1001 Hapot Asin Simbag

I am holding right now a book that seduces me with more than a thousand questions while tempting me with answers. This is a book that was part of those regularly released by Cecilio Press in Sabang. It is attributed to Antonio B. Salazar but given the range of the queries and the almost eternal implications of the answers, the author must have compiled them from some sources. From the chanter of passion to the cockfight aficionado to the healer, everyone and anyone that has something to do with enchantment of life and the absence or surplus of it must have been touched by this book. The book has the carefree air of a gypsy’s forecast: you heed it because there is no other option. To do otherwise is not to learn for the book is a book of knowledge. In between its pages are answers that may not be true but are stated with such certainty there is no other way but for you to listen to it. I talk about this range of responses regarding the book, or the pamphlet, because the book is not addressed to me, or to this generation. This book is addressed to a community that believed in direct responses to the Life questions. Much as these questions revolved around the mysteries of life, the 1001 Questions and Answers are not meant to keep things mysterious. The world then, when this document was the reference to many social rituals, was a world that required answers. It was a world that was not meant to live in darkness, and when it was suffused in gloom of ignorance, there was always a source, a wellspring of data out of which people can talk to each other. Page 1 of this book startles as it asks the question about the beginning of things. Anong bulan linalang an kinaban? The book has an answer. The next big question is still on origin: Kasuarin linalang an mga Angeles? Again the document has an answer. If the angels are discussed then surely Adam and Eve must be also talked about. We know the meaning of the name of Adan but we do not know where that name was derived. Well, the book has an answer. The name Adam was put together from the “apat na bitoon sa apat na sogod nin kinaban.” Then the book commands us: Ngarani dao an mga bitoon na ini. Name them indeed. They are: [A]natole, [D]yssis, [A]rctos and [M]essembria.