PALESTINE STORIES...AND THE CREATION OF MALAYSIAN LITERARY HISTORY...

 By Mansor bin Puteh

The Malaysian literary scene, if there is one that we can describe as such, has been lifeless in a long while.

Maybe it needs some stirring to shake it from its slumber by coming up with a novel I finished just before the covid-19 pandemic was declared in the world, a work I hope could be significant in the development of Malaysian literature on many levels and perspectives.

I have published for the Melaka state government an epic novel on the entire history of the Melaka Sultanate from the time before Parameswara leaves Palembang to the death of the last Sultan of Melaka, Sultan Mahmud Shah in Kampar in Sumatera, Indonesia called ‘Melaka the Glorious Malacca Sultanate’ in a special edition of two thousand copies.

I have since reworked on this novel which I hope to publish in America in two volumes and retiling it to, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Melaka Sultanate’ before I try to publish all the other eighty-six titles of books in various genres that I have written over the years in Bahasa Melayu and English in a special world record edition. 

Since no one in the world had done anything like this before, I have to find a way on how to do it; it’s not like a Malaysian who wants to climb or visit the peak of Mount Everest, an attempt that had been done by many others before, so it will be easy for him to get the required support even though such an attempt is now trite and quite laughable for anyone to undertake with new and modern equipments available for him to use, that even the disabled person with no real experience in mountain climbing and blind have done it without much effort. 

Most of the novels I have written in the two languages are on issues that no Malaysian authors have ever written before. Most of them did not have the advantage of studying at a university in America and also not traveled as widely like what I had managed to do so the issues and stories that were available to them are limited and often petty ones.

There are some novels that have been written by Malaysians and published abroad but they are those who do not live in Malaysia like I do; and their stories are mostly personal in nature and restricted to what their relatives experienced when they came to Tanah Melayu or during the Japanese Occupation of the country. 

But before this can happen I decided to publish my epic novel called, ‘Palestine Stories’ which will be released in America by a publisher and distributor there in August.

So, naturally, I am happy to see my first novel in English that is published in what can be described as the first novel of this nature that is written by an author from Malaysia.

With my background in Journalism as a profession and a major in Advertising at Institut Teknologi Mara (ITM) in Shahalam, and interests in traveling allowed me to gain a wider view of the world and to look at Malaysia, the Malay World and Islamic World, and also on America in a totally different light and attitude.

This was made available when I finally made it to Columbia University in New York City where I worked on a graduate program in Film Directing, after getting a student loan from Mara in 1978 which had a year earlier rejected my application for a scholarship/student loan because they did not like the fact that I wanted to study in a university I did not know what it was then – an Ivy League university! 

I have traveled to forty countries and returned to America almost every year and sometimes twice a year, for the last few years before the covid-19 pandemic happened. And while in America I prefer to travel on the bus and on land to record videos and so he could see different views of the country and to bump into strangers along the way from Los Angeles to New York City and back that takes three days and three nights each way, with almost everyone thinking that he was Japanese; none of them he had met said they had not met a Malaysian or even an Ivy Leaguer before!

And this is despite the fact that I had to walk with a prosthesis in his left leg that he got for the three surgeries he had at two hospitals in Manhattan – St. Luke’s Hospital and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center after being diagnosed with a ‘giant cell tumor of the upper left tibia’ and had to be on two crutches for many years before being able to walk on his own again.

I have also been invited to participate in film festivals, forum, seminars and conferences in many countries and to show his films, including at the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah in September, 1999 which caused him to twenty years later, write ‘Palestine Stories’, an epic novel that he did not envision that he would come up with. It was just meant to be a simply story on a Palestinian family but it turned out to be the story of Palestine…

It is more than anyone in the film industry who had hardly ever been invited to speak in forums, seminars and conferences in film.

Surprisingly, I was able to complete writing the novel in only seven weeks which has 171,000 words because I can type furiously, and could do research using my cell phone to complete it before the start of the covid-19 pandemic. 

I can say that ‘Palestine Stories’ is a unique novel written in a style never before attempted by any author; it does not describe the personal appearances and physical characteristics of the characters or their level of economic and social standing as a personal choice - that many other authors are wont to do with so much effort that it fills up from ten to twenty percent of their novels…because it was what I had in mind of using the style of writing that has never been used by anyone before.

I hope this novel can bring to light the time when the Middle East especially in the Arab World which was quaint and peaceful with people living in harmony with no threat or fear of the domination of ideas, values and politics…and before oil was discovered in some of the countries, and also before hatred, dissent, deceit was introduced into the psyche of the people there.

I have also written 86 titles of books in various genres, in English and Malay and hopes to publish all of them in a special world record edition – in what will be an unusual world record once created that can never be beaten!