{"id":6939,"date":"2026-07-12T12:42:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T04:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/?p=6939"},"modified":"2026-07-12T12:42:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T04:42:26","slug":"writing-against-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/writing-against-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Against Death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Razul A. Ariz<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Death is the opposite of life. Yet many people live as though already dead, while death itself remains what many fear the most. Often, it is avoided whenever it surfaces in conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

When death visits, it leaves pain, grief, sorrow, and scars that never truly disappear. They heal, yet continue swelling quietly within us, bound to be carried for the rest of our lives. Indeed, death is fearful, but perhaps it is also death that reminds humans what it means to be alive.<\/span><\/p>\n

More than the death of the physical body, I see death everywhere\u2014moving from place to place, slowly devouring the heart, hope, and dignity of people succumbing to their own demise. These deaths ripple outward and threaten the existence of the living.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a child, I remember how I was always afraid when the news of certain deaths circulated in the community. In my memory, death indexes many signifiers:\u00a0 the piercing scream of bakw\u00e8, birds of omen; the dead calm of trees under windless skies; the sepia reflection of kabamulaw\u00e1g during dusk; the herald of an undulated white pandala; the column of smoke from the bagalugan\u00e1n; the mujawadah Qur\u2019anic recitation of Abdulbasit echoing from afar; the chattering noises and cry of lamenting mourners; the sound of ripped un\u00fang or s\u00e1put prepared for the m\u00e1yat; the distant roar of chainsaws; funeral processions crossing the road; and graves dug six feet beneath the earth along with prayers from loveones packed into the crumpled mudballs, sealed with coconut slabs that would bury the story of a person into forgotten land.<\/span><\/p>\n

Death visited me many times. The first time, it tormented me with unbearable pain. The second time, it numbed me so deeply that I could no longer cry or sympathize whenever I encountered it. Yet perhaps this is what I fear most\u2014not death itself, but becoming numb and apathetic toward life.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is not who I am\u2014I am not numb nor apathetic. I was raised in a household that upholds justice, humility, and respect. Whatever sense of compassion I possess, I owe it to my parents.<\/span><\/p>\n

I grew up in Palimbang, one of the coastal municipalities of Sultan Kudarat. Our place has witnessed bloodshed and historical violence firsthand. It carries the scars of injustices rooted in imperial Manila and in the long history of dispossession in Mindanao.<\/span><\/p>\n

I came from a family of Ilocano-Magindanawn farmers, scarce in resources yet rich in wisdom and principle. My paternal lineage traces back to the government-sponsored intra-ethnic resettlement program in Mindanao during the post-colonial period. What pains me most is that these movements unfolded alongside the Massacre in Malisbong. Reading Fahmiya Dimakilang\u2019s Dig Your Own Grave<\/em> awakened me to the brutality inflicted upon our people. It helped me understand why many from our older generation carried commitments to liberation movements and why memory remains deeply political among Bangsamoro communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 2019, there were attempts to weaponize writing and frame the massacre as a hoax, even at the expense of survivors\u2019 testimonies. In 2022, history repeats itself, but this time it’s not the usual tragedy but a farce. Our people seem to have historical amnesia for accommodating the late dictator\u2019s son and giving them a seat in national power along with the daughter of the former president, who administered the same state-sponsored impunity and allowed the cadaver of the brutal dictator to be laid on the Libingan ng mga Bayani.<\/span><\/p>\n

Witnesses say that the Tacbil masjid, where the Malisbong massacre took place, soaked in bloodbath even after they wiped it out many times every Friday over the years after the massacre. It seems like the blood of the victims was poetically calling for justice. If so, may those streams of blood flood and asphyxiate those who failed and continuously fail them with endless guilt.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was then that I realized the importance of writing. That writing should always be political\u2014and is never neutral. For indeed, writing can erase, distort, and silence. But writing can also resist forgetting. It can document truths that power wishes to bury.<\/span><\/p>\n

