Idiot's guide to
Philippine cartography

By Noralyn Mustafa

WHILE watching a news program during the height of the SARS scare, I saw this video clip of Zamboanga City medical personnel discussing the possibility of the virus spreading to their city when I heard that term again.

A doctor, apparently worried sick, expressed his fears about the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus coming in, like a thief in the night, disembarking from a boat from the "back door." Meaning, Sulu and possibly Tawi-Tawi provinces.

It did not occur to the good doctor that the virus could fly in on one of the airlines that daily land in the city bringing in homecoming Overseas Filipino Workers. Bad things don't come through the front door.

The back door is where SARS, fugitives, smugglers, kidnappers, gunrunners, the Jemaah Islamiah, scum, and assorted lowlife gain entry into or exit from the country.

With this term we have effectively dichotomized this country into the "front door" and the "back door," north and south, the metropolis and the boondocks, progress and backwardness, Christian and Muslim, and all the while decrying our disunity.

And I blame this front door-back door mindset for many things happening to us as a nation.

It is because of this that we deserve only the afterthought, the surplus, the rejects.

They even took Palawan Island away from Mindanao, and so Malampaya, which could spur the development of provinces that cannot be reached by the Mindanao grid, flows into Metro Manila to sustain the fuel-guzzling lifestyle of the nation's movers, shakers, and entertainers.

Although in fairness to the movers and shakers, they do think of Mindanao whenever the guns roar and the blood flows.

And when they do think of Mindanao, it is usually in connection with what might have been and what could be, meaning, Mindanao could have been, or could be, the country's "food basket." Another term that grates on the mind. As in, how utterly gross. Guess who will burn in the sun, whose backs will break to produce those comestibles?

Cavite province hosts the naval headquarters because it is part of the front door; all we have are two very leaky patrol boats. And when the Abu Sayyaf bandits sail in broad daylight to Malaysian beach resorts to kidnap tourists, Misuari escapes to Malaysia, human smuggling results in such tragedies as the overloaded MV Annahada that claimed the lives of close to 200 people, we wonder how that could have happened, with the cluelessness of a half-wit.

We lay claim to the palm-size sand dunes we call the Spratlys because it is within the territory of the front door, and we are even willing to fight several countries to assert our rights, but we always place our legitimate claim to resource-rich Sabah in the "back burner" because it is part of the back door.

I have always wondered too, what it is we have done that have made us deserve this humiliating relegation, and no matter how I try, the answer is always the same--because we resisted the invaders and Christianity; because we are Muslim, we are "lumad (indigenous peoples)," and therefore children of a lesser God.

And through time, we had to learn this queer cartography.

Where our racial brothers came through is the back door. Where the white man pounced upon us is the front door.

Where Islam came with the message of peace and the oneness of God is the back door.

Where Christianity came brandishing a sword and preaching the infallibility of the Pope is the front door.

Where the Makhdumin landed, preaching Islam in mosques that local people willingly constructed with wood, bamboo and nipa is the back door.

Where Christian priests and their architects came with elaborate church plans of properly gothic and rococo designs came is the front door. (Guess whose forced labor translated those plans into stone and mortar?)

Where Arabic culture with its rich heritage of mathematics, the arts, and medical science came through is the back door.

Where Western culture with its insistence on progress and development through industrialization and production passed through is the front door. (Guess whose cheap labor is producing for those multinationals?)

And so because we are the back door, we get the trickles. The most scant office supplies, the fewest schools, the most ill-equipped hospitals, the poorest public services, the worst roads, the smallest amount of relief goods.

Along with this is the conviction that we in Mindanao and Sulu are really nothing more than drawers of water and hewers of wood, so that when some activity arises that requires of its participants some measure of mental effort and some of us somehow measure up, we are acknowledged with the inclusive "also."

I recall attending a consultation meeting intended to acquire "inputs" from the locals on the concept of the Borneo-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asian Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) when this lady lawyer, as if she suddenly discovered a cosmic truth, and with the tone of magnanimity befitting Mother Teresa, stood up and suggested: "Why don't we invite our Muslim brothers? They can also contribute some ideas."

And I realized to my horror that I was the only Muslim present, and truth to tell, I was invited not for my brilliant inputs, but to observe and take notes on the proceedings, and I wondered how these people could be talking about trade and cultural relations with southeast countries with which we Muslims share not only a history and a culture, but also bloodlines, and not a single one was invited to take part in the discussion.

It was at that point that I walked out.

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