Hear Erwin Cabucos talk about growing up Filipino and his new book 'Green Blood and Other Stories' on Saturday 8 November 2008, 10:30-11:30AM at the Robina Library, the Gold Coast. Light morning tea of Filipino sweets will be served.
This is a free event and is suitable for all ages.
His talk is one of the highlights of the Gold Coast Multicultural Festival from 8 to 16 November 2008. A wide range of free and exciting cultural activities will be held in recognition of the many cultures in the Coast.
To book, call the library on 07 5578 9582, or email us on goldcoastmagic@bigpond.com or call Yvette on 0421634630.
Garry Collins Launches 'The Green Blood' Book
Speech of Garry Collins, President, English Teachers Association of Queensland, 7 June 2008 at the Brisbane Square Library: As has become customary in recent years, I’d like to open by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Jagera and Turrbal peoples. An opening like that has become so routine that it is perhaps in danger of becoming an empty formality but I think it is particularly apt today. While the traditional Aboriginal custodians of the land on which this library stands lived in the area here by the river for thousands of years, they originally came from somewhere else.
It is generally acknowledged by anthropologists that the Aboriginal peoples of this land walked to the Australian continent when it was still joined by a land bridge to Asia. So it could be said that they were the first of a series of waves of immigration that have populated the great south land. I suggest there is a twofold relevance to this afternoon’s event because we are here to officially launch a book that explores both life in a part of Asia and the immigrant experience.
I’d also like to acknowledge our hosts, the Brisbane City Council library service. Like many of the other good things about living in this country and this city, it is a benefit that is often taken too much for granted. The book we’re launching deals in part with some aspects of the relatively prosperous life generally enjoyed by Australian residents compared with the economic and material conditions that prevail in many less fortunate parts of the world. The city’s libraries are a source of tremendous pleasure and intellectual stimulation and, for my own part, I think I get good value on the rates that I pay just from libraries and bicycle paths alone. I think it is very appropriate that this book launch should be taking place in this fine new library.
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the official launch of this newly published book, Green Blood and other stories, by Erwin Cabucos, who teaches English at Carmel College in Thornlands. Erwin was born and raised in the Southern Philipines. He first came to Australia on a scholarship to study and then, after marrying, migrated here.
Erwin’s book is a collection of short stories, some of which are set here in Australia and some in the Philipines. Some of the stories deal with experiences of growing up and others with adult life. A central theme involves the tensions that arise in the interaction of cultures. In some stories this involves Western cultural influences in the land of the author’s birth or competing religious affiliations there, and in others it concerns the difficulties that immigrants face in adapting to the different culture of their new country. It’s clear that Erwin’s life experiences have informed his writing.
I come to be here today because, as was noted in the introduction, I currently have the honour to be the President of the English Teachers Association of Queensland, ETAQ, or as we normally say within the association: EE-TACK. ETAQ is the professional association for school English teachers and most of our members, like our author Erwin Cabucos, teach the subject in secondary schools, both state and private. There is an English teachers association in every state and territory in the commonwealth and we are linked in a national umbrella body entitled the Australian Association for the Teaching of English, AATE. These associations exist for professional sharing and to support English teachers in their work.
What is that work? Well, naturally, it is to teach subject English to school students. You could be excused for dismissing that remark as a flash of the blindingly obvious but, of course, there are ongoing debates, and sometimes heated ones, about just what the subject should include, and with a national curriculum about to be developed we can expect to see some aspects of that debate feature in the media in the next year or so.
As far as ETAQ is concerned, subject English should be about a sensibly balanced mix of the three Ls: literacy, literature and language. They are of course inter-connected because literacy is needed for people to participate in the experience of literature. We would wish literacy and literature to be defined in broad, future-oriented ways that encompass the new communication technologies of the 21st Century as well as the traditional print-based one and what is often referred to as our literary heritage. The materials and services provided by this library are no longer restricted to paper books, although, thankfully, there are plenty of those.
Literacy is about using the language effectively in all its modes and the language component is about understanding how the linguistic system and the English language in particular work. Literacy now has a broader definition than just reading and writing but those two skills still constitute its core.
So, at the heart of subject English are efforts to teach students to read and write effectively. Teaching of anything is enhanced if the teacher is able to show by personal example just how things should be done. It is probably true to say that English teaching would be more informed and therefore more effective if more teachers wrote more. We don’t all have to get ourselves into print, but Erwin has a tremendous advantage in his teaching in that he can present himself as a real writer. In recent years it has become quite common for schools to arrange to have a writer-in-residence for a period of time. Erwin’s school now won’t have to go to any additional expense to achieve that goal. They will be in the enviable situation of having a published author on site.
Now to say a few words about another of the three Ls: literature. The importance of literature in the school English curriculum is that it enables students to imagine and vicariously experience worlds other than their own. It provides opportunities for students to imaginatively move beyond the restricted domain of their daily lives and to gain a sense of what it would be like to inhabit other spaces in their own society and culture and then, more broadly, what life is like for people in other societies and cultures. There is much of value to be learnt from fiction. Naturally, the same also applies to readers in general. Exposure to literature highlights both differences and commonalities: the differences between times, places and cultures and, conversely, the commonalities of the human experience, no matter where, when and how people live. In recent years, syllabuses have very appropriately mandated that students should be exposed to a range of literary texts. The draft QSA 1-10 syllabus talked about including texts:
I’d also like to acknowledge our hosts, the Brisbane City Council library service. Like many of the other good things about living in this country and this city, it is a benefit that is often taken too much for granted. The book we’re launching deals in part with some aspects of the relatively prosperous life generally enjoyed by Australian residents compared with the economic and material conditions that prevail in many less fortunate parts of the world. The city’s libraries are a source of tremendous pleasure and intellectual stimulation and, for my own part, I think I get good value on the rates that I pay just from libraries and bicycle paths alone. I think it is very appropriate that this book launch should be taking place in this fine new library.
I am very pleased to have the opportunity to participate in the official launch of this newly published book, Green Blood and other stories, by Erwin Cabucos, who teaches English at Carmel College in Thornlands. Erwin was born and raised in the Southern Philipines. He first came to Australia on a scholarship to study and then, after marrying, migrated here.
Erwin’s book is a collection of short stories, some of which are set here in Australia and some in the Philipines. Some of the stories deal with experiences of growing up and others with adult life. A central theme involves the tensions that arise in the interaction of cultures. In some stories this involves Western cultural influences in the land of the author’s birth or competing religious affiliations there, and in others it concerns the difficulties that immigrants face in adapting to the different culture of their new country. It’s clear that Erwin’s life experiences have informed his writing.
I come to be here today because, as was noted in the introduction, I currently have the honour to be the President of the English Teachers Association of Queensland, ETAQ, or as we normally say within the association: EE-TACK. ETAQ is the professional association for school English teachers and most of our members, like our author Erwin Cabucos, teach the subject in secondary schools, both state and private. There is an English teachers association in every state and territory in the commonwealth and we are linked in a national umbrella body entitled the Australian Association for the Teaching of English, AATE. These associations exist for professional sharing and to support English teachers in their work.
What is that work? Well, naturally, it is to teach subject English to school students. You could be excused for dismissing that remark as a flash of the blindingly obvious but, of course, there are ongoing debates, and sometimes heated ones, about just what the subject should include, and with a national curriculum about to be developed we can expect to see some aspects of that debate feature in the media in the next year or so.
As far as ETAQ is concerned, subject English should be about a sensibly balanced mix of the three Ls: literacy, literature and language. They are of course inter-connected because literacy is needed for people to participate in the experience of literature. We would wish literacy and literature to be defined in broad, future-oriented ways that encompass the new communication technologies of the 21st Century as well as the traditional print-based one and what is often referred to as our literary heritage. The materials and services provided by this library are no longer restricted to paper books, although, thankfully, there are plenty of those.
Literacy is about using the language effectively in all its modes and the language component is about understanding how the linguistic system and the English language in particular work. Literacy now has a broader definition than just reading and writing but those two skills still constitute its core.
So, at the heart of subject English are efforts to teach students to read and write effectively. Teaching of anything is enhanced if the teacher is able to show by personal example just how things should be done. It is probably true to say that English teaching would be more informed and therefore more effective if more teachers wrote more. We don’t all have to get ourselves into print, but Erwin has a tremendous advantage in his teaching in that he can present himself as a real writer. In recent years it has become quite common for schools to arrange to have a writer-in-residence for a period of time. Erwin’s school now won’t have to go to any additional expense to achieve that goal. They will be in the enviable situation of having a published author on site.
Now to say a few words about another of the three Ls: literature. The importance of literature in the school English curriculum is that it enables students to imagine and vicariously experience worlds other than their own. It provides opportunities for students to imaginatively move beyond the restricted domain of their daily lives and to gain a sense of what it would be like to inhabit other spaces in their own society and culture and then, more broadly, what life is like for people in other societies and cultures. There is much of value to be learnt from fiction. Naturally, the same also applies to readers in general. Exposure to literature highlights both differences and commonalities: the differences between times, places and cultures and, conversely, the commonalities of the human experience, no matter where, when and how people live. In recent years, syllabuses have very appropriately mandated that students should be exposed to a range of literary texts. The draft QSA 1-10 syllabus talked about including texts:
· from cultures (incl Asia) where English is not the dominant language
· that represent diversity in relation to cultures, social groups & forms & variants of English
Green Blood and other stories clearly fits the bill here. It is important to remember that Australia is a land of immigrants. In a sense, all Australians originally came from somewhere else and Erwin’s book provides a very useful exploration of the experience of adapting to a new land.
In early July I’ll be attending a national English teacher conference in Adelaide. The theme of the conference is “Stories, places, spaces: literacy and identity”. I think that neatly sums up the important contribution that the literature component of subject English can make to the tolerance and understanding so necessary in the multicultural nation that Australia is today. It also points to the valuable contribution that Erwin’s book can make to that sort of tolerance and understanding. In this collection we have stories of growing up and family life, stories of the clash of cultures and stories of the immigrant experience. The places depicted are both the Philipines and Australia. A central theme is that of human identity.
The book offers a diverse range of characters, situations and vicarious experiences. There are elements of both tragedy and humour. Some of the stories are quite moving and the vivid description in the intriguingly named title story Green Blood almost brought tears to my eyes, and a shiver to my spine. You’ll have to read it to see just what I mean by that.
And Green Blood is not the only intriguing title to be found between these covers. Titles like Salted fish make-up and Does it matter what the dead think are also well calculated to whet the reader’s curiosity:
Erwin Cabucos is to be congratulated on the literary achievement represented by this entertaining, insightful and thought-provoking collection of stories.
In early July I’ll be attending a national English teacher conference in Adelaide. The theme of the conference is “Stories, places, spaces: literacy and identity”. I think that neatly sums up the important contribution that the literature component of subject English can make to the tolerance and understanding so necessary in the multicultural nation that Australia is today. It also points to the valuable contribution that Erwin’s book can make to that sort of tolerance and understanding. In this collection we have stories of growing up and family life, stories of the clash of cultures and stories of the immigrant experience. The places depicted are both the Philipines and Australia. A central theme is that of human identity.
The book offers a diverse range of characters, situations and vicarious experiences. There are elements of both tragedy and humour. Some of the stories are quite moving and the vivid description in the intriguingly named title story Green Blood almost brought tears to my eyes, and a shiver to my spine. You’ll have to read it to see just what I mean by that.
And Green Blood is not the only intriguing title to be found between these covers. Titles like Salted fish make-up and Does it matter what the dead think are also well calculated to whet the reader’s curiosity:
Erwin Cabucos is to be congratulated on the literary achievement represented by this entertaining, insightful and thought-provoking collection of stories.
In conclusion then, I’d like to formally declare Green Blood and other stories officially launched. I wish its author all the best – particularly in his future literary and English teaching endeavours. I hope that many readers – both school students and in the general population - will have the opportunity to enjoy – and learn from – his stories.
(note: currently President of the English Teachers Association of Queensland (ETAQ), Garry Collins began teaching at Gladstone High School in 1969 after graduating from the University of Queensland. He has now been an English Department Head in Queensland state high schools for over 30 years. In addition, he has experience of North American classrooms via year-long exchanges in both the US and Canada.)
The Year of Philippine Australian Writing
(l-r: Xerxes Matza, Jose Capili, Deborah Ruiz Wall, Merlinda Bobis, Jose Dalisay, Jr., Erwin Cabucos, Crystal Gail Koo and Sydney Consul-General Theresa Lazaro.)This year marks a significant chapter in Australian literature: the first ever anthology of Filipino-Australian writings is published.
The book is 'Salu-Salo: In Conversation with Filipinos - An Anthology of Philippine-Australian Writings', edited by Jose Wendell Capili and John Cheeseman, published by Casula Powerhouse and Blacktown Arts Centre, Sydney.
The publication features masterpieces from Xerxes Matza, Jose Capili, Deborah Ruiz Wall, Merlinda Bobis, Erwin Cabucos and Crystal Gail Koo.
Executive Director of the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Kon Gouriotis, launched the book at the Sydney Writers Festival in Sydney on 25 May 2008.
Gouriotis alludes to the opportunities missed when book on Filipino-Australians culture such as this, were not given importance in the past.
Referring to the book's richness in literary content, Gouriotis said: "It is a dense book..., representing the significant contributions of Filipino-Australians in the wider Australian culture and society."
"Filipinos are one of the top ten migrant groups in Sydney and this is the first anthology of their writings. This launching is a very significant event for Filipino-Australians and for Australia in general ."
Looking at the quality of the publication, he suggests that a second anthology should be looked into.
Merlinda Bobis, a prominent Australian writer with a Filipino background comments that this book presents rich and insightful stories to be heard.
