{"id":39293,"date":"2021-06-09T14:41:56","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T12:41:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/?page_id=39293"},"modified":"2021-06-09T14:49:48","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T12:49:48","slug":"sample","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/foreignrights\/authors\/raoul-de-jong\/raoul-de-jong-jaguar-man\/sample\/","title":{"rendered":"Sample translation – Jaguar Man<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Raoul de Jong – Jaguar Man<\/em><\/p>\n

The son<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear thou-who-art-my-forefather,<\/p>\n

For these past few years, you\u2019ve been playing a game with me. You gave me clues and I followed them. From Rotterdam to Paramaribo, from Rome to Recife. But every time I was on your tail, you sped away. We can\u2019t go on like this forever; I think you know that as well as I do. It\u2019s time to take stock of how far we\u2019ve come. To put our cards on the table. All right, I\u2019ll begin: this is not a story about white or black or the Netherlands or Suriname, and it\u2019s not a story about my father, even though all those things play a role. This is a story about you. I\u2019m told that you had supernatural powers and that those powers have something to do with me.<\/p>\n

Is that possible? Just because we share a few genes, could your actions have influenced my life? When I look at my father and myself, I think, yes, they must have. For twenty-eight years he wasn\u2019t a father to me, yet we shared everything\u2014much more than just our outward appearance. So it stands to reason there\u2019s also something of my father\u2019s father in me, and of my father\u2019s father\u2019s father. And all those fathers lead me back to you. My father tells me you had the power to change yourself into a jaguar, king of the Amazon, the strongest\u2014and some say the cruelest\u2014animal in the South American rainforest. How did you do it? Who were you? Where did you get your powers? And why does my father tell me I should leave those powers alone?<\/p>\n

This is day one of a seven-day ritual to answer my questions, a ritual explained to me in a little gingerbread house with anti-theft grates and a rose garden in a district of Paramaribo called Kasabaholo, or \u201cCassava Hollow,\u201d by the seventy-nine-year old Winti priestess Misi Elly Purperhart.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat my father told me\u2014could it be true?\u201d I asked Misi Elly. She was staring at something over my shoulder: a spirit, I thought, but when I turned around I saw a car parking across the street. She let out a secretive laugh and to my surprise quoted the Bible: \u201cI, your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the crimes of the parents unto…\u201d \u2014and then with a roar\u2014\u201c\u2026THE FOURTH GENERATION!\u2019<\/p>\n

Yes, it could be true. According to Christianity, and according to the Winti religion. I laughed nervously: \u201cThen I\u2019m cursed?\u201d Misi Elly didn\u2019t know, but she did know how I could find out. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you, but you have to follow my instructions. Otherwise we could have a disaster on our hands. This is serious business.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would take me seven days, she said. Seven days without cigarettes, without alcohol, without meat, without salt, and without sex. And I couldn\u2019t start until I was back in the Netherlands, because you, Jaguarman, don\u2019t like flying.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 10:35 on a Monday morning in June, and I\u2019m sitting in my bird\u2019s-nest studio on the eleventh floor of a high-rise, overlooking the Rotterdam harbor. The sun shines in through the windows, a flight of gulls passes the balcony, and the roar of the highway is audible outside. All my deadlines have been met, all my bills paid. There are no cigarettes in the apartment, my phone\u2019s on vibrate, and my out of office reply is on for the rest of the week. For the next seven days, I\u2019m all yours.<\/p>\n

By this morning, I\u2019d found everything Misi Elly had told me I needed except a prapi. That\u2019s because yesterday in the Winti store on Kruiskade, by the time I saw what a prapi was (an aluminum tub), I had already covered the counter with my other purchases. So this morning I used a blue plastic bucket instead, the same bucket I used for soapy water when I cleaned my apartment yesterday. I hope you don\u2019t mind.<\/p>\n

I made an X on the bottom in white chalk, crushed half a ball of pimba (a kind of white clay) into a powder, poured molasses onto it from a plastic bottle, took some twigs from a tropical plant out of a bag I kept in the freezer, cut them to pieces over the bucket, added cold water, stirred it into a sludge with a wooden mixing spoon, and filled the bucket with hot water. \u201cAs hot as you can stand,\u201d said Misi Elly\u2019s written instructions.<\/p>\n