Over time, I immersed myself in writing through reading books despite their inaccessibility in our community. Writing became my refuge. It made me feel safe, validated, and visible.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t exactly remember when I first became drawn to writing. But one afternoon during Kindergarten, \u00c1m\u00e0 burst into laughter after seeing my notes. There, I had written \u201cAbukantol,\u201d<\/em> a playful fusion of abukado<\/em> and santol<\/em>, simply to maximize the remaining space on my paper. He laughed not to mock me, but out of amusement. Perhaps, even then, he sensed something growing in me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Growing up, \u00cdn\u00e0 and \u00c1m\u00e0 never failed to nurture our curiosity. In the absence of books, we had aling\u00e0. I loved listening to their stories. At night, they would tell us tales of fantasy, adventure, comedy, and ordinary life in exchange for massages to ease their exhaustion from farm work. Those stories shaped my imagination long before I encountered literature in classrooms.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually, television arrived, and the practice of aling\u00e0 slowly faded from our household and from my own memory until it faced its own kind of death too.<\/span><\/p>\n

My writing journey formally began in high school. It was \u00c1m\u00e0 who taught me how to express my thoughts in writing. I experimented with poems, fascinated by rhythm, rhyme, and the playfulness of language. I even wrote acrostic stories heavily influenced by Wattymanian culture and high schooler idealism.<\/span><\/p>\n

Deep inside, I knew I had the capacity to write, yet my impostor syndrome prevented me from claiming that label. In college, I once wrote an eco-poetry piece that received a backhanded compliment from a professor. A remark was made saying that the piece sounded familiar, as though it had already been written elsewhere. Much of the speculation came from the fact that I had mispronounced a word while reading it to them aloud. A word that I only learned from reading. I felt both flattered and wounded because I knew the piece was my own.<\/span><\/p>\n

My relationship with writing changed further in college when we were tasked with composing poems using our first language. I wrote mine in Magindanawn, and after posting it online, it unexpectedly gained traction on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before this, I always placed the English language and Western literary culture on the highest pedestal. Whenever I wrote, everything became Anglicized\u2014the characters, the settings, the worldview. If not Westernized, I often aligned my writing with Manila-centric sensibilities to comply with what I believed were literary standards.<\/span><\/p>\n

My late professor helped me realize that writing in the local language was neither odd nor inferior. Through her, I encountered the works of writers in Mindanao and independent publications such as the Cotabato Literary Journal. I read the writings of Mubarak Tahir, Jude Ortega, Jade Mark Capi\u00f1anes, and other writers whose works carried the texture of our own realities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The realization transformed the way I viewed literature\u2014that it is not the West nor Manila that is the heart; it\u2019s Mindanao, it\u2019s the Bangsamoro community, it\u2019s ours. I began unlearning the notion that the literature only becomes valuable when detached from locality. I started writing about the ordinary, the awkward, the funny, and the culturally intimate\u2014the things often dismissed as \u201ccringe\u201d or insignificant.<\/span><\/p>\n

After graduating from college, I experienced an existential crisis. I felt lost, drifting, and emotionally hollow, as though I had become one of the living-dead I once feared. During that time, I longed for the nights when \u00cdn\u00e0 and \u00c1m\u00e0 would gather us for bedtime aling\u00e0 until we drifted into hypnagogia and yielded into a sound sleep. I longed for stories that once made the world feel less lonely. Only to wake up without remembering even a single aling\u00e0. Without them.<\/span><\/p>\n

To recuperate, I turned to translation. I bridge foreign realities and tailor them to mine.<\/span><\/p>\n

