A life extraordinary: Ibu Alijah Gordon 1929-2003

In death, the dead live on in the memories of the living. Fortunate are those whose lives have been filled with events and experiences worth recounting, valuable enough to be fished out of the stream of historical flotsam and rescued for the sake of posterity. Not many of us will be privileged enough to fall into this category, but I can at least claim to have known one who did: ''Ibu'' Alijah Gordon: academic, activist, traveller and adventurer, the gutsiest woman I have ever met and the biggest chain-smoker to boot.

Alijah Gordon - known to many who knew her simply as ''Ibu Alijah'' - passed away on the night of 18th November/ 23rd Ramadhan. She would have wanted me to include the date of the Arabic calendar as well, not for the sake of cosmetic exoticism or a false pretension to assumed piety, but in order to remind ourselves that there are always other dates, other places, other

topographies and discursive registers that need to be taken into account as well. A life-long advocate of cultural diversity and pluralism, she lamented the homogenisation of the world brought about by globalisation and the McDonald-isation of popular culture. A modernist who lived in the here-and-now, she was nonetheless dismayed at the erasure of the past, the flattening of the world and its cultures thanks to capitalism and crass consumerism.