I got a mysterious call from a number not registered in my phone book. I ignored it. Minutes later, a text message popped up on my screen: Uncle, this is Adjnabéa, will you answer my call, please?
I wasn't sure she is a niece, with their multitude. Just the same, I go, "Yep, yep!"
Adjnabéa said she needed to talk to me in person. It's not that important, she said, but her voice betrayed the urgency of her call. I was trying to place who her parents are from my hundred cousins. Her ambiguity over the phone nettled me, so I had half a mind of terminating the call, but curiosity got the better of me. So I go, "Where?" And she named an eatery down there in Quiapo that caters traditional Maranao dishes. It's been weeks —oh no, months — since I had slurped a bowlful of soup and savored the aroma of palapa, subsisting mostly on hamburgers and pizzas as city slickers are wont to, so in auto-mode I go, "Sure, let's meet then!"
True enough, when I arrived I was treated to a king's feast, that I was oblivious of the gambit I had unwittingly fall into. Adjnabéa stared at me across the table and intermittently pushed dishes after dishes before me, like the genial hosts of old. And I obliged. The succulent inaloban, the hot randang, … they were irresistible, I devoured them methodically, until I realized that I had skipped one ritual: take pictures of the dish before they were violated and upload them on my FB backed up in my Instagram, and eventually warehoused in my Pinterest.
As I wind up nursing on the straw of my drink, I was appraising the young lady Adjnabéa had become. I was sure that with her accoutrements some Cinderella moment must have happened to her young life along the way. The brand new SUV glowing outside in the afternoon sun eloquently spoke of her bank account, so the matchup marriage had been a success. And boy, was I impressed.
I burped, "So what's it you want to talk about? I'm all ears."
She said her husband wanted to run for a mayoralty in Basak Lanao, but she quaffed the plan, saying that it's going to be excruciatingly expensive, it might put them into financial ruin.
"Good for you," I said. "You're damn right nipping it in the bud. You made a sensible decision, Adjnabéa." True, a lot of nouveau riche had come to grief at this, I know.
An octogenarian who was sitting in our table helping herself on a betel nut box, started to chew and gave her approval nod with a hop of her absent eyebrow, goading her champion on.
"So I'm proposing a win-win situation, uncle. Something everybody could be happy about, even proud of. And guess what, you'd be the key to all this. I mean you'd play the big part."
"Whoa, why, I'm honored and thanks for the sumptuous meal." The way she said "win-win" in a sort of corporate negotiation stung my ears. Adjnabéa had only passed primary grades in Basak, when her family had to abandon their homes in Mindanao when a major war broke up between the rebels and the government. She lost her parents in the melee, and I could now barely remember the tiny malnourished evacuee hawking around a bilao tray of cheap plastic China toys, negotiating her way around the legs of adults during Christmas season nearby Quiapo Church. "And this win-win proposal is…?"
She cleared her throat, and I ought have fastened my seatbelt.
"I want to be enthroned as the Ḅaì a labi sa Quiapo — the first of my name!"
My jaw almost dropped to the floor. The way she heralded it ought to have been followed by blowing the horn of a sanggakala and then greeted by the boom of a twenty-one lantaca for good measure. I go, "The first of your name. Like the Game of Thrones, huh?"
The octogenarian made more vigorous approval nods and she beamed at me, the red juice spittle formed gelatin stalactites and stalagmites against the roof of her toothless mouth.
"Yes!" Adjnabéa said. The enthusiasm of youth is infectious. There is no better prescriptive to crank up your adrenaline than indulge a daredevil who is willing to brave anything even if blindfolded.
"Like Daenerys or Sansa, I see."
"Nope, Bapa. More like Cersei. The Grand Lady!"
"The Ḅaì a labi of the House of Lannister, of course."
She nodded ecstatically, smiling with her braces, never letting her wide eyes off me, gauging my every reaction.
"Uncle, tell me. Won't it be exciting and downright appropriate?" Her imploring eyelashes blinked rapidly like a car's windshield wipers. She's beautiful in the prime of her life, and what little scars could be discerned on her face was half-erased making her even more alluringly formidable. Her pert nose was somewhat photoshopped though it settled well with her personality that she could decently pass for the wife of a politician.
Exciting, you can bet on it. Scandalous even. But downright appropriate...I was groping for something to say. She sensed my tentativeness, so at her clapping, a tray of coffee, teas and after-meal condiments magically appeared on our side of the long table. At the far end, a durian fruit pried open suffused the room with its heady scent. It may be the 21st century, but I could have been as well swallowed in a vortex finding myself in a padau fleet in the company of Iranūn marauders, our backs sweltering in the sun, rowing our way north in the high seas, borasimama!
