I’M EVERY WOMAN: A painful journey

2009/09/16

HELL indeed has no fury like a woman mistreated. And it is sad when that fury becomes companion during one’s old age.

This was what I found to be most painful, watching Sabera Shaik as she played the tragic and sad life of Constance Sydney Swettenham, the estranged wife of Sir Frank Swettenham — he who graced our history books as the Resident-General of Malaya, and later, Governor of Singapore.

For 55 mesmerising minutes, Sabera Shaik had the audience at Asia House, London, glued to their seats as they went through a gamut of emotions with her.

And what a history lesson it was coming through from an 80-year-old spending the remaining torturous years of her life in an asylum; her constant companion being memories, bitter dark memories of her years as a dutiful colonial wife, albeit a lonely and resentful one away from her native land and mostly away from her husband.

It was as if it was an addendum, an appendix to the life history of the famous man revealing the infamous side of him through his senile and manic depressive wife.

I have heard this before — dark stories of one’s private life that comes lurking back during the advancing years.

Stories and secrets that are kept suppressed in the dark recesses of one’s mind suddenly find ways of expression when all common sense takes leave. It is indeed sad.

One can’t help but feel a surge of sympathy as Sabera Shaik took us on this painful journey from a happy 19-year-old bride-to-be to the resentful 80-year-old in her wheelchair.

The anger, the resentment was so real. It could be anyone’s life story.

Imagine a young bride who dreams a new exciting life abroad; the constant partying and life of luxury as an expat wife. And then, suddenly, everything goes tragically wrong. The events as played out by Sabera happened in the late 1800’s but what Sydney Swettenham went through couldn’t have been a unique experience of an expat’s wife in whatever era.

The loneliness of being left on one’s own in a foreign land while the husband is busy tending to his work is certainly not something that is altogether unexpected.

Sabera Shaik as Sydney Swettenham.

It is not something that is spelt out explicitly in the guidebooks. When an expat’s wife is abroad, life is not all that rosy.

The culture and language, apart from the weather, can be most testing if one is not used to it.

One is expected to occupy one’s self with activities to keep busy. The circle of friends is important. The involvement in local activities, too, can keep one sane.

Thus, in the modern times, before an expat goes abroad, it is not only the husband who is required to attend courses on culture and language of the host country, but also the whole family.

Not understanding the culture and the language for the one left behind with just the cook and the driver who speak a totally different tongue can be most trying, as discovered by the unfortunate Lady Swettenham.

This, in Sydney Swettenham’s case, was further exacerbated by the uncaring and indifferent attitude of the husband, who unfortunately, was as overbearing as the father she tried to escape from. And of course, there were the affairs.

What was sad, as the story cleverly executed by Sabera Shaik, came to an end to a thunderous applause, was that it was all too familiar.

From the dark recesses of my mind, I feel I have seen and heard all these before.

It is ironic that Constance Sydney Swettenham, from that wheelchair in the asylum where she died, had the final say in this history of the famous man that will forever be repeated.

And thanks to Sabera Shaik’s brilliant performance, the 55 minutes with her was a real lesson that we never had before.

Zaharah Othman is a Malaysian living in the UK. She can be contacted at zwan_uk@yahoo.co.uk