"When we learn to listen to people's stories, we experience a connection of human hearts," says Bobis.
Contributor Erwin Cabucos hopes that the anthology gains wider publicity in the Australian educational reading lists.
"It will be great if high school or university students include this collection in their literary and literacy studies so that learners gain richer understanding of the diversity of Australian and world literatures," adds Cabucos.
Editor Capili hopes to see that this book fills the gap of the silenced narratives of Australian people in the nation's contemporary history.
"May this book address the wide canvas of Australian national histories by highlighting those things which might have been left out of the national myth," comments Capili.
Cabucos' new book 'Green Blood and Other Stories' is published this year by Manila Prints.
Bobis' new book 'The Solemn Lantern Maker' is published this year by Murdoch Books.
'Salu-Salo' is now on sale through the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre: 02 9824 1121.
Author Talk: Noosa Library 18 June
Growing up Filipino with author Erwin Cabucos.
Featuring Filipino dancing and Brisbane author Erwin Cabucos who will talk about growing up Filipino.
He will also cover topics such as challenging the myth of the 'mail-order bride' and the tendency for some Filipinos to readily sacrifice their body for spiritual and family good.
Wednesday 18 June 6.30pm. $6 includes light supper. Noosa Library. Bookings essential
Ph (07) 54 424 411.
Featuring Filipino dancing and Brisbane author Erwin Cabucos who will talk about growing up Filipino.
He will also cover topics such as challenging the myth of the 'mail-order bride' and the tendency for some Filipinos to readily sacrifice their body for spiritual and family good.
Wednesday 18 June 6.30pm. $6 includes light supper. Noosa Library. Bookings essential
Ph (07) 54 424 411.
A Review on the 'Green Blood' Book
"It is a book that you can relate to as a Filipino and as an Australian. The stories have been woven into a world of two cultures which may be a very good tool for Literacy, SOSE (Studies of Society and Its Environment), and Anthropology teaching and learning in Australia." - Myrla Prianes, Brisbane-based school teacher and a community leader. May, 2008.
Reviews on Cabucos' 'Green Blood'
(Southern Star Newspaper, Brisbane, Australia. April 23, 2008.)Religious persecution, racism and poverty come under the microscope through the eyes of a Filipino-Australian in his new book, as Jackie Miller reports.
Imagine a level of school yard bullying that would lead a 12-year-old boy to seek out the services of a barber willing to perform a backyard circumcision without the benefit of anaesthetic.
This harrowing scenario is one of a series of glimpses into life growing up in the Philippines as told by expatriate Filipino teacher and author Erwin Cabucos of Brisbane, Australia.
In his second book, Green Blood and Other Stories, Cabucos explores a range of themes, mainly using children as the observers, conduits and questionaires of adult behaviour, religious beliefs and traditional thought patterns.
"Why is God white?" asks one of Cabucos' child characters, with no adequate response forthcoming from the Filipino priest under question.
Cabucos who was born into a catholic family in a Muslim-dominated area of the Philippines, came to Australia on a university scholarship aged 20.
"At first I was very lonely. I turned to books to alleviate that but I couldn't find something that I could relate to, so I started writing my own stories," he said.
Imagine a level of school yard bullying that would lead a 12-year-old boy to seek out the services of a barber willing to perform a backyard circumcision without the benefit of anaesthetic.
This harrowing scenario is one of a series of glimpses into life growing up in the Philippines as told by expatriate Filipino teacher and author Erwin Cabucos of Brisbane, Australia.
In his second book, Green Blood and Other Stories, Cabucos explores a range of themes, mainly using children as the observers, conduits and questionaires of adult behaviour, religious beliefs and traditional thought patterns.
"Why is God white?" asks one of Cabucos' child characters, with no adequate response forthcoming from the Filipino priest under question.
Cabucos who was born into a catholic family in a Muslim-dominated area of the Philippines, came to Australia on a university scholarship aged 20.
"At first I was very lonely. I turned to books to alleviate that but I couldn't find something that I could relate to, so I started writing my own stories," he said.
"I came to love the purging process of examining issues ranging from religion to peer group pressure, racism, and poverty versus opulence."
.
In the years that followed, Cabucos married Debbie, an Australian he met while at university, and they now have two children.
Green Blood is a collection of 15 stories that celebrate Filipino culture while laying bare the issues of religious hatred, racial snobbery, poverty, prejudice and persecution of those who dare to be different.
In one story, 'The Bleached Hills of Cotabato', a Filipino family prepares to deliver its teenage daughter to the airport to meet a much older Australian man who has courted her on the Internet. Only the young girl's brother questions the union and is told it will go ahead because of the man's perceived wealth and Caucasian "good looks".
"My stories are a reminder not to accept everything at face value," Cabucos said.
Green Blood and Other Stories will be launched at the Brisbane Square Library Theatrette on June 7 at 12:30 PM.
New Book on the Philippine-Australian Experience
Contemporary experiences of Filipino-Australians in Australia and in the Philippines are finally brought into the open through a newly released Australian book Green Blood and Other Stories.
Written by a Brisbane based Filipino-Australian high school English teacher Erwin Cabucos, the book explores issues on identity, racism and multiculturalism and racism in schools. The narratives also touch on the experiences in the Catholic tradition, social justice, father-child relationship and Muslim-Christian relationship.
Placing your face closely to the crucifix can be daunting so as having a terrorist in your house, asking you to bless the souls of Christian soldiers he had killed. How about plucking your pet spider off the nose of your father’s remains?
Why does it take for Marvin to see Reynaldo crucified before Marvin decides to march against war on Iraq? “I don’t know,” says Alex who thinks that the Catholic church started racism by using white-skinned Jesus and Mary in the churches, privileging the white over the black or brown race.
How did Emmanuel end up having his penis skin sliced behind his bully schoolmates? “I don’t know,” says Larry. “All I know is our toilet is holy because mum leaves some blessed palm leaves all over its wall.”
Fifteen short stories are packed in this 219 paged A5 paperback, published by Manila Prints in Sydney.
“Erwin deals with some very complex issues in this book and he never tries to paint anything as all black or all white…. funny and tragic at the same time,” says Pippa Kay, Author of Doubt and Conviction: The Kalajzich Inquiry, Sydney.
Cabucos was born and raised in the Muslim region of Southern Philippines and he first came to Australia on a scholarship, then after marrying his Australian wife. He completed degrees in Psychology from Notre Dame University in the Philippines and Communications and Education from New England University in Australia. He now works as an English and Religion teacher at a Catholic High School in Brisbane’s Bayside. He’s 34.
The book presents stories from the points-of-view of groups often marginalised or silenced in our mainstream and popular culture. “Really, they are literary pieces that I enjoyed writing over a number of years with the hope to also bring enjoyment to many readers of good writing ,” says Cabucos.
Coral Hartley, the publishing editor of The Write Angle Magazine in Brisbane read 'The Bleached Hills of Cotabato' short story and comments that it is “meaty, different and topical”.
Cecilia Brainard, author of When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, University of Michigan Press, USA, comments: “Erwin Cabucos' stories treasure the notion of the family. They are well grounded in contemporary history, so that after reading his work, one has a better understanding of the Filipino-Australian experience, and of Filipino experience in Muslim Mindanao.”
“I love the ‘reality’ and immediacy of the style, the use of language, and the way a sense of place is created. The stories are beautifully structured - a real joy to read. So alive, touching and funny,” says Judith Cheyne, Director of E-lucidate Web and Print Communications in Brisbane.
“I would like to see this book gain wide coverage in Australia with a place on High School reading lists,” says Joye Alit, Editor of Wordit, Australia. Filipinos are Australia’s second largest and perhaps the most well integrated non-English speaking migrants.
Meet the author and hear the President of the English Teachers Association of Queensland Garry Collins launch and discuss the book at 12:30PM on Saturday 7 June at the Brisbane Square Library. Entry is free.
Green Blood and Other Stories may be ordered from your local bookstore by quoting ISBN 978-0-9804827-0-6.
Copies are available from the following booksellers:
Manila Prints, Brisbane and Sydney. Phone 02 9313 8179.
Shearer's at Norton Bookstore, Sydney. Phone 02 9572 7766.
Collins Bookseller, Melbourne. Phone 03 9654 7400.
Abbey's Bookshop, Sydney. Phone 02 9264 3111 or 1800 426 657.
Manila Prints, Manila. Phone +63 2 8682 212.
Seekbooks.com.au, Online. Phone 02 9889 3566 Fax: 02 9889 3577
PALH Books, Sta. Monica, California. Phone (310) 452-1195
You may also order it from your local bookstore by qouting ISBN 978-0-9804827-0-6.
Written by a Brisbane based Filipino-Australian high school English teacher Erwin Cabucos, the book explores issues on identity, racism and multiculturalism and racism in schools. The narratives also touch on the experiences in the Catholic tradition, social justice, father-child relationship and Muslim-Christian relationship.
Placing your face closely to the crucifix can be daunting so as having a terrorist in your house, asking you to bless the souls of Christian soldiers he had killed. How about plucking your pet spider off the nose of your father’s remains?
Why does it take for Marvin to see Reynaldo crucified before Marvin decides to march against war on Iraq? “I don’t know,” says Alex who thinks that the Catholic church started racism by using white-skinned Jesus and Mary in the churches, privileging the white over the black or brown race.
How did Emmanuel end up having his penis skin sliced behind his bully schoolmates? “I don’t know,” says Larry. “All I know is our toilet is holy because mum leaves some blessed palm leaves all over its wall.”
Fifteen short stories are packed in this 219 paged A5 paperback, published by Manila Prints in Sydney.
“Erwin deals with some very complex issues in this book and he never tries to paint anything as all black or all white…. funny and tragic at the same time,” says Pippa Kay, Author of Doubt and Conviction: The Kalajzich Inquiry, Sydney.
Cabucos was born and raised in the Muslim region of Southern Philippines and he first came to Australia on a scholarship, then after marrying his Australian wife. He completed degrees in Psychology from Notre Dame University in the Philippines and Communications and Education from New England University in Australia. He now works as an English and Religion teacher at a Catholic High School in Brisbane’s Bayside. He’s 34.
The book presents stories from the points-of-view of groups often marginalised or silenced in our mainstream and popular culture. “Really, they are literary pieces that I enjoyed writing over a number of years with the hope to also bring enjoyment to many readers of good writing ,” says Cabucos.
Coral Hartley, the publishing editor of The Write Angle Magazine in Brisbane read 'The Bleached Hills of Cotabato' short story and comments that it is “meaty, different and topical”.
Cecilia Brainard, author of When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, University of Michigan Press, USA, comments: “Erwin Cabucos' stories treasure the notion of the family. They are well grounded in contemporary history, so that after reading his work, one has a better understanding of the Filipino-Australian experience, and of Filipino experience in Muslim Mindanao.”
“I love the ‘reality’ and immediacy of the style, the use of language, and the way a sense of place is created. The stories are beautifully structured - a real joy to read. So alive, touching and funny,” says Judith Cheyne, Director of E-lucidate Web and Print Communications in Brisbane.
“I would like to see this book gain wide coverage in Australia with a place on High School reading lists,” says Joye Alit, Editor of Wordit, Australia. Filipinos are Australia’s second largest and perhaps the most well integrated non-English speaking migrants.
Meet the author and hear the President of the English Teachers Association of Queensland Garry Collins launch and discuss the book at 12:30PM on Saturday 7 June at the Brisbane Square Library. Entry is free.
Green Blood and Other Stories may be ordered from your local bookstore by quoting ISBN 978-0-9804827-0-6.
Copies are available from the following booksellers:
Manila Prints, Brisbane and Sydney. Phone 02 9313 8179.
Shearer's at Norton Bookstore, Sydney. Phone 02 9572 7766.
Collins Bookseller, Melbourne. Phone 03 9654 7400.
Abbey's Bookshop, Sydney. Phone 02 9264 3111 or 1800 426 657.
Manila Prints, Manila. Phone +63 2 8682 212.
Seekbooks.com.au, Online. Phone 02 9889 3566 Fax: 02 9889 3577
PALH Books, Sta. Monica, California. Phone (310) 452-1195
You may also order it from your local bookstore by qouting ISBN 978-0-9804827-0-6.
From Foreign Shores: Stories of Migration
Dr. Peta Stephenson's Speech at the Brisbane Writer's Festival on 15 September 2007. Stephenson is the Author of The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia's Indigenous-Asian Story, UNSW Press, 2007.
Hi everyone. It’s really wonderful to be here today, especially in the company of such distinguished writers. In keeping with today’s theme, I’m going to be talking about two kinds of migration, two types of migration that are not usually discussed together. The first is the more traditional form of migration that we are all familiar with –the migration to Australia of people from foreign shores. The second kind of migration I will refer to – and we’ll discuss later how these two forms of migration are intimately connected – is an enforced internal migration, where people are taken from familiar to foreign places inside Australia.
It was actually Pauline Hanson who first led me on my journey of considering how these two forms of migration, that from outside Australia, and the other a form of exile within, are connected – the journey that led to my writing of The Outsiders Within. And since we are in the home of Hansonism, this is the perfect place to share this story with you.
As you will no doubt recall, until recently when she added Muslim communities to her long list of Australia’s least wanted migrants, Hanson targeted that nebulous group called ‘Asians’. Besides being concerned that we were about to be ‘swamped’ by Asians, she castigated them for refusing to speak English, and for living in ghettos and not assimilating. Her other main political target though, was Indigenous people. She argued that they were costing hard-working taxpayers money because of their receipt of social security payments, and other ‘special benefits’ ‘no matter how minute the Aboriginal blood’.
