Fisher King of Sendakan (Novel)

The Kingfisher of Sendakan

PLOT PART I

Jabrl, fondly called Jabil by his loved ones, was of thirty three summers, a highly respected businessman in Kuala Lumpur. He was very successful in business. He and some of his partners, bought a 12-storey building of his own in downtown KL and had it reconstructed into a 40-story skyscraper. The building stands up to this day. In the story, he meets a fatal accident during an out of town business trip to Florida, USA. He was confined in a hospital in the US, thereupon he asked to be taken to Japan and upon considering himself fit to leave the health industry, he came home.

Suddenly, he decides to throw it all away, leave Kuala Lumpur and settle in Sendakan, Malaysia. He was resolved to live a simple life in Sendakan, a coastal area of Sabah in his home country, Malaysia, facing Philippine territory. It is also the place where his forefathers spent their childhood, up to their best and golden years. Sendakan to him evokes many childhood memories handed down to him by his forebears.

The decision to leave the Malaysian capital after he suffered the tragic vehicular accident came about when it brought about his gradual separation from his own wife, fiancée, family and friends.

With his lawyer’s help, he bought a large house, a small fleet of boats, then on his own, he brought three pet cats with no pedigree, one fierce Black Labrador, one light gray and white, green-eyed Alaskan sheep dog and a huge suitcase larger than any of the travelling bags he ever had before in his life and finally, an aged encyclopedia of the sea that to its collector was worth more than all the millions in the world.

Jabil settled upon the life of a gentleman fisherman commuting between Kota Kinabalu, Sendakan, Sarawak and other parts of Sabah. The small number of small fishing boats he bought through his KL lawyer, grew into a large fleet of big and small fishing vessels. His home will be in Sendakan. He brought his ailing grandfather with him -- originally a native of Sabah but settled in Kuala Lumpur long after so many rebellions had passed. Along with Grandpa Abdu, the only other one that sympathized with Jabil's condition was his Uncle Jiki and his very, very young Aunt Suhaida. Both also came with him to Sendakan.

Life as a gentleman fisherman was dangerous, and many fishermen in both Tawi-Tawi (Philippines) and Sandakan were frequently robbed, raided, attacked, sometimes maimed or worse, killed by pirates in the high seas. This happened even close to home. So ordinary fishermen usually carried small or very high powered firearms and a large volume of ammunition, explosives like fragmentation grenades and similar weaponry for self-defense.

Jabil's fishing business that started with ten small fishing boats that grew in time to nine hundred fishing boats, large, medium and small became a logistical headache because of the rampant piracy in the seas near and beyond Sendakan. Without even planning it, Jabil came to have a large private army because his own fishermen did not want to be simple fisherfolk and so were also part of his army.

The story is about the belief in Islam, that angels are Guardians of people. Angels are aware of and follow as well as record the deeds of each individual as God spoke through Islam's Prophet Mohammad in Qur'an 82:11.

Jolo, Sulu, October 2008

Continued from Plot Part I

The Kingfisher of Sendakan

PLOT PART II

Little did Jabil imagine that one day he would run into the friendship of a strange man, Carl Bancaoan and into the fearsome ire of the Sabahan Lords of Crime Umar Abdulla Ibriz and his counterpart, Chinese crime empire Lord Wong Tang San.

By coming to Sabah with her husband Jiki and nephew Jabil, Suhaida missed Kuala Lumpur. She started hating Jabil’s Uncle Jiki, but kept her reservations about despising Jabil too.

Eventually, Suhaida got the nerve to curse Jiki’s parents and instantly was able to convince a Sabahan Islamic high priest to give her a divorce from Uncle Jiki.

Being truly blessed with superior beauty and charm, Umar Abdulla Abriz and Chinese Wong Tang San were taken by Suhaida and individually pursued her in separate circumstances.

Suhaida, after her divorce, became free to look around Kota Kinabalu for places where she could entertain herself and pretend as if she were back in Kuala Lumpur where she could be found almost at any place wherever the lively and rowdy nightlife was. For a short period, she even took the role of waitress in an old hotel in downtown Kota Kinabalu close to a huge disco house but Jabil took ransomed her from the owner who was having lurid dreams about spending night times with Suhaida and was contemplating on selling her to Umar or Wong, whichever of the two was the highest bidder.

Despite what they run into in Kota Kinabalu, everyone in Jabil’s family literally missed Sabah, but most of all they truly missed Sulu and Zamboanga. Jabil and his clan were original Tau Sug and they never considered themselves as Malaysians. They called themselves proudly Malays, (never malaise), but never Malaysians. The distinction, they said, was that after they left the Old Malaysia, they became people of the Waters, Tau Sugs.

When their forefathers left the Philippines to settle in Sabah, then later in Kuala Lumpur, where the grass was greener as they say, none of their clan forgot who they were. To them, they will always be Tau Sugs, secondly Malays, but first, they were Tau Sug.

