Everything else this archive says about Saloma's last day is a fact and a date. This is the version told by two women who were actually there for it — one at the hospital bed, holding her hand as she went, and one who spent the decade around it standing beside her on stage.
Rosnani Jamil built her own career in film alongside her husband, the director Jamil Sulong, but for more than three decades she was something else first: Saloma's closest friend, and the woman Saloma's family turned to in the last hours of her life. She calls herself ‘Mak’ — Mak Nani to everyone who knows her — and it is the name she still uses for herself, telling this.
Two girls on Jalan Sultan
The two of them were reciting the Quran together as children on Jalan Sultan in Singapore, long before either had a stage name. They lost each other when Saloma's parents divorced and she followed her father to Pontian, in Johor, and found each other again as teenagers back in Singapore — both of them, by then, singing with local kugiran bands without yet knowing where it would lead.
Saloma was already active with a kugiran band by then. I was in one too. We were both singers.
They drifted apart a second time — Mak Nani a film star by then, Saloma singing in nightclubs — before Saloma married A.R. Tompel and moved into the Boon Teck Road barracks where Mak Nani already lived. They turned out to be neighbours. The friendship deepened for good when Saloma gave birth to her son Armali and Mak Nani's own mother helped care for him.
By the time the two women had moved to Kuala Lumpur, they had picked up a third close friend, Rokiah, who had nothing to do with the film world at all, and later a fourth: the actress Latifah Omar. From P. Ramlee's death in 1973 until the illness that eventually took Saloma too, Mak Nani never stopped being at her side.
25 April 1983
In her final days, Latifah Omar and Mak Nani split the watch between them — Mak Nani in the mornings, Latifah in the afternoons, and Mak Nani again at night, bringing rice to Saloma's children: Linda, Rozie and Dian.
She had gone home and was watching television when Linda — or Sasha, Mariani's daughter, whom Saloma had raised as her own — telephoned to say the doctor wanted the family called in. Mak Nani went straight to the hospital, bringing Ustaz Aziz from Kampung Tunku at Linda's request. Saloma's children were already there. She took Saloma's hand.
Hello, darling… it's me… If you can hear me, please squeeze my hand.
Saloma squeezed it. Mak Nani recited Surah Al-Fatihah for her, and Ustaz Aziz read his own prayers alongside.
I looked at her stomach. I rested my head on it. It rose. Her hand never let go of mine. But when it fell, it never rose again. I couldn't bear to look at her face.
When Ustaz Aziz said she was gone, Mak Nani could not believe it at first. She kissed Saloma's hand, then told the children — Linda, Sazali, Armali and Dian — that Mama would not be coming back.
What followed, she did herself, one task after another, until the hospital staff assumed she was Saloma's own sister. She found the doctor. She telephoned her son, Anwardi Jamil, known as Didi. She carried the news to Saloma's mother. When the ambulance would not carry the body, she went and found a van instead.
“In the end, it was just Didi, Mali, Saloma's stepfather and me left at the hospital,” she says. “I handled the ambulance arrangements. Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow her body to be carried in one, so I had to find a van myself. I did everything until the doctor thought I was Saloma's own sister. Once we had the van, the four of us left the hospital with her.”
She did not tell Latifah Omar what had happened until later — Latifah had a heart condition, and Mak Nani did not want to risk the shock. “It was incredibly quiet,” she says. “It broke my heart that someone once so celebrated took her last breath with nobody there to see it, and only the four of us brought her body home.”
She has never visited the grave since. She told Saloma's mother that, as a friend, she had already done her duty — and she has kept away from Jalan Ampang because, in her own words, she still feels Saloma is alive and breathing.
Mak Nani says she has decided it is time the truth of Saloma's last years was known — that people never saw what she went through, confused and distressed from the moment she was first diagnosed with bone cancer, carrying a household with no steady income of her own after P. Ramlee died. When it became too much, Saloma would come to Mak Nani's house, where Mak Nani cooked for her and the two of them watched videos together.