"Ain't it about time, Bapa? We've grown in numbers and counting and we're gaining foothold in the Capital. Soon we will be all over the place this side of Luzon."
Oh, she has the amazon confidence of an Urduja. And I could hear her minions chanting a lá Conor McGregor in the gladiator arena of Madison Square Garden: "We're not here to take part; we're here to take over!" I now remember the street-smart Adjnabéa had become, how with her haggling and wheeling-dealing laced with veiled intimidation she had a grip on the hawkers that lined the footbridges in the city and controlled key sidewalk corners, dictating who goes where and what items to sell at the foot of a railway station during the holiday season. What vague sketch I know about her is that she was spotted by a police captain twenty years her senior and together they had a live-in life. When the police captain died in an encounter, she squeaked out clean and consolidated her gains, having outgrown the sidewalk and started to organize exhibits in malls. The hard-knock life paid off as she reinvented herself as a shrewd corporate negotiator with her broken English, until she fell for a cellphone technician ten-years her junior who manned one of her shops.
"Come on, Adjnabéa. Be down to earth. Why don't you take a title more appropriate to your bearing. We have choice titles in our clan that had been dormant the last hundred years that you can be bestowed with. Something that has a precedence. Our clan can ascend you to the title of Ḅaì sa Pŭṭṭád and we can stage your coronation in Basak hassle-free. I will see to its success, and no one is the wiser."
"Ḅaì sa Pŭṭṭád. Sand Queen?"
I nodded.
"Yak! What trite ugliness. Like I would be lording over a quarry. I could picture myself counting truckloads ferrying mounds of sands out of my domain until the carpet is swept away under my feet. What gives?"
"Don't belittle this one, Adjnabéa," I said. It's sacrosanct to your ancestors, to us, and to you. Ḅaì sa Pŭṭṭád was instituted after the Magatori or Makaturing erupted in 1765. Many Iranuns had fanned out all over Southeast Asia, even the northern coast of Australia. But our forebears chose to stay and endure it. This title had been long dormant and you owe resurrecting it in homage. It would be like unsheathing the Excalibur sword off its stone.
Adjnabéa was mulling at what I just said. I wasn't sure she knew anything about the King Arthur legend. So I slipped in the hitting-two-birds-with-one-stone trick. "It will be a welcoming home party for you, besides. It has been decades that you haven't seen your kin. Take it, girl."
"No Uncle. No way I would be pulled into wearing this title, not even if Magatori blows up yet another time."
The old woman who all this time had been acting as a silent referee blurted out from her betel nut chewing. "Astagfirullah! Astagfirullah! Di ka di pangangaloy wata. Lidasŭn tano ron o mga apo. Don't be silly, girl."
"I love the Baȳalabi sa Quiapo. I've been dreaming it. Uncle, I'm a trailblazer, and I live up to the role. The more I run it through my mind, the better it gets. Fits me like a glove, huh."
Silence engulfed us. And she broke out of the reverie. "Remember the catchphrase, what old folks used to say? 'Baka si-i mya mola sa niyog?' Now, it no longer holds water. We're born here, we're married here, we die, and we'll be buried here. Mayor Isko makes sure we're decently buried here too. Now, half-my cousins are half-Christians? All of them hardly knowing any of our native words."
"Like you don't know what the word Quiapo means. You won't love it after I told you."
"Try me. Why, what does Quiapo mean?"
"Quiapo means "kayupu," the ones you see floating on the lake, remember when you were a toddler running along the sandy coastline of Basak?"
"The tarembabak, you mean? Sometimes, they could get so dense, that the lancha had a hard time wading through out of the quay that sailors needed long poles to bring the boat into the open water. Ah, know that I remember, I could hear the crews shouting in the unholy hours of dawn, 'Marawi! Marawi! Magaan den tumulak!'"
"Gotcha! The kataba-taba and the kabontir. These are of the nomenclature of kayupu, from which the name of Quiapo was taken. A cabbage of hyacinths that get shooed all the way from Laguna de Bay to the mouth of Pasig which in my opinion is much, much more grotesque than the dignified sand dunes in our place."
"I think you're making this up, uncle."
"I'm not. By the way, who is the historian here? See the first principle is to see to it that you're entitled to a title, how you could be rooted to this place. And how could you be rooted to the hairy tails of a kayupu?"
"Ha! So that means our ancestors were the ones who named Quiapo. How wonderful. That's a start! Allah is great! Why, I ain't mistaken to have you summoned!"
Summoned? Now she is already playing the part of a Bai a Labi. "Not so fast, oké. The word kayupu itself in turn was rooted from the Sanskrit word kayappu. You see, if you try skimming the kirim scripts, you'll yield tons of Iranūn words of Sanskrit origins. The Iranūns clustered at Kayupu were trading briskly with the thriving community of Hanafi Chinese merchants from Zaynun who maintained their godowns in Tutuban in the eary part of the fifteenth century. Zaynun is the Iranūn name for modern Quangzhu."