The liquid was brown and steaming hot; the twigs got stuck in my hair. I doused myself with it, one cup at a time, using a little dish in which I made guacamole yesterday. \u201cAnd as you pour, don\u2019t stand stock still like a statue,\u201d Misi Elly had said to me. \u201cTalk! And your words will take shape.\u201d Her instructions told me what to say: \u201cI am washing myself to become enlightened. All the uncleanness I have picked up in the
\nstreet, at work, or anywhere else, I am washing away.\u201d I had plenty of uncleanness to wash away, so I spoke with conviction. \u201cEverything that was unclean is gone now,\u201d I said, and then I realized the walkway was right outside the bathroom window and anyone passing could hear me.<\/p>\n

I turned on the water and showered. Then I swept the twigs and brown water into the shower drain with a cloth and rinsed out the bucket. I made a new X on the bottom of the bucket, put dried roses on top that Misi Elly had given me from her garden, covered the whole thing with a red elixir called \u201cSeven Spirits,\u201d and filled the bucket with lukewarm water. This time I said, \u201cI am washing myself with this water to give my body strength, the strength my wintis need.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Misi Elly had instructed me, I\u2019d placed my outfit for the next seven days on my desk chair, folded and ready for use: a bright white T-shirt and a pair of tight white gym shorts, looking fresh as a daisy. Under this outfit I put on white thermal underwear; I hope that\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n

Then I opened the top of my vintage Swedish-designed ebony writing desk, which had cost much more than I could afford. Eight months ago, I\u2019d set it up as an altar, with all the objects that you, Jaguarman, have sent my way over the years. This morning, I lit a light blue candle, opened a fresh notebook, and said, \u201cThou who art my forefather, reveal thyself.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t recall how I\u2019d pictured this moment, but nothing happened. All I saw were the same books I see lined up on the desk in front of me now, books written by people who look like my father and me, and like you. Their names are Anton de Kom, Edgar Cairo, the Penard brothers, Leo Ferrier, Astrid Roemer, Rita Dulci Rahman, Bram Behr, Iwan Brave, Tessa Leuwsha, Reinier Artist, Frank Dragtenstein, Clark
\nAccord, Nina Jurna, Juli\u00ebn Zaalman, and Ellen Ombre. I found them thanks to a series of strange coincidences, in second-hand bookstores, at Winti celebrations, on websites for book collectors, and through conversations with architects, archeologists, bonu men, and dance instructors in the Netherlands and Paramaribo. Maybe somewhere in all those stories I found, your voice was speaking to me, but I still don\u2019t understand quite what you were telling me.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I don\u2019t want to end up with a psychosis or anything,\u201d I\u2019d told Misi Elly. Seemingly deaf to my words, she just nodded and said, \u201cDo it, do it. Do it. You have to do it.\u201d What I discovered might be bad, she told me, but it might be good. And with a mischievous laugh, she added, \u201cAnd it would be much better if you don\u2019t say anything to your father.\u201d<\/p>\n

While we picked the roses for the ritual in her garden, I realized there was a small but significant detail I hadn\u2019t mentioned yet. Not until we were saying goodbye at the garden gate did I tell her, \u201cOh, yeah, by the way, I\u2019m working on a book.\u201d Misi Elly didn\u2019t seem to see anything devilish in that. She replied, \u201cThen you should write it.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said it would give me insight\u2014in waking life and in my dreams. And she told me what to say before I started: \u201cFather, I will take everything in. I place everything in your hands. Father, you are God, you are my father, you are everything to me. You will never abandon me, and I have faith in you. Something happened, I know. As you once said, the crimes of the fathers will be passed on to the children. It
\ndoesn\u2019t have to be a crime; it could be something good. But you are saving something for me. Reveal it to me.\u201d So now I\u2019ve said it.<\/p>\n

Jaguarman, whoever you are and whatever you want to say, I\u2019m ready to face it: the truth and nothing but the truth. Let\u2019s start at the beginning.<\/p>\n

