Of tin cans and areca nut sheaths

In the sixties, before the internet, before cable TV, the DXRM radio station in Marawi was the clearing house of social, cultural and political happenstance in Lanao. In addition, it also served as a communication hub for the towns surrounding the lake especially in emergencies. This was a one-way communication before the icom radio handsets came into vogue, and way, way long before the ubiquitous mobile phones. For a minimum one hundred pesos, you could rattle off a dire message to your kin in, say, lowland Basak in sixty-seconds flat.

A typical SOS goes:

Phangĕnin ko ko mga maka sosowit sa radyo san sa Lumbayanague kalaan non san sa Pantao, a kapĕdi pĕdi kano bo na paki tokawi nyo san nggagan ko mga lokĕs, pagari, wata i Lomna Batolakit a zizii sĕkanian sa deneral publik ospital na kabibitinan sa katya, sa oba kano di makaoma nggagaan ka paka papatayin…

"I'm pleading to whoever has his radio switched on there in Lumbayanague, especially Pantao, to please, please do inform right away the parents, siblings and children of Lomna Batolakit that he is confined right now in General Public Hospital and an IV bottle is hanging by his side. So don't fail to come right away because he is on the brink of death."

These are miscellaneous income for the station. But the hefty ones come from political campaigns which are booked for at least an hour duration, some even dragging on for half a day to the detriment of lovelorn youngsters who are waiting to hear their song dedications announced and hear the voice of Eddie Peregrina or Perry Como play on the radio. DXRM was then a battleground for many a political duels between the Liberal Party and the Nacionalistas back then. One memorable tussle that I remembered was the occasion when the late Omar Dianalan, then mayor of Marawi, resented the use of an old proverb by the late Senator Domocao Alonto that went:

Sa di masĕrĕn sĕrĕn na kitang a rĕk ian on.

He who is unassertive ends up with an empty tin can.

 

Dianalan did not relish the employment of the proverb because it seemed to him opportunistic and inequitable. He particularly singled out the use of kitang as exhibiting poor taste. In what context the late senator was alluding to was lost to me because I was too young to understand politics. I was attending elementary grade at the time.

But the proverb caught on instantly with the masses for its picturesque quality and the reverberation of the empty tin can being kicked across the streets of Banggolo had a retentive element in the brain like monkey on the back. To be exact, the ever inventive doyen of Maranao letters toyed with the old proverb and recycled it fresh for general consumption. 

The old one goes:

Sa di masĕrĕn sĕrĕn na kalokop a rek ian on.

He who is unassertive ends up with an empty wrapper.

Kalokop is the sheath attached to the leaf of the areca nut tree better known as betel nut. Before the Maranao started using canned goods (and later patronizing Macdonalds and Starbucks), they had been wrapping their delicacies and preserved sweets in kalokop for centuries. It is a sturdy substance with tensile strength yet light in weight.

We're not done yet.

The long form of the proverb is actually:

Sa di masĕrĕn sĕrĕn na baratamay lumna,

Na sa di matao mbabak na kalokop a rĕk ian on.

The senator loved his wordplay, and although he wanted to update the container to go with modern technology, he might had done well to retain the kambabak word. Kambabak might be loosely translated as leapfrogging but used in the proverb it also evokes a plethora of allusions: kowtowing, aggressiveness or being pushy, undermining and bypassing others by not toeing the line.

Thus:

He who can't leapfrog ends up with an empty tin can.

Now tell me, which one stays longest in your brain, the crackling crunch of wrappers or the pinging echo of tin cans being kicked along asphalt?

The most popular form of kambabak is the Moro you often see in Malacañan every day. You can't miss him. Down the hollowed hallways of the palace he waits patiently by the corridors, and whenever a manicured hand passes by, he ingratiatingly says a "Good Morning, sir," a "Good Afternoon, sir," and a "Good night, ma'am," while clutching a folder and a pen at the ready. Oh yes, the Moro eventually realized that the signing pen proves mightier than his kris. The next morning, you could see him again in the same demure stolid posture, so still, you could mistake him for an antique jar.

