by Gavin Young
Jesus slept in some obscure corner near his engine, and I think his assistant, Small-But-Terrible, did too, burrowing beneath the cargo like some small rodent. The rest of the crew slept haphazardly below, on or near the cargo of red, flaky bundles, which took up most of the space under the roof-deck. These, the Haji informed me, were a valuable cargo of tanbark, the bark of the mangrove. The dry cylinders were reduced to powder in Cebu City, he said, and mostly exported to Japan to give colour to floor wax or shoe polish. In the Philippines tanbark gives a mellow whisky colour and mild tang to the local coconut toddy called tuba. I wondered whether any other more dubious cargo was hidden underneath the bundles.
By mid-afternoon we were still in sight of Sabah on the starboard bow as we edged down towards the Sulu Islands. I presumed that for safety’s sake the captain wanted to keep Malaysian territory in sight as long as possible.
‘Tawitawi Island is ahead on the right side,’ said the Haji. ‘They export copra, seaweed, fishes and tanbark there. They cultivate seaweed too because, without it, the island economy would suffer. You see, the coconut trees do not produce much. It is a damp place with many wild hogs.’ I remembered that Tawitawi was the headquarters of Conrad’s fictional one-eyed Babalatchi of the enterprising and merciless Balanini pirates. Further to the right, round a now-invisible headland, lay the town of Tungku, the home of the pirates defeated in 1879 by HMS Kestrel.
The weather was perfect, the sun hot, the sea blue, but by evening there was bad news. It was obvious that the Allimpaya’s engine was failing. Sometimes it puffed and panted like a dying asthmatic; sometimes it faded completely. First, Al Raza in the Arabian Sea, now the Allimpaya, I thought with exasperation, each at the worst possible time and place. Sumar, the Baluchi, pranced back into my memory, puffing out his whiskers and cheerfully booming ‘Allah karim!’ I could have done with his cheerfulness here.
Our speed was soon down to only three knots an hour from a possible seven or eight. Speaking as a kumpit owner himself, the Haji said he believed the trouble was a slipping clutch. ‘If I were the captain,’ he said, ‘I would steer to an island – there are many just out of sight – and anchor there for the necessary repairs. Also, I would not take this course; nearer the islands is quicker.’
But when I laid a pencil across my map, it showed that the shortest distance between Sandakan and Zamboanga was along the course we were following at present. Besides, I asked the Haji, weren’t there pirates on those islands? And, although he had just recommended this alternative, he now exclaimed, ‘They are full of pirates! I have been attacked by pirates there myself. Luckily, we beat them off with grenades. Two pump boats – outriggers, you know – came at us very fast. The pirates fired rifles – automatic rifles, tut, tut, tut, tut.’ He imitated automatic fire. ‘Oh, I was very scared, but we put out all our lights and went full steam ahead.’
‘How fast?’
‘Seven miles an hour, not much. Then I threw a grenade. That makes a big noise, you know, and it worried them. You have seen pump boat? It has problem coming alongside another boat. The outrig makes it very difficult to come close alongside quickly. While they try it, you drop grenades on them. Very dangerous for them.’
‘Do we have grenades?’
‘I don’t think. No.’
‘What if they’d boarded you?’
‘Cut throats of us all. They cut throats to save bullets. Maybe they sink kumpit, too, maybe not. Maybe only take cargo – they like barter goods. Last month two barter pump boats were shot to-tal-ly, everybody dead. What do you say? – “Dead man tells no tale,” eh?’
The Haji joined the captain for evening prayers. Kneeling far apart from each other on the roof-deck, they bowed towards Mecca. Carlos and Jan were wandering about as usual, and I didn’t see anyone else praying.
When the Haji returned, he told an even worse story. ‘One year ago, my two brothers were massacred in their kumpit. They smuggled five hundred cases of Champion cigarettes, and they were killed for them. In my idea the Filipino navy killed them because soon navy men were selling the cigarettes in Job market. Very bad. Who else could have killed them? Smugglers may rob other smugglers, but they never kill each other. Pirates may rob smugglers and sometimes kill them. The navy kills smugglers and pretends it was fault of pirates. That is not good.’