Unlike Hanson, I had never really considered Aborigines and Asians together. I thought about Australian history as an encounter between Indigenous and Anglo-Celtic people on the one hand, and as another encounter, unfolding more recently, between white settler and Asian interests. I hadn’t really considered them in the one story. What did Hanson know that I didn’t? Was there a long history of engagement between these two communities in Australia? And, if so, had white Australians always been anxious, paranoid even, about them in the way Hanson appeared to be? The extraordinary stories I uncovered in writing The Outsiders Within provided a resounding yes to both questions.
Hanson did not so much introduce, as respond to the racism and resentment that many of her voters were already feeling. She exploited widespread, if politically submerged, anxieties about Indigenous Australians as the internal ‘Other’ and Asians as the external ‘Other’. Indigenous Australians, intent on getting back their land, were plotting a kind of invasion from within, while Asians, who were just as intent on taking the country, were invading it through unchecked migration. Hanson had, no doubt unwittingly, articulated the very dis-ease at the heart of the white nation, which, unable to confront its own illegitimate beginnings and colonial theft, always fears what it has taken can be taken away.
The fear of outsiders within, whether coming from the outback or Asia’s teeming hordes is nothing new. My book tells how 100 years before Hanson’s rather dramatic entrance onto the political stage, other Queensland politicians were voicing their concerns about precisely these communities, largely with reference to the burgeoning pearl-shelling industry in the Torres Strait. In fact Queensland was the first state (closely followed by Western Australia and then the Northern Territory) to introduce legislation designed to prevent Aboriginal and Asian people from engaging in working and sexual partnerships. The exemption of the pearl-shelling industry from the so-called white Australia policy saw the arrival of thousands of Asian indentured labourers each year in places like Broome, Darwin and Thursday Island. The men came from Japan, China, Indonesia, West Timor, Singapore, the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
In the absence of Asian women, the indentured labourers readily entered relationships with Aboriginal women. To those seeking to engineer Australia’s racial and social identity, these ‘immoral’ unions were to be stopped at all costs. They led to increases in venereal and other diseases, meant that Aboriginal women were not available for the sexual satisfaction of white men and, worst of all, led to an increase in the number of so-called ‘piebald’, ‘mongrel’ or ‘coloured’ children who, it was feared, might outnumber and swamp the white population.
It is important to remember that the North and Northwest of Australia were thinly populated by whites until the post-World War II period. Asians not only represented a territorial threat and sexual competition, they were also an economic threat – particularly when they employed Aboriginal workers. This raised the ire of local farmers and station managers who found it difficult to keep Aboriginal workers in their employ. If Aborigines worked for Chinese market gardeners, Japanese shopkeepers and other Asians, they would be unavailable for white economic endeavours and, at the same time, would contribute to the material success of Asian businesses.
These are just some of the arguments white politicians and Aboriginal protectors used to justify their introduction of legislation designed to keep Aborigines and Asians apart. But what were the symbolic issues at stake? What did Indigenous and Asian communities represent in the white imagination? What fear was at the heart of the government’s strident attempts to separate Aborigines and Asians? My book suggests that these policies of separation were the legal expression of a constant anxiety about the land being taken away.
Here’s how it works. In justifying their unlawful expropriation of Aboriginal lands, white colonists or invaders insisted that the land was empty and there for the taking. In order to maintain this lie and deny the presence of the Indigenous people, colonists introduced the legal dictum terra nullius; they murdered Indigenous people; tried to forget about them by packing them off to remote reserves and missions, or by writing them out of Australian history altogether. And when all of that didn’t work they tried to make Indigenous people disappear by assimilating them and turning them into white people.
Belief in the myth of Australia’s emptiness led inexorably to the widespread fear that someone else might come and fill it up. The fear, if you like, of the invader being invaded in turn. Anxiety about the arrival of unwelcome outsiders intent on becoming insiders, went hand in hand with another sustaining myth of Australian national identity –that Australia is isolated. It is isolated of course from Britain, but not as we all know (and as white colonists were acutely aware at the time) from Threatening Asia, the Yellow Peril, the Asian menace.
And here’s where we come back to our two forms of migration. On the one hand the state looked outward, attempting to prohibit the migration of Asians altogether, or when expediency dictated otherwise (as in the case of the pearl-shelling industry), to at least manage and control how they migrated here. Asian pearl-shellers arrived here as bonded or indentured labourers. They had little power over the terms of their labour contracts and were obliged to remain working in the pearl-shelling industry for the period of their indenture. Local governments and the pearling masters wanted the Asian migrants for their labour only. They did not want them forging societies or creating a sense of community.
And to prevent this they created another whole class of people who were internally exiled. The state and federal governments did not just look outward, they also turned their segregating gaze inward, controlling the movement and marriages of Indigenous people. In a sense then, one kind of migration precipitated another. The migration of Asians from foreign shores led to the internal migration – or perhaps exile is a better word – of Aboriginal and Islander people. As punishment for committing the crime of engaging in relationships with Asians, many Indigenous women and their Aboriginal-Asian children in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, became involuntary migrants—people sent away from their traditional country, language and kin, to live in exile in foreign places on remote reserves and missions.
Territorial anxieties about the land being taken away are still with us. It is no accident that the government has recently made such strident attempts to prevent asylum seekers, refugees and other so-called queue jumpers from gaining entry to, and a foot hold in, Australia. Asians, the more traditional source of anxiety, have now largely been replaced in the white imagination by others from different foreign shores, but the concern about losing the land to outsiders remains unchanged.
Nor is it a coincidence that the government’s recent intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities has included attempts to further diminish land rights and abolish the permit system that regulates access to Indigenous communities. It’s another in a long line of strategies designed to guarantee white unilateral possession of the nation – all done to deny our own migration here from foreign shores.
(Dr. Peta Stephenson is an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. Her work has been widely published in specialist journals and edited collections.)
Hi everyone. It’s really wonderful to be here today, especially in the company of such distinguished writers. In keeping with today’s theme, I’m going to be talking about two kinds of migration, two types of migration that are not usually discussed together. The first is the more traditional form of migration that we are all familiar with –the migration to Australia of people from foreign shores. The second kind of migration I will refer to – and we’ll discuss later how these two forms of migration are intimately connected – is an enforced internal migration, where people are taken from familiar to foreign places inside Australia.
It was actually Pauline Hanson who first led me on my journey of considering how these two forms of migration, that from outside Australia, and the other a form of exile within, are connected – the journey that led to my writing of The Outsiders Within. And since we are in the home of Hansonism, this is the perfect place to share this story with you.
As you will no doubt recall, until recently when she added Muslim communities to her long list of Australia’s least wanted migrants, Hanson targeted that nebulous group called ‘Asians’. Besides being concerned that we were about to be ‘swamped’ by Asians, she castigated them for refusing to speak English, and for living in ghettos and not assimilating. Her other main political target though, was Indigenous people. She argued that they were costing hard-working taxpayers money because of their receipt of social security payments, and other ‘special benefits’ ‘no matter how minute the Aboriginal blood’.
Unlike Hanson, I had never really considered Aborigines and Asians together. I thought about Australian history as an encounter between Indigenous and Anglo-Celtic people on the one hand, and as another encounter, unfolding more recently, between white settler and Asian interests. I hadn’t really considered them in the one story. What did Hanson know that I didn’t? Was there a long history of engagement between these two communities in Australia? And, if so, had white Australians always been anxious, paranoid even, about them in the way Hanson appeared to be? The extraordinary stories I uncovered in writing The Outsiders Within provided a resounding yes to both questions.
Hanson did not so much introduce, as respond to the racism and resentment that many of her voters were already feeling. She exploited widespread, if politically submerged, anxieties about Indigenous Australians as the internal ‘Other’ and Asians as the external ‘Other’. Indigenous Australians, intent on getting back their land, were plotting a kind of invasion from within, while Asians, who were just as intent on taking the country, were invading it through unchecked migration. Hanson had, no doubt unwittingly, articulated the very dis-ease at the heart of the white nation, which, unable to confront its own illegitimate beginnings and colonial theft, always fears what it has taken can be taken away.
The fear of outsiders within, whether coming from the outback or Asia’s teeming hordes is nothing new. My book tells how 100 years before Hanson’s rather dramatic entrance onto the political stage, other Queensland politicians were voicing their concerns about precisely these communities, largely with reference to the burgeoning pearl-shelling industry in the Torres Strait. In fact Queensland was the first state (closely followed by Western Australia and then the Northern Territory) to introduce legislation designed to prevent Aboriginal and Asian people from engaging in working and sexual partnerships. The exemption of the pearl-shelling industry from the so-called white Australia policy saw the arrival of thousands of Asian indentured labourers each year in places like Broome, Darwin and Thursday Island. The men came from Japan, China, Indonesia, West Timor, Singapore, the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
In the absence of Asian women, the indentured labourers readily entered relationships with Aboriginal women. To those seeking to engineer Australia’s racial and social identity, these ‘immoral’ unions were to be stopped at all costs. They led to increases in venereal and other diseases, meant that Aboriginal women were not available for the sexual satisfaction of white men and, worst of all, led to an increase in the number of so-called ‘piebald’, ‘mongrel’ or ‘coloured’ children who, it was feared, might outnumber and swamp the white population.
It is important to remember that the North and Northwest of Australia were thinly populated by whites until the post-World War II period. Asians not only represented a territorial threat and sexual competition, they were also an economic threat – particularly when they employed Aboriginal workers. This raised the ire of local farmers and station managers who found it difficult to keep Aboriginal workers in their employ. If Aborigines worked for Chinese market gardeners, Japanese shopkeepers and other Asians, they would be unavailable for white economic endeavours and, at the same time, would contribute to the material success of Asian businesses.
These are just some of the arguments white politicians and Aboriginal protectors used to justify their introduction of legislation designed to keep Aborigines and Asians apart. But what were the symbolic issues at stake? What did Indigenous and Asian communities represent in the white imagination? What fear was at the heart of the government’s strident attempts to separate Aborigines and Asians? My book suggests that these policies of separation were the legal expression of a constant anxiety about the land being taken away.
Here’s how it works. In justifying their unlawful expropriation of Aboriginal lands, white colonists or invaders insisted that the land was empty and there for the taking. In order to maintain this lie and deny the presence of the Indigenous people, colonists introduced the legal dictum terra nullius; they murdered Indigenous people; tried to forget about them by packing them off to remote reserves and missions, or by writing them out of Australian history altogether. And when all of that didn’t work they tried to make Indigenous people disappear by assimilating them and turning them into white people.
Belief in the myth of Australia’s emptiness led inexorably to the widespread fear that someone else might come and fill it up. The fear, if you like, of the invader being invaded in turn. Anxiety about the arrival of unwelcome outsiders intent on becoming insiders, went hand in hand with another sustaining myth of Australian national identity –that Australia is isolated. It is isolated of course from Britain, but not as we all know (and as white colonists were acutely aware at the time) from Threatening Asia, the Yellow Peril, the Asian menace.
And here’s where we come back to our two forms of migration. On the one hand the state looked outward, attempting to prohibit the migration of Asians altogether, or when expediency dictated otherwise (as in the case of the pearl-shelling industry), to at least manage and control how they migrated here. Asian pearl-shellers arrived here as bonded or indentured labourers. They had little power over the terms of their labour contracts and were obliged to remain working in the pearl-shelling industry for the period of their indenture. Local governments and the pearling masters wanted the Asian migrants for their labour only. They did not want them forging societies or creating a sense of community.
And to prevent this they created another whole class of people who were internally exiled. The state and federal governments did not just look outward, they also turned their segregating gaze inward, controlling the movement and marriages of Indigenous people. In a sense then, one kind of migration precipitated another. The migration of Asians from foreign shores led to the internal migration – or perhaps exile is a better word – of Aboriginal and Islander people. As punishment for committing the crime of engaging in relationships with Asians, many Indigenous women and their Aboriginal-Asian children in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, became involuntary migrants—people sent away from their traditional country, language and kin, to live in exile in foreign places on remote reserves and missions.
Territorial anxieties about the land being taken away are still with us. It is no accident that the government has recently made such strident attempts to prevent asylum seekers, refugees and other so-called queue jumpers from gaining entry to, and a foot hold in, Australia. Asians, the more traditional source of anxiety, have now largely been replaced in the white imagination by others from different foreign shores, but the concern about losing the land to outsiders remains unchanged.
Nor is it a coincidence that the government’s recent intervention into Northern Territory Aboriginal communities has included attempts to further diminish land rights and abolish the permit system that regulates access to Indigenous communities. It’s another in a long line of strategies designed to guarantee white unilateral possession of the nation – all done to deny our own migration here from foreign shores.
(Dr. Peta Stephenson is an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. Her work has been widely published in specialist journals and edited collections.)
Australia's Racist Past
Erwin Cabucos' review of Peta Stephenson's The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia's Indigenous Australian Story, University of NSW Press, Sydney, 2007. RRP 39.95.
Appeared in Word's Worth - The Journal of the English Teachers Association of Queensland, December 2007 Issue, page 79, under a different title.
Remember Senator Pauline Hanson who said in her maiden speech in 1996 that Australia is in danger from being swamp by Asians? Remember her asking the government to stop giving help to the aborigines because it only separates the nation? Who can forget Professor Geoffrey Blainey and John Howard in the 1980’s who campaigned to lessen the intake of Asian immigration because Asians are only a burden to our welfare system.
White Australians’ negative views about Indigenous and Asian Australians are not new. They are traceable from the time the white population had started to settle in this land. The fact is, Asians had been trading and having sexual encounters with the Aboriginal population since the 1600’s. Goods and languages were exchanged and interracial families burgeoned.