The two women, she points out, shared the same star sign — both Capricorn, born a year and three days apart. What set them apart, she says, was temperament: Mak Nani liked company and travel, Saloma preferred to keep to a small circle, slow to trust and slower still to forgive anyone who had hurt her. But nothing dimmed what Saloma felt for P. Ramlee. “No matter what unkind things people said about him, Saloma still loved Ramlee,” Mak Nani says. “And in the end, she came to him with patience.”
What Uji Rashid remembers
The singer Uji Rashid holds her own record of the years after P. Ramlee's death, built from the tribute shows the two women performed together. Singers were invited to perform his songs in his honour, and at the end of each show Saloma herself would come out to sing Di Mana Kan Ku Cari Ganti.
They performed together at Stadium Merdeka, alongside Hail, L. Ramlee, A. Ramlee and Andre Goh, and again in 1974, when Datuk Rahim Razali cast Saloma as the lead in his stage production Kuala Lumpur! Kuala Lumpur! She sang Air Mata Di Kuala Lumpur in it — a song that, in hindsight, Uji says felt like a woman singing about a life that would not last much longer. When Saloma later fell ill, Uji visited often, sometimes with Rahim Razali himself.
Some of what stayed with her were small things. Saloma loved playing with the hair of Uji's only son, Cico, who called her Mamama — mama to his own mother. She was, by Uji's account, particular about her nails, and would sometimes twist strands of her hair around their tips.
When she was bedridden, my then-husband and I went to visit. Her mother asked if she recognised us. She named us one by one. She said, ‘Ji, no one takes care of my nails any more, they aren't pretty.’ Her mother gave me a look, so I said, ‘Mama, you have the best and most beautiful nails around.’ She asked, really?
Uji noticed that Saloma rarely invited a large group of singers to perform with her, and that when she did include someone, she looked after them personally. At a show for a state's royal family, Saloma brought Uji along and cared for her the way a mother would — finding polite reasons to excuse her from gatherings that made her uncomfortable, and sending her to bed once the night ran too long. What stayed with Uji most was how deep Saloma's memory of P. Ramlee remained: she recited Surah Yasin and Al-Fatihah every night before sleeping, without fail.
It was Saloma who pushed Uji toward a singing career she had not particularly wanted, recommending her to EMI and later giving her blessing — on one condition — when Uji asked to record her own version of Mengapa Dirindu. “She was the one who gave the recommendation, even though I wasn't especially interested in singing,” Uji says. “She let me record it, but only if I made it my own and didn't spoil the song.”
Uji went on to record several more of P. Ramlee and Saloma's songs — Jikalau Abang Merindu, Aku & Dia, Bintang Malam — and stayed close to Saloma through good years and hard ones. She was angered by how little respect some show promoters showed a veteran performer: on one occasion they were paid in a thick, uncounted stack of one-ringgit notes; on another, in Sabah, they were never paid at all, a debt Saloma once asked Uji to chase on her behalf that neither of them ever collected.
I still wonder why someone so good was treated that way. She never spoke ill of anyone. When we were together, she mostly talked about herself, and about her memories of P. Ramlee.
Saloma sewed her own stage costumes by hand, sitting up before every performance. Uji wore one of them once, in the film Jauh Pandangan, and has regretted ever since not asking to keep it.
Between them, Mak Nani and Uji Rashid hold two different vantage points on the same woman — one from the hospital room where Saloma's life ended, the other from the stages where her voice carried on for a decade after her husband's. Neither account was ever meant to replace the other. Told together, they are the closest thing this archive has to Saloma in her own circle's words.
Her fuller story is told at Saloma — A Digital Biography, a companion site within this archive.
Segala yang lain dalam pustaka ini tentang hari terakhir Saloma hanyalah fakta dan tarikh. Inilah versi yang diceritakan oleh dua wanita yang benar-benar berada di sana — seorang di sisi katil hospital, memegang tangannya ketika beliau pergi, dan seorang lagi yang menghabiskan satu dekad di sekitarnya, berdiri di sisinya di atas pentas.