Waiting to inhale: the rattle-tattle of black teeth

Pĕphamagapas apas so papas
Ka thalakin kon ko banog
Na di on phaka apas
Ka apai i ba niyan bayog
Na da on kasakriti

Ranaū-Iranūn literature is littered with hoards of compositions that today defy translation into the host language. Like an exotic plant they seem to reject their new habitat. The peculiar elements of culture, customs and environment just would not transplant to a one-on-one correspondence with the target language. Be that as it may, we would not be denied our curiosity (and enjoyment) of them and we try it at our own peril.

The above stanza is an onomatopoeic locomotive that mimics the shortening of breath after, say, a five-mile jog. Many, many years ago, my aunt on hearing that I was a budding writer in English, challenged me to try my hand at translating this old saying which continued to befuddle others.

There are many Maranao sayings in my aunt’s repertoire that I loathe to translate, and this one certainly tops the list. But there she was—my domineering aunt—beaming at me smugly in a you-can't-do-it dare.

I vividly remembered she was having her afternoon fix of betel nut chew, red juice spittle drooling from her lips even while her long fingernails were dug into the slaked-lime compartment of her betel nut box, an heirloom made of bronze inlaid with pure silver in meandering okir she had inherited from her great, great grandmother. The legend in our clan said that it was from the same betel nut box that Baì Pindaw had served Balindong Bésar his good luck send-off betel nut chew before the young man left with his contingent to rendezvous with Sultan Qudrat in the campaign to retake Ramitan from the Spaniards.

The tiny chest had been buffed to a dull sheen through years of use. Otherwise it remained as it had always been before. The only new thing introduced to it was the yard long brass link chained to my aunt’s waist. Wherever she went, the box went with her. She had lately been wary. One of her drug-addict grandchildren had earlier attempted to steal it to auction on ebay. And she could not afford to lose her only link to the past. Sometimes I espied her deeply asleep in her chamber of our clan's long torogan, the chain from her waist extending to the betel nut box lying at her feet. With her snoring, and the gentle rise and fall of her bosom, she seemed like a bobbing yacht on anchor in the French Riviera.

I knew that she really meant me to do my worst, because from what I knew the fourth line ought to read "apai pĕn so sambĕr ian." But my aunt was a an incurable improviser, a top notch who in her salad days held her ground in a marathon banter with Romarĕk ā Tantaoun, Mamayug, Kakaī Panganonĕn and a host of other well-known bards in their heydays. Her supplied line made the stanza even more watertight by introducing another rhyme, i.e. banog to bayog.

So how would you render a saying where the onomatopoeia is deeply embedded within the thought substance and rhymes of the lines? It would be like breaking an encrypted code. It would be like gouging out the inlaid silver on my aunt’s betel nut box. To my despair, I wasn't able to offer any decent mumbling that satisfied the old saw.  All I can remember is, I was left with the desperate parts of a dismantled Kalashnikov, unable to put them back together in a way that made sense, let alone work.

My aunt took pity on me, and before dismissing me she gave it to me as an assignment with no time-lock. My reward: inheriting her betel-nut box. She knew I had always coveted her box, which had a wheeled cart that I used to play with even when I was a toddler.

Over the years, I had preoccupied myself with many things, as a young man eager to see the world. But I couldn't help revisiting the proverb time and again. Sometimes I would be tempted and try to put all the desperate parts back together of the stanza in a new combination or introduce or drop words and phrases hoping for everything to one day just magically fall into place. Wherever I would be, in the toilet or in a posh hotel lobby or inside the cramped confine of an economy seat on a redeye flight, it would steal into my brain unbidden but no matter what permutations I would engage in the words, I would be out of luck. And defeated, I would stow away the disarrayed words and phrases back again into the deep recesses of my brain to hibernate for years. In the 70s it became my Rubik's cube. In the 80s it became my programming nightmare, until I'd all forgotten about it.

I won't be able to remember it again until one day while I was casually checking my laptop of what's cooking on ebay, I stumbled on a Maranao betel nut box that looked like my aunt’s. Everything, from the dimension to the design, to the weight as given was exactly like the heirloom.