At the turn of the 1900s, white settlers thought that since it was their land they claimed they discovered, they should have had those opportunities. They introduced laws that prohibited Asian men from having sexual relationship with aboriginal women and Asians from continuing to hold maritime trade with the indigenous population. Various reasons were cited, including the idea that Asians harmed the health of the indigenous population. It was later made clear that Aboriginal women were only reserved for aboriginal men and white men.
Families destroyed; husbands went back to Asia, leaving heartbroken wives; fathers were never to be seen again until around twenty years ago when grandchildren of Asian and aboriginal descent began to search for their heritage.
Peta Stephenson’s new book The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia’s Indigenous-Asian Story, published by the University of New South Wales Press takes the reader into an engaging journey of experiencing the struggles of Indigenous and Asian Australians against the racist policies of their white, fellow Australians. Stephenson uses personal interviews, photographs, literature, art, mementos and other items in order to bring to life stories that have often been silenced in the story of our nation.
Asian Australians had been locked up for being Asians. Indigenous Australians had been dispossessed because they don’t deserve recognition in the white effort’s to preserve the purity of the white race.
World War 2 brought paranoia to white Australians: Asians were yellow perils and aborigines were traitors along with the Japanese invaders that tried to advance into Darwin. Just because they had the same colours and slant eyes, happily settled Japanese Australians were separated from their families. Their children were taken away from their indigenous mothers. Families shattered.
This is a book that boldly tells the institutionalised racism that permeated in this country for many years. It bravely tells the emotional impacts of those scrupulous treatments of the white Australians to their coloured counterparts who became the outsiders within.
With its language accuracy and cultural sensitivity, this is a piece of writing that has the voices of the marginalised sections of our society, de-stabilising ideology. It is an excellent eye-opener to every migrant who thinks that Australia simply evolved from farting koalas and hay-fever causing wattle trees.
Its blurb “White Australia has a black history, but Black Australia has an Asian one” is indeed unfaltering.
The paranoia continues. “Channel 7’s Border Security is a symptomatic phenomenon. In a ‘circus freakshow’ fashion, the program depicts Australia’s border officials exposing people as drug runners, white slavers or terrorists eroding our national security. But the appeal of the show surely lies less in its voyeuristic revelation of human venality, and more in the justification it provides for our incipient border insecurities”(p.158).
I think this book is a pertinent contemporary read for every Australian.
Appeared in Word's Worth - The Journal of the English Teachers Association of Queensland, December 2007 Issue, page 79, under a different title.
Remember Senator Pauline Hanson who said in her maiden speech in 1996 that Australia is in danger from being swamp by Asians? Remember her asking the government to stop giving help to the aborigines because it only separates the nation? Who can forget Professor Geoffrey Blainey and John Howard in the 1980’s who campaigned to lessen the intake of Asian immigration because Asians are only a burden to our welfare system.
White Australians’ negative views about Indigenous and Asian Australians are not new. They are traceable from the time the white population had started to settle in this land. The fact is, Asians had been trading and having sexual encounters with the Aboriginal population since the 1600’s. Goods and languages were exchanged and interracial families burgeoned.
At the turn of the 1900s, white settlers thought that since it was their land they claimed they discovered, they should have had those opportunities. They introduced laws that prohibited Asian men from having sexual relationship with aboriginal women and Asians from continuing to hold maritime trade with the indigenous population. Various reasons were cited, including the idea that Asians harmed the health of the indigenous population. It was later made clear that Aboriginal women were only reserved for aboriginal men and white men.
Families destroyed; husbands went back to Asia, leaving heartbroken wives; fathers were never to be seen again until around twenty years ago when grandchildren of Asian and aboriginal descent began to search for their heritage.
Peta Stephenson’s new book The Outsiders Within: Telling Australia’s Indigenous-Asian Story, published by the University of New South Wales Press takes the reader into an engaging journey of experiencing the struggles of Indigenous and Asian Australians against the racist policies of their white, fellow Australians. Stephenson uses personal interviews, photographs, literature, art, mementos and other items in order to bring to life stories that have often been silenced in the story of our nation.
Asian Australians had been locked up for being Asians. Indigenous Australians had been dispossessed because they don’t deserve recognition in the white effort’s to preserve the purity of the white race.
World War 2 brought paranoia to white Australians: Asians were yellow perils and aborigines were traitors along with the Japanese invaders that tried to advance into Darwin. Just because they had the same colours and slant eyes, happily settled Japanese Australians were separated from their families. Their children were taken away from their indigenous mothers. Families shattered.
This is a book that boldly tells the institutionalised racism that permeated in this country for many years. It bravely tells the emotional impacts of those scrupulous treatments of the white Australians to their coloured counterparts who became the outsiders within.
With its language accuracy and cultural sensitivity, this is a piece of writing that has the voices of the marginalised sections of our society, de-stabilising ideology. It is an excellent eye-opener to every migrant who thinks that Australia simply evolved from farting koalas and hay-fever causing wattle trees.
Its blurb “White Australia has a black history, but Black Australia has an Asian one” is indeed unfaltering.
The paranoia continues. “Channel 7’s Border Security is a symptomatic phenomenon. In a ‘circus freakshow’ fashion, the program depicts Australia’s border officials exposing people as drug runners, white slavers or terrorists eroding our national security. But the appeal of the show surely lies less in its voyeuristic revelation of human venality, and more in the justification it provides for our incipient border insecurities”(p.158).
I think this book is a pertinent contemporary read for every Australian.
You are invited...
to the launch of Erwin Cabucos' Green Blood and Other Stories, 12:30PM Saturday 7 June 2008 at the Brisbane Square Library, Brisbane. Free entry. To book, please phone the library on (07) 3403 4166. Book signing, reading, author interview and if we're lucky, a dance performance.
Copies are available from the following booksellers:
Manila Prints, Brisbane and Sydney. Phone 02 9313 8179.
Shearer's at Norton Bookstore, Sydney. Phone 02 9572 7766.
Collins Bookseller, Melbourne. Phone 03 9654 7400.
Abbey's Bookshop, Sydney. Phone 02 9264 3111 or 1800 426 657.
Manila Prints, Manila. Phone +63 2 8682 212.
PALH Books, Sta. Monica, California. Phone (310) 452-1195
You may also order it from your local bookstore by qouting ISBN 978-0-9804827-0-6.
Copies are available from the following booksellers:
Manila Prints, Brisbane and Sydney. Phone 02 9313 8179.
Shearer's at Norton Bookstore, Sydney. Phone 02 9572 7766.
Collins Bookseller, Melbourne. Phone 03 9654 7400.
Abbey's Bookshop, Sydney. Phone 02 9264 3111 or 1800 426 657.
Manila Prints, Manila. Phone +63 2 8682 212.
PALH Books, Sta. Monica, California. Phone (310) 452-1195
You may also order it from your local bookstore by qouting ISBN 978-0-9804827-0-6.
Australasian Writing Competitions: February-May 2008
14 Feb Eaglehawk Dahlia and Arts Literary Competition: short story, poetry and bush verses. http://dahlia.bendigo.net.au/Literary2008.pdf
22 Feb The Kathleen Mitchell Award: manuscript. http://www.trust.com.au/philanthropy/awards/kathleen_mitchell/
22 Feb Alan Marshall Short Story Award: http://www.nillumbik.vic.gov.au/Page/page.asp?Page_Id=454&h=0
28 Feb FreeXpresSion Literary Competition: rhyming poetry, free verse poetry, haiku and others. For more information and entry form, email frexprsn@tpg.com.au
14 Mar Bundaberg Writers Club Short Story Competition. For information and entry forms, email novels@sandycurtis.com.
23 Mar A Bush with Verse - Tenterfield Art Prize and Poetry Competition. http://www.tenterfield.nsw.gov.au/.
28 Mar Voices on the Coast Writing Competition: unpublished manuscript for younger readers. Email voices@immanuel.qld.edu.au.
27 Mar The Inverawe Nature Poetry Competition 2008. http://www.inverawe.com.au/Poetry.htm
4 Apr Cancer Council Arts Awards: film, art, short story and indigenous art, children's art and children's writing. http://www.cancervic.org.au/artsawards
15 Apr Omega Writers Short Story and Poetry Competition. Entries based around any dreams, schemes or marines themes. http://www.alpha2omega.org.au/.
23 April The R Carson Gold Short Story Competition. http://www.connectqld.org.au/asp/index.asp?pgid=19928
30 May Bush Lantern Award. Poetry. Email dino123@dodo.com.au
Lastly, this has got the major literary awards' links:
http://www.solutionsindata.com/writing_opportunities/major_literary_awards.htm
Goodluck, everyone.
22 Feb The Kathleen Mitchell Award: manuscript. http://www.trust.com.au/philanthropy/awards/kathleen_mitchell/
22 Feb Alan Marshall Short Story Award: http://www.nillumbik.vic.gov.au/Page/page.asp?Page_Id=454&h=0
28 Feb FreeXpresSion Literary Competition: rhyming poetry, free verse poetry, haiku and others. For more information and entry form, email frexprsn@tpg.com.au
14 Mar Bundaberg Writers Club Short Story Competition. For information and entry forms, email novels@sandycurtis.com.
23 Mar A Bush with Verse - Tenterfield Art Prize and Poetry Competition. http://www.tenterfield.nsw.gov.au/.
28 Mar Voices on the Coast Writing Competition: unpublished manuscript for younger readers. Email voices@immanuel.qld.edu.au.
27 Mar The Inverawe Nature Poetry Competition 2008. http://www.inverawe.com.au/Poetry.htm
4 Apr Cancer Council Arts Awards: film, art, short story and indigenous art, children's art and children's writing. http://www.cancervic.org.au/artsawards
15 Apr Omega Writers Short Story and Poetry Competition. Entries based around any dreams, schemes or marines themes. http://www.alpha2omega.org.au/.
23 April The R Carson Gold Short Story Competition. http://www.connectqld.org.au/asp/index.asp?pgid=19928
24 Apr - 31 Jul Golden Point Award, Singapore: short story and poetry in English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil. To confirm, this year's window for submissions, visit: http://www.nac.gov.sg/eve/eve08.asp.
29 April 2007 University of the Philippines Centennial Literary Prize. http://upd.edu.ph/~icw.30 May Bush Lantern Award. Poetry. Email dino123@dodo.com.au
Lastly, this has got the major literary awards' links:
http://www.solutionsindata.com/writing_opportunities/major_literary_awards.htm
Goodluck, everyone.
'Does It Matter What the Dead Think?'
A short story 
by Erwin Cabucos.
Appeared in A La Carte: Food and Fiction, Edited by Cecilia Brainard and Marily Orosa, Anvil Publishing, Manila, 2007. ISBN 971-27 18779.
Read on air, the Queensland Storyteller, Radio 4RPH, Brisbane. 5 November 2007.
Her hand still holds the telephone handset. The sound of it dropping onto its base seems like a closing door, banging and locking her into her guilt and uselessness. The clear blue skies outside her Armidale window seem to have turned overcast like the grey skies of her General Santos town in the Philippines. She cups her mouth as she lowers herself to the floor and feels the tears roll down her cheeks. Her mother's cry on the phone keeps playing in her mind.
‘Inday, it’s too late. We tried, but Nene didn't make it to the hospital.’ The old lady's controlled voice shows the sincerity of their endeavours to save her sister despite their poverty. ‘We could have saved her if we’d known beforehand.’
Melissa, or Inday to her family in Gen San, knows that her sister and her sister's baby could have been saved had her sister been admitted to the lying-in clinic. There, midwives would have been able to determine her state of pregnancy earlier and prescribe a caesarian procedure at the hospital. But Melissa had insisted that giving birth at home with the assistance of a midwife would be okay. This is what most women do in the Philippines, and Nene agreed. Now of course everyone disagrees with the decision. A member of the family has fallen victim to the idea, and it was Nene, the one Melissa had wanted to come to Australia to join her. It was Nene who Melissa had periodically tried to gather cash for - from delivering pamphlets to washing dishes casually at the bistro, to shelving at her local supermarket — just to be able to help her sister out as she struggled to complete a nursing degree. Being the only one overseas, Melissa feels she has the opportunity and responsibility to alleviate her family's poverty in the Philippines. Her mum always mentions the inadequacy of the income they get from selling dried fish in the market. The very family income that had helped raise her and her two brothers and sister from a shanty house.
When Melissa married Ted, an Australian council worker whose name she first saw in a local magazine and to whom she started writing, she imagined sending lots of money home. Her mum could start making renovations to the toilet, perhaps changing it from an out-house to one that'd actually be located inside the house. Those boys who used to peep at her as she was doing her business would all be gone and sorry. Then she'd be sending more money to buy clothes for her parents and her nieces and nephews, or simply to add capital to her parents' business. She knew that they'd been wanting to buy an extra-large fridge to store smoked fish. She even imagined giving her younger brother capital to start a poultry business. However, all these dreams had slowly faded through the years with the nearly retiring Ted. For her to work full time would mean killing Ted's pension money off, which he always detests. So what's the point of looking for full time work? Casual work here and there within the area of this small NSW country town has been a consolation for her. Her dreams have been shrouded with the thick blanket of sadness and frustration.
So, she hasn't been able to send the cash needed for the costs of Nene's ultrasound and admission to the lying-in clinic. At that time though, she thought, Nene's husband could get by. Besides, her main concern was really only to send Nene to school and she had done that. She graduated. The next thing in her mind was Nene's application for a nursing job. So she had saved nearly five hundred dollars for it already, but what's the point when the intended person has already gone?
‘What's the point!’ she mutters. ‘What's the bloody point!?’ she yells. She feels the firm lump forming in her throat, seemingly choking her. She bangs the floor with the side of her curled palm. She lowers her head, her chin touching her chest. She closes her eyes and breathes in as she feels the tears that go past her stretching lips. She pinches the collar of her shirt to wipe the saltiness of her tears. She thinks the salt is because her soul has been inadequate and she has been frustrated in making things a little sweeter for her family.
