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When Isham Rais left Malaysia in 1975, he had barely turned 21. During most of his 20 years abroad, he traveled with nothing - sometimes even without his own travel papers. Until Belgium officially accorded him asylum in 1982, he was stateless, dispossessed and mostly alone. He has never had a wife (or so he claims), a family of his own, mortgage or car, never been regretful of leaving possessions behind and never lost his rebellious spirit. In other words, the perfect candidate for the romantic mythifying of an exile.

My first encounter with this myth was at the office of Australia's University of New South Wales Student Union in 1987. By then, Isham Rais had already left Australia and was living rather quietly in Europe. On one of the walls of the office was a large poster of him.

I was a first year student from UM, in Sydney on vacation. I had heard of his name, but the facts were all muddled. His picture was blissfully banned on campus, his name not mentioned in public, like the way a family removes a photograph from the family album when a black sheep member has run away. That made the myth even more intriguing - I was, after all, about to turn 21 myself, and like most nave students, liked to think I was a Marxist-Socialist - it was a label that was more trendy than an Armani suit.

I thrived on stories of sacrifice and martyrdom, of protest and rebellion. The fact that Hishamuddin Rais existed, and had not sold out the 'cause' (whatever that may have been then) preserved the myth. Among the activist crowd in Sydney, the general consensus was the same. I did not have to ask about him, an Australian student at the UNSW student union office helpfully volunteered information, and added, with true anti-establishment disgust: "Bloody Andrew Peacock made him leave".

I was intrigued precisely because of this filtering of information, rumour, student hero-worship and half-truths. He was inaccessible and he represented everything that was strictly forbidden in my life in UM. And he was an exile. For me (and I suspect, many of my peers), the hope that he was always going to be an exile selfishly preserved the misconceptions.

No excuse

Even when he returned in November 1994. I think there was still a part of me that wanted him to continue being inaccessible. I was older and, with age, could not afford the naivet of hero-worship and idealism. Marxism - and yes, any other ideology I subsequently flirted with - became corrupted by maturity. I became a cynic and reveled in tearing down every simplified slogan I was passionate about in those formative years of school. Knowledge brought the loss of innocence and with this loss, like most Malaysians my age, I lost trust in my own convictions.

But the myth of Hishamuddin Rais was still alive; as I had never had to confront it, I was not obliged to tear it down. However, the time came to confront myth and reality one night in December 1994, at some stalls in Bangsar, as I discussed cover personality possibilities for Men's Review , the magazine I was editing, with a few of my closest friends.

"You know who I'd like to see on the cover of the magazine? Hishamuddin Rais." I speculated. "I wonder where he is."

"If you can get him, he'd probably be your best cover," a fellow romantic myth junkie-cum-cynic enthused.

One of the others leaned forward and whispered loudly, "Don't look now, but I think he's at the table just behind you!"

And he was. After all that speculation in the press that he was "under police surveillance" or hidden away in Negeri Sembilan, here was Hishamuddin Rais, at one of my favourite stalls in KL, having teh tarik with a few friends. Completely accessible. I could not back down now. I had no excuse.

Honestly, I rather wished he wasn't there. I don't think I really wanted to hear his answer to that question that would have decided - once and for all - whether the cynicism had come full circle and whether, after confronting reality, I was going to be obliged to tear down yet another myth. The question that I knew I had to ask him, yet was reluctant to know the answer to was: "Was it all worth it?"

The escape

One week after Isham Rais, Kamarazaman Yacob, Abu Zer Ali and Yunus Ali slipped through the net and left Universiti Malaya, the four decided that they would attempt to leave the country with the help of sympathetic Middle Eastern diplomats.

The Middle East-Malaysian student activist connection began in the previous years with the inclusion of the Palestinian issue as a favourite on the students' agenda. Namely the US backed aggression by Israel since 1948 culminating with the occupation of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank and Golan Heights in Syria after the Six Day War in June 1967 and The October War in 1973. (The October War was the focus of the Anwar-led student protest at the US Embassy in 1973.)

The plan was to leave via the Malaysian-Thai border at Golok, Kelantan. They were to split up, with Kamarazaman (Zaman) and Abu Zer taking the central route and Isham and Yunus taking the southern route via Mersing to Kota Baru. The Meeting Point was to be at 5.30 in the evening a week later in front of the Rex Cinema in Kota Baru.

The four, accompanied by a Middle-Eastern diplomat, arrived as planned at KB. Here, the story gets a little vague. Kamarazaman Yacob, in his book Bersama Anwar Ke Penjara , claims that the trip across the border was aborted because their Middle-Eastern connection in KL advised against it. Isham, however, gives a different side of the story.

"It was called off because someone in the group changed his mind," he recalls, with some irritation. En route to Kota Baru, Zaman received news that his wife, along with Isham's girlfriend at that time, Juliet Chin (who was the secretary of the University of Singapore's Student Union), had been detained while trying to flee the country. Naturally, the young president of the PMUM was reluctant to leave his wife behind. Isham speculates rather sarcastically, "I think he just wanted to sit his final exams very badly."