Jabil met Carl who was a colonel in the Philippine’s maritime police. Their lives would become entwined by events. After a while, the two men would become more close than brothers.

Carl Bancaoan encountered Jabil as the leader of a huge group of civilian volunteers interdicting smugglers, drug dealers, human traffickers and other kinds of illegals. He had no resources, he had few loyal men inside his government agency and he needed to earn a living. By arresting the illegals, going through the motions of filing criminal, economic sabotage, environmental, drugs and customs law violation cases against them, he placed these illegals in a position of weakness. Naturally, desiring to be set free, they offered money to Carl.

Carl would pretend not to be interested in the bribe offers but when he noted the insistence and willingness to make a pay-off, he immediately took the bribes and made them promise to pay him regular retainer in the coming days, in return for giving them advanced tips so that the illegals will no longer be harassed by his own people and the other government agencies any further in the future.

Since Carl maintained a large private army with battalion size, his income of P500,000 or sometimes more, per week, came down to only about P60,000 expenses for himself, his family and personal house staff every week, or about P240,000 a month. Not bad for a really, really hard day’s work, he’d say. When Carl met Suhaida, who was more than ten years his junior, he decided he wanted to marry the lady in Moslem ceremonies as his second wife. (His first wife, a Christian, lived in Manila. He decided to keep this fact a secret from his first wife.)

Carl arrested several of Jabil’s fishermen by overpowering them with his higher caliber weapons, all courtesy of the former Moro National Liberation Front or MNLF that used to fight the government but whose leaders signed a peace agreement with the Filipino government that never got to be implemented.

Finally, Jabil and Carl had a chance to sit down together about the arrests. When Carl and the civilians he commanded took down the largest in the fleet of fishing boats owned by Jabil and in retaliation Jabil prohibited Suhaida from consorting with Carl.

Suhaida was Jabil’s aunt, or former aunt as it were. Although very much junior in years than Jabil, Suhaida's parents were much older than even Jabil's grandparents, that thereby made her Jabil’s elder relation although she was really very young to be an aunt to him. In fact, it was Jabil that carried her in his arms and sing songs for her to sleep as a boy when she was a tiny little tot. But that did not make Suhaida less than his aunt.

The prohibition upon Suhaida, strengthened the resolve of Carl even more to woo her. He assiduously courted the young maiden in many secret ways and even closely befriended Jiki on the sly. When everything fell into place, he had the nice opportunity of cornering Suhaida and making her say yes to him.

In the Islamic faith, angels are servile to Man. As Mohammad wrote, Al’lah orders angels to be under Man’s commands Qur’an 2:34.

Jolo, Sulu, October 2008

Continued from Plot Part II

The Kingfisher of Sendakan

PLOT PART III

Jabil Hamalat and Carl Bancaoan, at some point in time, met in many of Sandakan’s places of entertainment during cockfights. Carl was fond of cockfights and Jabil always wanted to watch the spectacle without miss. The two and their private armies almost got into shooting matches after merely a bad exchange of cuss words. The bone of contention was Suhaida.

Carl, despite the many abrasive encounters with Jabil, rescued him when Umar Abriz had Jabil arrested by his bosom, childhood friend, Gen. Almuddi Terza.

With Umar seething in rage over Jabil’s release, he joined forces with his Chinese counterpart and Suhaida was kidnapped by Wong Tang San.

Carl and Jabil became fast friends after that, despite the series of encounters juxtaposing one’s skills, needs and inadequacies with the other’s, Carl and Jabil combine their talents and resources to fight Umar Ibriz, a leader of a 1000-man strong syndicate operating from Sabah, to Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, Basilan, Zamboanga and onwards to Sarangani and Cotabato.

By joining their small armies, the two rescued Suhaida from Wong Tang San and Umar Abdulla Abriz.

At the end of the story, the general cooperating closely with Umar and eventually with Wong, was disgraced and retired from government.

Umar and Wong were killed in a firefight with government troops from Kuala Lumpur that were coordinated by Carl and Jabil to fight the menace of piracy, kidnapping for ransom, terrorism, drugs and human smuggling, illegal gambling and other high crimes perpetrated by the Umar-Wong and Gen. Terza triad.

The story is about the belief in Islam, that angels are Guardians of people. Angels are aware of and follow as well as record the deeds of each individual as God spoke through Islam's Prophet Mohammad in Qur'an 82:11.

In the Islamic faith, angels are servile to Man. As Mohammad wrote, Al’lah orders angels to be under Man’s commands Qur’an 2:34.

Among Muslims, there is a significant belief that humankind holds predominance among God’s creations. While seraphims, cherubims, archangels, angels also sit beside God in heaven and were created in his glory, there are voluminous other duties and tasks the Qur’an also tells about.

