Widow keeps memory of Kg Tanduo hero alive with Ramadan menu

SEMPORNA: For the past eight years, fried popiah and sugarcane juice have always been on the Ramadan menu for Sitti Bandorah Mahalil and her family when breaking fast as these were the favourites of her late husband, Sergeant Abdul Aziz Sakiran.

Sitti Bandorah, 46, said the items were included in the menu to remember Abdul Aziz, who was one of the policemen killed in the ambush in Simunul, here, on March 2, 2013.

“Usually, I would prepare the popiah filling two or three days before Ramadan, and before it's time to break fast, I would be ‘led' by my husband's spirit to buy sugarcane juice at the bazaar.

"After getting the sugarcane juice, ‘we' would return home and I would fry the popiah for the breaking of fast," she said when met at her home in Kampung Bubul after receiving a visit from Eastern Sabah Security Command commander Datuk Ahmad Fuad Othman, who also presented some donations.

Sitti Bandorah said although her husband was no more, she would also donate fried popiah and sugarcane juice at other times in memory of her husband.

She said her eldest son, Mohd Farizul Helmi Abdul Aziz, 27, has followed in his father's footsteps and become a policeman.

“I was calm when my son informed me that he had been accepted into the police force. I sincerely told him to become a policeman. For me, death is a certainty and the way we die has been set,” she said, describing her husband's demise as martyrdom.

Sitti Bandorah, whose four children are now aged between 16 and 27, said the incident that happened eight years ago had a traumatic effect on herself and her children, and that she did not even want to cross the location of the incident where her husband was killed.

On Feb 11, 2013, a group of armed intruders from Southern Philippines arrived in Kampung Tanduo in Lahad Datu to lay claim to Sabah on behalf of Jamalul Kiram III, the selfproclaimed Sultan of Sulu.

However, after negotiations to end the invasion failed, on March 1, 2013, there was a shooting incident in Kampung Tanduo in which two policemen were killed. - Bernama