When my mother received a WhatsApp message about a genealogical researcher trying to track her and her siblings down in her old kampung in Tambun, Perak, she was suspicious but curious.

The researcher, Fazil Shuhaimi Talib, had the names of her siblings, her mother, and others. His message stated that they were all descendants of someone she had never heard of-Puteh Manjera bt Muhammad Amin-who turned out to be her great-grandmother and the reason why he was searching for her and her siblings.

My mother can trace her ancestry up to her grandmother, but her great-grandmother had been a mystery up till now. Looking back, it was rather odd that she knew nothing.

After getting confirmation from an attorney that Fazil was indeed who he said he was and that his search was legit, she agreed to meet with him.

For Fazil, a 70-something former engineer turned amateur genealogist, meeting my 85-year old mother and the steel-trap that is her mind, was akin to finding the smoking gun in the detective mystery he was
seeking to unravel. Her memory is remarkably good – since she remembers every embarrassing thing I have ever done, it stood to reason that she’d remember the names of all her cousins and their kids, no matter how far flung.

For the rest of my family, his entry into our lives not only gave us back our great-great-grandmother and her sister, it suggests how close our connection may be to the British Resident James WW Birch’s assassination, a pivotal moment in Malaysia’s colonial past.

‘The idea that we’re descended from one of the people involved; that’s so cool,’ said Maya, my cousin.

And while Fazil’s research may have answered some questions we had about our ancestors, it created more questions. How were we completely clueless about our ties to the Laksamana Muhammad Amin?

Source: BERNAMA News Agency