The Time Amer Found Crime
Amer Hamzah and I took our Certificate of Legal Practice (‘CLP’) course at the University of Malaya (UM) when they used to run it. The time we took it was the second last time they held the course there, 1997-1998. The course was conducted by a mixture of UM lecturers and part-time practicing lawyers. They varied in quality from the amazingly good to the indifferent perfunctory performance; in quantity, the latter outnumbered the former. Amer typically wore black heavy metal-rock-inspired printed t-shirts and jeans to class. Quite honestly, I thought him rather juvenile for wearing them to lectures. We all wore those t-shirts in college, but it’s now like post-university, dude. Who would have thought the beast he has become began with a slim collection of fictional stories? Who would think he would transform into the famed, feared, fashionable, and phowaargghr lawyer (and vegan athlete and sexy skateboarder) he is today? We remained acquaintances through CLP. We acknowledged each other whenever we were in each other’s vicinity. We would chat when we happened to be around each other. Outside of that, we made no special effort to hang out with each other. We both had our respective group of friends by then. Amer and I were the lucky few that passed the CLP on the first go. We filed our call papers around the same time and were eventually called within a week of each other. He pupilled at Zain & Co., I pupilled with my father. His office was just around the corner from the courts when they were located along Jalan Raja. Mine was in Bukit Damansara, a ten to fifteen-minute drive away, depending on traffic. We would see each other around in the lower courts or the court canteen, where most of us new and young lawyers congregated after our matters. There we always found company, conversation, and drink. There was always someone new to meet or someone to catch up with on any given day. That was the best part about going to court when we started out – hanging out at the court canteen. Sometime in our second or third year of practice, Amer and I bumped into each other at the airport. Both of us were flying to Alor Setar for a matter on Sunday morning. We were on the Saturday evening flight from Subang. It turns out fortuitously that we booked rooms at the same hotel. We cabbed it there together after we landed and agreed to catch up over dinner. Before I relate our dinner, I need to set out three matters to provide the context to that dinner. Firstly, then and now, I believe like a religion that there is at least one book meant for each of us. That book is meant for us because it speaks to us about our deepest yearnings, yields clues as to who we could become, or teaches us something we did not know about ourselves, or more. That book irretrievably changes us. It doesn’t have to be a famous, classic, deep or holy book. To each our own. Each sentence recasts us until by the end of it we arrive at the start, having begun, or completing our own Copernican revolution. Even though we know it was written for the many, it still feels as if it were written only to us. After that book, we do not simply feel, think and appreciate differently; we are different. I wrote ‘at least one book’ because I believe there is more than one. In fact, there are a great many books out there that have such capacity. One of my life quests is to discover these books for myself. And one of my greatest pleasures is to find such books and give them to those I think suited to them; then watch them flourish or resonate. It does not happen all the time, of course. More often than not, the click doesn’t come. And that’s fine. If it happened all the time, there would be no sense of thrill when it does happen. But when a recipient gets the book I give them, they would gush about how the book resonated deeply with them or blew their mind open. They are generous in their thanks. I get a deep sense of satisfaction when this happens. I like to be that guy that gives you Dhat Boohke. When that happens, I feel like I have discharged my duty to the recipient and serendipity’s cause. Secondly, about a year or so prior, I discovered Horace Rumpole, Esq. the fictional character created by John Mortimer, an English barrister, and writer. Or rather I finally stopped being such a tart about it and read him as I feel every lawyer should. Many are surprised to learn I read him late. The reason for that is my pettiness. In university, there was a geek who was quite lansi but had a great enthusiasm for Rumpole. His association with Rumpole turned me off from the character then. When I finally got around to reading Rumpole, I realized what that lansi fella was on about! Now I was mad about Rumpole too! I had the froth about the mouth sort of fervour about me as well. I bought any book that had the word ‘Rumpole’ on it. If you stamped that name on an empty filthy discarded milk carton, I’d have bought it. I touted him to anyone that gave me the shadow of an opportunity. I suffered the Ancyent Marinere syndrome for my pettiness. Mortimer wrote a few stories for each individual Rumpole volume. Those volumes were later collected into a three-volume omnibus version. The omnibus version is easier to procure than the original individual volumes. I prefer the individual volumes because they were slim and easier to carry around. In the early 2000s those books were not easy to procure in Malaysia. Thirdly, before I go on any trip, no matter how long, I must bring a few books with
