….as I woke up yesterday morning. Well, not really. Rather, the phone woke me up. I was going to wake up early so I can bersahur (I was fasting yesterday) anyway, so the fire drill sound didn’t really annoy the hell out of me. I groped in the dark, found the handphone(with both ease and difficulty; the phone was flashing but its brightness is too much for my eyes), and opened the message. It was from Nabilah Hisyam, one of my ex-schoolmates from SRI ABIM JB. The message was…
Guess I’ll make this as short as possible….
“Sir Mustafa died last night at 12 am. Do recite the Al-Fatihah for him. Tell other people who knew him at the Johor Matriculation Centre.”
……which is exactly the full contents of the message, but still…..
…..I didn’t wish for this, but I did know beforehand that Sir Mustafa has been warded in a hospital due to health problems, so the prospect of him dying is……. inevitable at least. Either way, as I sat on my bed that morning, reciting the verse Al-Fatihah for his soul, with half my brain still in an advanced state of ZZZZ, I recalled the days during my time at SRI JB…
Sir Mustafa came as a substitute teacher to compensate for the lack of English teachers at our school. He was a retiree, but he made a contract with the principal so he could be one of the teachers teaching Standard 6 students. Back then, having him in your class was something that could be considered as special. See, even though he’s just like your average English teacher (except that he’s a retiree), what he lacked in youth, me made up in seniority and lots of…expletives.
Well, not curse words as in those that were used by the MPs in our Parliament. Now and then, he would talk trash about our previous seniors(which includes both my bro and my sis), make politically rude remarks about my friends and I or say something like “…mengabihkan boreh mak bapak”, “pergi mampus” and anything else along that line. Of course, choice words like those aren’t really the type of cussing that is prominently featured in today’s communication between teenage delinquents or MPs of different political parties, but being the innocent, cute and chubby(in my case) kids that were yet to experience true trash talk and extreme swearing back then, we were nonetheless impressed(or is it intimidated? Whichever comes first) by his knowledge to rant without impunity.
Huh? What’s the point I was trying to make here? Oh, fine, so from the meager description of him that I wrote above, Sir Mustafa didn’t seem to be any more impressive than some expletive-laden, retired old timer. To tell the truth, the description above was meager since most of the details I forgot already. But I digress that his presence left a huge impression upon my early life, which I carried upon my current life(hence why I wrote in this blog). He left an unforgettable mark in the minds of his students(whether good or bad I can’t say), and as far as I am concerned, even though he’s not the best, he’s the most memorable English teacher that I ever had.
BTW, I myself never knew how he got the title “sir”. Maybe he got it when he taught students during his younger days, and the title suits him to this day.
May Allah bless his departed soul. Innalillahiwainnailaihi roojiuun.
Gotta go have a bath now.
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