That is, I had been born in Cotabato, but had no memories of the place. My father was a wanderer then, and the family tagged along. Thus, I was whisked off as an infant to Dumaguete, and then wrenched from there as a Cebuano-speaking toddler to return to Zamboanga, my father’s hometown, there to spend much of my childhood and early manhood. Cotabato was a lush, mysterious realm, distant, unknown, but still, in a sense, my homeland. Another thing that led me further into the dark interior of the tale was the delightful suspicion that the tale’s narrator, and, therefore, likely, the story’s author, was, like me, a Chabacano-speaking town-mate.
I left the barber-shop with the thrilling secret that a Zamboangueño had made it to the pages of the awesome Philippines Free Press, and thus had joined the ranks of such worthies as Bienvenido Santos, Gregorio Brillantes and Wilfrido Nolledo. This was a glorious thought, and hope stirred in my heart, for wasn’t I, even then, already writing poems and short stories of my own? Someday, I said to myself, I, too, would make it to the pages of the Free Press.
The first time I made it to the Free Press, it was post-Edsa. Locsin, Sr., and even his old foe Marcos, were long gone. My literary output, under the new reign of Locsin Jr., was sluggish at best. But Tony Enriquez was more fecund than ever, coming up with evermore – new material. He had won national awards for his fiction, and some of his novels had been published abroad. "The Surveyor" I read again, in its revised form as a chapter in Enriquez’s first novel, Surveyors of the Liguasan Marsh (University of Queensland Press, Australia, 1981) This book won for him his first of two Palanca grand prizes for the novel, the second being Subanons, that gut-and heart-wrenching portrayal of a tribal people’s agon under martial rule.
Surveyors is certainly sui generis, post-modern fiction long before the fashion hit the country. An uncannily powerful and poetic work, it defies realistic convention, but remains compellingly and hauntingly real. It is early vintage, aesthete Enriquez: Unapologetically apolitical, and insouciantly, though despairingly amoral.
Subanons manifested a significant change of ethical and political perspective. What changed it all was martial law, that "hidden war" whose heinous enormity has yet to be fully exposed. Antonio Enriquez provides us with a long-neglected key to our understanding of the Mindanao conflict. His work provides us with a valuable perspective. Simply put, Christianity and Islam are global, hegemonic ideologies, tending to a ruthlessness that destroys life-ways other than their own. When two behemoths struggle, those that happen to be in the way are destroyed – often deliberately. In the hidden wars, the lumads, because they were infidels to either worldview, were dispensable. The fact that some had converted to Christianity or Islam did not make them any less endangered. Conversion did not invariably confer respect from those who belonged to dominant ethnic groups. Worse, the lumads could become unwilling participants in the war that, because it was hidden, was unforgiving in its atrocity.
With Subanons, Enriquez moved into the realm of advocacy. Perhaps only the morally infirm or the inveterately diabolical would not experience a moral rebirth from the fire of purification that was martial law. From any reading of Subanons, it is indubitably clear that the author was someone who had undergone that spiritual transformation. The novel is a shining moment in the heretofore unknown aspects of the contemporary Subanon, particularly their horrific and tragic experience under martial rule.
With The Voice from Sumisip (Giraffe Books), Enriquez leads us further on, deeper into the forest. The experience would invariably remind the reader of a well-known and well-read journey into the wilderness written by a world-famous writer to whom (as it is to Enriquez) English was not a first language.
But any reading of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness yields for us almost nothing at all about the African region of the Congo – the tale’s purported setting. It lies, even as we write, in darkness. On the other hand, Enriquez, born (in 1934) into a much later generation of writers – and thanks in no small way to his life-long partnership with his vivacious wife, Joy Viernes Enriquez, ethno-musicologist and cultural scholar, is better informed. That is to say, Antonio Enriquez speaketh not in darkness, but perhaps in that sacred space that T.S. Eliot, in Four Quartets, preferred to call "the heart of light."
In Voice from Sumisip, Enriquez’s tale takes us there, to the inner sanctum of tribal innocence and wisdom. Tony Enriquez, hunter, big-fisherman, cusser, drinker, and devotee of fictional art spent much of what he calls his "most beautiful years" in Basilan. That is to say, in Yakan country. Without Basilan, Tony might never have become the man of the great outdoors that he is. And, too, perhaps because of this, he is the odd man out of the corps of fictionists this country has produced. He is never at ease in the academic dispensation. And bully for him, too, because he writes about places untouched by the ennui and prosaic despair of the secular city.
Should it be New York or Sumisip? A vote for either will be a vote based on values, and not merely on such questions as political and economic power, or high and low culture. So we must stop over in Sumisip to listen to its precious voice. More and more writers and scholars realize that what is true of nature is also true of culture – the destruction of any original ethnic way of life diminishes all of us, causing the loss of our artistic and cultural heritage.