She breathes in, trying to contain the emotion. But she can't. She has to let it out. ‘Diyos ko po,’ she bursts out like a calf mooing for its mother in the field. ‘Oh my God, help us.’
She hears a knock at her door.
‘Melissa, is everything all right?’ It's the next door neighbour, Mary, who might have been alerted by Melissa's outburst. Mary is slow in many ways but she's alert to times of distress. Melissa suspects the old lady is in her early seventies and she seems to know many things about the neighbourhood, such as Ted being gone fishing near Ebor Falls.
Melissa pinches her collar again and wipes her face with it. She clears her sinuses, gets up and drags her feet to the door.
‘Mary, my sister passed away this morning,’ Melissa croaks while pushing the screen door to let the lady in.
Mary quickly clasps her fingers around Melissa's arms. ‘Oh, and the baby?’
Melissa nods. ‘Yes, it died, too.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Mary holds Melissa's hands, slightly pulling her towards the couch. ‘What happened?’
‘The baby was breach, Mary, and it was all too late for everyone back home to save her. Imagine my father's tricycle taking a woman in labour to the hospital, how uncomfortable it would be.’
‘Wasn't there supposed to be a midwife?’
‘Obviously, she wasn't much help, was she? Not when she’s not equipped with resources like a hospital. It's really different and difficult over there.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Mary looks on the floor, showing a sense of disappointment in her face. ‘I wish I can understand the ways things are in the Philippines, Melissa. I should visit it one day with you.’
‘Yes,’ Melissa mumbles, thinking that it would be quite hard at her age to go out and about town let alone visiting her poor place in the Philippines. The smell of the dried fish would surely revolt this old lady. Melissa remembers the first day she cooked some dried herring and how Mary sprayed her whole house with toilet spray even her garage. Ted was later convinced to buy a round Weber.
‘So, are you going home?’ Mary looks Melissa in the eye. ‘I think you should. It's not even a question to ask. She is your only sister. I think it's just right for you to go home.’
Melissa bites the tip of her forefinger and crosses her legs. She should go home, really, she thinks. She hasn't been home even once. Things have been tough for her. Every time she has the chance to go home - like when her pocket allows her to - she's faced with a dilemma about rather sending the money home. It was usually for Nene's course requirements, textbooks, excursion or things related to her studies. Now, the situation is no different. She's only got to add a little bit more and she'd be there in time. She'd be there seeing all her family again after ten years. She'd be seeing all the nephews and nieces she hasn't seen since birth, or her friends since growing up. How things would have changed in Gen San. If she goes this time it will be to a funeral, the funeral of the sister she loved and worked for. And if she goes, she might need more money to help with the burial: the interment, the catering, and other stuff.
‘Ahhh,’ she sighs. ‘I don’t have anything to add to my current savings. I might be able to borrow a little bit from my friends, but that's it. But enough to reach two thousand would be impossible. I'd be dreaming. I might not go home, Mary. I wouldn't have enough.’ Melissa mumbles.
‘Surely, you and Ted could come up with something.’
‘No, I think I'll stay.’
‘Would you be happy about that, though? Obviously you wouldn’t want regrets lingering in your mind ever after.’
Melissa is unable to continue. She knows she can't go. The money she'd be spending would be better spent if sent to her family. But she feels she should go because Nene would have wanted her to go. Melissa knows her presence would be much appreciated by her sister. With this reunion, her sister would be saying to forget about expensive burial. I just want to see you in person. But Melissa consciously knows her sister is dead now. Does it really matter what the dead thinks? Does the dead really think? It does matter, though, how the living thinks about what the dead might think. This is based on the knowledge and feelings we have of the dead before their passing. And that's what matters with us living. That's what makes life meaningful. It encompasses death. We love the person whether he or she is present or absent.
‘Would you like some tea, Mary?’ Melissa stands, composing herself as if nothing has happened. It's the usual thing she'd say when Mary visits her house.
‘Don’t worry, dear. I don’t want to be a bother to you, especially at this time.’
‘Oh, that's nothing, Mary. That's life.’ Melissa walks to the kitchen to make a cuppa. Mary follows.
Melissa continues: ‘I suppose we have to take into consideration that death is just a part of life. Also, for me living so far away from the Philippines is like death, too. And what's killing me is the lack of funds to be able to travel over there to see them.’
Mary looks at Melissa's face intently.
Melissa remembers when the Australian embassy twice rejected her brothers’ and parents' application to visit her in Armidale. ‘In a way,’ she adds, ‘the toughness of immigration against Filipinos visiting their families in Australia adds to my death in living away from home.’
‘I suppose you have to accept the fact that you are living in Australia now and your family is really in another part of the world. Whether you like it or not your worlds are kind of divided.’ Mary sips her tea and puts the cup down on the bench.
‘I don’t really like to think of it that way, Mary, I'm sorry, but I feel that it is our deep human need, and a part of our human dignity to have no restrictions to seeing our family as often as we can. If we as humans built aviation technology and then developed immigration policies only to restrict families from getting in touch with each other, then I think we got it all twisted. We're missing the point.’ Melissa shakes her head while nesting her cup in her palms.
‘I'm sure there'd be reasons behind restricting Filipino visitor visas. One of them perhaps is the number of Filipino visitors overstaying their visas.’ Mary blinks her eyes as she looks in the sink, her face showing her disapproval of the situation.
‘But they should think of wiser solutions for genuine family visitors who stick by the law.’
Mary sighs, looking at the sky, which is now turning overcast. ‘Here is what the forecaster is talking about,’ she says. ‘I'd better head home and collect my washing.’
Melissa watches Mary waddle to the door, waving goodbye. She straightens her feet on the two adjoining chairs and gulps her remaining tea. She drops the cup on the table strongly the way she dropped the handset.
She was sad, but now she's angry. She should voice what she really wants. Over the years, she has been quiet about being able to earn lots of money to help her family survive, and to be able to see them in person. That isn't much to ask, she thinks. She wants to go home! She wants to attend the funeral of her sister. She wants to see her family again! She should tell Ted. She'll tell him when he comes home.
Ted is still munching the last pasta he has shot into his mouth. He stares at her intently and raises his brow, as if he's asking if anything's wrong. She's not been saying anything much throughout the meal and she's only been speaking intermittently since he arrived. ‘Have I told you this pasta is delicious?’ he mutters.
‘Thanks,’ she says, folding her arms.
He shrugs his shoulder, tips his bowl a little, twirls the pasta with the fork, and stuffs the last noodles into his mouth. He smiles. ‘That was divine, honey, thank you.’ He grabs his lemonade, pulls out his chair and walks straight to the lounge where the sounds of the Australian Open are heard. ‘Would you care to join me after the wash up?’
‘I'm not washing the dishes tonight,’ she says, looking down, still with folded arms.
‘Beg your pardon?’ Ted's brows draw together.
‘I think it's time for you to give a bit of help here.’
‘Since when did the flow of the tide change?’
‘I'm tired tonight. I don’t feel like washing and someone has to do it.’
‘What's up yours?’
Melissa suddenly freezes and feels the tears nearly escaping her eyelids. ‘My sister died and I want to go back to the Philippines!’
The cup in his hand nearly falls as he tips backwards. ‘Oh, I'm sorry, darling. Goodness me, what happened?’ His eyes look sincere as he is getting up and walking towards her.
Melissa sighs. ‘Childbirth. Got no money. Died. Gone. Life sucks.’ She has been strong in withholding her emotion, but this time, she just can’t control it. She stares at one spot of the room while her tears flow. ‘I want to go home. I've never been home and it’s been ages.’
‘Could you afford it?’ His brows meet again and he sits back in the dining chair. ‘How could you do it if you don’t have the money?’
She hates that 'you' thing all the time. For many years now, she holds her contempt about the 'you' and 'me' things in their marriage. 'His mails', 'my mails'. I am not allowed to open his mails, as he is not allowed to open my mails. But we're married. It's bizarre. Isn't it togetherness in sickness and in health, and in having mails from anywhere around the world? She remembers her parents back home. Things are always 'ours' in marriage. ‘Our children', 'our house', 'our lunch', 'our rice'. Here in Australia, 'his privacy', 'my privacy'. What privacy? I already know how wrinkly your balls are and how lumpy your thing is. That's why we can't have kids.
‘I'm asking you, Melissa. How can you afford it?’ Ted wakes her up.
‘I'll manage, Ted. I've already got nearly enough. Just a bit more and I'll be swaying my tails off Armidale Airport, past Sydney Airport, to General Santos City Airport, down to our front door. I'll be there hugging my mother and father and brothers.’
‘I think you better wake up, Melissa. I don’t think you can ever do that. And if you are thinking of being able to borrow money off me, forget it. You know I have saved all my life to prepare for this retirement and now is my perfect chance to tour around Australia. I don’t want to postpone that simply because of an unexpected thing in your family. You know we're leaving in four months time. Things have been pretty much set up for that. The campervan is already smiling with welcoming arms for us.’
‘Ted, I can't bear to think about the pleasure-seeking lifestyle we have here in Australia and the survival lifestyle my loved ones have to endure over there. It's weird. It doesn't feel right.’
‘Darling, you cannot solve the poverty of the Philippines. You simply have to accept the fact that it is a poor country, a third world country. And if everyone is struggling over there, then, so be it. Maybe they are destined to do so.’
Melissa feels sick. She doesn't know what to say. They didn't choose to be poor. They don’t love nor want to be poor. She feels that she probably doesn't know many things about world poverty, economics and that sort of thing, but she does know she's happy every time she sends money home. She feels she's done her bit to make things a little bit better back home.
‘Darling, you'd be better off sending your money. You can’t make your sister alive, that's for sure. She'd probably appreciate it better if you spend it towards the funeral and the needy family left behind than having to see your sorry face.’
She snorts, bawls and runs to the bedroom. There's a heat running along her back, feeling like thorns, pricking her. She suddenly feels exhausted, too tired to say something back to Ted. There's no point arguing with him. He's never been to the Philippines. His narcissism is overpowering. It always dominates their talk. From his superannuation, to his savings, to his financial advisers to investment options. It's all about him and his investments and his pension. It's all about his pensions that hamper her to move and work in Brisbane or Sydney. She's only in her late thirties. What's stopping her? She sighs.
She shakes her head and thinks that there's no point crying over spilled milk. She allows silence to take over everything she feels now. Everywhere she looks seems cloudy and overcast. She just wants peace and nothing to think about. That is what she has learned in the process of being resilient for so many years: silence of the mind. She closes her eyes and lets the sounds of the TV go along with the breeze that fans and cools her this summer night. She hears Ted's footsteps coming towards her, perhaps to check how she is. She hears him leaving and slumping his bottom again on the couch in front of the television.
She breathes in. She feels her heart racing. She imagines her blood rushing. She tells them to slow down. A church lyric lulls her:
Peace is flowing like a river;
Flowing out to you and me.
His peace is flowing like a river;
Flowing out to you and me.
She hears the train, chugging its way back to Sydney. The wind slowly fades the sound and turns it into only a momentary ambience, making her angry, frustrated — a disappointed soul wandering through rolling hills. What if she leaves him and moves on her own to Brisbane or Sydney or anywhere? She doesn't need to be with him. He can look after himself with his investment options and his travel around Australia plans. She can just be a dressmaker, in the shopping centres, maybe. That's something she's good at. She can do it. And why not? ‘Thank you Melissa for mending the hem of my work skirt. You do an excellent job.’ That would be a delight – a recognition of her individuality. ***
Copyright: Erwin Cabucos 2007. Brisbane, Australia. erwincabucos@yahoo.com.au.
by Erwin Cabucos. Appeared in A La Carte: Food and Fiction, Edited by Cecilia Brainard and Marily Orosa, Anvil Publishing, Manila, 2007. ISBN 971-27 18779.
Read on air, the Queensland Storyteller, Radio 4RPH, Brisbane. 5 November 2007.
Her hand still holds the telephone handset. The sound of it dropping onto its base seems like a closing door, banging and locking her into her guilt and uselessness. The clear blue skies outside her Armidale window seem to have turned overcast like the grey skies of her General Santos town in the Philippines. She cups her mouth as she lowers herself to the floor and feels the tears roll down her cheeks. Her mother's cry on the phone keeps playing in her mind.
‘Inday, it’s too late. We tried, but Nene didn't make it to the hospital.’ The old lady's controlled voice shows the sincerity of their endeavours to save her sister despite their poverty. ‘We could have saved her if we’d known beforehand.’
Melissa, or Inday to her family in Gen San, knows that her sister and her sister's baby could have been saved had her sister been admitted to the lying-in clinic. There, midwives would have been able to determine her state of pregnancy earlier and prescribe a caesarian procedure at the hospital. But Melissa had insisted that giving birth at home with the assistance of a midwife would be okay. This is what most women do in the Philippines, and Nene agreed. Now of course everyone disagrees with the decision. A member of the family has fallen victim to the idea, and it was Nene, the one Melissa had wanted to come to Australia to join her. It was Nene who Melissa had periodically tried to gather cash for - from delivering pamphlets to washing dishes casually at the bistro, to shelving at her local supermarket — just to be able to help her sister out as she struggled to complete a nursing degree. Being the only one overseas, Melissa feels she has the opportunity and responsibility to alleviate her family's poverty in the Philippines. Her mum always mentions the inadequacy of the income they get from selling dried fish in the market. The very family income that had helped raise her and her two brothers and sister from a shanty house.