A mild panic seized me. I read the description, and it says it was taken by one of the American scouts of the 27th Infantry, who had retrieved it from the siege of fort Bacolod-Kalahui during the campaign of “Black Jack” John Pershing on April 6-8, 1903.  Because it was believed to have been taken from the cadaver of the Sultan of Bacolod himself, the piece’s asking price was rather hefty plus shipping and handling. It said it was first showcased at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. If the supplied history was true then I could relax. But sometimes an invented history is given to an antique relic to fetch the price higher.

I looked around me. I was at the lounge of Atlanta airport waiting for my flight back to JFK New York, where I would change flight to Italy and then Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to get back to the grind of my nine-to-five job. I may be in one of the most posh airports in the world, but I might as well have been stranded in an atoll in the Pacific, with just a lone shark circumambulating to keep me company. People around me were casually calm, and it nettled me. I fumbled for my phone and dialed Basak. I just hoped that the lake would bounce the signal well. I got a mildly choppy answer from one of my cousins.

I asked how aunt Damil was doing. She said, she was sorry nobody had ever remembered to tell me she had passed away. I asked when, and she said, some two years ago. I was halfway around the world, and I decided to go west via LA, Narita, Manila then CDO, and a five hour trek to the lowlands of Basak.

No, nobody ever remembered my aunt saying anything about me let alone about any sayings. Her corner of the old torogan was picked clean of everything she possessed. I shuffled to the far side of a wall and ran my fingers along the dusty shelves that once housed jars of karoménga and other exotic herb extracts yet to be assigned a nomenclature in botany. I walked around me like I was a newly hired interior decorator assessing what elements to place in a vacant house. I stopped and squinted up at the gables, hoping that mayhap, aunt Damil had stowed the box among the rafters, but I would just be rewarded by a pilfering of dust falling down my eyes.

I walked around, pacing some more and sniffed the mildew air. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I thought I was smelling the incense of borok, an old perfume concoction of the folks my aunt couldn't do without.

My eyes clouded with tear. Angry, I asked everyone where the betel-nut box was. Was I disinherited of it? I was told that aunt Damil had never tired of reminding everyone while she was alive that the box belonged to me and me only. Then barely a week after she had died, it was stolen. By whom, no one had any idea.

When the novelty of my arrival wore off on everyone, I was left all alone in the torogan. I was bitter that I hadn't seen my babo one last time before she died. They had offered the explanation that nobody liked to break me the news of the loss of the betel nut box. Quietly I slinked away from the house and visited her unmarked grave in the clan cemetery where everyone in our clan had a plot reserved for him.

It was late afternoon. August is a golden month in lowland Basak – sunflowers in full bloom by the unkempt roadside, purplish spray of butterflies whipped away by a buffalo’s tail from his sugary mud hide, air thick with the ticks of grasshoppers, lazy sun moving through a field in blotches of shadows and patches of umbrella leaves, along a grove of bamboos, susurrating of leaves agitating in the wind, in silver flow of a brook shy among the rocks. A scudding cloud pass in a gallery of ghostlike vintas and prahus  across the outlying mountains, now veiling, now unveiling, now coming down with the wrath of long-forgotten warriors to hug the outstretch of the plains of rice paddies still in their puberty, then ascending to the pillow of a blue sky and resting in gauzy stillness.

Whatever had momentarily lifted my heart was tugging at me now as a downdraft ruffled my hair as my aunt was wont to whenever I en-wrapped myself of her. I could now sniff at her camphor, beeswax, White Flower, Vicks Vapor Rub and the residue mildew of her malong. The stirring brushed the frangipanis in the graveyard, scraping dried leaves across the ground.

I sat on my hunches, closed my eyes, and recited words from the Quran I knew not the meaning of but had memorized by heart. I slaked the plant on her mound with rainwater issuing from the spout of a jug, and offered my piece:

Huffing and puffing, the swift is
trying to catch up with the hawk
But he is not up to the race
For even the backwash of the hawk's flight
He could not keep pace

My rendition, I know, is still a work-in-progress. But this will do for now. Rather than an example of our shortcomings, it is an exhibit of our eagerness. We are the gigahertz generation, and however swift we are, we will never be able to match the deeds of our illustrious ancestors.

