Category: Essay

Afdal B. Kunting

Stuck in a traffic jam at Veterans Avenue again! During the day in Zamboanga, there is virtually no chance to rev one’s engine and sprint to a destination. I was running a little late at around 7:15 AM, but the traffic build-up was already colossal. Just another day in Zamboanga.

Typically, during these episodes of boredom, I would yearn for simpler times, the carefree Zamboanga of old, our Ciudad de Flores (City of Flowers). The city was very much provincial then, like a charming barrio lass. Acacia lined avenues, verdant greenery and a profusion of bougainvillea flowers exuded a quaint country charm.

After a couple of deep sighs, I stumbled across a favorite memory of my childhood, the calesa ride. I was probably around four or five years old back then, in the late 1970s. Sundays were specially anticipated because it meant the possibility of a picnic at the beach at Cawa-Cawa Boulevard. We lived with my Angkong (Granddad) and Amah (Granny) at Sto. Niño, on San Jose Road, just a stone’s throw away from the beach. It was a short walk for an adult but a fair distance for kids. So, a calesa ride was in order.

I don’t know why this memory is something that I could recall after so many years. Perhaps happy memories are etched with more fervor in one’s brain cells? Even today, the images seem so vivid. A typical jaunt to Cawa-Cawa would involve our Amah Lei Wah and Ae (Aunt) Rosita, calling us to prepare hurriedly so we can get a good spot at the beach. At that time, there were no beach resorts of note except maybe Caragasan Beach, but that was too far away. Apura ya, nuay mas ya kita lugar alya! (Be quick or else we won’t be able to get a spot there!)

I would gather up our dog, Skippy, a poodle with a questionable pedigree and shepherd my younger brother, John, and first cousin Koji towards the camino or road. We had a neighbor who operated a calesa, our suki for these excursions. His name escapes me, we just called him Nyor (Mister), but his features are still clear to me. He was a short, slightly rotund, jolly person. His weather-beaten face always featured a gap-toothed smile. “Hoy Peter! Anda ya tamen ustedez na aplaya? (Hey Peter, you are going to the beach again?) We would reply in unison with a gleeful Si! Si! Si! (Yes! Yes! Yes!)

If you didn’t notice, we had nicknames not aligned to our first names, my brother being Ahmed and Koji is Emmanuel. My Mmah (dad) is a multi-ethnic Muslim while my mom is of Chinese descent. I was told that her parents came from Manila during the war leaving their fledging business to escape the fighting. Being Muslim, my dad gave us Arabic names, however, my Amah didn’t like it one bit. Deficil habla ese mga nombre. Hard to say those names. She would remark. Thus, we were nicknamed Peter and John after the Apostles. Our family was one multi-religion affair. Since my Dad was in Tawi-Tawi during our early years, we practiced a variety of religions before becoming Muslim later. We went to mass at the city’s Roman Catholic cathedral, had a Chinese altar at home and celebrated the ancestors’ birthdays, burned paper money and joss sticks. We even had lechon during birthdays! The crispy lechon ears were the first to be consumed! Those were carefree days indeed, just don’t tell my dad!

Back to the calesa. We clambered onto the brightly colored contraption whose sizable wooden wheels were bright yellow covered with flat gray rubber for a less bumpy ride. The dark red spokes provided a jarring contrast. The sky blue coach was average sized, easily fitting two adults and three boisterous boys plus the kutsero. I don’t know why, but the rhythmic clip clop clip clop of the hooves on the mixed asphalt and gravel road was a mesmerizing sound to my young ears.

Nyor’s horse was a cantankerous old stallion with a mean temper. We knew better than to come near its legs or mouth. Experience is a bitter teacher. When the grumpy horse strayed away from the chosen path Nyor kutsero would give him a healthy whack on his fly-covered butt. The judicious use of the whip allowed us to make good time and arrive at the correct destination. This horse also had a nasty habit of stopping suddenly and depositing a steaming heap of manure as we were eating our breakfast. Ay loko gat esta caballo! (What a crazy horse!) My Amah used to remark in her shrill voice! I don’t know if this was intentional, but it happened too often to be a mere coincidence! This caballo was toying with us!

Since we would go early, we usually brought food to eat; suman ibus, tamal, and alfajor. The latter is a Zamboanga delicacy that is sort of like a biscuit made from corn and probably coffee. It felt like eating gravel, but it was Amah’s favorite. The tamal, on the other hand, is a handy eat-as-you-go snack of steamed glutinous rice powder with coconut milk, chicken, sotanghon and boiled egg wrapped in banana leaf. Real good quality tamal just melts into your mouth, sending an explosion of salty, umami goodness. As you can probably tell, it is my all-time favorite comfort food. We form lifelong habits from childhood activities.

After an hour or two hours of invigorating dips and feeble attempts at swimming, we would call it quits. Nyor kutsero knew to be back by that time to pick us up. The fare, a few centavos, was good enough for him to buy some tuba bajal or coconut toddy for his afternoon buzz. As we headed back home, the horse’s mane would flick in cadence to his clip clops. Boys being boys, we would rock our heads in unison with the horse’s mane, not minding our salty skins and dry lips. Everything was a game back then.

Such trips were highlights of my childhood. Sadly, as we grew older and my Amah became frailer, these trips became few and far in between. The appearance of more jeepneys and tricycles signaled the inevitable demise of the calesa.

A loud honk broke me out of my revelry, the traffic enforcer was signaling for our lane to move. As I drove in a sea of cars, I found it remarkable that in the span of less than fifty years, no traces of the calesa can be seen in my city. Such a sad end for an iconic mode of transportation.