When Melissa married Ted, an Australian council worker whose name she first saw in a local magazine and to whom she started writing, she imagined sending lots of money home. Her mum could start making renovations to the toilet, perhaps changing it from an out-house to one that'd actually be located inside the house. Those boys who used to peep at her as she was doing her business would all be gone and sorry. Then she'd be sending more money to buy clothes for her parents and her nieces and nephews, or simply to add capital to her parents' business. She knew that they'd been wanting to buy an extra-large fridge to store smoked fish. She even imagined giving her younger brother capital to start a poultry business. However, all these dreams had slowly faded through the years with the nearly retiring Ted. For her to work full time would mean killing Ted's pension money off, which he always detests. So what's the point of looking for full time work? Casual work here and there within the area of this small NSW country town has been a consolation for her. Her dreams have been shrouded with the thick blanket of sadness and frustration.
So, she hasn't been able to send the cash needed for the costs of Nene's ultrasound and admission to the lying-in clinic. At that time though, she thought, Nene's husband could get by. Besides, her main concern was really only to send Nene to school and she had done that. She graduated. The next thing in her mind was Nene's application for a nursing job. So she had saved nearly five hundred dollars for it already, but what's the point when the intended person has already gone?
‘What's the point!’ she mutters. ‘What's the bloody point!?’ she yells. She feels the firm lump forming in her throat, seemingly choking her. She bangs the floor with the side of her curled palm. She lowers her head, her chin touching her chest. She closes her eyes and breathes in as she feels the tears that go past her stretching lips. She pinches the collar of her shirt to wipe the saltiness of her tears. She thinks the salt is because her soul has been inadequate and she has been frustrated in making things a little sweeter for her family.
She breathes in, trying to contain the emotion. But she can't. She has to let it out. ‘Diyos ko po,’ she bursts out like a calf mooing for its mother in the field. ‘Oh my God, help us.’
She hears a knock at her door.
‘Melissa, is everything all right?’ It's the next door neighbour, Mary, who might have been alerted by Melissa's outburst. Mary is slow in many ways but she's alert to times of distress. Melissa suspects the old lady is in her early seventies and she seems to know many things about the neighbourhood, such as Ted being gone fishing near Ebor Falls.
Melissa pinches her collar again and wipes her face with it. She clears her sinuses, gets up and drags her feet to the door.
‘Mary, my sister passed away this morning,’ Melissa croaks while pushing the screen door to let the lady in.
Mary quickly clasps her fingers around Melissa's arms. ‘Oh, and the baby?’
Melissa nods. ‘Yes, it died, too.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Mary holds Melissa's hands, slightly pulling her towards the couch. ‘What happened?’
‘The baby was breach, Mary, and it was all too late for everyone back home to save her. Imagine my father's tricycle taking a woman in labour to the hospital, how uncomfortable it would be.’
‘Wasn't there supposed to be a midwife?’
‘Obviously, she wasn't much help, was she? Not when she’s not equipped with resources like a hospital. It's really different and difficult over there.’
‘Oh, dear.’ Mary looks on the floor, showing a sense of disappointment in her face. ‘I wish I can understand the ways things are in the Philippines, Melissa. I should visit it one day with you.’
‘Yes,’ Melissa mumbles, thinking that it would be quite hard at her age to go out and about town let alone visiting her poor place in the Philippines. The smell of the dried fish would surely revolt this old lady. Melissa remembers the first day she cooked some dried herring and how Mary sprayed her whole house with toilet spray even her garage. Ted was later convinced to buy a round Weber.
‘So, are you going home?’ Mary looks Melissa in the eye. ‘I think you should. It's not even a question to ask. She is your only sister. I think it's just right for you to go home.’
Melissa bites the tip of her forefinger and crosses her legs. She should go home, really, she thinks. She hasn't been home even once. Things have been tough for her. Every time she has the chance to go home - like when her pocket allows her to - she's faced with a dilemma about rather sending the money home. It was usually for Nene's course requirements, textbooks, excursion or things related to her studies. Now, the situation is no different. She's only got to add a little bit more and she'd be there in time. She'd be there seeing all her family again after ten years. She'd be seeing all the nephews and nieces she hasn't seen since birth, or her friends since growing up. How things would have changed in Gen San. If she goes this time it will be to a funeral, the funeral of the sister she loved and worked for. And if she goes, she might need more money to help with the burial: the interment, the catering, and other stuff.
‘Ahhh,’ she sighs. ‘I don’t have anything to add to my current savings. I might be able to borrow a little bit from my friends, but that's it. But enough to reach two thousand would be impossible. I'd be dreaming. I might not go home, Mary. I wouldn't have enough.’ Melissa mumbles.
‘Surely, you and Ted could come up with something.’
‘No, I think I'll stay.’
‘Would you be happy about that, though? Obviously you wouldn’t want regrets lingering in your mind ever after.’
Melissa is unable to continue. She knows she can't go. The money she'd be spending would be better spent if sent to her family. But she feels she should go because Nene would have wanted her to go. Melissa knows her presence would be much appreciated by her sister. With this reunion, her sister would be saying to forget about expensive burial. I just want to see you in person. But Melissa consciously knows her sister is dead now. Does it really matter what the dead thinks? Does the dead really think? It does matter, though, how the living thinks about what the dead might think. This is based on the knowledge and feelings we have of the dead before their passing. And that's what matters with us living. That's what makes life meaningful. It encompasses death. We love the person whether he or she is present or absent.
‘Would you like some tea, Mary?’ Melissa stands, composing herself as if nothing has happened. It's the usual thing she'd say when Mary visits her house.
‘Don’t worry, dear. I don’t want to be a bother to you, especially at this time.’
‘Oh, that's nothing, Mary. That's life.’ Melissa walks to the kitchen to make a cuppa. Mary follows.
Melissa continues: ‘I suppose we have to take into consideration that death is just a part of life. Also, for me living so far away from the Philippines is like death, too. And what's killing me is the lack of funds to be able to travel over there to see them.’
Mary looks at Melissa's face intently.
Melissa remembers when the Australian embassy twice rejected her brothers’ and parents' application to visit her in Armidale. ‘In a way,’ she adds, ‘the toughness of immigration against Filipinos visiting their families in Australia adds to my death in living away from home.’
‘I suppose you have to accept the fact that you are living in Australia now and your family is really in another part of the world. Whether you like it or not your worlds are kind of divided.’ Mary sips her tea and puts the cup down on the bench.
‘I don’t really like to think of it that way, Mary, I'm sorry, but I feel that it is our deep human need, and a part of our human dignity to have no restrictions to seeing our family as often as we can. If we as humans built aviation technology and then developed immigration policies only to restrict families from getting in touch with each other, then I think we got it all twisted. We're missing the point.’ Melissa shakes her head while nesting her cup in her palms.
‘I'm sure there'd be reasons behind restricting Filipino visitor visas. One of them perhaps is the number of Filipino visitors overstaying their visas.’ Mary blinks her eyes as she looks in the sink, her face showing her disapproval of the situation.
‘But they should think of wiser solutions for genuine family visitors who stick by the law.’
Mary sighs, looking at the sky, which is now turning overcast. ‘Here is what the forecaster is talking about,’ she says. ‘I'd better head home and collect my washing.’
Melissa watches Mary waddle to the door, waving goodbye. She straightens her feet on the two adjoining chairs and gulps her remaining tea. She drops the cup on the table strongly the way she dropped the handset.
She was sad, but now she's angry. She should voice what she really wants. Over the years, she has been quiet about being able to earn lots of money to help her family survive, and to be able to see them in person. That isn't much to ask, she thinks. She wants to go home! She wants to attend the funeral of her sister. She wants to see her family again! She should tell Ted. She'll tell him when he comes home.
Ted is still munching the last pasta he has shot into his mouth. He stares at her intently and raises his brow, as if he's asking if anything's wrong. She's not been saying anything much throughout the meal and she's only been speaking intermittently since he arrived. ‘Have I told you this pasta is delicious?’ he mutters.
‘Thanks,’ she says, folding her arms.
He shrugs his shoulder, tips his bowl a little, twirls the pasta with the fork, and stuffs the last noodles into his mouth. He smiles. ‘That was divine, honey, thank you.’ He grabs his lemonade, pulls out his chair and walks straight to the lounge where the sounds of the Australian Open are heard. ‘Would you care to join me after the wash up?’
‘I'm not washing the dishes tonight,’ she says, looking down, still with folded arms.
‘Beg your pardon?’ Ted's brows draw together.
‘I think it's time for you to give a bit of help here.’
‘Since when did the flow of the tide change?’
‘I'm tired tonight. I don’t feel like washing and someone has to do it.’
‘What's up yours?’
Melissa suddenly freezes and feels the tears nearly escaping her eyelids. ‘My sister died and I want to go back to the Philippines!’
The cup in his hand nearly falls as he tips backwards. ‘Oh, I'm sorry, darling. Goodness me, what happened?’ His eyes look sincere as he is getting up and walking towards her.
Melissa sighs. ‘Childbirth. Got no money. Died. Gone. Life sucks.’ She has been strong in withholding her emotion, but this time, she just can’t control it. She stares at one spot of the room while her tears flow. ‘I want to go home. I've never been home and it’s been ages.’
‘Could you afford it?’ His brows meet again and he sits back in the dining chair. ‘How could you do it if you don’t have the money?’
She hates that 'you' thing all the time. For many years now, she holds her contempt about the 'you' and 'me' things in their marriage. 'His mails', 'my mails'. I am not allowed to open his mails, as he is not allowed to open my mails. But we're married. It's bizarre. Isn't it togetherness in sickness and in health, and in having mails from anywhere around the world? She remembers her parents back home. Things are always 'ours' in marriage. ‘Our children', 'our house', 'our lunch', 'our rice'. Here in Australia, 'his privacy', 'my privacy'. What privacy? I already know how wrinkly your balls are and how lumpy your thing is. That's why we can't have kids.
‘I'm asking you, Melissa. How can you afford it?’ Ted wakes her up.
‘I'll manage, Ted. I've already got nearly enough. Just a bit more and I'll be swaying my tails off Armidale Airport, past Sydney Airport, to General Santos City Airport, down to our front door. I'll be there hugging my mother and father and brothers.’
‘I think you better wake up, Melissa. I don’t think you can ever do that. And if you are thinking of being able to borrow money off me, forget it. You know I have saved all my life to prepare for this retirement and now is my perfect chance to tour around Australia. I don’t want to postpone that simply because of an unexpected thing in your family. You know we're leaving in four months time. Things have been pretty much set up for that. The campervan is already smiling with welcoming arms for us.’
‘Ted, I can't bear to think about the pleasure-seeking lifestyle we have here in Australia and the survival lifestyle my loved ones have to endure over there. It's weird. It doesn't feel right.’
‘Darling, you cannot solve the poverty of the Philippines. You simply have to accept the fact that it is a poor country, a third world country. And if everyone is struggling over there, then, so be it. Maybe they are destined to do so.’
Melissa feels sick. She doesn't know what to say. They didn't choose to be poor. They don’t love nor want to be poor. She feels that she probably doesn't know many things about world poverty, economics and that sort of thing, but she does know she's happy every time she sends money home. She feels she's done her bit to make things a little bit better back home.
‘Darling, you'd be better off sending your money. You can’t make your sister alive, that's for sure. She'd probably appreciate it better if you spend it towards the funeral and the needy family left behind than having to see your sorry face.’
She snorts, bawls and runs to the bedroom. There's a heat running along her back, feeling like thorns, pricking her. She suddenly feels exhausted, too tired to say something back to Ted. There's no point arguing with him. He's never been to the Philippines. His narcissism is overpowering. It always dominates their talk. From his superannuation, to his savings, to his financial advisers to investment options. It's all about him and his investments and his pension. It's all about his pensions that hamper her to move and work in Brisbane or Sydney. She's only in her late thirties. What's stopping her? She sighs.
She shakes her head and thinks that there's no point crying over spilled milk. She allows silence to take over everything she feels now. Everywhere she looks seems cloudy and overcast. She just wants peace and nothing to think about. That is what she has learned in the process of being resilient for so many years: silence of the mind. She closes her eyes and lets the sounds of the TV go along with the breeze that fans and cools her this summer night. She hears Ted's footsteps coming towards her, perhaps to check how she is. She hears him leaving and slumping his bottom again on the couch in front of the television.
She breathes in. She feels her heart racing. She imagines her blood rushing. She tells them to slow down. A church lyric lulls her:
Peace is flowing like a river;
Flowing out to you and me.
His peace is flowing like a river;
Flowing out to you and me.
She hears the train, chugging its way back to Sydney. The wind slowly fades the sound and turns it into only a momentary ambience, making her angry, frustrated — a disappointed soul wandering through rolling hills. What if she leaves him and moves on her own to Brisbane or Sydney or anywhere? She doesn't need to be with him. He can look after himself with his investment options and his travel around Australia plans. She can just be a dressmaker, in the shopping centres, maybe. That's something she's good at. She can do it. And why not? ‘Thank you Melissa for mending the hem of my work skirt. You do an excellent job.’ That would be a delight – a recognition of her individuality. ***
Copyright: Erwin Cabucos 2007. Brisbane, Australia. erwincabucos@yahoo.com.au.
Erwin Cabucos' Profile
Erwin Cabucos is the author of ‘Green Blood and Other Stories’, ISBN 978-0-9804827-0-6, to be released by The Manila Prints, Sydney, in April 2008.
Erwin teaches in secondary schools in Brisbane. He writes short stories for ‘Bayanihan News’, a Filipino-Australian Newspaper, distributed Australia-wide, and edits ‘Tanglaw’, the publication of the Filipino-Australian Teachers Association of Queensland, Inc.
Erwin’s first book ‘The Beach Spirit and Other Stories’ ISBN 978-1-74027-084-7 was published in Australia by Ginninderra Press in 2001.
