ALAL BIMBANG | Tahik Anugpat: 1st Sulu National Literary Conference

(Opening message of Mucha-Shim L. Quiling, representative of the NCCA-NCLA Executive Council Western Mindanao and Sulu Archipelago at the opening of Tahik Anugpat: 1^st Sulu National Literary Conference held in Sulu at the Notre Dame of Jolo College last week). 

ALHAMDULILLAH! Thanks be to Allah for the gift of Knowledge. Alhamdulillah, thank you for the gift of Life.

I believe the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the National Committee on Literary Arts (NCLA) would have wished us Congratulations for this First Sulu National Literary Conference on November 19-20, 2025 at the Notre Dame of Jolo College and the Sulu State College, in collaboration with the Barangay Local Government of Busbus, Jolo, Sulu.

When I was younger, more energetic than today, I had wished of seeing together in one venue all the brightest and luminous writers and creatives of Sulu. It was in those times of war when our writers and artists were producing excellent bodies of work drawing from the rawness of pain, anger, anguish and harshness of separatedness and brokenness wrought by the 40years conflict and disarray of lives. And yet here at home, no one read of them, nobody had heard of them, that even to this very day, only very few know them, as what Dr (sir Tony) Anthony L. Tan might feel what a writer feels when no one reads him. Today, as we gather here, it is perhaps that the time has come to harvest the winnings of peace. After all, Sulu can now have the luxury of leisure and mental stability to appreciate higher forms of intelligence than smut entertainment fare and the basic thinking of survival instincts.

So I had dreamt of witnessing a sort of an extra-bonanza. EXTRA BONANZA was what we would call festive moods of this sort back among my generation of the 1960’s and 1970’s. That extra bonanza would feature poetry reading, singing, storytelling, rhetorical declamation, and dancing and performances. We shall be listening to and seeing in person reading his poems and excerpts from his Palanca-awarded short stories, Sir Tony, the brightest gem of Siasi town and Dr Samuel Tan, too, published writer of many books, might have allowed us basking in his descriptions of precolonial times in Sulu coming alive. 

We would have ‘wowed’ at the wit and eloquence of our national journalist cum essayist Noralyn Mustafa; the Sadain brother poets – Said (Jun) and Mehol – of San Raymundo, Jolo; Ibrahim Jubaira – I have never met the guy with the golden pen who is now hailed as Father of Bangsamoro Literature but have the sweetest honor of meeting his equally illustrious son in the person of our ‘Aya’, Sharief Nahdin Jubaira, who messaged me, “I will try my best (to come)” and I chatted back “you are always the best, Aya, without even trying at all.” (Dr Samuel Tan, Ms Noralyn Mustafa, Said Sadain, and Ibrahim Jubaira have all left us now).

Sulu’s best and most luminous would include its artiste and creatives, maggagabbang and artist Abraham Sakili of Parang who was for a while Dean of UP College of Fine Arts for most of post-Martial Law years without Sulu even knowing it. And the greatest young artist of our time, Tausug Ukkilist, late Rameer Tawasil whose legacy is now continued by his equally talented children, writers and artists Zhameena and Zhareena Tawasil. Magkikissa (story chanters) and maglelelleng (balladeers), Mullung and Jenes, now Sabah based, would have to be there, too, why not? They made immortal the epical pursuits to Freedom of MNLF in Kissa kan hadji Ban (Epical Ballad of Hadji Ban Jajurie) and Kissa sin Kasunug sin Kapu’an (Epical Ballad of the Burning of the Islands) and many, many more unnamed others in their respective artistic fields of literature, rhetorical writings, storytelling, music, dance, and performance.

And that dream finally saw light – our research collective, Sharif Ul Hashim and particularly its Lumpang Basih Journal became accredited member of the NCLA and elected as coopted member of the executive council of the NCLA and I sat a very short unserved term of a resigned Zamboanguena Execon of Western Mindanao. To this representation, I have the honor of adding to Western Mindanao the Sulu Archipelago even before the Supreme Court legalese even lawfully said so. And so here we are today, on endowment of NCLA Project Hulagway. To showcase our most luminous talents as the “Hulagway” (images) of the Nation of Suluk, people perennially moving, crossing, and transitioning in Sulu sea and across its island Archipelago.

