Those Next-Door Neighbours on the Left

By Mosa-ab Z. Mangurun

Tuck!

A star must have fallen on the tin roof thinning crisp.

Tuck! Tuck! That’s two more.

How old the sky must have become,

that it couldn’t hold all the parts of the galaxy anymore. 

This peculiar logic led Dayang back to her consciousness. Her dreams are becoming weirder, amassing, and swelling behind her eyeballs. She doesn’t like the weight they impress on her mind, and their strong aftertaste survives her coffee after breakfast, adding bitterness to her already acrid tongue.

Perhaps it’s past midnight, but the forms that emerged from her renovation fever are still distinct in her room. Now drowned in the dimness, but tomorrow they will be honey-white and sandy-brown, and a little jolting of hibiscus-red and cerulean-blue in smaller figurines and pillows, here and there. A sleeping tableau of Japandi aesthetics interrupted only by the corpulence of her husband lumping beside her like Mount Mupho.

She briefly relished this reverie before she gathers her sleep again with a deep sigh. “Still, this is good living.”

Tomorrow she’ll ask her husband to check the roof. It might be a cat’s misstep, a stone…

a stray bullet, 

a crystallised rain… 

maybe a splinter of a fallen star. 

Yes, stars can be a nuisance sometimes; 

but the neighbours on the left are far worse. 

Who knows? They might even have an elephant in their garage.

…

THEIRS was the last in a stretch of conjoined university apartments, close to a street frequented by boisterous and hungry students, going in and coming out of the nearby dormitories, feeding this sleepy neighbourhood with its only sustenance of human sound.  They had only moved here a few months ago but the thought of living here forever made her commit to renovating the entire place. But could they keep this place, knowing it was illegal to occupy a university faculty cottage? Never mind. She is the cousin of the housing division director.

Sometimes, she missed the small municipality puncturing the belly of the jungle where she had lived and taught crooked English for years. She missed the robustness of implausible stories – of snakes swallowing motorcycles, cannibals eating lumberjacks, or a washerwoman impregnated by a stray sperm escaping through the meandering stream — where anthuriums and orchids whimsically bloom, and the Malimonong River eats carabao during rainy seasons. Still, the city is electrifying to the soul. The atmosphere is middle-classy. You can litter your talks with slick English and Tagalog phrases, a respite from the thundering phonetics of Meranaw. And there are restaurants serving fettuccine alfredo. It may be listed as the poorest province of the Philippines, but the people here have the pride of Malay royalties. Everything is fine in life, except having those neighbours on the left.

Soon, she will apply for a government loan to buy a German gas oven, and then she’ll probably start on the kitchen renovation project that has been gestating in her mind for months now. She has seen enough of Home Makeover TV series to know that her next happiness factory is made up of clean countertops and pastel-painted pantries. She’s never a good cook, and except for the steamed rice, the viands that end up on the dinner table are often bought from sando-bagging food sellers. But who doesn’t need an inspiring kitchen? 

But for now this is enough — a room she bullied, haggled, and online-shopped into existence out of an open garage, for the love of sunsets and sunrises, and a coffee table and a divan that won’t fit aesthetically in any of the existing rooms. And look at the outcome of her persistence! It has become the seat of her power. Surely not for those who don’t understand the sacrilege of creasing a bedsheet during the day, curling a carpet, or leaving a trail of water on the floor. Not for her 7-year-old and 11-year-old. Even her husband would instantaneously mellow in the atmosphere of the bedroom. Everything is fine, really, except those neighbours on their left.

She feels she could articulate it even better to her visiting friends if she tries again: that upheaval in her nerves when she hears the honking of their black Toyota Fortuner every afternoon.

“Why do they do that? For whom?!” It doesn’t make sense; they live alone. After disturbing the neighbours, she knows the wife would be climbing out of the car to open the gate herself. 

“And they don’t even look at us.” 

And that one time she SalaamuAlaycum-ed the wife. It was a Salaam! And she didn’t even lift her arrogant head to respond! 