Pearlsha Abubakar-Quebral

I first became familiar with the Islamic principle of “barakat” when my Aba (father), the late Hashim Rasul Abubakar, asked me to work with him on a Powerpoint presentation for an international group of development workers visiting Manila in 2007. The group wanted to hear other perspectives on what makes social development sustainable.

The Western model of development prides itself on democracy, open-mindedness, visionary leadership, and courage of the pioneer, which is why it should dovetail perfectly with the requirements of barakat. After 911, it had become particularly hard for the West to see anything good in Islamic culture. Together, my father and I expounded on the meaning of “barakat” and attempted to articulate it to a secular audience, in a small effort to build sturdier, more lasting foundations in place of the physical structures that had come apart after 911.

What is Barakat? “Barakat” in Arabic is the plural form of “blessing.” Aba extended the definition to mean a principle whereby “rahman” or grace is the singular element that fuels social change. It is literally singular in that “rahman” is bestowed upon a human being by a combination of fortuitous personal and sociopolitical circumstances. Having become extraordinary by acquiring this “rahman” or grace, this human being then moves to improves large swaths of human lives using their own personal means.

This main feature of barakat is controversial: an extraordinary human being favored by the universe to effect lasting change. It makes the 99% of us wince. It makes all the inequalities and inequities even more apparent and therefore painful to bear. Why can’t rahman be bestowed upon every single one of us?

If only we can ask Prophet Abraham, Moses, or Jesus Christ what they thought of their extraordinariness. But history did tell us how inconvenient it had been for them to be extraordinary during their lifetime. If they didn’t nearly drown in the Red Sea after barely escaping their hunters, they got crucified and were left on a hilltop to die.

Now that will make the 99% of us not only wince, but scream, twist and shout in agony as well. We don’t want any of this, after all.

In the province of Sulu in Muslim Philippines, where my father was born, extraordinary human beings were called tubuanan or magaagama, people or families with blood links to history and whom circumstances have installed in positions of wisdom, power and influence. Descendants of the Prophet Mohammed are considered as such. This concept is neither alien nor impractical to many cultures. Histories and herstories, oral and written, are full of kings, queens, shamans and healers whose powers did not come from excessive striving, but from being at the right place at the right time, with them possessing the necessary mental, social and spiritual faculties to effect meaningful change. Human design could only go so far – we cannot truly predict when the ocean swells will be at their highest point. Most of us only know that the ocean will heave at some point; but barakat allows the extraordinary person to ride the biggest wave, for the rest of us to see where dry land could be. To give a very simplistic example, it will be usually easier for a child of a family of sailors to succeed in sailing than a child of a family of lute players, or vice versa. Intergenerational inheritance and the epigenetic effects of a supportive environment are constantly operating on an extraordinary person’s life. One cannot exist without the other.

To be part of world history is Grace. A truly amazing grace. “In God We Trust” is minted on American coins; “Inshaallah” (or God Willing) is marked on Muslim leaders.

The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for 2006, Mohammed Yunnus of Bangladesh, practiced barakat, with or without him knowing it. Using his own personal wealth, knowledge and wisdom, he went back to his poverty-stricken homeland to introduce a micro-financing scheme for Bangladeshi women. The deep reason for the poverty was neither poor soil nor military harassment; it was a patriarchal culture that stifled the potential of women. Mohammed liberated the women from this insidious culture by lending money exclusively to them, not to their husbands who would most likely mismanage it. With it they bought cows they grew and whose milk they sold in the market. Some bought plows to till the soil, and the benefits of their hard work empowered the women and their families, instantly improving their lives on all levels: physical, psychological, spiritual, and economic.

Yunnus is hardly an ordinary man. It could be mind-boggling how a person as endowed with wealth and power as he was could have such compassion for his fellowmen, and such compassion is not ordinary. It is grace. With grace, a person becomes fit to lead. Unfortunately, electoral processes, which were initially developed with the pure intention of representing the people’s will, have since become so warped that they have instead weeded out people blessed by amazing grace and nurtured the people blessed by amazing money and power.

Fortunately, however, the enlightened man, aware of the failure of the electoral process, shares his grace through means other than political. And in Muslim Philippines, the actions of a mere handful of powerful people in the central government can spell life or death for the future of barakat. For instance, a powerful leader that continues to appoint warlords-turned-politicians in a town where private citizens have been practicing barakat can quickly diminish the gains of barakat. These leaders were appointed by the central government, not chosen by the people, which explains why they rule with such brute force, not with the effortlessness and lightness of touch that comes with true grace.

In 1996, my Aba, a beautiful human being who I believe to have possessed an amazing grace, started developing a piece of property that lay directly in the path of two warring families. For a long time, the An Noor community in Indanan, Sulu was a place that drew residents, Muslim and non-Muslim, from all over Mindanao. The endless blue waters of the Sulu sea, the mangroves, the movements of the gentle Sama people that built houses on stilts close to the property, all inspired Aba to make Paradise on Earth a reality for the community, achieved without any government support. On Fridays, residents went to the little bamboo mosque to pray, and helped each other run errands. Mango trees and yellowbells bloomed, and an ancient banyan tree by the water’s edge witnessed much drama, love and laughter happening under its shade.

But the Universe had other Plans, and when our house was bombed during a particularly tumultuous period in Sulu’s modern history, the family moved to higher ground and did not come back for a spell. My brother has since begun picking up the Pieces that will make An Noor worthy of its brilliant name again, but it will be a long time before a full peace can be restored.

Maybe someday, Inshallah, paradise on earth will become a reality once more in my father’s homeland.

Or perhaps, paradise is already underway as I end this essay.