The Stories Behind: After 30-year conflict with dad, this magician wants his audience to see the real magic of relationships

SINGAPORE — From Harry Houdini of Hungary to David Blaine of New York, magicians have always exuded an air of flamboyance and mystery. 

Their freakish, ethereal feats give the impression that the men behind the wizardry are different from us regular people. 

So I didn’t quite know what to expect when I made my way to a crowded cafe in the eastern part of Singapore on a sunny Saturday morning in July to have a chat with Singaporean magician Aman Alhamid.

As it turns out, Aman Alhamid of Tampines is very much an ordinary man. 

You could not picture Criss Angel or David Copperfield typing away at their laptops late into the night, promoting their upcoming magic show to every journalist in every publication.

But that was what Mr Alhamid did. 

In two weeks, the 40-year-old corporate trainer and father of three will perform for two nights later this month in front of a total crowd of around 500 people at the Esplanade's Recital Studio. 

For the first 20 minutes of our conversation, however, Mr Alhamid, dressed in an unassuming plain black tee and grey trousers, waxed lyrical only about his children, not his show.

“My eldest son loves cooking and my youngest one is a huge football fan,” he told me as he pulled up photos of them on his phone. 

Do they share his enthusiasm for magic? “Not at all,” he said, but he doesn’t mind. 

“They should do whatever brings them joy.”

When he spoke about his kids, I noticed a gleam in his eyes that cancels out the visible fatigue that comes with planning, promoting and rehearsing for the biggest performance of his 23-year career in magic.

Indeed, he told me: “No matter how tired I am at the end of the day, whenever I open the door to my home and see my kids… it's like I'm not tired at all. 

“All that energy comes back. All that tiredness magically disappears.” 

FROM FATHER TO FATHER

As a student in junior college, Mr Alhamid saw a video of David Copperfield performing a stunning card trick. The American brandished a series of aces at will from a deck of cards, made them disappear, and brought them back once more.

The then teenager looked up a tutorial online and proceeded to spend a whole year practising and mastering the same card trick.

From the moment he finally nailed it, he said, there was never any doubt he would continue to make magic a part of his life. 

But what is it about magic to him that’s, well, magical? 

“I think every magician wants to learn magic because there's a small part of us that wishes it was real,” Mr Alhamid said. 

“It's kind of like making dreams come true, right? We wish we could fly, so magicians devise ways to levitate and defy reality.”

In Mr Alhamid's case, the dream that had eluded him for over three decades was a healthy and loving relationship with his late father.

His old man had never quite fully gotten over the fact that the prepubescent son chose to live with his mother in Brunei when they divorced. 

That led to a lifetime of cold shoulders and distrust despite Mr Alhamid's best efforts to mend those ties — on the day of his wedding, his father bought a plane ticket out of the country just to avoid showing up at the event. 

“I remember calling him one day to tell him that I loved him… He hung up without saying a word back.”

Once in a while, though, as a young adult back in Singapore, it was magic that provided an excuse for conversation.

“My dad would see me buying props from magic shops and he would challenge me: Why are you buying these? If you could do real magic, you wouldn't need them,” he recounted.

While harsh, Mr Alhamid saw these criticisms as a way for him to grow in his craft, and said that his father’s words are etched in his mind to this day.

The turning point in their relationship came some time in 2017, when his father was diagnosed with an illness that meant he had just several months left to live.

“He was on the hospital bed and he ended up crying. He confessed that he realised he's been a horrible father. And I think I really needed to hear those words.

“It was only a couple of months from that point to when he passed away. But those months, that was when I had my father.”

At that point of time, magic brought them closer together as well. Mr Alhamid had made a breakthrough in his career that year and was invited to compete as a contestant for season three of the reality TV show Asia’s Got Talent.

Bedridden at the hospital, his father was not able to travel to Malaysia’s state of Johor to support him. So staff members from AXN, the cable channel airing the show, flew to Singapore and set up a monitor at his bedside so that he could watch his son perform.

What did he think of it? 

“He had some feedback as usual,” Mr Alhamid said with a chuckle. “He said I could have done this or that better.”

But by that point, the relationship had been mended. Mr Alhamid's father died in 2018 cradled in his son’s loving arms.

THE REAL DEFINITION OF MAGIC

I had come to get a measure of the magician rather than the man. Yet, I soon realised that his affection for magic was very much intertwined with what he values as a person.

I asked Mr Alhamid if he ever wanted to quit his job as a corporate trainer to focus on his craft full time, and he said that in many ways, he is already doing so — incorporating magic in his assignments to get his point across to his clients.

Illusions or feats of wizardry aside, this is what real magic looks like to him: The relationships we have with other people.

That’s why, he told me, the focus of his upcoming performance at the Esplanade is not the magic itself.

It draws deeply from the experiences he has had with the people in his life. 

Aptly titled Real Magic, he said that the two-hour show is structured around “six emotional needs” that encompass a great relationship; like a TED talk interspersed with bits of magical flavour. 

This is the second time Mr Alhamid is performing at the Esplanade. Last year, some members of his audience left the theatre in tears, he recalled, with several picking up the phone to call their loved ones. 

Instances like this are why he does what he does. 

“People think you either gel with a person or you don't. But the reality is that you are able to create a great relationship with others, as long as you know what their emotional needs are.”

When people leave their jobs, it’s mostly because they have a poor relationship with their manager, he said as an example. And on the flip side, people stay because they have a good one — even if another company pays them more. 

“I want to change what magic means in Singapore. It’s not just for kids… it’s not about fooling the audience. I want to give people tools that they can use in their everyday lives to make real magic happen.” 

I asked him if he wished his father knew about these six emotional needs earlier, and Mr Alhamid nodded his head with a pensive, slightly melancholic smile.

“Magic is the vehicle I choose to carry this message.”

Real Magic plays on Aug 27 and 28, 2024 at 7.30pm in the Recital Studio of the Esplanade Theatres by the Bay.