KUALA LUMPUR, Sept. 28 -- It is easy to remember Tun Dr Hasmah Mohamad Ali through the people and institutions around her: as the wife of Malaysia's longest-serving prime minister, as a former First Lady, or as the woman who stood beside Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad through decades of public life.

But those descriptions leave out much of the woman herself.

There was the teenager whose schooling was interrupted by the Japanese invasion, the young doctor who worked among rural communities in Kedah, and the woman who maintained interests and a public identity of her own outside politics.

There were also the less expected details: a RM10 payment she refused from a patient's family, the trust she had to earn from rural villagers, a badminton tea...