A thousand build-up, one single slip and a POV

Life has never been fair lately, if you ask me. I'm not complaining, so let's dish out our proverb:

So sanggibo ā ranon na piatai ā satiman ā tadĕman.

When I first heard this, I assumed it’s a walk in the park. Let's try a translation, nice and easy:

A thousand cares is killed by a single hurt.

Oh-huh. What do we have here? I'm beginning to smell rat, I daresay. The question begs itself: Whose POV was this spoken? Is it from the point of view of the one who brought all the cares (a thousand cares at that and maybe still counting) or the one who was hurt? In short, who has an ax to grind?  Was the hurt fatal that it cancels out the thousand cares? Or was it merely a gripe that it was only made as an excuse.

It isn’t clear. It could swing either way.

The proverb is neutrally said from the point of view of a disinterested third party or maybe a go-between who laments the break up between the two lovers because he wanted them to make up so he can have the choice cut of the carabao to be slaughtered on the eve of the wedding that now is in limbo.

For the sheer fun of it, let’s butt in and introduce some colors to the sepia:

A thousand cares is snuffed out by a single gripe.

A keyword here is satiman(single)  to emphasize  the alone-ness of the gripe. I don’t feel comfortable at all with the word piatay (killed) so we can drop it in favor of snuff because in the modern era, the dominant means of killing is the gun, but snuff is just as instant but more evocative like the wind snuffing out a candle’s flame. In addition, to turn off any device, the Maranao uses the word bono which is a synonym for piatay. This is the genius of his language.

I also toyed with the word erase but I feel the image's dismissal rather gradual.

The most critical word here is tadĕman. Tadĕman used in the negative is bitterness. Tadĕman could also mean a remembrance. From the point of view of the guy who was cherishing, a gripe is not much of a bitterness. So to him, it doesn’t justify snuffing out a patiently built love.

Interpreted this way, the proverb could be referring to the woes a lover is experiencing, who had patiently built his reputation and caring for the object of his love. And after pooling all his thousand-care eggs in one basket (hers), with just one misstep—pow!—he was rebuffed. Everything he had worked painstakingly was cancelled out by a one silly mistake. I figure that the woman is not sincere at all from the get-go; she was just hanging out, waiting for an excuse to happen to get rid of the poor lover. Maybe she saw him kiss an old friend on the cheek or shared an umbrella with an office mate and she would entertain no explanation.

Another word that could come in handy here is to use the word squelch or squash which is very colorful indeed—as in rubbing it in (the pain). Thus:

A thousand cares is squelched by a single gripe.

If the ancients were alive today, they would as likely dig for this:

So sanggibo ā ranon na kidĕs ā satiman ā tadĕman.

I kind of like this improvisation because it emphasizes the absurdity and unfairness of the girl's decision. You squelch an insect, an ant or a lice with your thumb. But here the odds are stack against the thumb 1:1,000.

So far so good.

But then let’s not forget the woman’s standpoint. So, taking her POV, we get:

A thousand cherish is killed by a single bitterness.

Okay, the man may be caring alright in all ways, and they were engaged, the wedding had been set (the go-between is anticipating his carabao meat) except that the day before she saw him with another woman getting into a cab. She followed them and saw the two ended up in a motel with a glowing neon marquee on it. This one is fatal. Kaput.

Pitting one against one thousand is also found in other ancient sayings. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” said Lao Tzu. And of course we have the Arabian tales of A Thousand and One Nights told by Scheherazade.

Oh, I don't know. The old folks who must have had originally said this proverb certainly had an ax to grind.  In the olden days a rebuffed young man resorts to challenging his love rival in a duel to the death. This is not your average cowboy Western gunslinger duel. This is the cut-and-slash dance of kris and kampilan. By the way, did you read about the Spaniard who challenged the Coralat of Combés, Sultan Qudrat himself, in a duel? If you’re merely relying on your school textbook, which during my high school days was mainly by Zaide, then you probably haven’t come across it.

The story was that the young Spaniard was thoroughly drunk when he issued the challenge.

