"Our amah or cleaning and laundering girl was named Mas, which means gold. She was very small, less than five feet, and of mixed origin - Sumatran, Siamese, a touch of China. She spoke a little English - "Yusof a bit cracked, tuan," she would say, rightly - but was fluent in all the tongues of the peninsula. Her father called himself Mr. Raja and was reputed to have committed incest with her - sumbang, a terrible crime - but was immune from any criminal charge because the Sultan owed him money. He looked wholly Tamil. Mas had been married at the age of twelve. This was unusually young, but the occupying Japanese had had the delicacy not to send married women to their brothels. Mas's one son, born when she was thirteen, was a burly policeman who looked ten years older than his mother."