Rosnani Jamil membina kerjaya filemnya sendiri bersama suaminya, pengarah Jamil Sulong, tetapi lebih tiga dekad lamanya beliau lebih dahulu dikenali sebagai sesuatu yang lain: sahabat karib Saloma, wanita yang dipercayai keluarga Saloma pada saat-saat terakhir hayatnya. Beliau membahasakan dirinya ‘Mak’ — Mak Nani kepada semua yang mengenalinya — dan itulah nama yang masih digunakannya untuk dirinya sendiri, menceritakan kisah ini.
Dua gadis di Jalan Sultan
Kedua-duanya mengaji al-Quran bersama sejak kecil di Jalan Sultan, Singapura, jauh sebelum mana-mana satu memiliki nama pentas. Mereka berpisah apabila ibu bapa Saloma bercerai dan beliau mengikut bapanya berpindah ke Pontian, Johor, lalu bertemu semula sebagai remaja di Singapura — kedua-duanya ketika itu sudah menyanyi bersama kugiran tanpa mengetahui ke mana ia akan membawa mereka.
Masa itu, Saloma dah aktif ikut kugiran. Mak pun masa itu ikut kugiran juga. Kami sama-sama jadi penyanyi.
Mereka berpisah buat kali kedua — Mak Nani sudah menjadi bintang filem, Saloma pula menyanyi di kelab malam — sebelum Saloma berkahwin dengan A.R. Tompel dan berpindah ke berek Boon Teck Road, tempat Mak Nani sudah pun tinggal. Rupa-rupanya mereka berjiran. Persahabatan itu bertambah erat apabila Saloma melahirkan anaknya, Armali, dan ibu Mak Nani turut membantu menjaganya.
Menjelang kedua-duanya berpindah ke Kuala Lumpur, mereka sudah mempunyai seorang lagi sahabat karib, Rokiah, yang tiada kaitan langsung dengan dunia filem, dan kemudian seorang lagi: pelakon Latifah Omar. Dari kematian P. Ramlee pada 1973 sehinggalah sakit yang akhirnya turut meragut nyawa Saloma, Mak Nani tidak pernah berhenti berada di sisinya.
25 April 1983
Pada hari-hari terakhirnya, Latifah Omar dan Mak Nani berkongsi tugas menjaga Saloma — Mak Nani pada waktu pagi, Latifah pada waktu petang, dan Mak Nani semula pada waktu malam, menghantar nasi kepada anak-anak Saloma: Linda, Rozie dan Dian.
Beliau sudah pulang ke rumah dan sedang menonton televisyen apabila Linda — atau Sasha, anak Mariani yang dibesarkan Saloma sebagai anaknya sendiri — menelefon memberitahu doktor mahu keluarga dipanggil. Mak Nani terus ke hospital, membawa Ustaz Aziz dari Kampung Tunku atas permintaan Linda. Anak-anak Saloma sudah pun berada di situ. Beliau memegang tangan Saloma.
Hello sayang… I lah ni… Kalau you dapat dengar I, tolong picit tangan I.
Saloma memicit tangannya. Mak Nani membacakan Surah Al-Fatihah untuknya, dan Ustaz Aziz turut membaca doanya sendiri di sisi.
Mak tengok perut dia. Mak letak kepala Mak di perutnya. Perutnya naik. Tangannya juga tak lepas pada tangan Mak. Tapi, bila perutnya turun, ia terus tak naik-naik lagi. Mak tak mahu tengok muka dia.
Apabila Ustaz Aziz berkata Saloma sudah tiada, Mak Nani pada mulanya tidak percaya. Beliau mencium tangan Saloma, lalu memberitahu anak-anaknya — Linda, Sazali, Armali dan Dian — bahawa Mama tidak akan kembali lagi.
Apa yang menyusul, beliau lakukan sendiri, satu demi satu tugas, sehingga kakitangan hospital menyangka beliau kakak atau adik Saloma. Beliau mencari doktor. Beliau menghubungi anaknya, Anwardi Jamil, dikenali sebagai Didi. Beliau menyampaikan berita itu kepada ibu Saloma. Apabila ambulans enggan membawa jenazah, beliau sendiri mencari van.