Just because your names are ribboned with professorships, and your titles granted by the university, doesn’t mean you should act too heaven-high. Doesn’t mean you can tell your neighbours to tone down their singing in the middle of impressing the poor relatives!

Yes, Dayang is a graduate of a predatory college and didn’t pass her licensure exam, and they are university people. So what? Do they excrete gold and breathe musk? 

Well, o’ well, they don’t deserve a wrinkle on her forehead.

“Jun-jun, sweetie, can you buy some buns.”

She returned to the living room where her big auntie from the province was seated like a mama orangutan, an auntie that now waits for the right time to explain how she planned to build a house and would be great if her niece could lend her some money for the cement. She would pay her by the month’s end, she shouldn’t worry. All these words were already sagging in the uneasy eyes of the visitor. But she, like those before her, has to listen first about the complaints against the university-certified next-door neighbours who honk their car unnecessarily, amongst other things. This is an accompaniment to many of her hostess’ entertaining. But Dayang does it best in her honey-white room. While seated on her divan. Feeling phenomenal in her 50%-off evening robe. Flipping a lifestyle magazine. Sipping coffee in between. To an oblivious husband. 

“Do you know that that old professor flunked the mayor’s daughter?” 

Dayang’s husband is a policeman bodyguarding the municipal aforementioned mayor. 

“He is a notorious academic Terrorist, they say, with only a student or two passing in a class of fifty.” And his rejoinders always excite her more.

“Then he doesn’t know how to teach or doesn’t teach at all. How can anyone eat from haram salary…” PAUSE. Remembering suddenly that she was also doing something similar, paying her cousin a fifth of her earnings to teach on her behalf. Tsk. She needed another cup of coffee. And that corner needed monsteras in an earthen vase. Perhaps too big? How about a bunch of ferns?

“Love, have you brought banana fritters? No?”

She tucked in her rob tighter and continued: “Yes, she reads Quran every dusk, but with such a croaked voice it’s causing anxiety to the neighbourhood. I tell you, not even those abayas can save her skin. Lofty heads like that will be made to bow down in hell! — Jun-Jun-akun, you buy banana fritters, OK? Your Baba forgot again.” 

“Jun-Jun, hurry! Aw, wait, you buy Cheese, too. Cheddar Cheese, ow!” She Englishly and loudly announced this in the garden, because in a town too poor to deviate from fried fish for dinner, cheese middle-classes you. And she wanted those neighbours to understand that she belongs to the street too. 

…

BUT then, one Friday afternoon, came a soft-spoken Kandori invitation from these neighbours. The wife offered this while standing close enough for Dayang to see the dark spots on her face. She has skin similar to the underbelly of a frog.

“My husband has just retired, so we’ve decided to throw a Thanksgiving party. Even if it’s simple, please make some time to attend tomorrow. It’s at 1 pm, In Shaa Allah. Please tell your husband too. I hope it’s not too much of an imposition.” 

“Oh, thank you, we’ll come for sure. That’s tomorrow after the midday prayer, right? Thank you. I’ll tell my husband we will come…”

Casanaya is the name of their neighbour, the wife… Dayang used to know her only as Professor Maulad. She saw more of her the next morning when they air-kissed their hellos and she found out she was unperfumed too, a smell of detergent walled in her lanitan — her human scent.  

Judging by the tint of her lipstick, Dayang must have considered this visit a very serious occasion. Her dress was the one she wore in the wedding of the Municipal Mayor’s daughter. And her husband was made to dress to not look like a sloppy bodyguard. 

The Maulad’s garden is bland compared to hers. The house is like the other university houses, and so nothing is extraordinary. O, there is even laundry left hanging there. Stepping inside this property made Dayang feel powerfully modern. The living room attested to her aesthetic superiority. It was a depot of things sad, cultural, and 1980s. Except for the large SmartTV, everything else gleams of wooden, laminated melodramas. Clean, yes. The air is sanitised, yes. But who decorates a wall with an actual Bangsamoro Flag? Is this a museum? 