Our Hulagway is to banner the archipelago and maritime contexts of our home and our voices. TAHIK ANUGPAT SIN KAPU’AN PA BINAYBAYAN, a confluence of Sinama and Sinug words literally translated as “the Oceanic Connectivity from Sea to Island, from Island to Sea.” But this Hulagway is also us speaking in languages as us, in Bahasa Sinama and Sinug; speaking in voices of those we remember but now seldom come home. We are voices of people in the outliers, off-shore and diaspora, voyaging to come home, migrants, and some of whom are erased and undocumented, subsisting in their statelessness and thriving as their own center and are sovereign and free, rather than be integrated into an inequitable dominant and mainstream society only to be relegated into the fringes and pushed down into bottom rung of the social ladder

Our Hulagway features artistes and literatists that are diverse and widely spread, this conference’s speakers come as far as the Netherlands, Doha in Qatar, Thailand, small and sparsely scattered from islands of Indonesia in WAKATOBI Sulawesi, Sumatra, and Java Jakarta, and Sabah, and here in our homeseas, we speak from General Santos City, Bongao in Tawi-Tawi, Cotabato and Iligan City, in sonorous calls with our fellow creatives here in Jolo, Sulu but mostly living in diaspora.

Yesterday, I happily learned that even our videographers and people technically manning the conference have come home to support Sulu literature. They are the often forgotten Tausugs of Chinese and mestizo Bisaya descent who helped build this town of Jolo in the 1930’s. The families are still around. Our chief media and video documentation is being done by a grandson of the late Rusticiano Jablo and the Ngos of Jolo’s ever familiar Sincere Trading. This family built the Notre Dame school, the Carmelite monastery, and Sulu capitol building. 

There was also Manuel Singkang Lim who donated land and infrastructure that today stand as witness of Jolo’s glorious multicultural years, the Plaza Tulay and Sulu Public Hospital ( IPHO). Leon Fernandez was our first governor of Sulu, he came from Siasi town. And we are blest by this diversity, it is Allah’s mercy. 

Among our sponsors who helped us bring our writers, artists, and presenters are our own business sector like the Lee Mandangan family who have found their fortune and prospered outside after the Jolo burning of 1974 dispersed us and almost erased us from the face of earth. Thank you, Sug Adventurer and artist-entrepreneur, brod Vohaary Lee Mandangan, whose designer shirts becomes our walking canvas of pride.

As for those who have gone on the journey we will let their voices speak from the footprints in the sand and, as young Tausug pananarasul (poet) Gamzon Jr Mawallil Quijano wrote, in “sampuak bukal alun”– froths and bubbles of tides; from the spectres and shadows in graves; from the barzakh of memories. 

The special participation of our Naqshbandiya Aaliya Philippines brothers gifting us with the sweetness of Dhikr and Rabbana (the Philippine Rabbani Ensemble group) as we open the formal conference proper is a moment of Shahada -a witnessing of Allah’s Onenewss in everything, and His Omniscience gracing every aspect of our lives, earthly and spiritual, and our coming face to face with the Ahlus Suluk, that writers and academic scholars have spoken in conference speeches, intellectualized as history and theorized as epistemology in glossy papers of rhetorics and discourses but whose truth could not be admitted let alone be accredited in their Scopus publications. 

So in this gathering today we are showing them the proof and swearing by the Wisdom of the NUN Pen that the Sulu tuan awliya and mukali exist indeed! As people journeying the Path, they are those whom Allah loves most, His beloved, whom Allah shall protect and preserve as bearers of the White Hearts of Allah’s wisdom. 

Their quiet presences are flickers of a side vision hovering in prayerful intimacy, so much like Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi’s ghazal or love-cries, sprinkling perfume in the air, the wisps of green and white open the liminal portals and corridors between worlds that is a testament of what Bapah Gerard Rixhon had always written and said in his Sulu Studies survey of the Sulu Literature, that Suluan’s are a Literature of the Voices. We write with our voices, we express with movements. And on top of his list of inventory of Sulu literatures are the mystical writings and devotional poetry, indigenous to us. To that I could not miss invoking the name of my mentor and guru, founder of Shariful Hashim Incorporated and Sulu Current Research institute, Dr Benhar Jambangan Tahil Allahu yarham, who to his last breath (b.1958-d.2024) was searching for the lost Seven Books of the Mukalli, the makhdumin wisdom of Sulu dating back earlier to the 12-13th CE, much older than Philippine’s first printed book, the ‘Doctrina Christiana’.

These are among the Sulu national literary traditions. And in this tradition, there is a blurred dichotomy – as Western literature arbitrarily would want structured – between the written, orality, and performance poetry, rhetorics, and storytelling literatures. And because of that for the next two days, we will be unapologetically speaking in our languages without feeling obliged to translate ourselves to the audiences outside who consider themselves centers of literary production standards. And we are thankful to rare jewels of multi-awarded Philippine national literary artists of the Visayas and Mindanao, Dr Januar Yap and former UP Mindanao Chancellor, Professor Ricardo de Ungria who have sailed home with us, rowing, swimming and diving with us for pearls in Sulu sea, resonating and speaking as interlocutors with us.

This is our Hulagway. This is how our Tahik Anugpat our Kapu’an pa Binaybayan.

Thank you very much. Sanglit maka pudji ma kitam kahemon. WaBillahi Taufik wal hidaya. Wa bahdu wassalmu alaikum warahmatullahi wa barakatuhu.