Circumcision.

It was a school term holidays in 1959 in a month of Ramadhan. It was about 5 in the evening and I was out playing with the other kids in front of the house in Taiping. My father came back from the office and told me after the breaking of fast we would be going to the Hospital for my circumcision. Suddenly my mood changed and I stopped playing. I headed for the staircase and ponder how I was going through the night. It was a short notice and I was not prepared to face the knife. I was very scared because I was never been hospitalized before. I was a kampong boy staying with my grandparents. Some of the boys who had been circumcised came around, related to me their ordeal and I felt I was just like facing the gallows. My father assured me Dr Raja Abdullah would be around and not to worry.

After the breaking of fast, my father took me to the Hospital and I was ushered into the room. Dispenser Haji Ismail was waiting and he was going to perform the cutting. My brother Jamaluddin accompanied me but he remained outside the room. I did not know where Dr Raja Abdullah and my father went to. I was asked to lie down and Haji Ismail performed the surgery. There was no anesthetic and the pain was horrible. I remember I cried in pain but Haji Ismail had no mercy on me. It was over in about half an hour but to me it was an agony of three hours.

When it was over it was still paining but the consolation I had been circumcised and now it’s my turn to scare off the other boys. I suffered for the next one week until the wound completely healed. Pain killer was not known then and for one week I walked like a “king kong”. When the school term about to end, my father sent me back to the kampong and from then on I could pray along with the kampong elders. I entered adulthood and the most fearful obstacle of any Muslim boys had been conquered.

My grandparents were shocked as they had planned a big ceremony for their grandson’s circumcision. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. I had crossed the obstacle.

I was the first boy in the kampong to be circumcised in a Hospital. Whenever I am in Taiping, I always remember the Hospital and the Dispenser, the late Haji Ismail.