IT must have been after dinner at the canteen that we decided to go to the 13th floor of the then Institut Teknologi MARA (ITM) (now Universiti Teknologi MARA), where the Faculty of Communication and Media Studies was and still is.
We would either play carom or watch television in the TV room. When we arrived, the TV room was full — apparently a special programme had replaced a scheduled one.
That was in 1976. Abdul Samad Ismail, who was then the managing editor of the New Straits Times, who was detained in June of the same year, was on TV. With me was Nuraina, or Ena, his daughter and my classmate in the journalism class. In the room were some of my seniors who were his students as he was also a part-time lecturer teaching newswriting.
I remember the silence as we heard "the confession". Pak Samad, as he was fondly known, admitted he was a member of the communist party.
Suddenly, Ena just rushed out of the room. Fati (Fatimah Abu Bakar), Mia (Raja Amilia) and I followed her out through the door. It became all too much for Ena watching her gaunt father for the first time since the arrest under the country's Internal Security Act (ISA), reading out what must have been scripted for him. She didn't recognise the voice: the admission that must have been forced out of him.
We found Ena behind a big bin along the corridor — feeling quite helpless — we assured her that things would be all right.
After that everything was a blur. We all remember bits and pieces and nothing more. But thanks to the now recently published Tuesdays with Bapak (TWB) by Datuk Nuraina Samad, everything is coming back crystal clear.
Fati remembers Ena was trembling and she became hysterical. Mia remembers accompanying her home a few days later, only to be told about the house being ransacked in the early hours when Pak Samad was taken away by the police.
Aishah Ali, our senior who was Pak Samad's student, was in her hometown in Johor when she watched the news with disbelief. She and some of her journalism friends had just received their offer letters from Pak Samad before he was arrested.
"I cried. But somehow I knew he was made to confess," said Aishah, who later visited the family home where she found the atmosphere, which used to be kecoh, so sombre.
"Pak Samad taught me," said Aishah, who rose to become the Sunday Mail editor, in a tribute to the freedom fighter of the 1950s who, "throwing all conventions to the wind", fed them a syllabus of colourful language and street cred to equip his journalism students. This she wrote when the great man of journalism turned 80.
Aishah clearly remembers his motto, "A deadline is a deadline — you don't meet it, you're dead!"
I was not fortunate enough to meet the late Pak Samad but his reputation preceded him. I had heard about the air turning blue on the editorial floor as he ravaged and butchered copies with his editing pencil. I also heard about his passion for journalism and nationalism.
After that sad episode on the 13th floor of ITM, we never talked about it even though Ena was the official squatter in our room in Block 3C.
Life went on as usual — she always joined our singing sessions to break the boredom of writing term papers and revealed nothing of her pain behind the dark glasses she used to wear even during our classes. We suspected she was sleeping.
Even when she visited me in London in 1979, en route to Boston where she continued her studies, we didn't talk about the ordeal which stung her with the stigma "Anak Komunis". Neither did she say anything in her numerous letters to me from her campus in Boston.
Now, reading TWB on my Kindle, I am learning more about Pak Samad, Ena and certainly about her mother, Hamidah, who held her large family together on a meagreEmployees Provident Fund savings.
TWB was poignantly penned by a daughter in her blog, 3540 Jalan Sudin, to remember the family's visits to see Pak Samad during his incarceration from 1976 to 1981.
It became an addictive reading for her followers, a catharsis for the blogger. The jottings, which gave insights into how Pak Samad was coping as a political detainee and how his family survived throughout the ordeal, were begging to be turned into a book.
I brought Ena back to the day she, Fati and I strode down to Pak Cik Dahari's desk on our first day of practical training at the NST in 1977.
How did she feel walking down the very floor where her father was the boss who was removed so unceremoniously?
"I didn't feel daunted," she said — and that's the spirit of her Bapak coming through, I thought.
Ena knew most of the people on the editorial floor, especially those from Berita Harian.
"They grew under Bapak. Most of them would still come for Raya even when Bapak was in detention. Most of them knew the politics of it," she added.
Did the experience colour her views on politics?
"Yes, I refused to cover King Ghaz's assignments," she said of the then home minister, Ghazali Shafie, who was instrumental for her father's detention.
"But I didn't hate the government... just disillusioned… and anti-ISA. It was a subject I worked on during my studies," she added.
After serving 27 years with the NST, mostly as a political writer, Ena took the Voluntary Separation Scheme in 2006 and left the NST to become a media consultant. But she returned to fill in her father's shoes as managing editor in 2009.
"She was there in her own right. Not because of her father's legacy," said Philip Mathews, former editor of the NST.
Mathews, who wrote the introduction to TWB, met Pak Samad in the late 1960s as a cadet reporter and had remained close to him.
In his eulogy when Pak Samad died on Sept 4, 2008, he wrote: "Weeks before his arrest that year, he confided in me, saying that he feared arrest and that he did not have former prime minister Tun Abdul Razak Hussein, whom he knew well, to vouch for him. He said the new prime minister did not know him."
Mathews remained close to the family and was among many at Pak Samad's house when he was released.
"When I asked him why he had confessed on TV, he said he was disoriented in prison. He received an apology sometime later, at a private function by a government functionary," he added.
TWB is an interesting read, long overdue. Pak Samad bounced back and reclaimed his place in journalism, acquired cooking skills while in detention and I was told he looked forward to the newspaper-wrapped nasi lemak that was his meal.
It was from these newspapers that he continued to read my husband's (Wan A Hulaimi) review of movies.
So, which Tuesdays stood out for Ena?
"Certainly the first one, (at the Jalan Bandar police station) and the one where my aunts (Pak Samad's sisters) came all the way from Singapore to wait on the pavement to see him being driven away in an unmarked police car."
To me, the most exciting was the car chase by Med (Hamid, Ena's brother), who followed the police car in his red mini, to find out the location where their father was being held.
Well done, Ena. Now, I am waiting for Wednesdays With Mak as you jokingly wrote in your blog. Such a strong woman!