His fiction appeared in a number of publications in the US, in the Philippines, and Australia, including ‘Growing Up Filipino: Stories for Young Adults’, Philippine-American Literary House, California, 2003, ‘Ala Carte: Food and Fiction’, Anvil Publishing, Manila, 2007, and ‘From the Editors: Migrant Communities and Emerging Australian Literature’, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney, 2008.
His short story ‘Chrislam’ appeared in the Jan 14 issue of the Philippine Graphic Magazine, Manila. Another story ‘Green Blood’ will appear in March in the same magazine.
Erwin was born and raised in the Muslim Region of Southern Philippines. He joined a catholic priesthood program briefly before shifting to Psychology. He garnered a scholarship to study Communication in Australia where he met his Australian wife.
He has completed degrees in Psychology (cum laude) at Notre Dame University, Philippines, in Communication at the University of Newcastle, and in Education at the University of New England, Australia.
He now lives with his wife and two young children in Brisbane. He’s 34.
Erwin teaches in secondary schools in Brisbane. He writes short stories for ‘Bayanihan News’, a Filipino-Australian Newspaper, distributed Australia-wide, and edits ‘Tanglaw’, the publication of the Filipino-Australian Teachers Association of Queensland, Inc.
Erwin’s first book ‘The Beach Spirit and Other Stories’ ISBN 978-1-74027-084-7 was published in Australia by Ginninderra Press in 2001.
His fiction appeared in a number of publications in the US, in the Philippines, and Australia, including ‘Growing Up Filipino: Stories for Young Adults’, Philippine-American Literary House, California, 2003, ‘Ala Carte: Food and Fiction’, Anvil Publishing, Manila, 2007, and ‘From the Editors: Migrant Communities and Emerging Australian Literature’, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney, 2008.
His short story ‘Chrislam’ appeared in the Jan 14 issue of the Philippine Graphic Magazine, Manila. Another story ‘Green Blood’ will appear in March in the same magazine.
Erwin was born and raised in the Muslim Region of Southern Philippines. He joined a catholic priesthood program briefly before shifting to Psychology. He garnered a scholarship to study Communication in Australia where he met his Australian wife.
He has completed degrees in Psychology (cum laude) at Notre Dame University, Philippines, in Communication at the University of Newcastle, and in Education at the University of New England, Australia.
He now lives with his wife and two young children in Brisbane. He’s 34.
'Chrislam'
A short story by Erwin Cabucos
Appeared in The Philippine Graphic Magazine, 14 January 2008.
Stephen wakes up suddenly. He hears hurrying footsteps in the kitchen and in the lounge room. Spoons and pots clatter. He looks around his bedroom; his clock says 2am.
‘There’s someone downstairs!’ he whispers. ‘Is it Frank making coffee at this ridiculous time of the morning?’ He frowns. It sounds like there is more than one person. He holds his breath, hearing his heart pound. ‘I don’t think it’s Frank. And if it’s not Frank, who is it?’
The full moon creates dancing shadows of tamarind tree leaves on his wall. He looks at the crucifix in the corner. ‘My God,’ he says, placing his finger on his lip, ‘they’re probably taking our appliances away.’ He remembers leaving his laptop switched on next to his organiser and mobile phone downstairs before he went to bed.
He thinks about the last two years he and his fellow missionary priest, Frank, have spent in this Southern Philippine city. It’s a long way from New Zealand for both of them. Stephen cares for Muslim and Christian street children that flock to his shelter night after night. Frank teaches ethics and morality at a nearby university. They say mass at the Cathedral on weekdays and Sundays. It has been a full on mission for them. Lately, news of break-ins and stabbing has been reported in the area. Last week, the American sisters’ convent was broken into and the Mother Superior was stabbed in the chest and sexually assaulted. Caucasian foreigners are particularly targeted. He remembers the baby in the box that turned up at their gate one morning. Its lips were purple and it was swarming with ants. He wishes he had heard it cry.
He bites his lip. ‘Whoever they are,’ Stephen murmurs, ‘I hope they won’t come up and hurt us.’ He wonders if Frank is awake and hears the same thing. He tiptoes to Frank’s room.
‘Are you awake?’ Stephen hisses. ‘There are people downstairs. I think we’re being robbed.’
The door creaks. Frank drags Stephen in and shuts the door. ‘Shhh.’ Frank whispers. ‘Just let them do what they want to do, and be quiet.’
‘Are you nuts? We won't have anything to our name tomorrow!’
‘What if they're armed?’
‘Yeah, but we have to get rid of them. We just can't stay here.’
Frank shakes his head. ‘It's not worth it.’
‘They may even be scared if we shout or rattle a few things.’
‘Still, I wouldn’t do it.’ Frank paces back and forth.
‘But how the hell can we stop them?’ Stephen sits on the side of the bed. He sees Frank's buttocks. ‘For Christ's sake, Frankie, put some pants on.’
‘Sorry,’ says Frank. He stands up and rummages for some shorts in the cupboard.
‘And you with nothing on might actually scare the shits out of them!’
‘You know how humid it is here.’ Frank flaps his briefs’ elastic.
Stephen puts his ear to the door and listens intently. ‘Do you have a stick or pole here?’
‘We have the coconut broom with a long bamboo handle in the pantry. The handle is light but it’s thick. It could kill someone if you hit hard.’
‘I’ll get it.’ Stephen opens the door and pokes his head out. He crawls to the pantry, biting his lip. The pantry door creaks and bangs.
Frank hears the noise. ‘Stephen you clumsy creature!’ he murmurs, shaking his head. ‘Now we’re dead.’ His heart pounds.
Stephen tiptoes back to the room, broom in his hand and silver chalices tucked into his shorts.
‘What have you got?’ Frank says.
Stephen lifts his shirt up. They both laugh.
‘We can’t use holy Eucharistic objects to smash people,’ says Frank.
‘It’s self-defence, Frankie.’
‘We better wait for a while,’ Frank sighs. ‘The noise might have scared them off. It sounds like they’ve gone. Just another interesting night in this presbytery. They’re probably poor and hungry. If our things helped them, God bless them.’
‘Frankie, this is not a charity. We need things.’
They sigh.
Someone knocks on the door.
‘Father.’ It's a male voice, strong and deep. ‘Father, you're there?’
Frank nudges Stephen: ‘Answer it.’
Stephen shakes his head. ‘You answer it. He’s calling you.’
Frank bites his lip.
‘I’m right here behind you.’
‘Hello, father?’
Stephen opens the door. ‘Yes.’
‘I need him to bless this.’ The man with a sparsely growing moustache and in khaki uniform smiles. His M16 rifle dangles from his chest. He is carrying a maroon string bag. Another man stands behind.
Frank comes out and he can’t believe his eyes. ‘Kazan Abdullah!’ Frank’s eyes widen. ‘How are you? It’s been a while since I saw you last — in our Morality 401 class at Notre Dame University.’
‘I’m fine, Father. Just involved with a group for a good cause now.’
‘Ahuh.’ Frank leans his head, waiting for more details.
‘MILF. Moro Islamic Liberation Front.’
Frank nods without saying a word.
‘I know, Father, you’re probably sad one of your students turned out to be an enemy of the government.’
‘So, you’re happy?’
He nods. ‘It’s better to be doing something for my people, than nothing. Filipino Muslims are really marginalised in this country.’
‘Ahuh.’
‘It’s just something that we have to do. It’s like a calling, you know.’
‘I’m just appalled by the sporadic killing from your lot and the government parties. This has got to stop, Kazan. Families and children are affected. Many of them became fatherless.’
He shrugs. He opens the bag and shuffles pieces of cloth embroidered with names.
Frank turns the lights on. He sees Sgt. De La Cruz, C., Sgt. Sarmiento, L., Cpl. Tatad, B.
‘Can you bless them, Father?’ The man sifts his fingers through the cotton tags like a rice vendor handling rice grains.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Bless them as if they are to be buried.’
‘Huh?’ Frank’s brows draw closer.
‘Well, Rasid and I,’ he says, tapping the shoulder of his companion, ‘were burying the soldiers we ambushed yesterday at Maganoy when we saw rosary beads and Perpetual Help necklaces on their necks. I thought they must be devout Catholics. Remember in our class we talked about Muslim and Christian’s common belief in the after life? If these soldiers deserve to go to heaven, I should help them go to heaven. If blessing their badges and name tags would help, then I’d do it.’
Frank sighs. How unusual, nevertheless, grand, he thinks.
‘We killed them; they were only doing their job,’ the man continues. ‘They might as well go to heaven.’ He chuckles.
Frank smirks and shakes his head, his eyes are fixed to the man. ‘Why kill them then when you actually care about them? Christians or Muslims deserve to go to heaven. We don’t need to kill each other.’
He shrugs. ‘Well, can you bless them, anyway?’
Frank sighs.
‘We were going to the city to buy some supplies: salt, antiseptics and all that. We thought we’d stop by and have this done. We haven’t got a lot of time.’
‘Okay.’ Frank kneels and lays the bag in front of them. Stephen follows. The other two remain standing.
Franks starts: ‘Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let your perpetual light shine…’
Stephen sighs as he listens to the rest of the prayer.
The phone rings. Frank finishes his prayer hurriedly and the priests stare at each other.
The men become fidgety, looking around the house. They point at the priests, their thumbs move the rifles’ levers to automatic. Stephen and Frank clasp their hands behind their heads.
‘Don’t answer it!’ says the first man. ‘Could be the police. No one should know we’re here.’
‘It could be an emergency from the children’s shelter,’ Stephen says. ‘It could be from the hospital, someone needs anointing.’
The man pouts. ‘They could be military, tracking us.’
‘I doubt it,’ says Frank. ‘Unless someone saw you coming in.’
‘Okay then, answer it.’ The first man nods.
Stephen stands up and grabs the handset. The other man follows, his rifle still points to Stephen’s head.
‘Hello, Father Stephen here.’
There is silence. The four turn into statues.
Stephen heaves for air.
‘Who is it?’ says the second man.
Stephen puts the handset back, his eyes are wide and his jaw drops.
‘Who was it?’ The second man jabs Stephen’s head with the tip of the rifle. Stephen hits the wall.
‘Please don’t hurt us. We haven’t done anything wrong.’ Stephen’s jaw quivers.
The two men look at each other.
The second man growls: ‘Fuck, it’s the military! You didn’t even try to hide us!’
Stephen kicks the second man.
The second man gets up and pulls the trigger.
Frank closes his eyes as his body jars from the thundering blows. Burning smell fills his lungs. He pants and he looks around.
Stephen twists on the ground, screaming in pain. ‘Ahhh!’ he cries, holding his thigh which is torn apart. Blood pools under him.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Frank says.
The men are gone.
Footsteps thud on the stairs. The door swings open.
‘Where are they?’ A policeman asks. Two other officers behind him, holding pistols, their eyes panning across the room. They lift the bed, open the cupboard and check the ceiling.
More footsteps roar in the hallway. The tin roof clunks.
‘Don’t worry, Father. An ambulance is on the way, just bear with us,’ an officer says. ‘We have surrounded the whole presbytery. The city night squad and a few men from the regional infantry are here.’
Frank closes his eyes and hopes that everything is just a nightmare. He hears Stephen gasping for air so he crawls to Stephen and cradles Stephen’s head. Frank puts his hand over Stephen’s mouth, saying, ‘Shush, you’re okay, Stephen. You’ll be fine. I’m here.’
Stephen hushes.
‘Fire!’ someone yells outside.
Frank shudders as gunfire blasts around the house. He ducks, worrying that if he gets hit, will he feel the pain straightaway? Have any of the others been shot? Have Kazan and his friend been caught yet? Frank prays: ‘God if this is the end of me and Stephen, bless all the people in this place. Into your hands, God, I commend our spirits.’ He makes the sign of the cross.
The firing stops.
‘Into the back street!’ Someone yells.
‘Where’s the other one?’
‘We lost him.’
Gunfire erupts on the street again. ‘Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta.’
‘At the corner!’ Someone yells.
Frank hears his heavy breathing in contrast to Stephen’s silence. Frank shakes Stephen: ‘Hold on, Stephen. Medical help is on the way.’
There is silence.
Footsteps race upstairs. ‘We got him. He’s dead, Father. But the other one got away.’
Frank doesn’t know what to say. Should he congratulate the police? Should he show remorse for the death of his former student or the companion, or should he just say nothing and pretend he is dumbfounded? He shakes his head. Killing is killing. It’s destructive. Now that one of the men is gone, have we really solved the problem. Frank feels exhausted. He asks the officer: ‘Why’s the ambulance taking so long?’
‘Soon, Father, soon.’
‘They’d better be quick.’
‘Gee, Father, we need to stop the blood loss now. Do you have a sheet?’
Frank snatches the white cotton sheet. The police tears the sheet with his knife and bandages Stephen’s leg, trying to hold it together.
As the officer winds the sheet around Stephen’s leg, Frank cries and, feeling faint, slides down onto the floor. Blood and flesh smear the wall. He howls and looks at the ceiling. ‘Oh, God!’ he says.
The ambulance siren wails on the street. In no time, two medic officers appear. Frank breaths heavily as the medic officers examine Stephen. ‘There’s a pulse. Quick, let’s go!’
He sees Stephen being carried down the stairs, on a thick white sheet with poles. Stephen looks pale. Frank follows them to the ambulance.
Outside, moonlight seeps through the coconut fronds. Clouds move. Neighbours wearing pyjamas and malong - the Muslim sarong, murmur with each other. Stephen is pushed in the back of the car. The ambulance siren takes off, reverberating in the neighbourhood.
Frank walks back into the presbytery; he wonders who the military killed.
