Dany years ago I won a famous writing competition in Malaysia, the Utusan Group Literary Award (Sayembara Hadiah Sastera Kumpulan Utusan). My manuscript, “1511H Kombat”, revolved around a group of military Sufis fighting Western imperialism. To this day it remains one of the works that readers of Malay literature remember well, but I don’t think it represents who I am as a writer.

The person who handed over the prizes on that glamorous night was the Malaysian minister of defence at the time, Mohd Najib Razak. The ceremony ended quickly, unenthusiastically and without lustre. I say this because I have been up on stage several times to receive literary prizes, including from Dr Mahathir Mohamad 1.0 in 2002. I still remember that Dr Mahathir, who was then at the end of his first term as prime minister, joked with me: “Wow, you got a lot of prize money. You could give me fifty cents — I’m not asking for much.”

That joke was enough to make me, a young writer, smile for days.

It was different with Najib. He wanted to end the event as soon as possible, and when he handed me my prize, I heard him mumbling something. Perhaps what he said was “tahniah” (congratulations), but I seem to have heard the word “payah” (trouble), or perhaps it could have been “serah” (surrender). Anyway, I remember that I tried to tell him a little of the story. I said: “This is about a group of soldiers in the future who rise to fight against the West. And their general is a woman.”

• Tags: Faisal Tehrani, Issue 17, Malaysia, Mohd Najib Razak