Enriquez takes us to Sumisip to listen to that voice. The narrative turns, swirls and wheels around that voice. It is robust, hearty story-writing you will find, for (if you don’t know yet) story is Enriquez’s sine qua non. And, like Conrad before him, he takes us there with English – but not as a means to dominate or malign. English here becomes a mode of empowerment, a means by which the writer may translate that voice into the language well understood by the oppressive center (call it New York, call it Manila.) And it is an especially expressive language, too, I think: sensitive, powerfully realistic, though sometimes magical:
Facing Prof. Jose, his back to the door of his room, was Shaman Gamutang. In the corner of the circle flickered a small oil lamp, which, like all the others in Sumisip, was crudely made from an empty can, and from a discarded piece of old cloth came its wick. From this oil lamp a small flame flickered, and though sometimes it soared and disembodied itself from its wick, the flame would return to its wick – before reaching exposed ridgepoles and trusses, just as if it were ashamed to violate the roof’s nakedness. Not always then were the faces of the Shaman, Professor Jose, and the others illuminated by the flame; there were moments when their faces sank deep into shadow, boundless, and only the Shaman’s eyes shining among them with an after-glow glitter.
Prof. Jose, an academic whose field of study is folklore, is the novella’s central intelligence. It is through his sensibility that we see the world of the Yakan. But it is our duty, as sensitive readers, to see through him. Imperfect human medium though he is, he is our guide into the still center of that world, a heart besieged on all sides by the forces of darkness – intolerant, self-important, violent hegemonic forces that come under the holy banners of religion. And, too, under the holy vestments lurks human cupidity. The entire apparatus of Marcos’ martial rule is infected by greed and vice.
Prof. Jose is a creature of those dark times, and of his corrupt urban environment. Despite his education and involvement in cultural studies, he has not risen above his prejudices. In short, he is much like the average Filipino. The crucial question the narrative wants to resolve is this: Can Prof. Jose, with all his sins on him, as he passes through the spiritual center of Yakan country – that heart of light – be reborn in the light? Will he hearken to and learn from that voice in Sumisip?
He discovers to his chagrin that he is caught between two worlds. Or, should we say two centers? The subject of his research invades his being as he struggles to break free from its control: He of all those present should be the last to give any weight to those signs (i.e., of "bad luck.") But Professor Jose, in his heart, knew differently; shaken was the fiber of his Christian faith and the staunchness of his belief in science – his continuous exposure to rituals, pagan beliefs, folk-tales, myths, and epics had made it so. It had not un-Christianized him, but had only scraped the surface of his prejudice, Dios mio!
Such ethnic centers have a drawing power. They could very well be our connection to the life-force. They can be a source of spiritual energy. But this energy can also be deadly and ruthless, especially when mishandled. And Tony Enriquez is too much of an outdoorsman, too much of an elemental realist to be dewy-eyed about the consequences of such misuse or abuse.
But there can no longer be any doubt about the vitality of such centers, especially when we see a pattern, national as well as global, where some of the best writers write from home – or, as in the case of Enriquez, every so often an adopted home, in the way that Eric Gamalinda adopted Negros and Alfred Yuson adopted Sagada. It has been more rule than exception to write from one’s own Yokhnapathawpa, or to appropriate one. The need for such far-flung sources of soul-energy is undeniable. Even Nick Joaquin of Manila sought as a source of inspiration the distant past. But as ethno-culture-vultures, we must take sage counsel from Antonio Enriquez, that voice from Zamboanga and Misamis: Only the converted can make a difference. No more Dr. Joses need apply – unless they are reborn by fire.
Some of Enriquez’s works were published in Australia. In the year 2002, he was our South East Asia Write awardee for fiction. Last year he went on a writing fellowship to Scotland where he forged warm ties with eminent Scottish writers. He has been offered fellowships in America. But for all these, he has not made that allegedly logical move to go to the center of centers, wherever that may be. He remains to this day a solid resident of his island, Mindanao, the happy hunting-ground of his marvelous fictions. The four stories included in this book take us back to Enriquez’s own ethnic roots: Historical Zamboanga at the time of its founding. What makes these stories unique is that they read like eye-witness accounts of contemporary events, combining the horrific, the passionate, the humorous and the macabre – all vintage Enriquez . They are a whale worth reading in their own right. The stories revolve around Naawan (the ancient name of Zamboanga) and they seem so suspiciously to be the first powerful ingredients of another brewing novel.
And, by the way, for those among us who are still trying to cover up for that charnel-house called martial law, and endeavor, even this late, to perpetuate the turgid myth of Marcosian benevolence, mainly by taking advantage of the poverty – and consequent ignorance – of our people, I have only this to say: Read this book and be memorably, effectively, refuted.