“Akhirnya tinggalkan Mak, Didi, Mali dan bapa tiri Saloma di hospital itu,” katanya. “Mak uruskan ambulans. Malangnya, jenazah beliau tidak dibenarkan dibawa dalam ambulans. Mak terpaksa pula cari van sendiri. Mak buat segala-galanya sampai doktor ingat Mak kakak atau adik Saloma. Bila dapat van, kami berempat bersama jenazah Saloma keluar dari hospital.”
Beliau tidak memberitahu Latifah Omar sehingga kemudian — Latifah mempunyai sakit jantung, dan Mak Nani tidak mahu mengambil risiko mengejutkannya. “Keadaan sungguh sepi pada waktu itu,” katanya. “Mak sedih sebab orang yang begitu terkenal dan dipuji suatu ketika dulu menghembuskan nafasnya yang terakhir dalam keadaan yang tiada sesiapa pun tahu, dan hanya kami berempat yang membawa jenazahnya pulang.”
Beliau tidak pernah menziarahi pusara Saloma sejak itu. Beliau memberitahu ibu Saloma bahawa, sebagai sahabat, beliau sudah melakukan tugasnya — dan beliau mengelak dari Jalan Ampang kerana, pada katanya sendiri, beliau masih berasa Saloma masih hidup dan bernafas.
Mak Nani berkata beliau merasakan sudah sampai masanya kebenaran mengenai tahun-tahun terakhir Saloma diketahui umum — bahawa orang tidak pernah melihat penderitaan yang dilaluinya, sentiasa bingung dan susah hati sejak mula-mula disahkan menghidap kanser tulang, sambil menanggung sebuah rumah tangga tanpa pendapatan tetap selepas P. Ramlee meninggal dunia. Apabila tertekan, Saloma akan datang ke rumah Mak Nani, tempat Mak Nani memasak untuknya sambil mereka menonton video bersama.
Kedua-dua wanita ini, katanya, berkongsi zodiak yang sama — sama-sama Capricorn, dilahirkan setahun dan tiga hari berbeza. Yang membezakan mereka, katanya, ialah perwatakan: Mak Nani suka berkawan dan berjalan, Saloma pula lebih suka pada kelompok kecil, lambat mempercayai dan lebih lambat lagi memaafkan sesiapa yang mengecilkan hatinya. Namun tidak ada yang mengurangkan kasih Saloma terhadap P. Ramlee. “Macam mana pun orang cakap buruk fasal dia, Saloma tetap sayangkan Ramlee,” kata Mak Nani. “Dan akhirnya, dia bertemu jodoh dengan Ramlee pun dengan cara yang sabar.”
Yang diingati Uji Rashid
Penyanyi Uji Rashid menyimpan catatannya sendiri tentang tahun-tahun selepas kematian P. Ramlee, terbina daripada persembahan penghormatan yang mereka berdua sama-sama jayakan. Para penyanyi dijemput mempersembahkan lagu-lagu Allahyarham, dan pada penghujung setiap persembahan, Saloma sendiri akan muncul menyanyikan Di Mana Kan Ku Cari Ganti.
Mereka pernah membuat persembahan bersama di Stadium Merdeka, bersama Hail, L Ramlee, A Ramlee dan Andre Goh, dan sekali lagi pada 1974, apabila Datuk Rahim Razali memilih Saloma sebagai bintang utama dalam persembahan teaternya, Kuala Lumpur! Kuala Lumpur! Beliau mendendangkan Air Mata Di Kuala Lumpur dalam persembahan itu — sebuah lagu yang, jika dilihat kembali, kata Uji, seolah-olah seorang wanita menyanyi tentang kehidupan yang tidak akan lama lagi. Apabila Saloma kemudiannya jatuh sakit, Uji kerap melawatnya, ada kalanya bersama Rahim Razali sendiri.
