Dato Yunus
He didn’t learn to read or write until he was fifteen, but the man today who is stitched in white and being lowered into Wealden clay beside the commuter line near Woking could turn a poem – though that, in truth, was not his calling. He knew the art of encouraging, certainly. His school at the heart of Covent Garden might have been its soul. He offered to help me, as the tailor he was apprenticed to had helped him climb out of poverty and reach the first of his twelve degrees, at last achieving the top rung. Magistrate. Datuk Yunus. Entrepreneur of Englishness, whose own vowels puffed at the pennant that flew its proud colour from his suit pocket, blew in the silken rigging of the ties he wore, elaborate, knotted as if to moor himself Melayu. We saw him at St Pancras, the Renaissance Hotel, last winter. Not well, but still the complete man, distinguishable, enthroned with waiting travellers. Unintimidated, he lies among sultans now. Beneat...
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