It certainly was not. To the list of human hazards of which I was already aware – pirates, smugglers, the Moro rebels – were now added what I had regarded as a deterrent force, not a threat: the Filipino navy.
*
But it wasn’t the Filipino navy that stopped us; the Moros got to us first. Early next morning a pump boat came alongside, a narrow, nippy outrigger with a Japanese outboard motor in the stern, and seven wild and agile men scrambled aboard the Allimpaya. Even now I am not sure where they sprang from.
Anthony Quinn peered out of the cabin window and Haji Daoud muttered, ‘Savage people, savage people.’ I couldn’t see Carlos or Small-But-Terrible, and I supposed they were on the deck below, trembling amid the tanbark. The captain was politely assuring the Moros that we were helpless, harmless people with nothing more than a failing kumpit and eighty tons of uninteresting cargo.
I sat on the roof-deck rail in the sun and watched them. Three or four of them had twisted coloured cloths around their heads from which long hair dangled to their shoulders, and some had straggling hair on their lips or chins. They wore a variety of coloured shirts, and several had old military khaki jackets with buttons missing and inked doodles of hearts, hands holding daggers that dripped blood, or topless women. Some wore tight khaki trousers, stained and much worn, and scuffed basketball shoes or jungle boots with thick soles. The older ones were flat-faced men with short grey hair and empty, dangerous eyes. Old or young, all were dark-skinned from the island sun and had high cheekbones, wide noses and slightly slanting eyelids. They spread out over the kumpit, and the older men immediately went into conclave with the captain, who never for an instant permitted a wide smile to leave his face. I could see his hands spread and his shoulders moving up and down as he talked earnestly with them, his head bent attentively to what they were saying. Then they disappeared below the level of the roof into the belly of the boat.
It wasn’t long before three of the younger Moros snooping about clambered onto the roof. They stopped dead when they saw me sitting on the rail; the last thing they’d expected to see was a white man. Then they slowly came forwards, edging up to me without speaking – so surprised, I suppose, that they didn’t know what to say. I waited until they were very near, and then said, ‘Hello. How are you?’ I put out my hand, and the nearest Moro took it cautiously as if making an experiment and said, ‘You who? American?’
‘No, English. You from Tawitawi?’
‘From Jolo. You from England? Where you go?’ He spoke with great hesitation; obviously, his English was limited. There were bulges of what I took to be guns in their hip pockets, and two of them had long, big-handled knives in their belts.
‘I go Zamboanga.’
‘Zamboanga? You … ah … selling?’
‘No, not selling, not merchant. Writer, writing book.’ I mimed someone scribbling.
‘Ah, book?’
Another Moro asked, ‘Magazine also?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Yes. All kinds.’
At last the first Moro grinned. ‘Very famous, yah?’
‘No. Not famous. Very poor man.’
He sat on the rail so close to me that our shoulders touched, and they all stared at me as if I were an exotic and possibly dangerous species of animal in a zoo.
‘Very poor, yah!’ He laughed. ‘So go in kumpit, no go aeroplane.’
‘That’s right. A poor writer travelling in a kumpit. And you are – Moros?’
‘Yah, Moro.’ He watched for my reaction.
I continued to smile. ‘Moro people very brave.’
He asked, ‘England people say that? In England people know about Moros?’
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br /> ‘In England not many people know. But in Singapore they know about Moros. Moros are famous.’
‘You go Manila before?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why you go Manila?’
‘I go everywhere. A writer must go everywhere.’
‘Sure. True.’ He thought for a moment, looking at the deck as if he saw something unpleasant there. ‘Goddam Marcos government no good. Goddam President Marcos.’
One of his companions echoed, ‘Goddam fuckin’ Marcos government,’ and spat over the side.
The man next to me had spotted two Malaysian fifty-dollar notes in the breast pocket of my shirt; I had forgotten they were there. Now he tapped the pocket with his finger and asked, ‘Malaysia dollar? Show me?’
