went down to the streets of Kuala Lumpur and met all kinds of people,” she recalls, adding: “I learnt a lot about people.”
After her first book was published in 2007, Dina confesses to taking two years off to recover. “My God... this is what writers have to do! I just liked the process of writing, but the promotions and the readings...they were all too much for me!” After a pause, she surmises thoughtfully: “Maybe I’m just not very good with peoplelah!”
But then, she was asked to write another column. “It was all panic, panic, panic but then I decided to do it anyway. This time, I didn’t want to write about the same things, I wanted to write about Malaysians. I didn’t want to write about the typical aunty, uncle fare. I wanted to talk about people, what they believed in and what they didn’t believe in,” recalls Dina.
So with Holy Men, Holy Women, she moved on to do the unthinkable — at least for most orthodox Malay Muslims — by veering off the beaten track and stepping into the oft forbidden dens of other Gods and beliefs. In a period of time where religion is often a subject that’s loathed to be discussed or is a ticking bomb for racial tensions to implode, the idea of a Malay Muslim woman asking to be an observer in other places of worship that was not her own, was preposterous. She wrote: “Much has been said about the country and its tolerance for the many faiths practised by its people. Malaysia makes for a fantastic advertisement on multiculturalism. Note the word ‘tolerance’. Herein lies the root of all the problems the country faces.”
“There’s so much of tension in the air these days,” she says, sighing. “You can’t discuss religion without sparking off a war of sorts. I’ve got friends of other races who wouldn’t dare ask any questions. Religion and race have been politicised to a point where we can no longer have conversations anymore.” Malaysia has largely avoided overt religious conflicts in recent decades, but tensions, Dina observes, have been growing.
At 49, Dina retains an impish air of ingenue about her, and the quiet mischief in her smile suggests a certain pleasure in her own troublesome single-mindedness. She likes to talk in elliptical sentences that often tail away into elegant gestures or playfully knowing expressions. On the question of whether or not she’s a writer or an anthropologist, she simply says with a casual shrug: “I’m a teller of stories. For me, that’s the only way I can make sense of the world we live in, with all the dance that it involves.”
OBSERVER OF PEOPLE
Anthropology and sociology, she then confides, have been her interest since young. “But my father told me pointedly: ‘Mana ada duit jadi lecturer?’ (Where’s the money in lecturing?) so that put paid to my pursuing those subjects!” she says, adding: “I studied mass communications instead.”
Her insights and keen observations of people were birthed from the fact that she was a loner growing up. Her father worked
for the Foreign Service, and the family of 10 travelled with him to foreign postings in Tokyo and Moscow. “When I was young my father kept moving around. ‘Look, you’re going to move abroad because this is my work,’ he’d say.”
Sporadic schooling meant that growing up was often a lonely affair. “School terms at the beginning was always halfway completed. My parents kept travelling so much, they finally said: ‘We’re going to travel again. Now where do we put you?’” she recalls, adding drily: “I think if my mother knew the concept of home schooling back then, she’d have done that instead!”
Her years at Convent Bukit Nanas was absolutely fun. “There’s something about missionary schools that allows you to be who you are. But when I went to college, it became a different thing,” she recalls. Because she came in halfway, it wasn’t easy making connections. “It was an entirely different culture and tough for me to assimilate. Everyone was talking about being Malay and I wasn’t interested in that. All I wanted to do was pass my exams!” she recalls, quipping candidly: “To be honest, I didn’t want to become a writer when I was young. I just wanted to pass my exams and leave school. I was a terrible student. And you can quote me on that!”
And so, observing people on the periphery became “her thing to do”. That trait stayed with her through the years and as she would put it succinctly: “It’s the dormant anthropologist in me — steeped in the complexity of real life, yet becoming a more insightful nuanced observer at the same time.”
After studying mass communications at Western Michigan University, she returned to Malaysia in the 1990s and joined a PR firm. “They’re going to kill me,” she exclaims with a hearty laugh. “But I was bored at work dealing with shampoos. So I wrote on the side.”
Were you writing then about the psyche of the Malaysian people? I ask. “Oh God, no! I wrote about my experience as a single Malay woman. You know... when you come to a certain age, your parents want you to get married?” Another hearty laugh rings out when I nod my head furiously, thinking about my own incorrigible parents.
She pauses and looks around the New
Straits Times lobby where we’re chatting and says softly: “This is almost like a homecoming. I sent my first article here and after a few weeks, they called to tell me that they’d accepted it.” She began writing a lighthearted column in the New Straits
Times called Dina’s Dalca — a Muslim Malay woman’s chronicles about life as a single and the dating scene in modern Malaysia. “I remember talking a lot about my cats,” she recounts, grinning. “My cats had a fan club! People would write in to NST asking about my cats! They were such hits!”
Dina became the recipient of the British High Commissioner Chevening Award in 1998, and returned home to Malaysia a year later, armed with an MA in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. It was then that she joined Malaysiakini as a subeditor, and soon started writing a column on her observations of the Malay Muslim community which eventually led to her first book I Am Muslim. And Holy Men, Holy
Women followed soon after a brief hiatus from writing.
Along with her band of like-minded friends, Dina founded IMAN, a think-tank that works on ethno-religious relations, socio-political risk, perception and public opinion. Her research and observations have gone beyond the boundaries of standing at the peripheries as an uninvolved observer, to delving into deeper issues like researching the growth of violent extremism in Malaysia and finding solutions to moderate this radicalisation among the Malay Muslim youths.
MALAYSIAN ADVENTURES
So the researching, observation and the search never stops, I muse. She laughs and nods. It’s a natural progression and nothing is planned. But Holy Men, Holy
Women remains one of the most eyeopening and impactful experience she’s ever had, concedes Dina. The entire journey of chronicling her adventures, with all its challenges and hurdles, was unforgettable.
“People were afraid to let me into their world,” she admits. “They couldn’t comprehend that someone like me — a Muslim — would want to ask questions they’ve never been asked before. Whom are you worshiping? Why do you worship? Can I join you and observe?”
There’s an amusing yet insightful story in her book where she recounts the rejection she received from a Buddhist meditation group.
“Miss, why do you want to come?” she was asked.
“To understand you. Just like how you don’t understand us Muslims. So that I get to know your goodness like how you can get to know ours.” I explained to her that I wanted to conduct a comparative religious observation on faiths in Malaysia.
She coughed. “Miss. This is Malaysia. Cannot.”
“I had been rejected, waved away and there have been moments when I wondered whether I am insane to have embarked on this project,” she wrote.
Yet, her book speaks of people who did open their worlds to her. From Carmelite nuns, mystical Bidayuh healers, pious Hindus right up to the closet Muslim poledancers, Dina traversed the landscape of Malaysia to find the meaning of religion that has divided the nation for so long. “It took time to build relationships and for them to trust me. But I’m grateful for those who did allow me into their lives.”
What did you find after all that searching? I ask.
She pauses before finally replying: “We’re a nation of believers. It’s wonderful that everybody celebrates and worships God. Can we look at our commonalities and similar values instead of our differences?”