I never had the feeling I was cursed, Jaguarman. I didn\u2019t have a father, but I had a mother, three aunts, an uncle, three blond boy cousins, three blonde girl cousins, a grandma and grandpa, and a whole line-up of ancestors from Friesland and Groningen dressed in peasant smocks and golden headdresses, and that was strange and wonderful enough, because these were the gifts that life had given me. Until December 10, 2011, when I received an e-mail:<\/p>\n

im searching for my son raoul de jong \u263a\u263a\u263a.<\/p>\n

I still remember exactly where I was when I read it: sprawled on a mattress in my squalid little room without central heating on the top floor of the low-rent building where I was staying as part of Rotterdam\u2019s anti-squatting program. It felt as if everything was falling apart, as if I\u2019d been caught red-handed. As if all my life I\u2019d been on the run from the secret police and now an officer had called my number. As if nothing would ever be the same again. And of course, that turned out to be true.<\/p>\n

I replied, \u201cWHO ARE YOU???\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, I received a reply:<\/p>\n

That was your father. This is his girlfriend. Your father is searching for his children.<\/p>\n

I pictured two junkies somewhere in a room not so different from mine, cooking up nefarious plots to wring money out of his long-lost son, in the misguided belief that since I wrote books I must be wealthy. I replied that I wanted a reply from my father first. I wanted to know why he was suddenly looking for me after twenty-seven years. Two weeks later I still hadn\u2019t heard back from him. And that was that, I told myself. I could breathe again.<\/p>\n

But you didn\u2019t stop there, Jaguarman.<\/p>\n

Five months later I ran into Jim, the only other half-Surinamese person I\u2019d known well as a child. When I was ten and Jim was twenty-one, he was my babysitter one night a week while my mother took evening courses for an art degree. Jim and I hadn\u2019t seen each other for more than ten years. He told me he\u2019d visited his own Surinamese father, who had died soon afterwards. \u201cHe\u2019s the only dad you\u2019ve got,\u201d Jim
\nsaid. \u201cLook him up while he\u2019s still around.\u201dWhen I got home, I searched my old e-mail account for the message from my father\u2019s girlfriend, and I saw that in fact my father had responded, four months after
\nmy last e-mail, on March 12, 2012.<\/p>\n

MY DEAR SON RAOUL, I AM DELIGHTED TO HAVE HEARD FROM
\nYOU. IT MAY BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO IMAGINE BUT THIS IS
\nEXACTLY WHAT I HAVE BEEN PRAYING FOR ALL THESE YEARS.
\nFOR GOD TO REUNITE ME WITH ALL MY CHILDREN, FOR GOD TO
\nGIVE ME A CHANCE TO MAKE UP FOR MY PAST FAILINGS. A
\nCHANCE TO ASK YOU ALL TO FORGIVE ME FOR NOT BEING THERE
\nFOR YOU. CHILDREN DO NOT ASK TO BE BORN, BUT IT IS
\nPLEASURE, TWO PEOPLE ENJOYING THEMSELVES, THAT LEADS TO
\nIT: A CHILD. SOMETIMES WE THE PARENTS CANNOT OR WILL NOT
\nSHOULDER THE RESPONSIBILITIES, BUT I HAVE KEPT YOU ALL
\nWITH ME IN MY HEART ALL THIS TIME, WHETHER I WAS THERE
\nFOR YOU OR NOT. I THANK GOD FOR LETTING YOU GROW UP INTO
\nTHE MAN YOU ARE TODAY. MY SON, MAY THE LORD PRESERVE
\nYOU, PROTECT YOU, AND MOST OF ALL, LOVE YOU. LET US
\nAPPROACH EACH OTHER WITH OPEN MINDS, WITHOUT JUDGING
\nOR FEELING GUILTY TOWARD EACH OTHER. AND OF COURSE A
\nVERY HAPPY TWENTY-EIGHTH BIRTHDAY TO YOU TODAY. YOUR
\nFATHER. WHO LOVES YOU VERY VERY MUCH. GOD BLESS YOU MY
\nSON, YOUR FATHER HUMBERT<\/p>\n