"Hmnn, I see. Just as well, our clan is a few thousand strong here already in the capital, it's about time we are listened to, and not just the ones listening all the time. After all, I've heard that Manila and its environs used to be controlled by Muslims. We're just asserting what's ours. Shouldn't we be?"
A little learning is a dangerously incomplete thing. But why drag in Alexander Pope? "I'm not contesting you on that. But the descendants of these Muslims you're referring to are alive and well today. And they are aware of their high-born origins, however nebulous. If you insist on becoming a Ḅaì a labi sa Quiapo, you'd be a laughing stock."
"Why, I'm not begging to be the Ḅaì a labi sa Tundo or Pasay. I just want this tiny bit of Manila where at least we have some semblance of preponderance. Besides there's never been a Ḅaì a labi sa Quiapo here before. So who cares if I assume it?"
"That's the trouble," I said. "Nobody cares because you're just making it up out of thin air. Titles must be rooted in wars, origins, and succession of rulers, and peppered with some primordial legends even. Above all they must be recognized in the realm."
"There is no realm to talk about. We now have a Philippine Republic whose charter doesn't officially recognize royalty. So the government and the populace don't give a hoot to whether you declare yourself Queen of Mars or Pluto or whatnot, long as you don't encroach into the privacy of others or trample their rights. I just want to be Ḅaì a labi sa Quiapo — the very first of my name. After that, man, I could die happy for all I care."
I think I was underestimating my primary-grade niece. "True, no one would handcuff you. You'd just be ignored. But for your bestowal, do you have some concrete basis to lay down your pipe? Or it would be a futile exercise, and all it accomplishes is fill your ego."
"Then how did the 16 Royal houses bestowed a title on Tomas Cabili, Jr.?"
"In the case of Tomas Cabili, Jr, he has the title of his father, the late Senator, whose ancestry harked back to Datu Tomidao Búka and Ḅaì Yana sa Inêtao Cabilin. Just like Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She took the title of her father Diosdado and converted it into a Ḅaì a labi. In your case, how then are we going to justify it so that it will have at least some cultural import or historical underpinnings?"
"Uncle, you are the historian here you said, so pray tell me, whose bailiwick Quiapo was in the olden times in the first place?"
I was ill prepared for this sort of interrogation. But I did have some quaint readings on the early days of Manila. "Well, to start with there was Doña Clara Morahin who was married to Don Francisco Banal."
"Did they begot children?"
"At least, they have one child Marcelo who became an Augustinian priest."
That's a dead end there. Let's work back. Who's Francisco Banal?"
"He's the son of Don Miguel Banal, the Datu sa Kayupu."
"Now, let's unpack this. How did he became the Datu sa Kayupu? Was he preceded by his father?"
"No, his father Juan Banal was a Datu sa Tundok, meaning today's Tundo."
"So he must have probably taken it from his in-laws."
"Yes, most probably. But it could go either way."
"Who's the wife of the Datu sa Kayupu?"
"It's Doña Inés. Dahitim is her native name," I said. "This is what the genealogical documents deposited with the Philippines' National Archives revealed."
"Dahitim must have been hispanized a bit. Daïtŭm is more like it in our dialect. It means being speckled or suffused with blackness, an acquired thing like when your skin gets dark after getting too long exposed in the sun. Then you are called 'Daitum.' Or if you are prone to dirt, you're called 'Daburing'."
I nodded.
"Now, we're talking!" Adjnabéa was so pleased with herself that at her clap a plateful of tamokonsi was brought to the table.
"We're talking what?"
"Can't you see? Tagalog has only the modifier ma- as in maputi or maitim, but daïtŭm is a word native to Iranūn. Who were Doña Inés Dahitim's parents?"
"Her mother was Doña Maria Laran…"
"And Doña Laran was…"
"A daughter of Raja Sulaiman. Dahitim's father was not mentioned."
"Now you're not just the historian here. You're the genealogist."
They stowed away the dishes. And I fired my laptop on the table. A dozen pair of eyes of rubbernecks peeped at my screen as I navigated through my database, and I could feel their heat breathing down on me.
I sighed. I reclined on my chair, and the rubbernecks withdrew instantly to give me space.
"Well," I said, "Doña Inés Daïtŭm's father was Datu Aman who went by his teknonym Bapaī Sumilaw. He was also the father of Doña María Guinyamat or Putrí Kayamat who became the wife of Don Augustín or Datu Turingan."
"And who's this Datu Aman or Bapaī Sumilaw?"
