As for me, I found my niche in Brooke’s country of 30 indigenous tribes, once ruled and dominated by piratical “Sea Dayak” head hunters living in communities scattered throughout Sarawak’s 5,000km of rivers and remotest regions. As a “jungle wallah” my rumble in our own tropical forests started in 1981, when fascinated by the exploits of Malaysia’s brave Iban “head-hunters”.

I headed upriver. It was in upper Rajang, the nation’s longest 560km river, that I discovered my forte when I encountered a pandora’s box of stories of tales ranging from man-eating crocodiles and cultural cannibals! In my first exploratory foray, I was fortunate to meet Kapit-born Dr James Jemut Masing, the first Iban with an Australian PhD in anthropology.

Through him I learnt about the celebrated custom and ritual of his Iban ancestors--HEAD HUNTING!. Masing who wrote in his essay “Timang and its significance in Iban culture” (submitted for his Master of Arts degree at the Australian National University) said the human soul, from which all Iban life springs, resides in the head. Explaining, the importance of obtaining heads, he said it had to do with their lifestyle as farmers and shifting cultivators.

“To the Iban, the human head represents “vitality, supremacy and fertility” and according to timang (Iban folklore), the head contains padi (rice) grains.” Dr Masing who studied Iban mythology said in the old days the gawai amat ritual (also called gawai burong) was held to ask the spirits for success in warfare and headhunting.

“The timang is narrated like an epic by a lemambang (bard) during a gawai (festival) ambang which invokes the spirits and gods to guide the Iban warriors and give them magical protection during headhunting missions.” Masing explained that Gawai antu was held for the spirits of dead warriors who lost their heads in battle.

He said: “At this gawai, the spirits are invited from the mythical land of the dead called Sebayan to join the living longhouse folk for the last time.” In the early 1990s I attended a Gawai Antu with my classmate lawyer and police commando, “hero” ASP Wilfred Gomez anak Malang, a Panglima Gagah Berani (PGB) gallantry award recipient.

As the leader of the elite Special Branch Probing Unit (SBPU), he and two Iban warriors Sgt Moari and PC Andang took on 30 CTs killing four enemy in Ulu Kanowit in fierce firefight on June 3, 1973. Wilfred was the guest of honor at the ceremonial drinking of sacred rice wine called ai jalong at the home of another Iban “Hero” ASP Rentap at Lubuk Antu. Masing said because the head represents supremacy, the comrades of Iban warriors who died in battle would lop off the heads of their colleagues so that they would not fall into enemy hands.

At Kapit I also met WW2 veteran Temenggong Jinggut anak Atan who regaled me with his tales and exploits in witnessing as a youngster. Coming from a long line of famous hereditary chiefs, Jinggut was only 16 when appointed “Penghulu” during the tail end of the war. In one incident in 1945 he and several others went on a hunt for Japanese soldiers who had victimized the Iban during the occupation.

“One particular soldier who was confronted by my uncle killed him and soldier hid in a bunker and but we caught with him and slashed him to death. “I was so furious that when the others cut out his liver, I had a piece of it,” reminisced Jinggut Jinggut said he also witnessed the smoking of heads after they had killed two Japanese soldiers.

“Our heroes returned with the freshly decapitated heads, to Nanga Mujong and the ceremony started us walking the length of the longhouse ruai (the roofed verandah) past a long line of admiring spectators. After various rituals the heads were taken to the stream by an elderly and experienced expert in preserving heads.

“I noticed that the old man first made a clean cut from under the chin and close to the jaw, right to the back of the head, removing the stump of the neck.’ “He then proceeded to widen the occipital brain with the pointed end of his parang and then sliced one end of a piece of rattan. “He then placed the long end of the rattan strip into the occipital hole and dug out a bits of the brain.

He placed it in some glutinous rice and swallowed quickly. “He did not throw up (vomit), because it would be mali as the man would fall ill and die because his semangat (spirit) was weak. The ceremony continued with the removed of brain matter of the occipital hole with the rattan strip with a vigorous twisting and poking movement (like using a bottle brush) while holding the head in a running stream.

In this way the soft matter was -easily washed away by the water and removed. He added: “When the last bits of brain was removed, the expert removed the eyes of the victims with his parang. “Sometimes the eyes are not removed, in which case leaves are placed to cover the eyes so that they will not bulge or pop out during smoking.”

The heads were then wrapped in several large scented leaves gathered from the river bank, and tied with rattan strips so that the jaws would not fall off. Describing the age-old ceremony, author and naturalist Sir Hugh Low said that after a battle the heads are taken back to the village wrapped in the plaited leaves of the nipah palm.

Low said after a battle smell of the putrid head often surpassed the “odorous durian” fruit. He said most of the heads taken by the Ibans were smoked in a manner similar to that in which fish is smoked. He said: “In this way, the head (minus the eyes) is preserved, together with the flesh and hair.

Sometimes during the process, the head is singed black. Another Jinggut tale worthy of mention, was during the initial months of the Malayan Emergency in 1948, when several Iban trackers hacked off the heads of several CTs not knowing that it was an offence. Jinggut who was then a co-opted British army Lieutenant said:

“The British officer in charge reprimanded the offenders and ordered the heads to be stitched back to the corpses so that they could be photographed and properly buried.” ”Later, some Gurkha soldiers, involved the CT killing who had helped the Iban in the removal of the heads, were court martialled.

Our trackers were warned not to do this again or we would face the same consequences.” In another incident in 1965 during the Malaysian-Indonesian confrontation in Sarawak, Iban from the Ranger Regiment took collected at least 30 enemy heads and took them back in gunny sacks as war trophies.