I found one of his kind the other night at a dive in Timog, Quezon City. The bartender refused to give him one more drink. “Go home,” he told him. “Sleep on it.” His butt was slipping off the high stool of the bar, so I yanked him upright just in time as I entered. He looked at me with glazed eyes, and it took time for his eyes to focus before he recognized me. He was not the one in our proverb, but he was an old friend. The story in Marawi was that he had been outbid by a rival in the dowry, so he was drowning himself with San Miguel.

Short of hauling him, I dragged him outside the bistro. He was etching for a brawl and I had to take him away. It was already past midnight, windy, and dark clouds scudding across a full moon overhead. I could not reveal his name, but he got the moniker "GC" from the lost girl, short for "Grenade Catcher." She can't get enough telling everyone that when she asked him how far he would go for her, he replied a Bruno Mars: "I'll catch a grenade for you." Cute line, I'd say. He was sobbing by the asphalt road as we were flagging for a ride. "Hell," he said now, by way of update, "I would have eaten even a volley from an RPG, if she had asked." "Dismiss her, man" I said, "she's worth a nothing."

A few minutes of waiting, then a cab stopped for us. We got in. My friend had mellowed somewhat but not quite. We drove away. It was a Saturday when most radio station played the oldies. Dr. Love had just finished giving a thrashing lecture on a lovelorn listener, and to soothe her, he played a song by way of intermezzo. It didn’t help my friend’s mood on the deserted road.  "All is fair in love, love's the crazy game, two people vowed to stay…"

Yes, all in love is fair. Either way, it’s your POV.

The Palapâ Oath: proof in the pudding

Manila's mossbacks are wont to say to anyone fresh out of the boat from the peer that the thing you're apt to lose first when you're new in the city is your virginity; the last being your accent. In 1971, just three-days after shedding off my high school toga, I couldn't wait to see the Capital and took the defunct Air Manila's last Fokker flight out of Mumungan airport in Lanao (before it had closed down forever) and never looked back. I did struggle with my promdi accent for a while especially in my freshman year but I eventually licked it, and along flowed my innocence as well. Barely a year right out of college, I went abroad and again I never looked back. To think of it, I virtually spent half my life outside the country then, but through all my adventures and miscues, one thing had never left me: my constant craving for palapâ.

Designed for this post by N. Sharief © 2015

Palapâ is a spice no Maranao worth his name could eat without. It's a pounded concoctions of scallion bulbs (sakurab), devil pepper, ginger caramelized by ultra-slow cooking and mixed with a moderate dollop of coconut oil. When done properly in proportionate ingredients, palapâ has a fulsome bite to it that stays in the tongue, its piquant aroma making it irresistible. I grew up eating palapâ, so I never leave home for an extended time without it or its taste would haunt me.

When I worked for Saudi Arabian Airlines in Jeddah in 1979 after a short stint with SGV1 in Makati right off college, I had to do a regular trip to the customs clearing to claim for the lone can of palapâ sent to me by my folks. Those were the snail-mail years when my folks would pour out all their pining in a good-old kirim scribbling and ask me—their orak—what would I want sent to me. I would then write back that I had ran out of palapâ, and slip in a few Benjamin Franklins or King Khalids inside for good measure.

I  was a progressive Maranao then (whatever that means), donning the fashion of the time, virtually lost in the homogeneity of the modern crowd. I did a lot of travelling. But wherever I went I would never be without my stash of palapa. My tongue was a virtual prisoner. It's what gives me away. One time at a formal dinner in downtown Manhattan, I could not stay my hand and found myself unwrapping my palapâ from a sealed sachet out of my coat pocket. The host and the guests at the round table instantly knew as they watched me spooning a dollop of it onto a small plate that this was not something you could just order from the hotel kitchen.

I saw all eyes on me, so I invited everyone, rather shyly, to try this condiment which goes well with any viand. A grand dame beside me with a vaguely European accent made a tentative taste, and her report: "fantastic!" Soon, everyone, tasted it and giving me the thumbs up. I won't bore you with the details of their enthusiastic (if polite) suggestion that I should introduce it in commercial quantity to the state of New York, etc. But you' d be asking: what has the darn palapâ got to do with this blog, unless I'm embarking suddenly on the cuisine aspect of the Ranaū-Iranūn! (And I have to confess upfront that cuisine is my Achilles' heel. My confidence level in cooking goes no further than frying a sunny-side-up egg.)

