My Afternoon Tea with Haji Saab

As always, when I reach the house of Haji Saab, the door will be open and I see him in the distance, on his couch, reciting some part of the Qur’an quietly from a small kitab. As always, I give my salaam. 

“Wa’alaikum salam. Come in, brother Abbas. Just let me finish this, ya?”

I sit quietly at his side for a couple of minutes until he finishes. In those few minutes I will look at Haji Saab. It’s likely you may have seen him before at Masjid Sultan or Masjid Abdul Razak. Haji Saab has a white beard, neatly trimmed. He often wears a white skull cap to go with his white long-sleeved shirt and black trousers. Some years ago, he would be seen carrying a small briefcase. These days, if you see him at the mosque, it’s likely he’ll be holding on to an umbrella he uses as a walking stick. His eyesight isn’t too good these days.

“Sit over there, in the light so I can see you,” he says with a smile.

I oblige. We chat as we wait for the tea. Haji Saab likes to drink his tea extremely hot. As he holds the cup close to his lips, you can see the wisps of steam rising from the cup. I will usually wait another five minutes before sipping mine, you know, just so I don’t burn my lips.

He asks about my family and about the progress of my research like he always does. He asks if there is anything in particular I wanted to know from him. Haji Saab has been a great source of support and information since I embarked on this research years ago. Having been involved in the Singapore Pakistan League since his youth and later, the Singapore Pakistani Association, he has met and knows many Pakistanis in Singapore.

In fact, his father’s shop along North Bridge Road was the registered address of the Overseas Pakistan League when it was established in August 1947, nearly seventy-five years ago. It was one of the places where Pakistanis often congregated. Haji Saab told me some time ago, “The early meetings used to be held at my father’s office. Because there were a small number of committee members, my father could accommodate them. As my family was staying upstairs, my father would inform my mother, ok arrange for halwa, arrange for pakora, arrange for tea. It will come down from upstairs.”

In over an hour, we chat about some of the people who had visited him recently, about his brother’s experience crossing over from India to Pakistan during the Partition, about the challenges I face in my research, and as always, he recounts some individuals he remembers from the time when there was a strong Pakistani community in Singapore. 

“In the course of your research, how many names have you come across?”

“Of Pakistanis? Maybe around three hundred?”

“Maybe someday, could you read the names to me? I had the membership ledger with me - the names of all Pakistanis in the League from 1947 were there. But when I left, I handed it over to the next committee.”

Every time Haji Saab tells me this, a little part of me disintegrates and explodes further into millions of pieces. That membership ledger is now seemingly lost. Nobody knows who it ended up with. In the days before records were computerised and when humans relied heavily on pen and paper, we actually had a list of Pakistanis who were members of the Singapore Pakistan League. What this meant of course is that, if this ledger had survived, we could have a better understanding of the Pakistani community in Singapore during that period of time - who they were, what they were working as, where they lived and most importantly, where they originated from. It remains to be seen if we can ever recover this lost possession during our lifetime. As I sat listening to Haji Saab, I imagine it being in a box somewhere in someone’s store, with its owner unaware of its existence. Or at least, I hope. In all likeliness, it probably ended up in a landfill or incinerator many years ago.

I continue chatting with Haji Saab for some time. It had been some months since I visited him. Before I leave, he shares an interesting anecdote with me which I share with you now:

“I remember one Pakistani policeman, he told me this story; his boss was a British. And he told him to wait outside first, then he will call him in. He waited outside and the rain came. And he got wet in the rain. But he was standing there all the time. Suddenly the British officer realised that he had forgotten to call this man in. So when he opened the door, he found this man standing, drenched in rain water. He said, what happened? He said, Sir, you told me to stand outside. That was the kind of discipline these people had. So that’s why the British were very happy with them.”

This said policeman who Haji Saab knew very well decided not to settle in Singapore permanently and returned to Pakistan, where Haji Saab visited him some years later. He lived the remainder of his life as a Sufi and was well-regarded by everyone until his passing in the 1980s.