“You have a beautiful house.” She said to Casanaya with a smile.

Their host leads them to the centre of these artefacts, where His Professorship the Neighbour-Husband is already seated on his rocking rattan throne. And after formulaic feel-at-homes and a few enacted smiles, Casanaya started talking about how they should have made this kind of invitation sooner. His Professorship preserved himself in utmost silence and was committed to acting like a disinterested iguana. On the other hand, he does look like an iguana. 

“Have we arrived too soon or too late?” Dayang noticed that there are no other guests. Wasn’t this supposed to be a Thanksgiving party?

Tomorrow will be the main occasion, the host explains, but they wanted to have a special moment with their next-door ‘friends.’ Their children from Manila will be arriving tonight, and it will be their first visit this year. She can’t blame them, she adds. They grew up with boring parents, so they chased excitement as far as opportunities would allow. Then she continues to roll down the story in a dramatic tone: Habits keep you from hearing the leakage in time. And how strange that earning a Living cost you Life. At this point, the iguana excused himself with a “thank you for coming” ribboned with an awkward smile. His back was killing him, he said.

Dayang was nodding throughout Casanaya’s soliloquy, fuelling it with accenting remarks, “yes, true, true,” fanning it further with  theatrical facial expressions, modulated hahas, and calculated Ohs. Her husband was behind her, supporting her with embarrassing crackles of laughter and interjections. Dayang may have played her role all too well that, much to her surprise, she started liking their host. She even thought of giving her some wild orchids from her hometown. At least now, she was assured of her aesthetic superiority, and, well, she could probably get used to the afternoon honks. 

“And sorry if the car horn disturbs you… My husband couldn’t get rid of the habit. Probably, he missed the olden days when he had the children opening the gate for him…” When Casanaya said this, the silence surrounding them thickened, and from somewhere a sound started peeling out. 

Dayang could swear she heard the voices of her children travelling to their host’s living room. Delivered to them like a platter. 

She stares in horror at what appears to be a wall they share with these university professors. This poor melodramatic room is the other side of her honey-white room. The string of sounds leaking through hits her in tidal realisations. Yes, toned-down but still very clear. 

“But Mamang said we are not allowed in here.” 

Sure it was her youngest’s.

“Shhh! Be quiet! If you shut up, we are safe, Stupid!”

That was Jun-jun’s.

“That’s Baba’s wallet!”

“I said shut up, stupid! I won’t share it with you if you don’t shut up!”

She recognised her own horror in her husband’s face. Casanaya is spitting words they couldn’t catch. Their act is irredeemably collapsing.

So, they can hear everything over here? Everything Dayang has said. While in her 50%-off evening robe. Flipping magazine. Sipping coffee in between. 

Has she spewed one graceful word about them? All that would have flooded in were the curses she made, the patterned complaints she tells with vigorous enactment to her guests. 

None.

She was betrayed by the broadcasting wall. The sepulchral silence of these neighbours defeated her. Exposed her. Now she looks like she just pooped on their sofa: “Ai. I forgot we have to go. Sorry. Excuse me. We have to go. Sorry. Sorry.”

“But you haven’t touched the food yet? Should we pack them instead?”

“Oh, no, no, no. Sorry, we have to go na. It might rain.” She couldn’t see her husband. She couldn’t stop bowing her head: “Sorry, sorry, we have to go, sorry.” 

Where are her sandals? 

Did she stumble over a splinter of a fallen star?

“Sorry, sorry.”

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Mosa-ab Z. Mangurun is a faculty member of the English Department at the Mindanao State University-Main Campus, Marawi City, Philippines. He writes to represent his people, the Meranaw, a Bangsamoro tribe who for centuries resisted colonialism, thus preserving their Islamic identity against the overwhelmingly Christian country. He writes to humanize his Muslim characters, presenting them in their everyday struggle, away from the frame of war and terrorism to which they are constantly subjected. 

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