Sebahagian yang tersemat di ingatannya adalah perkara-perkara kecil. Saloma gemar membelai rambut anak tunggal Uji, Cico, yang memanggilnya Mamama — mama kepada mamanya sendiri. Saloma, pada pemerhatian Uji, amat mengambil berat tentang kukunya, dan kadangkala memintal rambutnya dengan hujung kuku itu.
Ketika terlantar, saya dan bekas suami saya pergi menziarahinya. Ibu arwah bertanya, kenal tak siapa yang datang melawat. Dia akan menyebut satu persatu nama kami. Dia berkata, ‘Ji, kuku I ni tak ada orang bela, dah tak cantik lagi.’ Ibu Saloma segera memberi isyarat. Saya pun cakaplah, ‘Mama, you have the best and beautiful nails around.’ Dia bertanya balik, iye ke?
Uji perasan Saloma jarang menjemput ramai penyanyi untuk sama-sama tampil, dan apabila beliau menjemput seseorang, beliau akan menjaganya sendiri. Ketika satu persembahan untuk kerabat sebuah negeri, Saloma mengajak Uji turut serta dan menjaganya seperti seorang ibu — mencari alasan yang sopan untuk melepaskannya daripada majlis yang membuatnya kurang selesa, dan menyuruhnya tidur apabila malam sudah terlalu larut. Apa yang paling tersemat pada Uji ialah betapa mendalamnya ingatan Saloma terhadap P. Ramlee: beliau membacakan Surah Yasin dan Al-Fatihah setiap malam sebelum tidur, tanpa pernah gagal.
Saloma jugalah yang menggalakkan Uji ke arah kerjaya nyanyian yang sebenarnya tidak begitu diminatinya, mengesyorkannya kepada EMI dan kemudian memberi restu — dengan satu syarat — apabila Uji meminta izin merakam semula lagu Mengapa Dirindu. “Dia yang bagi recommendation, pada hal saya tidak minat untuk menyanyi,” kata Uji. “Dia memberi keizinan tetapi bersyarat, saya perlu membawanya dengan gaya sendiri dan tidak merosakkan lagu itu.”
Uji kemudiannya merakam semula beberapa lagu popular Allahyarham P. Ramlee dan Saloma — Jikalau Abang Merindu, Aku & Dia, Bintang Malam — dan terus rapat dengan Saloma sepanjang tahun-tahun baik mahupun susah. Beliau terkilan dengan sikap sesetengah promoter pertunjukan ketika itu yang tidak menghormati seorang penyanyi veteran: pada satu ketika mereka dibayar dengan segulung tebal wang kertas satu ringgit yang tidak dikira; pada satu ketika lain, di Sabah, mereka langsung tidak dibayar — hutang yang pernah diminta Saloma agar dikejar oleh Uji bagi pihaknya, namun tidak pernah mereka terima sehingga ke akhirnya.
Saya hairan mengapa insan sebaik arwah diperlakukan seperti itu? Dia tidak pernah bercerita hal orang lain apatah lagi menganiaya. Kalau kami bersama, dia banyak bercerita mengenai dirinya serta kenangan ketika bersama arwah P Ramlee.
Saloma menjahit pakaian pentasnya sendiri dengan tangan, sering berjaga hingga larut malam sebelum setiap persembahan. Uji pernah memakai salah satu daripadanya, ketika berlakon dalam filem Jauh Pandangan, dan menyesal sehingga kini kerana tidak memintanya untuk disimpan sebagai kenangan.
Antara mereka berdua, Mak Nani dan Uji Rashid memegang dua sudut pandang berbeza tentang wanita yang sama — satu daripada bilik hospital tempat hayat Saloma berakhir, satu lagi daripada pentas-pentas tempat suaranya terus bergema sedekad selepas suaminya tiada. Tiada satu pun catatan ini bertujuan menggantikan yang lain. Dibaca bersama, inilah yang paling hampir dimiliki pustaka ini kepada Saloma dalam kata-kata lingkungan sahabatnya sendiri.