text by Halim Surin
Dina Zaman
“I always wanted to go back to Terengganu, but it is not easy to go back,” says Malaysian writer Dina Zaman.
Talking to The Peak over breakfast in a Bukit Bintang mall in Kuala Lumpur, our conversation about her book, King of the Sea, transported us away from the bustling cityscape of the Malaysian capital to the serene beauty of Terengganu, a place close to her heart.
“The heart is always there; I see a different Terengganu than what others see,” she says. Until the completion of the East Coast Expressway in 2015, connecting Terengganu to the Karak Highway and Kuala Lumpur, that beautiful coastal state has long been harder to reach than even Kelantan, which sits further north, dividing Terengganu from their former suzerain Thailand.
Terengganu was the only state in West Malaysia that was not served by Keretapi Tanah Melayu. Its so-called east coast network bypasses the state’s pristine golden beaches, running instead closer to the deeply forested spine of the peninsula.
This remoteness allowed Terengganu to preserve its unique culture and traditions, which remain vivid in Dina’s memory as she fondly recalled growing up there with her grandparents in the 1970s.
“There’s always some sort of adventure there,” she says, recounting her late grandmother taking her to see Mak Yong performances. “I grew up like that and it is always magical.”
“Pak Busu slung his sejadah over his right shoulder as he prepared for the meeting. Truth be told, he didn’t have any idea what to do. He had never taken to magic, and besides, everyone on the island was religious: afraid of ‘doubling’ God. No one in the village dabbled in spirits, or in healing.”
Man of the Jungle, King of the Sea.
Published in 2012, Dina Zaman’s book is a testament to her deep love for Terengganu— specifically, her unique vision of the state— through the collection of interconnected short stories that capture the essence of Terengganu and its people, seen through Dina’s eyes and experiences.
King of the Sea by Dina Zaman
The book was born out of her longing for the monsoon-battered coast of Terengganu while studying in the UK at the turn of the millennium. During the pandemic lockdown, this longing resurfaced, inspiring Dina to write three more stories for the book, which will be republished later this year.
While less controversial than her 2007 book I Am Muslim, the reputation of her earlier work brought Dina a certain notoriety as she recalled her experience talking to a young woman in Terengganu who recognised and approached her at a Main Puteri performance.
“She said: My friend had to read [King of the Sea] secretly because people say there’s a lot of things in there that’s khurafat,” Dina says.
“When I went back home I skimmed through the pages trying to figure out what is there that is khurafat, but that is the thinking.”
The mystical and magical have always been present in her writing. In King of the Sea, at least five of the now twelve stories dabble with the antics of a bomoh or shaman in one way or another, weaving through the village community’s reliance on them while at the same time discomfort with having such thoughts, which contradicts Islamic orthodoxy.
The bomoh the organisers had hired to keep the rain away for the Main Pantai Sea Festival must have been a con-man. She had looked forward to it so eagerly; there had been no festival for several years because the village imam at the time had declared it syirik, and that it was only Allah who provided the bounty from the sea, not pre-Islamic gods and demons. The festival resumed this year, albeit on a smaller scale, after the death of the old imam.
The Rainstorm, King of the Sea.
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Having a strong appreciation of the mystical aspects of traditional Malay society and beliefs while being a thought leader in Kuala Lumpur, and managing a think tank she co-founded—Iman Research—appeared to have rubbed the capital city’s ‘intelligentsia’ wrongly, with some telling her that the book surprised them, thinking all these while that she was “one of them”, whatever that meant.
“I don’t know what they see when they read King of the Sea,” Dina says.
“I’m not the spokesperson for Terengganu; I wrote about it because I missed it. But it’s really sad when you find people who don’t appreciate it.”
Stressing that Terengganu is more than a reductive image of a religiously conservative society, Dina does not appreciate people who come in with “a Kuala Lumpur thinking”, without understanding the nuance on the ground.
For Dina, the march of progress in the last several decades has severed the ancient ties the Malays had with the mystical that has been foundational to their understanding of the world, leaving the community uprooted and adrift, trying to make sense of the modern world.
“We Malays don’t want to be reminded of the past, but when we lost our spiritual, traditional, cultural self, we lost ourselves, left adrift,” Dina says.
“I don’t know what happened along the way.”
Still, not all is lost.
Working with younger Malaysians at her think tank made her realise that the Malaysian people of 2024 are a more sophisticated reader even when compared to the status quo from twelve years ago.
Dealing with her younger research assistant, Dina Zaman says that they also kept her on her toes, and dared to tell her their mind, like when they didn’t like her stories, something unthinkable for previous generations.
“Despite all these issues that we are having in the country, we need to look at the young people. They are more sophisticated in their readings,” she says. She begins stitching the feathers onto bamboo poles with rattan vine. Over and over she loops them in a basic pattern to keep the feathers together securely. She blesses every stitch with a whispered prayer as she bends over and makes her wings.
And She Became An Angel, King of the Sea.