Qur’anic verses state that angels as the champions of God’s causes, are conspicuously in attendance when people die, in the punishment of unbelievers (Qur’an 7:50). Angels also cause humans to die (Qur’an 47:27).

Jolo, Sulu, October 2008

More About Sandakan

The original post was about Sandakan, one of the two biggest cities in Sabah, Malaysia today.

Like the other war memorial tourist destination, the situs of the Bataan Death March, the place is also another site where the Death March of Sandakan is commemorated. Japanese warriors forced thousands and thousands of Javanese and Prisoners of War from the Allied Forces captured during the Second World War into forced labor in Sandakan and many of them died.

Before the population became conscious of the ecology, Sandakan was one of the Asian Region and the world's biggest source of illegally cut logs. Now a lot of restrictions are in place; although there are still isolated cases of unauthorized logging, it is not as much as before.

From Sandakan, or through it, comes the Jasmine rice that many Mindanao people eat on their tables. My dad used to say, if we were in Mindanao, why would we be buying rice from Manila? It is always cheaper to buy from Sandakan.

Today, of course, the Vietnamese, other countries boast about bringing imported rice to the tables of Mindanao folk. At a cheaper price. But Jasmine rice coming from the boats offloading goods from Sandakan is still the best rice of all!

The City of Sandakan is like many Oriental cities and places of interest, very mysterious. It is host to Sipadan, the place where some criminal elements or pirates, as it where, kidnapped tourists and handed them over to the Abu Sayyaf. Supposedly, it was a planned operation on the part of the Abu Sayyaf.

The hand-over by foreign and local criminals to their group after the snatching however somewhat belies that story.

Today, one of the terrorists that guarded the hostages kidnapped from Malaysia and brought to Sulu, believed to be Al Bader Parad (we really don't know if the tale is true or not), is the same one who is holding the International Red Committee on the Red Cross hostages in custody. But the snatching, again, was done by a different group. Former government employee, Raden Abu, a Jail Guard in Sulu Provincial Jail, led the kidnapping and did it inside the premises of the government's Provincial Capitol Compound itself. Other supposedly active government people were also trailing behind the hostage takers prior to and during the act

The hostages, Italian Eugene Vagni, Swiss national Andreas Notter and Filipino Mary Jane Lacaba, were immediately turned over to Al Bader Parad by Raden's group, that calls itself the "KILOS".

What is this KILOS? We simply won't know. But the people in Sulu, Zamboanga, Basilan, Tawi-Tawi, Cotabato, Marawi City, Lanao, now know a lot about what really transpired.

On the other hand, while the hostages are being supposedly dragged here and there by the Parad-KILOS Gang, the AFP is slowly disappearing from the scene. It is only the Police that are now doggedly pursuing the kidnappers and trying to rescue the hostages.

Whatever is the matter in that place, we sure hope it won't end up in the killing of the ICRC hostages and the other hostages that have recently been taken by the pirates, Abu Sayyaf, criminals, and the lot.

Sandakan: Mindanao's point of view

Some time ago in the past, Sandakan was part of the Philippines, so my grandfathers say. They used to visit the place. From as far as Luzon or Visayas, or even just Agusan, that lies on the other side of the large Mindanao island, Sandakan was already a favorite destination way back then. My father went to Sandakan, Kota and so many other places in Borneo (it's old popular name in the past) when he was still alive. He enjoyed telling us stories of his trips to the place. But very little about the business he conducted there. I wonder why not?

Never mind that. He and my uncles used to tell tales and legends about the late, old Jamalul Kiram, said to be heir Sultan of the entire North Borneo kingdom. Of course, in history, there are so many claimants that one misses count of how many have come up as of the last survey.

But his stories about Jamalul were never dull. Always too colorful! And he described each scene and sequence in vivid detail you can't afford but get mesmerized at the tall tales!

What a wonderful thing it would be if many Filipinos could wander off into Sandakan like my dad and uncles did during his time on this planet. Dad and Uncle Babes, would regale us with how the old Sultan would recount his days as a young warrior. (The Tausugs of Sulu are born warriors. They never run away from any battle, dad and the uncles used to say.)

The language was quite different and my folks would explain the meanings of Tausug, Butu, Siki, Hadji Butu, Datu Siki, Moro, Muslim and while doing so, narrating about Nur Misuari the coffee maker of Jamalul's council later commander of Tausug-Samal as well as a motley of other Muslim tribes' warriors, the Arabs in Mindanao and Malaysia, the battles between the Christians and Muslims, the peacefulness of Maimbung town of Sulu province during those days, the feverish interest of the British in creating a mole inside the Malaysian government's inner circle, and so many other interesting plots!

Sandakan, like Kota Kinabalu, also in Sabah, up to this time remains as one of the most beautiful destinations in the world. It's population is much too caring to the environment. Many parts of Sandakan is lush vegetation. This can be attributed to the planting of the residents there of long life trees. Big trees like sequoias in the west that can outlive centuries.