I knew to where this was heading to: Adjenabéa trying to squeeze herself into the equation. So I rattled off: "He was better known to the Spaniards as Bapa Silaw. Miguel Lopez de Legaspi was indebted to him as he procured boatloads of rice from Panay for the Spaniards when they were being starved by the people of Raja Tupas in Cebu. Being country traders, Bapa Silaw accompanied Legaspi's fleet to Manila along with Mokamad sa Kalibau who was responsible for ferrying the rice from Panay to the Spaniards. When the Spaniards conquered Manila, Raja Sulaiman, the Raja Muda, was killed by the Spaniards in 1575 at Navotas. Bapaī Sumilaw took the orphan Maria Laran for a wife, and the couple gave birth to Daïtŭm and Kayamat or Doña María Guinyamat."
"And, Bapa, who are the parents of Bapaī Sumilaw?"
"Bapaī Sumilaw is a son of Datu Bangkāya {Datu sa Magindanao ika-2} by one of his wives, Bukayan {Putrí Byronai} of Sêlangan. Datu Bangkāya used Bapaī Sumilaw as his feeler and emissary to the Spaniards. Guido de Lavezaris, who succeeded as Governor-General when Lepaspi died, wrote King Felipe II on Jul 17,1574. that Datu Bangkāya : "The lord and chief of Bindanao River (Pulangi) has also notified me, through letters, that he wishes to be our friend …"
"Then Bapa, couldn't I be descended from Bapaī Sumilaw then?"
"I-I'm not too certain, girl." I wanted to terminate this conversation as especially that President Duterte had just announced that in a week's time there would be a moratorium on travel as new strain of a viruse called COVID-19 was starting to demonize the world, and I wanted to spend some time in Mindanao for my research. "You see the progenies of Datu sa Kayupu came in disfavor with the Spaniards. Don Juan Banal was executed with his brother-in-law Magat Salamat when their plot to seek the help of the Sultan of Borneo and the Emperor of Japan to overthrow the Spaniards was uncovered. Juan Banal's son, Don Miguel Banal, the Datu sa Kayupu and his household were evicted from their lands by the Jesuits, their homes razed to the ground. This was the last stand of the Datus in Manila."
"How tragic, Bapa" she sighed. There was a long silence. And the octogenarian seemed to have given up too as she tucked away her betelnut box..
I switched off my laptap. Just as I was zipping my backpack, about to go, Adjnabéa broke the impasse by tacking in another angle. "Wait, wait, Bapa. If Bapaī Sumilaw or the Bapa Silaw to the Spaniards is only a teknonymy, then he must have another family where a Sumilaw is a son of his, right?"
I should not have underestimated this Queen of the Underpass. "Of course, he had an earlier family before Doña Inés Dahitim. Sumilaw is a son of Datu Aman with Ḅaì sa Pusĕd ā Ragat who was of Talakag."
"Then could I be somehow a direct progeny then?"
I had stowed away my laptop and would not deign opening it again. Besides, it's getting late in the evening already. "I'm not sure," I said. "But you could be. Who knows."
She looked forlorn. "I can sense that you really want this title so badly."
"Oh, Bapa. I dream about it all the time!"
"Anyway, the bottom line is you are descended from Datu Bangkāya. He had 13 children from at least four spouses. Either Datu Dimsangkay Adel or Kapitan Laut Buisan would have you as an assured descendant. It's a horizontal swig from Bapaī Sumilaw but that will do. It's now your call."
Adjanabéa had never been so happy in her life, I could see that she desperately needed my validation. She thanked me profusely, and even as she ushered me on my way out, she had been so animated in elaborating what a spectacle it will be when she resurrects the Ḅaì a labi Daïtŭm sa Quiapo. The festivities, the pompous celebration, the authentic performances of artists. She will invite the old nobilities of Manila. Even some of her friends from Southeast Asia. They would all come, she said.
It was late in the evening already when I got home. In the days following people were in frantic mood. The shelves of groceries were wiped clean and I thought everyone was bracing for a long haul of isolation as international flights were suspended and face mask started to appear like everyone was about to holdup their local bank. Then the regulation one meter-apart distance had become ubiquitous in shops and malls. Then schools closed, congregations suspended, feasts disallowed, and one could only call a meeting Zoom-bie mood…
[The historical contents of this anecdote are true and meticulously researched by the author, but I am not about to give the references but in my upcoming book "The Iranūn of Southeast Asia: Discovering Philippines' Lost Heritage & History". Here, I use the anecdotal form as it is easier for readers to digest than a formal one. This is the trend nowadays even in businesses and in corporate board rooms. It's been a while since I last wrote anything anecdotal but this one is anything but fiction. The contemporary portion of the story had been altered only somewhat to protect the innocent— or harbor the guilty, if you will.]
