Her novel Kehilangan mestika (Indonesian: Loss of the jewel), 1935, was among the first by a female author to be published by Balai Pustaka; she was one of only a handful of Indonesian women authors to be published at all in the Dutch East Indies, alongside Saadah Alim, Sariamin Ismail, Soewarsih Djojopoespito and a few others.
[2] After graduating from there she returned to Muntok and taught at the independent Malay school there (the Sekolah Rakjat), then at the Palembang Instituut.
[5] After that, Fatimah also taught at a Taman Siswa school until the start of the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies.
The novel contained many autobiographical elements, telling the life of a young female schoolteacher in the same places in Sumatra that Fatimah had lived, studied and taught.
[2] Her book Kehilangan mestika continued to be republished in numerous editions after her death, first by the Indonesian Ministry of Education in 1955 and then by Balai Pustaka in 1959, 1974, 1998 and 2011.