So Melaka, the place where I suffered for two and a half years before going off to college - also known as "an overgrown fishing village where everybody is related to everybody else", and by its Anglicized name of Malacca - is in the news again since someone discovered a new bat-vectored reovirus there. Apparently the Chief Minister isn't too happy about a virus being named after his state, never mind that nobody minded the naming of Nipah virus back in the 1990s (Chua Kaw Bing, the leader of the Malaysian team, was also involved in the discovery of Nipah, if I remember correctly).
Viruses have been renamed in the past, most notably the Sin Nombre ("No Name") hantavirus that killed a lot of people in a Native American community. The researchers were originally going to name it after the place it was discovered, but the community objected, not without reason since a number of their best young people had just died.
Thinking about Melaka again, I can't say that this is the only thing I find interesting about it. Melaka has a great history, but the vast majority of Malaysian local governments wouldn't know what history was if it bit them on the bum. The vaunted Portuguese fort, A Famosa is a pile of rocks while beautiful old Chinese shophouses that have been around for generations crumble (warning: 鸟屋 [The Bird House] is one of those artsy movies where the ending makes no sense).
During my time in college, I read Shellabear's transcription (it was originally written in Jawi) of the Sejarah Melayu [The Malay Annals - or loosely, "The History of the Malays"] and finally finished it during spring break of senior year. We had been exposed to snippets of classical Malay through the last two years of secondary school, but never read a full text like how American kids have to swallow at least one Shakespeare. I wanted to taste at least one classical Malay book in its entirety...which was pretty much the equivalent in difficulty of an ESL speaker digesting the Lord of the Rings.
I was volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build that spring break. Lying on the bottom bunk in a beach house in South Carolina, reading by torchlight, I wept over the terror and betrayal of the Portuguese invasion:
Setelah datang musim maka kapitan kapal itupun kembalilah ke Goa. Telah datang ke Goa maka, diwartakannya kepada wazir-wazirnya peri kebesaran negeri Melaka dengan makmurnya serta dengan ramai bandarnya. Pada masa itu wazirnya di Goa Alfonso d'Alberquerque namanya. Maka ia pun terlalu ingin menegar khabar negeri Melaka itu. Maka ia menyuruh berlengkap kapal tujuh buah, dan ghali panjang sepuluh, fusta tigabelas. Telah sudah lengkap, maka disuruhnya menyerang Melaka. Maka Gonzalo Periera nama kapitannya. Telah datang ke Melaka, make dibedilnya dengan meriam. Maka segala orang Melaka pun terkejut menengar bunyi meriam itu, katanya, 'Apa bunyi ini seperti guruh?'
Maka peluru meriam itupun datang mengenai segala orang Melaka: ada yang putus lehernya, ada yang putus pinggangnya, ada yang putus pahanya, ada yang pecah kepalanya; makin bertambah-tambah hairanlah orang Melaka melihat peluru bedil itu, katanya, 'Apa nama senjata bulat-bulat ini? Mana tajamnya, maka ia membunuh ini?'
[My crappy translation: When the season came, then the captain of that ship returned to Goa. When he reached Goa, he reported to the viceroys of the greatness of Melaka, of its sovereignity and its many towns. At that time, the Viceroy of Goa was named Alfonso d'Alberquerque. He greatly desired to hear more of Melaka. therefore he commanded that seven ships, ten long ghalis [dunno this word], and thirteen fustas [dunno also] be equipped. When all was ready, he commanded the invasion of Melaka. Gonzalo Periera was the name of his captain. When they reached Melaka, they bombarded it with cannon. Then all the people of Melaka were shocked to hear the cannons, saying, 'What is this sound like thunder?'
Then the cannonballs came and struck the people of Melaka: some had their necks broken, some had their waists broken, some had their thighs broken, some had their heads crushed; and the amazement of the people of Melaka grew watching those missiles, saying, 'What is the name of these round weapons? Where is their sharpness, that they kill like this?' -- Sejarah Melayu, WG Shellabear edition, p.184]
That is the history of Melaka. The history of Melaka cannot be conveyed by a bunch of lazy vendors selling trinkets made in China. The history of Melaka cannot be conveyed by painting all the buildings in the historical district brick red. The history of Melaka, for heaven's sake, cannot be conveyed by a giant revolving tower shaped like Hang Tuah's keris.
The history of Melaka is the history of a fallen kingdom whose conquerors themselves all fell in time. It comes to us through stories, read or spoken, and through the lives of the people whose ancestors were there - Malay, Chinese, Indian, Portuguese. In comparison all else is dirt.
Labels: history, Malaysia, science
