My Mother's milk ... part 2

I muse that perhaps everything is changing and very fast. Noel is very religious like all the community elders I have spoken to so far. He easily goes off into a long tirade about morals and religion. I wonder how appealing that is for the younger generation. Also, the Portuguese community has always been an open group: the descendants of the Dutch in Melaka, for instance, also speak Portuguese and are often counted as members of the community (in fact, I don't believe anybody speaks Dutch in Melaka any more).

Noel still inveighs against the designation 'Eurasian' every now and then: his point is that it does not root people in any specific country but is vague and general. In fact, it is a British colonial designation used by the community before it refashioned itself as Portuguese in the late colonial era. Noel must have been a teenager when the identity shift took place. I am unaware of anyone in Melaka who styles himself or herself as Eurasian, and there is certainly no visible community that claims that identity now. The point Noel hammers home again and again is that the community is Portuguese and as well as Lusophone (i.e. Portuguese-speaking).

His point is important as far as the name of the language is concerned. He ridicules the appellation 'Pápia Kristang' often used for the language. To him 'kristang' is a religious identity, not a language. He says that the designation started in the Dutch times. To me it makes sense, as the Dutch East Indies Company did have an all-encompassing category of 'Christenen'. It was a complex category as it had a legal as well as a religious nature. It also included people who were not ethnically European or not only European.

Also, calling oneself and one's language 'Portuguese' during the Dutch era must have been slightly tricky as the Portuguese remained enemies of the Dutch - the Catholic church was officially suppressed in Dutch settlements - for quite a long time (the Dutch conquered Melaka in 1641; the Portuguese community's Church of São Pedro was only built in 1710).

Joti - a man from Penang, who long ago married a woman from Kampung Portugis and is fluent in the local language, told me that the language became Creolised (he says, meaning 'full of short forms') during the Dutch period, as locals tried to avoid the impression that they were speaking an enemy language. Hence, also the name of the language. There was also more to it: religious identity -- Catholicism -- that was obviously enormously important. In fact, the community moved to its current location due to the efforts of at least two priests - one French, the other Portuguese - to get the colonial government to give them land. The efforts eventually succeeded in the 1930s and the community then moved from its various previous locations - mainly in Tengkera -- to Kampung Portugis. Joti tells me that the land is still often called 'chang di padri' - the priest's land ('chão de padre' in my Portuguese).

My impression is that religion has therefore been a very important binding element in the community. For it is not only a Christian community in a Muslim-majority country and in a city where (non-Christian) Chinese are dominant; it is also a minority Christian community within the varied and multi-denominational group of Melaka Christians itself. Besides, most Catholics in town don't count themselves as members of the community. (The other church in town, Saint Francis Xavier, was built in 1849 by French missionaries from Siam and south France, and is mainly a Chinese church today. Donations from as far away as Peru and the erstwhile Brazilian Empire went into its construction.)

It strikes me that one other thing that may have kept the community together is their comparative poverty (that used to be worse in earlier times). Incidentally, this is also something they have had in common with local Indians, a group with which they have obviously been closely associated, also through marriage. Some of the houses in the settlement in fact still look very modest. Part of the settlement is also made up of ugly blocks of public housing that probably can be found in every Malaysian city. Jorge, one of the elders, as well as Kátia - a social worker from Portugal who has just left the community to go back home - have told me that there are quite a few families in need, or who live very modestly.

My mother's milk is expensive (Melakan Portuguese dilemma) -- Part 1

I spend an entire lazy afternoon in Kampung Portugis speaking in papiaçam -- the Creole Portuguese of Macau/Melaka -- with Noel Felix. With us is one of the few Portuguese-speaking young scholars of Malaysia. (She's not of Portuguese origin.)

Felix can speak for hours on end in front of his Carlsberg. As I heard him out, I realised the many complex paradoxes of being Portuguese in the Indian Ocean. For that's what Felix considers the Melakan Portuguese to be, besides being Portuguese-speaking Malaysian. They are not a Creole community; they are Portuguese and speak Portuguese, though of course he is aware that they are not European Portuguese, nor is the language the same as that of Portugal.

Felix says he speaks old Portuguese, not Creole. He has been to Portugal once. He has a daughter who once lived in Brazil and now speaks to him in Brazilian Portuguese. He does not mind. He finds Brazilian Portuguese and Melakan Portuguese to be very close. Or, at any rate, closer than either of them is to Portugal's Portuguese. (I have difficulty with this in its spoken forms. I would often ask friends in Macau to repeat what they had just said to me, sometimes twice, only to realise that I was unable to make it out. It would have been embarrassing to ask them to say it in English, of course.

In Melaka, I have difficulty following local Portuguese, but if I'm persistent and my interlocutor patient -- and Felix is patient -- then we manage to communicate. (I must confess, however, that I'm more a listener than a talker). In another context and in another time, he might be considered a language nationalist of some sort. However, in the modest environment of the kampung in Melaka, he is someone who does not want his traditions to disappear, perhaps because he grew up with them. He says his mother's milk is expensive. He imbibed the language from her.

He does not want to give his language up nor does he take easily to the fact that his community is clearly losing it -- young people in particular can understand it though they do not speak it as fluently as their parents. They prefer to talk in English and Malay. In fact Felix interrupts our conversation for about an hour to go and teach a Portuguese class to some of the kampung's young people. Voluntary work.

The lady who runs the restaurant where we are sitting and talking puts his beer bottle into the refrigerator. At one point, he was in doubt if he should take it along with him.