The Oath of Palapa, Size 200x100 cm, oil on canvas, Soedibio Collection

But the palapâ episode that night allowed me a platform to tell with aplomb a little known episode of  Southeast Asian history to my small audience, which made them better appreciate the condiment I had brought half-way around the world:

Gajah Mada (c. 1290) was a loyal, if passionate elite guard of Majapahit kings and their family. When he rose to the rank of mahapatih (Prime Minister) in 1329 he (Gadia muda in Ranaū-Iranūn) made a solemn oath to the Queen Tribhuwanatunggadewi his famous oath, Palapa Oath. The telling of the oath is described in the Pararaton (Book of Kings), an account on Javanese history that dates from the 15th or 16th century. He said that he will never taste the palapâ until he conquered the islands of Southeast Asia for the Majapahit Empire. At first his friends and detractors alike doubted his sincerity, but the Gadia Muda kept to his promise and pursued relentlessly his quest. Soon Bali fell followed by Lombok (1343) and then he brought the thalassocratic kingdom of Sriwijaya in Palembang to its knees. He then went on to extend the territories: Temasek (Singapore), Malaysia, Brunei, East Timor and the most far-flung, the last frontier, the southern Philippines.

To this day, thus, the modern Ranaū-Iranūn is blissfully unaware that such a sumpa (sapâ) had existed at all, although they relish their palapâ and their culture is informed by this once mighty empire. But such is the twist of fate that in the pungent aroma of the palapâ is trapped the history of our race.

1Sycip, Gorres, Velay & Co. 

The incurable longing of one's own culture

Inguma kano!

Get in. Dive in. The water is fine.

Don't tell me you don't know how to swim. You call yourself a Maranao-Iranūn, better live up to the name. Don't hesitate. You won't drown. We'll walk you through the ropes, and, if need be, we'll grow you fish-scales and fins and gills to breathe through. Your amphibian god-ancestors, buccaneers extraordinaire, saw to it that you can soar and ride the high waves even as you can roll with the punches. It's in your genes. We may be guilty of a whole lot of sundries but boresome is never one of them. We'd rather court a fiery phosphorescent end than endure the long monotonous sameness of the days. It's reflected in our choice of colors, our actions, and our haughtiness even in the face of death. So don't even deny it, and let fly.

Hello. I've decided to do snippets of surgical dissection of our literature not because I consider myself a supreme authority on Maranao culture and its vaunted art of discourse, never mind the Ranaū-Iranūn complex in general. Far from it. Yes, I could stitch a few canned phrases every now and then, but until now, it had been my well-guarded secret that I had never written a good-old fashion alamat-sorat-ako-i-giraw letter to anybody in my life. Ever!

Have you?

I did writings here and abroad, essays and fictions, guidelines and corporate proposals, year-end financials, feature articles, lead-ins in newspapers and a few whatnot but I had never dabbled in anything remotely Maranao. I was born in a conservative clan of ustaz, ulama, and guro-aleem. So exposure to bayok, kirim, tuba-tubad, kandaunga, sakeba were kept to a minimum—if not zero. Whenever a feast or some social happenstance was bubbling somewhere, my mother, ever mindful of my father's stature in the Dar el bohoth al Islamia and Majlis so shoora, would discourage me to go. My sin was that I had never been able to synchronize the beat of my agong to the tune of the kulintang to this very day.

Now, whenever I found myself in a typical Maranao setting, I would gape askance at the kalalagan as they belt out their orations, employing a language I claim my own yet could not fathom. The ancient kirim is replete with words and phrases today's Maranao is hard put to understand. Yes I would perk my ears in an attempt to decipher and get the gist of the talk, but try as I would, I might as well be trying to crack a coded message of a U-boat crossing the Atlantic during World War II.

The very frustration was consuming me mad. I'm so disgusted with myself that you might as well impale me on a post, cut my head off and jam it on a spike. I would then serve as an example of someone who had been unmindful and ungrateful to his cultural roots.

Whose fault is it? Mine?

