By SH Lim

The drawings in this book are beautiful. Gorgeous. For their fine details captured in a tidy simplicity. Clean lines. Rich colours. For the vistas of a rural Malaysian landscape we don’t see too often slapping our soles on KL’s sidewalks or in its malls. Or sitting in traffic staring in a stupor at the snaking line of cars ahead. Englishman Iain Buchanan’s ‘Fatimah’s Kampung’ offers, beyond its message, views of the green horizon which Emerson thinks necessary for tired urban eyes and spirit. It’s both a storybook and a coffee-table collection.

The former university professor, a tall man with concerned blue eyes, had taught geography (which included ecology and economics) for roughly 35 years when he took early retirement. Then spent eight years – no short stint – to put together this labour of love. He writes, ‘The signs of global crisis were everywhere, and our journeys around Malaysia were bringing home, at a very personal level, just how severe were the changes we [human beings] were unleashing.’

Buchanan was clear what his message would be. His first obstacle was how to find the right medium. He started with the landscape since we all live in a landscape, although, he points out, we tend to take it for granted. ‘I drew a map, and then the setting of Kampung Hidayah and its surroundings; then Fatimah and her family moved in; and slowly and haphazardly a story of sorts developed’ he writes. He knew he couldn’t use words alone tell his story. They wouldn’t be able to bring his message to life. He needed pictures. ‘I wanted to capture the drama of the change, what it meant to the landscape and the people who lived in it.’ It had to be done visually.

But to draw, the geography professor had to undergo ‘a complete re-education’. He reveals, ‘I’d no art training of any kind. ’The medium – pen and translucent ink on paper – arose fortuitously. Buchanan’s friend, an aging artist, was going to toss out a considerable amount of ink. Being at the right place at the right time, he inherited the ink and from then practiced and experimented, drawing cartoons. He says, ‘Translucent ink was perfect because it allowed for layering which was necessary for the details. Watercolor would have been a problem.’ He didn’t think he could or would work with oils.

‘The pictures had to show the landscape with all its beauty,’ Buchanan says. Because of that he had to draw his pictures several times larger than the final scale used in the book – A4 landscape. Some of the original drawings were about three feet by eight feet so that when the leaves, flowers, texture of bark, ants on a leaf, the fretwork on the balconies were reduced, none of the details were lost.

Then from the drawings the story evolved.

While Buchanan did not undertake any formal research, he had a bank of experiences living as a child for a while in Africa, as a geography teacher in Malaysia, and then India. He also has a Malay extended family and because of that he makes regular visits to our country. He reveals that while the writing was more difficult, it fell into place as he fished from his memory the stories that his wife and his relatives told him. Nothing in the book concocted out of sheer fancy. The segment about the kerengga (large red ants found on fruit trees) in the book has its inspiration in a personal experience when Buchanan swallowed two red ants that fell into his mouth when he was under a mango tree trying to get the fruit. The story about Pak Belang (tiger) was something he picked up from the relatives and used in the story as a metaphor for the changing landscape.

The man with the concerned blue eyes that match his blue striped shirt is certain that we – not just Malaysians – must look more closely at how we live. Perhaps we are expecting a way of life that is not sustainable. Perhaps we’re too pampered. Perhaps we need to scale down. But he has greater hope and faith in us because we have not reached the level of degradation of the developed countries. ‘Britain is too old to learn; Malaysia isn’t,’ he underscores.

But the message will not go across fast or easily in a materialistic culture, Buchanan says. Then again neither did it find much acceptance when he was lecturing in the universities for so many years. Regardless we must keep trying to get the message through, he points out. He wants us, especially the younger ones, to care about our landscape, the environment we live in, ‘to picture how the world can be’ or ‘how barren we can let it become’.

Fatimah’s Kampung is published by Consumers Association of Penang. RM65