I translated poems by international writers whose works revolved around liberation, hope, longing, and personal struggle. Translating became more than a literary exercise; it became a way of reclaiming language and proving to myself that Magindanawn could carry universal human emotions.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the pieces I translated was Maya Angelou\u2019s Caged Bird<\/em>, rendered into Magindanawn as Nalug\u00ebn a Papanuk.<\/em> Beyond reflecting social inequalities, the poem also resonated deeply with our vanishing biodiversity and the condition of marginalized communities. I also translated Robert Frost\u2019s The Road Not Taken<\/em> into Su Lalan a Di Tatap Bagukitan.<\/em> This piece mirrors the uncertainties of pursuing writing in a society that often treats literature as impractical.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of my writing emerges from personal experience and observation. I write about grief, longing, language, memory, faith, liberation, and mundane realities of the Bangsamoro. I always try to ensure that the voice of Bangsamoro resonates in my works, not as an exotic image, but as a living and breathing reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 2024, my piece Mapya p\u00ebn Silan<\/em> was published in the Bangsamoro Literary Review. The piece reflects my personal struggles and the collective realities of Bangsamoro Muslims in relation to their faith, doubt, and devotion. Through it, I tried to explore how belief becomes both a refuge and a struggle in the everyday lives of Bangsamoro communities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet faith was not the only thing I found myself writing about. I once wrote Pangangan\u00fan<\/em> (\u201cYearning\u201d) in Magindanawn\u2014a recollection of grief and separation shaped by memory and distance. Writing in the language, however, also made me confront its fragility. Literature in Magindanawn remains scarce not only because of limited readership and interest, but also because of the lack of a unifying orthography and the complexity of its dialects. The language itself carries diverse textures: the schwa dominance of T\u00ebw sa Biwang<\/em>; the layered stresses of T\u00ebw sa Suk; <\/em>the singsong omission-contractions of T\u00ebw sa Laya; <\/em>the syllabic pronunciation of T\u00ebw sa Ilud;<\/em> and the lesser-explored accent of T\u00ebw sa Kaw\u00e1nan.<\/em> These differences reveal the richness of the language and the histories carried by its speakers. Yet they also reflect the long and complicated history of the language itself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Magindanawn was once written in Kirim or Jawi before the colonial infiltration, documenting and standardizing the language from an etic perspective. Then, this gradually shifted toward Latin orthography. While these records preserved the fragments of the language, many of its sounds and textures could not be fully carried by the colonial alphabet. Perhaps this is why I feel compelled to gather those fragments and piece them into a mosaic so that the subaltern can finally speak.<\/span><\/p>\n

In many ways, this complexity also encouraged me to pursue language documentation and mainstreaming through my advocacy page, Magindaknown.<\/em> Through this initiative, I connected with fellow language advocates and researchers, including Mubarak Tahir, whose works inspired me to continue similar efforts within our own community.<\/span><\/p>\n

Along the way, I began to realize that language is deeply tied to the environment and the everyday life of our people. Growing up in a far-flung community became a blessing in disguise. I immersed myself in the landscape rich in biodiversity, one that is embedded in our way of life, and made my childhood both colorful and meaningful.<\/span><\/p>\n

Eventually, this led to the expansion of my language documentation efforts into Magindanawn biodiversity. I began by noticing how disconnected many young Magindanawn have become from the ecological world surrounding them. Many can no longer name endemic plants, coastal terrains, birds, or traditional environmental knowledge once embedded in our vocabulary and daily life. Some of these names now survive only through fragments of memory and language.<\/span><\/p>\n

The kaly\u00e1w\u00e0 (Ruffous hornbill),<\/em> once known as the clock of the mountain, is no longer familiar to many today. It might be forgotten, but it is embedded in the Magindanawn language, evident in the onomatopoeic term \u201cmigkaly\u00e1w\u00e0,\u201d which refers to a cacophonous or rowdy crowd, echoing the ways it once reverberated from the mountains.<\/span><\/p>\n

And perhaps, this is another form of death.<\/span><\/p>\n

I fear that one day, similar to the kaly\u00e1w\u00e0, the bakw\u00e8 will no longer scream to warn us of impending death\u2014of body, heart, hope, dignity, memory, or language\u2014because they themselves have already disappeared before us.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I write.<\/span><\/p>\n

I write to remember what is slowly vanishing. I write so that our stories, languages, memories, and ways of seeing the world may continue to live, even in a time that constantly teaches people how to forget.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Razul A. Ariz Death is the opposite of life. Yet many people live as though already dead, while death itself remains what many fear the most. Often, it is avoided whenever it surfaces in conversation. When death visits, it leaves … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6940,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6939\/revisions\/6940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bangsamororeview.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}