TAUSUG IRREDENTA

Neldy Jolo

TAUSUG IRREDENTA*

Nelson Dino Sulu

I am called what I am to be and identified as such, why call me the name that described hates in me? Did I ever agree to be called with that name? I never think so. You like me to be so because you hate me with that name. I am proud that I was born on this identity of mine – so call me such – the right one. You know what it is.

The first time you touched my shore, you called me Moro because of my faith to distinguish my identity from Indio - you changed their belief too. You replicated their doubled identity. 

"I promise from whatever ethnicity I may belong, I was Tausug, I am Tausug and I will be Tausug. I am not “a good Moro is a dead Moro” but a good Tausug is a living Tausug till the death will die!"

You said your belief is good for me as you assure, but why should you kill me? I was defending my rights to live in my belief until you vanished then banished from my homeland after more than three hundred years – the years that’s not too long to count and to wait. 

Then the eagle perched on me and befriended me while fighting the people identified from the further north of Sulu archipelago. I should not be mistaken: were they not the people that I learned named after syphilis-died King Philip II? So they were Filipino – not ME?

Because I was so sincere, I penned ink to the unprecedented tricky paper. I was so sincere but some of my kin abused it later. They wanted to grab me out of the throne and they created their own. 

I was known as cosmopolitan when you “civilized human” embraced my homeland with “education”. Am I not educated with my own respect when the time you arrived? I was so indeed. 

No, I never learned the odium until I became topic in the podium. It was because I was in the mountain; the clouds hug me and comfort me as my dead body lying in the crater. My blood drained to the ground as witness to my own soul. 

Ants, flies and other creatures witnessed my slain body – as you do. I was left burlesque in the eagle eyes and was beheaded but still a guy.

I never say goodbye to the identity and belief I swore to die, until Yamato spirit launched to do kamikaze-banzai by the descendants of daimyo but I never perished but I did a similar belief – a parang sabil spirit. 

Then you are mistaken again: I am not juramentado of your definition but at least you fear me. I oath to die for an honourable defends of truth that you put in falsity – you never frightened me of my being so.

The remnants of your cowardice still remained like the scars in your rotten flesh. You have no soul - you betrayed and swindled me but I was not deceived. 

Why do you assumed me to be good when I am dead? Who are you to say that? You are not God that created me and so you – the whole humanity.

Why do you compare me to be “a good Indian is a dead Indian”? Do I? It is all up to you. Anyway, I will fight for what is right and “to write and to say” is my right, as you do.

You made a play of the name you gave me – “Moro-moro” as what was known to be and other one was “Sultan of Sulu”. But at least you made it out of nothing that you can do – but frustrations over my effects to you. 

I defended my homeland, the treasure of the treasured culture. I was nurtured and scribed with the sweat and blood as well as tears – tears of the mujahidins, the orphans and the widows. Their tears were the ink that can never perish until forever comes to expire.

It doesn’t matter if you mocked me as such; as long as you feel my feeling that you too had felt under the foreign government. You wanted to be free as what I was leading to be. The freedom that I have been longing for is here without you giving. I was indeed free.

I was born with nostalgia found at every misty peak of mountain ranges by the Sulu Sea; the Bud Tumantangis, Bud Datu, Bud Dahu, Bud Bagsak, Bud Talipau in the island of pearls, facing the breezing sea, the Bud Bungau in the strong current of bay.

The Bud Mantalingahan in the island known with beautiful sanctuary of nature, Bud Matangal and Bud Sinangkapan in the known as the island of hope, the Bud Batulampun in the garden of flowers and the Bud Kinabalu in the land below the wind.

I am the homeland that was led by the religious strongman: Sayyid Abubakar. He eventually became Sultan Syarif Al-Hashim, the episode that cum gives birth to my nationhood and statehood.

It began with the sweet lullaby of scenery on 17 November 1405. Then he was succeeded by the honourable men in the battle – the Tausug Gagandilan that linger forever in the heart of young minds further.

That was it. I promise from whatever ethnicity I may belong, I was Tausug, I am Tausug and I will be Tausug. I am not “a good Moro is a dead Moro” but a good Tausug is a living Tausug till the death will die!

*Declamation dedicated to the Tausug Citizens that were administered by multiple foreign governments but right now reactivating their own government.

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