Perhaps everything is changing, and too fast. Noel is very religious, like all community elders I have spoken to so far. He goes off into a long tirade about morals and religion at the slightest provocation. I wonder how appealing that is for the younger generation.

The Portuguese community has always been an open group: the descendants of the Dutch in Melaka speak Portuguese too and are often counted as members of the community. (I don't believe anybody speaks Dutch in Melaka any more.) Noel still inveighs against the label Eurasian every now and then, his point being that it does not root people in any country, but is vague and general. It was a designation used by the British colonials, that was accepted by the community before it refashioned itself as Portuguese. Noel must have been a teenager when the identity shift took place. I am not aware of anyone in Melaka who calls himself or herself Eurasian, and there is certainly no visible community that claims that identity now.

The point Noel hammers home again and again is that the community is Portuguese, and Lusophone (i.e. Portuguese-speaking).

Call for New Asian Short Stories

Call for New Asian Short Stories

Professor Kirpal Singh of Singapore Management University and Professor M.A. Quayum of International Islamic University Malaysia will coedit a new collection of Asian short stories. New and previously unpublished short stories are invited from writers of Asian origin/background or those writing about Asian life, culture and experience. Submissions should be sent to asianshortstories@gmail.com by 15 July 2014. The edited volume is expected to come out by the end of 2014.

Terms and conditions of entry:

1.     Writers must be of Asian origin/background or writing about Asian life, culture and experience.

2.     Submission ought to be new, unpublished and not submitted elsewhere.

3.     Each author is allowed to submit only one story.

4.     Stories must be in English, typed double-spaced in Times New Roman.

5.     Stories should not exceed 6000 words in length.

6.     Submissions in any other genre are not considered.

7.     Writers should include their name and a brief profile (100 words max.) on the cover page of the submission.

8.     No submissions will be accepted by post or after the deadline.

9.     Successful writers will be contacted on or before 30 September 2014.

10.  Further queries about the project should be sent to the email address above.

About the Editors

Kirpal Singh is a renowned poet and academic, and Director of the Wee Kim Wee Centre at the Singapore Management University.

M.A. Quayum is the author, editor or translator of 27 books. He is currently Professor of English at International Islamic University Malaysia and Adjunct Professor in the School of Humanities at Flinders University, Australia.

Please forward this to friend who might be interested.

Páscoa (Easter), 2010

(The author, Fernando Rosa Baragül, is a Brazilian anthropologist based in Kuala Lumpur and Melaka.)

Easter. There were so many people at St Peter's Church in Melaka (built in 1710 - two images on the right) that it was impossible to go in. It was not unlike an Easter procession in Brazil. Even as a child I had found that there was something slightly gloomy about processions. This one was no exception as it wound its way along the Melaka river early in the evening, with thousands of people, stopping and then starting again when someone gave a signal (usually by clapping hands). All those at the head of the procession were men. This compared well with my vague memories of its counterpart in Brazil. It was indeed a very male procession.

People said that it was the first time in many years that the procession has been allowed outside the church grounds, and they were excited. (In Brazil, processions normally proceed along the streets). Some people thought this was the first time in history that the procession was allowed onto the streets. But they were wrong. I learnt that as late as the late 1960s (and some years after that ), the Easter procession in Melaka was along the streets. It is intriguing how short historical memory is. It was something that had gone on for centuries, then stopped for a couple of recent decades by the government, and was already fading out of social memory. I was certain, however, that the Portuguese community - especially the older members - still remembered.

There was not much difference between this procession and the ones I had watched occasionally as a child (my family was not religious). There was one difference however, and it stood out  prominently: many of the participants in Melaka were not even Catholics. It was obviously a religious and social event that everyone participated in. It was the hub or fulcrum for Melaka's incredibly varied society. Someone told me that in old times people would carry large incense sticks used in Chinese temples instead of candles. I did not see any this time. There were only candles (and there were many sellers of these by the gate to the church grounds). Long candles of the same type I remembered from home; giving out light in the gloom.

I did not feel like staying on, however. It was hot and crowded, and somewhat too familiar to hold much fascination. It was funny how familiarity triggered disinterest. Nonetheless, it was all reassuringly familiar. It served as a point of reference, an anchor even, because of my own history. It was something so parochial that, at home, I would not have even given it a second thought. On the contrary, I would have shunned it for being boring.

Religion feels so different in Melaka when compared to Brasil. Here, it envelops everything, it's part of the social fabric. Religion here is as important as ethnicity, and commerce is thoroughly intertwined with both. It is funny how academics seem not to see it, and treat ethnicity as either part of politics or folklore. But it is part of neither. It is about being a part of the world -- being different in different ways. It is also not fixed, and that's why the Easter procession and the mass are Melaka events, not merely Portuguese ones. The Portuguese run the show, but it is for everybody.

It was also intriguing how many inquired later, over and over, whether I had witnessed it. They somehow also acknowledged my history as theirs.


Fernando Rosa Baragül has worked in the Caribbean, Cape Town, Kerala, and was, until 1999, in Macau. He is also interested in Dutch-Afrikaans, Arabic, and Malay writings, and the possible overlap between them.
 
His latest publications include a comparison between Brazil and Kerala in the rise of local literary canons and modernity; a bird's-eye-view of African language materials generated in South Africa in the twentieth century, and their racial underpinnings; and a book chapter (in Portuguese) comparing Cape Town and Melaka in terms of their history, urbanscape and people. His next publications will be a comparative study of two authors, namely Garcia d'Orta and Sheikh Zainuddin, one Jewish, the other Muslim, the former writing in Portuguese, the latter in Arabic, respectively in sixteenth century Goa and north Kerala.