Beliefs

Beliefs, I believe, fall into three main categories. Sublime, absurd and ridiculous.

While a picture of Sublime and Absurd can very well be created buy studying the lives of say, Mother Theresa and Al-Zarqawi, it is ridiculous beliefs of the Everyman that I find more interesting.

I had experience, recently, to watch the ridiculousness of belief. A friend, in quite a bad shape of health, suffering from a tumor growing in his intestine, asked me to accompany him to visit a Bomoh in Muar. He has been to every conceivable healer, spent a princely sum on them, but his cancer has grown large, has entangled itself in his bladder that nothing but long drawn chemotherapy sessions will, along with prayers, work.

I went with him, notwithstanding my skeptical view of shamans. Someone had told him that this particular guy was good, that even ministers and like go to him for healing; he can, simply put, work miracles.

The place was quite tidy, though a long line had already formed before us. We were offered teh-o and amid coughs and sneezes and groans and panting, I talked to the people around me.

They were quite a medley. Some suffered from cough and cold, some had real serious ailments: cardiomegaly, bad luck (that is a major illness), cancer in various forms and shapes. They were from different races and colors, they followed different religions or none at all, and they had one thing in common: they desperately needed to believe: that their ailments would go away; their tomorrows would be better.

The shaman, dressed in loose clothing that has become their trademark, was sitting with his eyes closed. A devotee ushered us into the room and left. A table, reminiscent of a doctor’s examining couch, stood in one corner. He opened his eyes and smiled. He had a pleasant face, a natural smile.

He stopped my friend with a raised hand when began to speak.

“You have a bad liver.”

My friend wanted to speak, was again shut up with a raised hand.

“Your insides are all gone, even your heart is weak. You feel like you want to curl up and die.”

My friend’s was a picture of humble acceptance. Hw wanted to curl up and die, the pain was unbearable, the prospects grim.

“I can cure you, but you have to believe.”

I had to speak then, just to show my sarcasm; “Does the pacik have chemotherapy facilities?”

“Buang lahitu.” His disdain was far overpowering that my sarcasm. “You think all these people have not gone to the doctors and hospitals before they came here?”

He read something in a bottle of water, gave it the patient and asked him to finish the water and he will be called again.

Longer wait.

Longer, more notes taking wait. And at last he was operated upon, lying naked with just his crotch covered with a rag, the skinny skeleton of a friend I knew as a healthy drug taking, samsu drinking person once was operated without any loss of blood. The shaman’s fingers roved over his body, making cutting gestures, removed his invisible heart, removed his invisible, kidney, liver, intestines. His hands at last held the patient’s forehead, said some prayers.

“Come again in ten days. If God wills, you will be fine.” We always like to thrust it on Him.

There is a story there, lurking somewhere, I couldn’t tell what exactly. Knowing me, I probably would be able to tell what for months when it would dawn on me and I would scurry for the notes.

But the story here has an end: The power of suggestion is immense, my friend bounded about, his life improved, he threw away the cocktail of drugs prescribed to him at the hospital. The Tramadols, the co-amoxicalvs and others where donated to help the various drain based creatures suffering from pain.

A week later he died. A happy man, a believer.