I think the blame is a collective one, and, worse, a collaborative one at that. We have not been able to properly preserve our living heritage because we took the miscue that killing our old folks' ways—andang sa muna—means giving our religion a full sway on the playfield. In other words, we are even encouraging the process.  I believe this is so misguided and is herding us all unto the edge of a cliff.

If anything, it's on account of our ancient ways that helped preserve our faith, never the other way around. Long before Islam found its way into our shores, our forefathers were cultivating a fledgling civilization as the farthest frontier of the Majapahit empire in the Pacific.

I built this site because I was disturbed by a terrible nightmare that Omacan the giant (remember the stories in the pre-Godzilla era?)  is trying to drain the deepest lake in the country of its water in the hope of finding the magical ring. Oh no, I'm not talking about the ring of Sauron in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. It's the ring pitched by the brother of the mighty Indrapatra into the middle of Lanao which until now remained unclaimed from the deep.

 

So join me and let us explore what mettle the Ranaū-Iranūn is made of, and what secrets the lake has in store for us. Who knows, we might find the coveted ring and beat Omacan at his game.  We would be doing the lake dwellers a service and nature itself a favor. There isn't much time, if you ask me. From what my betel-nut chewing aunt had told me long ago, Omacan is so humongous that he could just drink up the lake through a straw a lá soda.

Hello, my name is Nasser Sharief, and you can find about me here. I hope you'll find here stuff that will kindle you with inspiration to do things for the betterment of mankind. Here I'm trying to offer facets of the Maranao that are hitherto virtually untouched. So I hope what you get in this site will make you confident in carrying the greater Iranūn race. I hope you'll find here things you'd be proud stapling on your chest. For others, I hope you'll discover items here that will clarify your notion about the Iranūn complex.

Why this site? We live in a cynic world. These days, supportive gestures are regarded with suspicion. A kind word could be a disguised mousetrap. People are apt to throw you a curve but a lifejacket. We live in a time of information overload, so a young unformed person tries to find an anchor lest he be overwhelmed and swept away in the deluge.  Tariris iniběmběr!

Maybe you found us because of the keyword Maranao, Iranun and Moro. Well, I'm glad you find our hole-in-the-wall among tens of millions of flotsams out there. There's one caveat though: this site is not for the fainthearted. We have no-holds barred so you won't find any back-scratching niceties here neither. We'll be as brutally honest as can be, and yours truly has a penchant for poking fun on our misadventures and miscues. In short, we don't put on kiddie gloves. But in so doing, I hope you'll be the richer and feel the deep resonance of hearing the unexpurgated truth.

There is a dominant presumption that to talk about the Ranaū-Iranūn is to talk about being a Muslim.  We have to scrap this presupposed correspondence here. While we are Muslims, we only touch that aspects that bear on the arts and culture. We do not promote or discuss religion here per se.  So you won’t find here an answer to where to terminate the hemline on your hijab, or when you should break your fast, or some other knotty knickknacks questions. If you dig chicken-or-egg philosophical discussions, you’d be better off going somewhere else. Again there are tons of that debris floating out there.

We need to be clear about this from the get-go. This site is not about to be diluted by religious notions or the raison d'etre of our exploration would be defeated. The Darangan literature, for one, is replete with sensual allegories and steamy episodes in all its gore and glory. Paramāta Lawanen and Bantogen, one of the principal protagonists in the multi-volume epic, were siblings who bore a common offspring.

Our culture is slowly being pulled under us mostly due to our own undoing. Here, we hope to rekindle interest in our literature,  history and the arts, and put to rest all the nonsense being said in its name. There's barely time. Our oral historians are being claimed by mother earth one by one. The last time I checked (Ramadhan 2015), Kakaī Bantog, one of the last genealogy canters still alive, was a mere shadow of his former self. Be that as it may, let's start with a few kernel with this site, and hope to grow it and reclaim what's ours.

Lastly, If you got something to broach, a material to submit, or some ideas and suggestions, no matter how gonzo-esque, do email us. Who knows it might led us to new heights and open up new adventures. As we go along, we'll average the direction we want to be heading to in our voyage, sink or swim. Nothing, aki and oki, is cast in stone.

So having rid a few asides, off we jump headlong into the deep..