I took out the two notes, each worth ten pounds sterling, and he took one and examined it. ‘You give me?’ he asked politely.
‘Yes, I give you that. This one’ – I flourished the second fifty-dollar bill – ‘I keep this one. I need it for Zamboanga. Otherwise no money.’
‘Oh, yes,’ he nodded understandingly, one traveller to another. ‘You travel with leetle money. Maybe someone steal. You find your money from bank in Zamboanga Ceety, yah?’
‘Yes. Carry very little money. Maybe pirates come on the kumpit. Any pirates here in Sulu Sea?’
The other two said something that sounded like ‘Mundo?’ and he answered, ‘Yeah, mundo,’ and they said something else.
Turning to me, he translated, ‘My friends say, yah, pirates here. Mundo means pirates in our language, Tausuq language. But Moro not pirate. Moro fighting goddam Marcos. You scared?’
‘Scared?’ I said. ‘Why scared? You and me are friends.’
‘Ha! you good man.’ With a wild grin he threw an arm around my neck, jerked me down to his shoulder level and kissed me loudly on the cheek. ‘Good man. Friend,’ he informed the others with his arm around my shoulder. ‘Friend,’ he confirmed to me. ‘My name Musa. Your name?’
‘Friend,’ I agreed and told him my name with considerable relief. Had I defused at least these three? I studied my new friend. All three of them were in their twenties. He had a longish, pleasant face with an easy, lopsided grin and there was a two-inch scar over his left eye. His eyes were strange: glowing green, the colour of the base of a green bottle. It was a nervous face, constantly and subtly changing its expression as the nerves chased around under the skin. Like the others, his hair was long and pinioned by a rough headcloth.
All three wore ragged khaki jackets. On the T-shirt under his jacket one of them had drawn a crude sketch of a Moro in camouflaged uniform with a sub-machine-gun over his shoulder, a panga – a long jungle machete – in his belt, and his girlfriend, a large, busty girl in a short dress, at his side. ‘That is Ibrahim,’ said my new friend. He pointed to the third man, who wore the same costume as the other two but whose hair fell longer than theirs, well below his shoulders. ‘That is Ali.’ Ali had a bad-tempered expression, thick liver-coloured lips, and mean eyes in a pudgy face. He was tall and tough, and I didn’t care for the look of him; I hoped my friend, as I now thought of Musa, would want to control him. I suspected that a Moro’s mind could change rapidly from friendly to suspicious to hostile. It was not easy to foresee what might alarm or enrage them.
Suddenly a sharp call from below roused the three from their contemplation of me, and they ducked under the roof-deck and disappeared. Soon Jan and the Haji joined me, Jan jumpy but giggling, the Haji apparently calm in the recollection of Allah.
‘You make friend with Moro, yah?’ cried Jan. ‘You make friend with very Muslim man – yah, yah – with Ayatollah!’ Thereafter Musa, the friendly Moro with the bottle-green eyes, was known to Jan as the Ayatollah.
The Haji said, ‘Moros take arms from Brazil revolutionaries. FN rifles and pistols. Their chief is living in Libya with his wife. They want independence for Sulu, Mindanao and Palawan Island, all Muslim areas. But, of course, all that is too small for independence. It has nothing. I am a Muslim also, but I think independence is nonsense and Moros are too savage.’ The Moros made no show of guns; in retrospect, I realize they had no need to – and no desire to be caught flourishing weapons by a patrol launch of the Philippine or Malaysian navy.
An Oriental palaver had begun below that lasted most of the day. The Haji left me now and again to sit in on it and listen to the negotiations that pursued their desultory way through the heat of noon. Anthony Quinn, whose cargo was at stake, joined the captain in the talks. Jesus, the engineer, had stopped the engine, and in stifling heat we lay motionless except for a gentle rolling. Now and then a Moro or a member of the crew clambered onto the bows and urinated over the side while the spasmodic murmur of voices, and sometimes laughter, continued. Small-But-Terrible and Carlos bobbed up occasionally with anxious expressions to wave or wink at me. I sat on the roof and tried to read. It was not easy. I couldn’t stop wondering what all the talk below was about, and whether we were going to be made to jump overboard and swim to the nearest island. I was relieved, therefore, when at last the Haji clambered up to report on the talks so far. ‘The Moros say the captain must take them eight or ten hours away to some island near Tawitawi, so they can return secretly from there to Jolo Island, their base. They say there are many navy boats around Tawitawi. Too dangerous for them, but this kumpit can go there freely.’