This, Jaguarman, is how you brought my father back into my life after twenty-eight years. A grand, dramatic entrance, with capital letters and help from God. I\u2019m no fool, Jaguarman; of course I always knew there must have been a father in the picture somewhere. \u201cEach child chooses what parents to be born to,\u201d my mother used to say. She\u2019d picked that up in some course for developing your intuition. I always replied, \u201cThat\u2019s easy for you to say.\u201d It was my mother who had chosen my father, not me.<\/p>\n

If it had been up to me, I would have chosen Rio de Janeiro, London, Tokyo, Rome, or New York, but it happened in 1983 in a country where it always rains and where everyone is always complaining, in a city that was destroyed in a war and then rebuilt bit by bit out of asphalt, cement, and concrete. That night my mother was on her own at the Tudor Bar, a grimy hole in the wall on Nieuwe Binnenweg. Most of the
\ncustomers were young and either Surinamese or else art students. She lived around the corner and always ran into people she knew there. They played good music at the Tudor. Soul. That night he was standing on stage, a dark-skinned man with dark-skinned friends, surveying the people on the dance floor. He flashed her a smile and said something flattering, something like, \u201cHello, young lady.\u201d Swit\u2019talk, they call it in Suriname, I know that now. It worked. \u201cYour father made me feel like a princess,\u201d my mother said. I said, \u201cEeeew.\u201d<\/p>\n

They had a fling. My mother tells me it lasted two months, tops. In that time, the rest of my family met him once\u2014on my mother\u2019s twenty-third birthday. My father and a friend of his were supposed to cook for the family. They arrived three hours late. The way my aunt Hilda tells it, they looked like the members of Earth, Wind & Fire, \u201cin leather jackets and tight pants.\u201d My grandpa wasn\u2019t impressed. \u201cI don\u2019t know what she sees in that man,\u201d he once said from his white grandpa easy chair throne in the
\nliving room, where he sat for his whole adult life. \u201cPlenty of other people like that\u201d\u2014 Surinamese people, he meant\u2014\u201chave made something of their lives.\u201d (Jaguarman, please don\u2019t get the wrong idea. My grandpa would never say anything like that these days. He\u2019s a sweet man who was just repeating what he\u2019d learned about Dutch history in the 1940s, and he\u2019s changed too. He went through this whole process from up close.)<\/p>\n

As soon as my father had won my mother\u2019s heart once and for all, he lost interest. My mother realized she had to act fast; she\u2019d decided she wanted a child, and chosen this man as the father. \u201cBut why him?\u201d I asked. She couldn\u2019t really say. But it had to be him and no one else. She knew my father would not be a father to me, but she never saw that as a problem. She had always been at odds with her own father, my
\ngrandpa, who because of my mother\u2019s choice became the man for whom I pasted together presents in nursery school on Father\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

In the light of everything that followed, there\u2019s one detail I shouldn\u2019t leave out of my story, Jaguarman: in the kitchen of a Surinamese friend of hers, my mother took a bath with special herbs from the Surinamese rain forest to increase her fertility. She had misunderstood her friend\u2019s instructions, so instead of pouring the water over her head with a bucket, she made it in the bathtub and soaked in it.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, my mother was standing on a ladder whitewashing the walls of her new home when she felt it. Something moving in her belly. What I\u2019d planned to write here was: \u201cShe didn\u2019t know what lay ahead, just as I don\u2019t know now, yet in that single second it all flashed before her eyes. A whole lifetime, everything behind us and everything still to come.\u201d But my mother says that\u2019s an exaggeration and I\u2019m making up a story that belongs to her. In any case, she knew there and then that it had worked.
\nInside her was a child.<\/p>\n

Translated by David McKay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raoul de Jong – Jaguar Man The son Dear thou-who-art-my-forefather, For these past few years, you\u2019ve been playing a game with me. You gave me clues and I followed them. From Rotterdam to Paramaribo, from Rome to Recife. But every time I was on your tail, you sped away. We can\u2019t go on like this…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3251,"featured_media":0,"parent":39165,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-39293","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/3251"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39293\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/pages\/39165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foreignrights.debezigebij.nl\/wpg-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}