‘Would you like the see the person, Father?
‘Where is he?’ He is disinterested but feels obliged.
The body is covered with a white sheet under the coconut tree, next to the sign beware of falling coconuts. Frank feels uncomfortable that the body is there and could be hit by falling coconuts. He kneels on one knee and moves the sheet to uncover the face. Right now, he’d rather be hit by a falling coconut than be trapped by gunfire.
Frank lays his hand over the man and says: ‘Lord, grant Kazan eternal rest and let your perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.’ Frank makes the sign of the cross. He sighs and presses the man’s eyelids until they’re closed. ‘Goodbye, Kazan,’ he murmurs, putting the cover back.***
Copyright: Erwin Cabucos, 2008, Brisbane, Australia.
(About the author: Erwin Cabucos originally hailed from North Cotabato. He writes short fiction for ‘Bayanihan News’ in Sydney. His new collection of short stories ‘Green Blood and Other Stories’ will be released by The Manila Prints in Sydney and Manila in April, 2008. He has degrees in Psychology from Notre Dame University, Philippines and Communication Arts from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Erwin lives with his Australian wife and two children in Brisbane. He’s 33. Readers’ comments are welcome: erwincabucos@yahoo.com.au.)
Appeared in The Philippine Graphic Magazine, 14 January 2008.
Stephen wakes up suddenly. He hears hurrying footsteps in the kitchen and in the lounge room. Spoons and pots clatter. He looks around his bedroom; his clock says 2am.
‘There’s someone downstairs!’ he whispers. ‘Is it Frank making coffee at this ridiculous time of the morning?’ He frowns. It sounds like there is more than one person. He holds his breath, hearing his heart pound. ‘I don’t think it’s Frank. And if it’s not Frank, who is it?’
The full moon creates dancing shadows of tamarind tree leaves on his wall. He looks at the crucifix in the corner. ‘My God,’ he says, placing his finger on his lip, ‘they’re probably taking our appliances away.’ He remembers leaving his laptop switched on next to his organiser and mobile phone downstairs before he went to bed.
He thinks about the last two years he and his fellow missionary priest, Frank, have spent in this Southern Philippine city. It’s a long way from New Zealand for both of them. Stephen cares for Muslim and Christian street children that flock to his shelter night after night. Frank teaches ethics and morality at a nearby university. They say mass at the Cathedral on weekdays and Sundays. It has been a full on mission for them. Lately, news of break-ins and stabbing has been reported in the area. Last week, the American sisters’ convent was broken into and the Mother Superior was stabbed in the chest and sexually assaulted. Caucasian foreigners are particularly targeted. He remembers the baby in the box that turned up at their gate one morning. Its lips were purple and it was swarming with ants. He wishes he had heard it cry.
He bites his lip. ‘Whoever they are,’ Stephen murmurs, ‘I hope they won’t come up and hurt us.’ He wonders if Frank is awake and hears the same thing. He tiptoes to Frank’s room.
‘Are you awake?’ Stephen hisses. ‘There are people downstairs. I think we’re being robbed.’
The door creaks. Frank drags Stephen in and shuts the door. ‘Shhh.’ Frank whispers. ‘Just let them do what they want to do, and be quiet.’
‘Are you nuts? We won't have anything to our name tomorrow!’
‘What if they're armed?’
‘Yeah, but we have to get rid of them. We just can't stay here.’
Frank shakes his head. ‘It's not worth it.’
‘They may even be scared if we shout or rattle a few things.’
‘Still, I wouldn’t do it.’ Frank paces back and forth.
‘But how the hell can we stop them?’ Stephen sits on the side of the bed. He sees Frank's buttocks. ‘For Christ's sake, Frankie, put some pants on.’
‘Sorry,’ says Frank. He stands up and rummages for some shorts in the cupboard.
‘And you with nothing on might actually scare the shits out of them!’
‘You know how humid it is here.’ Frank flaps his briefs’ elastic.
Stephen puts his ear to the door and listens intently. ‘Do you have a stick or pole here?’
‘We have the coconut broom with a long bamboo handle in the pantry. The handle is light but it’s thick. It could kill someone if you hit hard.’
‘I’ll get it.’ Stephen opens the door and pokes his head out. He crawls to the pantry, biting his lip. The pantry door creaks and bangs.
Frank hears the noise. ‘Stephen you clumsy creature!’ he murmurs, shaking his head. ‘Now we’re dead.’ His heart pounds.
Stephen tiptoes back to the room, broom in his hand and silver chalices tucked into his shorts.
‘What have you got?’ Frank says.
Stephen lifts his shirt up. They both laugh.
‘We can’t use holy Eucharistic objects to smash people,’ says Frank.
‘It’s self-defence, Frankie.’
‘We better wait for a while,’ Frank sighs. ‘The noise might have scared them off. It sounds like they’ve gone. Just another interesting night in this presbytery. They’re probably poor and hungry. If our things helped them, God bless them.’
‘Frankie, this is not a charity. We need things.’
They sigh.
Someone knocks on the door.
‘Father.’ It's a male voice, strong and deep. ‘Father, you're there?’
Frank nudges Stephen: ‘Answer it.’
Stephen shakes his head. ‘You answer it. He’s calling you.’
Frank bites his lip.
‘I’m right here behind you.’
‘Hello, father?’
Stephen opens the door. ‘Yes.’
‘I need him to bless this.’ The man with a sparsely growing moustache and in khaki uniform smiles. His M16 rifle dangles from his chest. He is carrying a maroon string bag. Another man stands behind.
Frank comes out and he can’t believe his eyes. ‘Kazan Abdullah!’ Frank’s eyes widen. ‘How are you? It’s been a while since I saw you last — in our Morality 401 class at Notre Dame University.’
‘I’m fine, Father. Just involved with a group for a good cause now.’
‘Ahuh.’ Frank leans his head, waiting for more details.
‘MILF. Moro Islamic Liberation Front.’
Frank nods without saying a word.
‘I know, Father, you’re probably sad one of your students turned out to be an enemy of the government.’
‘So, you’re happy?’
He nods. ‘It’s better to be doing something for my people, than nothing. Filipino Muslims are really marginalised in this country.’
‘Ahuh.’
‘It’s just something that we have to do. It’s like a calling, you know.’
‘I’m just appalled by the sporadic killing from your lot and the government parties. This has got to stop, Kazan. Families and children are affected. Many of them became fatherless.’
He shrugs. He opens the bag and shuffles pieces of cloth embroidered with names.
Frank turns the lights on. He sees Sgt. De La Cruz, C., Sgt. Sarmiento, L., Cpl. Tatad, B.
‘Can you bless them, Father?’ The man sifts his fingers through the cotton tags like a rice vendor handling rice grains.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Bless them as if they are to be buried.’
‘Huh?’ Frank’s brows draw closer.
‘Well, Rasid and I,’ he says, tapping the shoulder of his companion, ‘were burying the soldiers we ambushed yesterday at Maganoy when we saw rosary beads and Perpetual Help necklaces on their necks. I thought they must be devout Catholics. Remember in our class we talked about Muslim and Christian’s common belief in the after life? If these soldiers deserve to go to heaven, I should help them go to heaven. If blessing their badges and name tags would help, then I’d do it.’
Frank sighs. How unusual, nevertheless, grand, he thinks.
‘We killed them; they were only doing their job,’ the man continues. ‘They might as well go to heaven.’ He chuckles.
Frank smirks and shakes his head, his eyes are fixed to the man. ‘Why kill them then when you actually care about them? Christians or Muslims deserve to go to heaven. We don’t need to kill each other.’
He shrugs. ‘Well, can you bless them, anyway?’
Frank sighs.
‘We were going to the city to buy some supplies: salt, antiseptics and all that. We thought we’d stop by and have this done. We haven’t got a lot of time.’
‘Okay.’ Frank kneels and lays the bag in front of them. Stephen follows. The other two remain standing.
Franks starts: ‘Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let your perpetual light shine…’
Stephen sighs as he listens to the rest of the prayer.
The phone rings. Frank finishes his prayer hurriedly and the priests stare at each other.
The men become fidgety, looking around the house. They point at the priests, their thumbs move the rifles’ levers to automatic. Stephen and Frank clasp their hands behind their heads.
‘Don’t answer it!’ says the first man. ‘Could be the police. No one should know we’re here.’
‘It could be an emergency from the children’s shelter,’ Stephen says. ‘It could be from the hospital, someone needs anointing.’
The man pouts. ‘They could be military, tracking us.’
‘I doubt it,’ says Frank. ‘Unless someone saw you coming in.’
‘Okay then, answer it.’ The first man nods.
Stephen stands up and grabs the handset. The other man follows, his rifle still points to Stephen’s head.
‘Hello, Father Stephen here.’
There is silence. The four turn into statues.
Stephen heaves for air.
‘Who is it?’ says the second man.
Stephen puts the handset back, his eyes are wide and his jaw drops.
‘Who was it?’ The second man jabs Stephen’s head with the tip of the rifle. Stephen hits the wall.
‘Please don’t hurt us. We haven’t done anything wrong.’ Stephen’s jaw quivers.
The two men look at each other.
The second man growls: ‘Fuck, it’s the military! You didn’t even try to hide us!’
Stephen kicks the second man.
The second man gets up and pulls the trigger.
Frank closes his eyes as his body jars from the thundering blows. Burning smell fills his lungs. He pants and he looks around.
Stephen twists on the ground, screaming in pain. ‘Ahhh!’ he cries, holding his thigh which is torn apart. Blood pools under him.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Frank says.
The men are gone.
Footsteps thud on the stairs. The door swings open.
‘Where are they?’ A policeman asks. Two other officers behind him, holding pistols, their eyes panning across the room. They lift the bed, open the cupboard and check the ceiling.
More footsteps roar in the hallway. The tin roof clunks.
‘Don’t worry, Father. An ambulance is on the way, just bear with us,’ an officer says. ‘We have surrounded the whole presbytery. The city night squad and a few men from the regional infantry are here.’
Frank closes his eyes and hopes that everything is just a nightmare. He hears Stephen gasping for air so he crawls to Stephen and cradles Stephen’s head. Frank puts his hand over Stephen’s mouth, saying, ‘Shush, you’re okay, Stephen. You’ll be fine. I’m here.’
Stephen hushes.
‘Fire!’ someone yells outside.
Frank shudders as gunfire blasts around the house. He ducks, worrying that if he gets hit, will he feel the pain straightaway? Have any of the others been shot? Have Kazan and his friend been caught yet? Frank prays: ‘God if this is the end of me and Stephen, bless all the people in this place. Into your hands, God, I commend our spirits.’ He makes the sign of the cross.
The firing stops.
‘Into the back street!’ Someone yells.
‘Where’s the other one?’
‘We lost him.’
Gunfire erupts on the street again. ‘Ta ta ta ta ta ta ta.’
‘At the corner!’ Someone yells.
Frank hears his heavy breathing in contrast to Stephen’s silence. Frank shakes Stephen: ‘Hold on, Stephen. Medical help is on the way.’
There is silence.
Footsteps race upstairs. ‘We got him. He’s dead, Father. But the other one got away.’
Frank doesn’t know what to say. Should he congratulate the police? Should he show remorse for the death of his former student or the companion, or should he just say nothing and pretend he is dumbfounded? He shakes his head. Killing is killing. It’s destructive. Now that one of the men is gone, have we really solved the problem. Frank feels exhausted. He asks the officer: ‘Why’s the ambulance taking so long?’
‘Soon, Father, soon.’
‘They’d better be quick.’
‘Gee, Father, we need to stop the blood loss now. Do you have a sheet?’
Frank snatches the white cotton sheet. The police tears the sheet with his knife and bandages Stephen’s leg, trying to hold it together.
As the officer winds the sheet around Stephen’s leg, Frank cries and, feeling faint, slides down onto the floor. Blood and flesh smear the wall. He howls and looks at the ceiling. ‘Oh, God!’ he says.
The ambulance siren wails on the street. In no time, two medic officers appear. Frank breaths heavily as the medic officers examine Stephen. ‘There’s a pulse. Quick, let’s go!’
He sees Stephen being carried down the stairs, on a thick white sheet with poles. Stephen looks pale. Frank follows them to the ambulance.
Outside, moonlight seeps through the coconut fronds. Clouds move. Neighbours wearing pyjamas and malong - the Muslim sarong, murmur with each other. Stephen is pushed in the back of the car. The ambulance siren takes off, reverberating in the neighbourhood.
Frank walks back into the presbytery; he wonders who the military killed.
‘Would you like the see the person, Father?
‘Where is he?’ He is disinterested but feels obliged.
The body is covered with a white sheet under the coconut tree, next to the sign beware of falling coconuts. Frank feels uncomfortable that the body is there and could be hit by falling coconuts. He kneels on one knee and moves the sheet to uncover the face. Right now, he’d rather be hit by a falling coconut than be trapped by gunfire.
Frank lays his hand over the man and says: ‘Lord, grant Kazan eternal rest and let your perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.’ Frank makes the sign of the cross. He sighs and presses the man’s eyelids until they’re closed. ‘Goodbye, Kazan,’ he murmurs, putting the cover back.***
Copyright: Erwin Cabucos, 2008, Brisbane, Australia.
(About the author: Erwin Cabucos originally hailed from North Cotabato. He writes short fiction for ‘Bayanihan News’ in Sydney. His new collection of short stories ‘Green Blood and Other Stories’ will be released by The Manila Prints in Sydney and Manila in April, 2008. He has degrees in Psychology from Notre Dame University, Philippines and Communication Arts from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Erwin lives with his Australian wife and two children in Brisbane. He’s 33. Readers’ comments are welcome: erwincabucos@yahoo.com.au.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
