Tea time with Ammi Kamal, his wife Khalati Maisoon, and his mother in law, Khalati Sooad.
Ammi Kamal is the son of my grandfather's brother, Abbas Rafie, while Khalati Maisoon is the daughter of Omar Rafie, another brother of my grandfather Hussen Rafie. Khalati Sooad was the foster mother to the Rafie children sent to study in Egypt in the 50's, and my father's one of them. Khalati Sooad is a Jamjoom, whose sister married my father's brother and brother married my father's sister, oh well, going into that will lead to explaining a really complex family tree.
We grew up hearing stories of my father's sea travel along with Ammi Kamal and his elder brother Ammi Abu Bakar from Penang to Makkah via Jeddah when he was barely ten years old. A year later they were sent to Egypt to continue their studies. Among them all, the Rafie cousins sent to Makkah and then Cairo, only my father came back to Malaysia. The rest furthered their studies or begin their careers in Egypt, KSA and the US , a few of them went on to hold very senior posts in Aramco, while there's quite a few doctors among them too.
Someday I must document their stories, and work all the criss-crosses of the marriage between the Rafies 😉
p/s: here's a couple of photos of H & Q drawing while we wait for our guests to arrive.
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