[IDYLLIC: (Top) Neighbour Wasilan Suaudi showing the stream behind the house where children followed Mas Selamat to go fishing. Neighbours said he planted bittergourd and tapioca, among others, in the garden, and that he made the swing (Bottom) himself.]

By Lediati Tan

TO VILLAGERS in the sleepy village of Kampung Tawakal in Skudai, Malaysia, Mas Selamat Kastari was the meticulous gardener tending his patch of fruit trees.

To the outside world, the gardener was really a terrorist bomb-maker.

But such are the many masks of Mas Selamat that for eight months his immediate neighbours did not suspect anything until a police raid one April morning.

The villagers did not know he was Singapore's most wanted terrorist. From what they saw of him, he was ordinary, if a little private.

Neighbours said Mas Selamat kept mostly to himself and avoided eye contact.

They also said he had no visitors while he was staying at the two-storey concrete house built on stilts.

Mr Wasilan Suaudi, 53, who lives in the house next door, told The New Paper that he found out from Johar Hassan that he was a relative's son who was in a crisis and needed a place to live.

Johar lived with his family on the top floor while Mas Selamat stayed on the ground floor.

Johar, said to be a fellow JI member, was arrested by Malaysian Security Branch officers on the same day as Mas Selamat.

According to Mr Wasilan, Johar, who is in his 50s, lived in the house with his wife, a housewife, and three children aged between 3 and 12.

Neighbours said the house actually belongs to Johar's dad and it had been vacant for a while before Johar's family moved in about two years ago.

Another neighbour, Mr Jamian Simin, 70, a retiree, said Johar's father had told him that Mas Selamat was Johar's cousin.

'Johar's father said that his limping was because he had fallen from a ladder and hurt his leg at a construction site,' said Mr Jamian in Malay.

Mr Jamian did not doubt this as he knew Johar was a contractor himself.

Mas Selamat quickly blended into the life in this quiet backwater of fewer than 100 villagers who mostly kept to themselves.

Even though he was a wanted man, he did not behave or live like someone on the run, according to accounts from neighbours.

The only telling sign was that he hardly ventured out of the house's compound, leaving only to get daily necessities from a grocery store along the main road outside the village.

And he usually did this at night.

He was mostly seen working in the large garden, about the size of two basketball courts, said Mr Wasilan.

Mr Wasilan, who owns a food shop near the village, said in Malay: 'Before he came, the garden was in a complete mess. He was the one who cleaned it up.'

Where he relaxed

Mr Wasilan even led The New Paper team to a small plot of land where he said Mas Selamat had planted bittergourd, groundnuts and tapioca.

He also showed us the fruit trees with branches heavily laden with rambutans, mangosteens and jackfruits as testimony to the terrorist's green fingers.

The New Paper team counted at least six different varieties of fruit trees in the garden.

Mr Wasilan added that he often saw Mas Selamat working in the garden, wearing tattered T-shirts, long pants and yellow boots.

On occasion, Mr Wasilan said that he would speak to Mas Selamat while he was working in his garden, but their conversations never went beyond simple questions like whether he had eaten.

Mr Wasilan claimed that he never asked and did not know his new neighbour's name, addressing him only as 'abang', which is Malay for brother, when he spoke to him.

Describing him as a nice and soft-spoken man, Mr Wasilan never suspected that Mas Selamat was a terrorist and a wanted man.

He said: 'Sometimes, I see him playing with the children in the garden.'

He added that the children would also follow Mas Selamat when he went fishing by a small stream about 20m behind the house.

He would then prepare and cook the small fish he caught at a makeshift kitchen behind the house.

Asked how they felt about having a terrorist live within their midst, Mr Jamian said that he was worried as he did not know what Mas Selamat had done while he was living in the house.

Mr Wasilan, however, simply shrugged his shoulders.

He said: 'I'm not scared because I didn't know he was a wanted man. By the time I found out, he was already caught.'

No one would say what would have happened if Mas Selamat hadn't been recaptured.

Would he have continued in his idyllic routine?

The village's name - Tawakal - is actually Arabic for surrendering yourself and putting your trust in God.

By assuming the idyllic life of a simple villager, Mas Selamat appeared to have surrendered himself to the kampung that became his refuge, and his prison.

This article was first published in The New Paper.