I didn’t like the idea of sailing in a kumpit loaded with armed Moro rebels into a region of remote islands infested with still more Moros and gunships of the Filipino navy. ‘What is the captain saying? Will he take them?’
‘Captain says he cannot take them because he has only enough fuel and food for three days to Zamboanga, not enough for two extra days at sea and seven more men to feed. He must convince them this is true or maybe they kill him next time he come this way, so he tries to convince them peacefully.’
As time wore on, an absurd rhyme entered my head and refused to budge:
It’s a long way to Zamboanga,
It’s a long way to go.
It’s a long way to Zamboanga
And the nearest land I know.
Goodbye, Tawitawi,
Farewell, pirates’ lair.
It’s a long, long way to Zamboanga,
And my heart’s right there.
I varied the time by trying to invent lines to follow ‘Oh, the monkeys have no tails in Zamboanga,” but I couldn’t concentrate for long.
Big, muscular Carlos and his friend Ernesto brought up bowls of the powdery rice, dried fish and red chillies, and Moros, passengers and crew gathered round and concentrated on eating. The Moros had caught a fish on the way; one of them fetched it from the pump boat floating alongside and they shared it with us. Captain Amin asked me, ‘You okay? Not too hot?’ I replied that everything was okay. The older Moros looked greyly at me without saying anything. I suspected that they probably didn’t speak any English; I had noticed them asking Musa about me.
After the meal and the usual mouth-washing and spitting, the captain, Anthony Quinn and Haji Daoud led the older Moros below once more to continue their palaver. I dragged a crude bench into the shadow of the wheelhouse, but had no sooner sat down when the ill-tempered young Moro called Ali loomed up. His brows bent into an intimidating frown and his lips like strips of raw liver pouted furiously. Abruptly he pointed to my wrist. ‘Geeve me watch,’ he said fiercely, ‘geeve me jacket also.’
Thirty two
Ibrahim, the Moro with the sketch of the rebel and the girl on his camouflage jacket, stood at Ali’s shoulder. As Ali’s face scowled, his was blank. My friend Musa, the one Jan had called the Ayatollah, had vanished.
‘Geeve me watch,’ Ali ordered again. ‘Geeve me jacket.’
‘Give me, give me, give me – what’s all this “give me”?’ I said, smiling.
‘Geeve me watch.’ He was gruff and impatient.
‘You give me your shirt.’
‘I want watch,’ he said angrily through the curtain of his hair.
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‘No, I want your shirt – oh, and your boots.’
‘You no understand. I want watch and jacket, too.’ He was scowling, but was also beginning to look baffled.
‘No, Ali,’ I said slowly, emphasizing my words but still smiling. ‘I’ – I pointed to myself – ‘want’ – I pointed to him – ‘your shirt and your boots.’
He looked really bewildered by now, perhaps as much by my smile – I was holding it as steadily and nonchalantly as I could – as by my unexpected and apparently unworried parrying of his threatening finger. Always smile: I had learned that lesson years ago in the Congo, where the penalty for dropping your grin, even for an instant, in the face of nervous soldiers or tribesmen, was slow death with both legs hacked off above the knee with pangas.
Ali turned to mutter something to Ibrahim, receiving nothing more in return than a shrug and a glazed look. To my relief, I saw Musa, the Ayatollah, approaching. His green eyes opened wider when he took in the situation, and wider still when Ali said something angry to him, pointing at me. Smiling, the tic fluttering his eyelid, Musa said quietly, ‘How about your jacket?’
‘How about it, Musa?’
‘Ali says your jacket ees very good. In the for-est veree good.’