They returned to KL. Isham was extremely annoyed with this development and made sure Zaman was well aware of this. In KL, the four parted company. "I did not bid farewell to Zaman," Isham remembers, slightly regretfully. They were not to meet again until 10 years later in London. Zaman returned to the university and managed to sit his final exams.

Right after this, he was arrested in Negeri Sembilan and joined Anwar Ibrahim, Adi Satria and other student detainees in Kamunting, Perak. His book, Bersama Anwar Ke Penjara , published in 1994, chronicles his experiences as a student activist and his subsequent detention under the ISA. This highly personalised account provides a valuable insight into the world of the student detainees, right down to anecdotes of Anwar Ibrahim singing in the shower and his frequent teasing of Zaman's romantic musings on his wife.

Apparently, Malaysia's former deputy prime minister managed to maintain a healthy sense of humor during his two year stint at Taiping.

Indonesian smugglers

Isham stayed on at the home of Abu Yaacob, the PLO representative to Malaysia, for a week or so, until the police started looking for him there. With the help of Rohana Ariffin, Abu Yaacob's wife, he found another 'safe house' in a squatter area in Keramat. (Rohana Ariffin has since divorced Abu Yaacob. She joined Universiti Malaya's academic staff and is now in Sydney, Australia on sabbatical leave. Abu Yaacob eventually fell out with the present leadership of the PLO and now runs a grocery store in the United Arab Emirates).

Isham lived here for a few months, disguised as a retrenched factory worker. "It was quite bizarre, really," he laughs, "I ordered two newspapers a day and the Far Eastern Economic Review . People there must have been suspicious."

By April 1975, a warrant was out for his arrest. He had failed to turn up in Johor Baru to answer to charges of obstructing a police officer during the Tasik Utara protest in September the previous year. His photograph was published in the newspapers. He knew it was time to move.

For the rest of the year, Isham moved from one safe house to another within the Klang Valley, including the home of political poet Usman Awang. The authorities by now believed that he had already left the country. He tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with Indonesian smugglers to help him leave Malaysia.

In October, Abu Zer got in touch with Isham. He had managed to get a false entry visa stamped in Isham's passport, and planned Isham's subsequent escape. "He hired somebody to take us to the border at Golok in a Volkswagen," Isham remembers. They were to take the same route of the aborted attempt eight months before. "This time it was going to be real."

Everything went smoothly this time, and Isham managed to get to Kuantan where they met up with Abu Zer's connection who was going to take Isham across the Golok border.

But Isham was going to make his break without Abu Zer. The latter had decided earlier not to leave the country after all and later went into hiding in the jungle, joining the CPM. He is officially still at large. When I asked Isham what he thought happened to the friend who helped him leave Malaysia, he said, "I'm not the person to ask about Abu Zer" and changed the subject.

Isham said goodbye to Abu Zer in Kuantan and both he and the 'connection' made their way up to Kota Baru. "In KB, we stayed overnight at this other guy's place. He was a really nice chap with quite a few women around him." Isham adds, wryly: "I suspect that they were prostitutes".

Aussie idiot

The next morning, the 'connection' made a trip to the border to check if the coast was clear enough to risk a crossing. There were a few roadblocks from Kota Baru to the border town of Rantau Panjang, the last Malaysian outpost before Golok. "I suggested that we hired two of the women to accompany us to the border so that we could pass ourselves off as tourists on a day-trip through the roadblocks," says Isham.

Seated between two prostitutes (who had no idea that they were being used as camouflage), Isham managed to get through four checkpoints on the road to Rantau Panjang. When they reached the town, they stopped near a kampung by Sungai Golok, the river that separated the two countries.

After telling the two women to wait with the driver, Isham and his friend made their way to the river to take a rakit (small boat) across to the Thai side. "We assured the two girls that we would return and take them across to Golok for a shopping trip," Isham laughs. "They didn't have a clue what we were going to do!"

They managed to cross the border at sundown. Isham wanted to go directly to Bangkok, but no taxi was willing to make a night trip to the capital. The next day, Isham got to Haadyai and took the train to Bangkok alone.

From Bangkok, Isham took a flight to Hong Kong, hoping that he'd be able to get a visa there for Australia. "This was during the bombing of Danang in Vietnam, and we had to fly around the coast to avoid the area," he says, as he recalls the Bangkok-Hong Kong trip that turned into a five-hour flight.

At the Australian High Commission in Hong Kong, Isham discovered that he was not going Down Under after all. "This guy in charge of visas there, K Rice, told me, 'Very sorry, Mr Rais, but you're persona non grata to Australia.' And the idiot even stamped 'Australia Not Allowed' on my passport!"

He stayed in Hong Kong for a week, weighing his options. "I thought, Why not try the Middle East? So I borrowed some money, flew back to Bangkok and took the cheapest flight to Amman, Jordan."

