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For Love of King and Country:

Ref ection on Twenty-Four Years as a

Malaysian Diplomat

Azhari-Karim

First Impressions
As a Junior Of cer in the Service, you begin to want to impress upon your
seniors at the earliest available opportunity. One such opportunity had
come my way. It was at one of the Morning Prayer Meetings (a practice that
brought together all of cers in the Ministry to review and evaluate events
and development around the world on a weekly basis), an event most people
feared to miss. In the Chair was the then Secretary-General, the late Tan Sri
Ghazali Shaf e who presided. As was his habit he would go around the table
with his eyes wide open to catch unprepared young of cers like me and he
would quickly pop out questions with rapid suddenness,

“Why did you join?”

In quick tempo I replied,

“To observe human behaviour”.

“Huh”, he said (Hiding the interest at my answer).

More important still, I had believed, the late Tan Sri, later Tun, otherwise
called “King Ghaz” (after the famous comic strip character of old) by all of
us who came to grow very fond of him over the years, now deceased, had
upon ref ection, f red an angry retort, and lunged at me imperiously for this
unwarranted impudence.

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