The road to Damascus and beyond

Isham arrived in Amman early one winter morning in 1975. He knew no one in Jordan, he had no idea what he was going to do or even where to start. His only hope was the name of a place he had heard about from Abu Yaacob. "It was the name of a hotel in Damascus, Syria - Karnak Hotel - given to me by Abu Yaacob," he explains, "This was where Palestinian activists supposedly congregated. With luck, I was hoping that someone would recognise Abu Yaacob's name."

He worked all this out as he sat in a caf in the diplomatic enclave in Amman, with nothing except a plastic bag containing a change of clothes and US$300 in his pocket. He tried applying for visas at three embassies - Iraq, Libya and Algeria. "The first two told me that I had to apply from KL. Algeria actually said okay, but who did I know in Algeria?"

He decided to try the Syrian option instead. He found a shoestring student hostel to put up for a few nights, and tried to get a visa at the Syrian Embassy. Two days later, when he managed to get the visa, he took a taxi over the Syrian border to Damascus. "Jesus took that famous road to Damascus from Jerusalem," he laughs at this point, "I took the other way. I'm always going the opposite way!"

"It was a lovely drive," he went on, "I also saw, for the first time, the occupied West Bank". He arrived in Damascus by early evening and proceeded to look for Karnak Hotel. "The taxi driver was no help. I managed to find the place the next day, left word that I was a friend of Abu Yaacob looking for someone who knew him, and waited.

As it turns out, the Karnak Hotel option was not such a good idea. Someone eventually did turn up. "Remember the Middle Eastern connection on our first attempt for the Thai border crossing? Well, his brother turned up at Karnak to look me up," Isham explains. But nothing came out of this meeting.

Militia groups

However, while waiting - like a true student activist - Isham had already established ties with the National Union of Syrian Students. Isham weighed his options again and decided to try to get into Iraq. "I made friends with this young English-speaking Palestinian Christian student. He told me that getting a visa to Iraq was difficult but he had a friend in Lebanon who could arrange it."

Iraq was then governed by Said Ahmad Hassan Al-Bakr, the president Saddam Hussein helped put into power after the 1968 revolution. This was also a tumultuous period in the Middle East and I can only speculate that Isham, the 22-year-old "I was just a kampung boy" Malaysian must have at times wondered if he had got himself in over his head.

Across the Syrian border, Lebanon was fast becoming the headquarters for assorted militia groups from around the region. Internally, hostilities between the Lebanese Christian militia and the Muslim Druze groups were fast developing into a full-blown civil war. This was to lead to the Israeli invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, and the involvement of Syria in the hostilities. (Syria 'officially' entered the fray when it sent troops to Beirut in 1988).

Getting to Beirut in 1976 was not an easy task, Isham soon found out. "You had to wait for the 'war' to die down before you could cross the border. I was always told at the bus station, 'Today's not safe, come back tomorrow'. It was quite normal in that part of the world."

Finally the day did come when it was 'safe' enough and Isham and his friend left Damascus for Beirut by taxi. It took them right to the heart of Muslim-controlled West Beirut - and into the war.

Around the city, various militia groups had established camps. It was not unlike the Spanish Civil War which attracted hundreds of 'free-lance fighters' across the globe in the 30s. Isham had time to kill - he was getting used to the fact that everything took a long time to do in the Middle East - and while waiting for the Iraqi connection to work out, he did the obvious thing any self-respecting young rebel-exile from Malaysia would do. He joined the war. Time was all Isham managed to kill in Beirut. In fact, it was miraculous that he didn't get killed himself.

"I was not even trained," he laughs, "My job was to guard an apartment block in West Beirut." Civil war lifestyle took some getting used to for Isham. "I kept getting scolded by the others because I was so ignorant to avoid snipers. I didn't have a damn clue what I was doing."

He remained in Beirut for four months before the Iraqi connection came through. "I finally met this guy - Eddie Zanariri - a Palestinian who was going to help me get into Iraq. He was from the American University of Beirut, in charge of international relations for the Palestinian student union."

With a visa secured, Isham left Beirut for Baghdad. That, however, was not the last he would see of the war-torn city that was once called the Paris of the Middle East.

[Part 4 will appear tomorrow]

SHERYLL STOTHARD is vice-president of Parti Rakyat Malaysia (PRM). She originally wrote the above article for the Men's Review in February and March 1995. The above is the third of a five-part series.

DOTMAI

Hishamuddin Rais

Penulis kolum ini sedang dinilai oleh polis sama ada akan dibawa ke kem tahanan lanjutan atau dibebaskan. Beliau telah ditahan selama 50 hari sejak 10 April lalu.

Hishamuddin Rais dibenarkan menerima lawatan anggota keluarga Rabu lalu.

Penulis kolum 'Dotmai' di malaysiakini kini sedang menjalani soal siasat secara intensif oleh unit-unit khas pasukan polis Cawangan Khas (SB).

Selepas 60 hari dikurung seorang diri dalam bilik kecil dan gelap dalam keadaan rehat yang tidak mencukupi, Hishamuddin akan dibawa ke kem tahanan lanjutan selama dua tahun di Kemunting, Perak jika Menteri Dalam Negeri Abdullah Badawi menurunkan tandatangan sebagai persetujuan.