Thy people shall…‘not?’

A reader commenting on my political status article in this paper really got my curiosity up. He mentioned NMD, and I figured he was born here, but grew up on Guam. He said that although he was born here, he was not an NMD. I ask, how is that possible? How does his situation add up? Was the comment writer born here before 1950? I notice he is using a Guamanian coin word “Magahaga.” The writer said his “greatma” was from Chuuk and that she probably would not be happy if she was designated a “Refaluasch” because of her Chuukese lineage of the Namunito atoll. Refaluasch means “our country men,” people who “belong” attributable to those “Saipanese Carolinians” who were born and grew up here. “Re-falu-asch” is like the African-American calling each other “Blood,” or like “Yo’ Blood.” That means that you belong to a group, or a race, the “in-group.”

Even then, I’m still happy with those statements. So, the comment writer was born here but that he was not an NMD. Seems like he is saying that because he was not an NMD, he doesn’t “belong.” O.k., reasonable enough. To each his own. And it dawned on me, then, that the feeling of that writer ”Magahaga” that he did not belong, born on Saipan, but not an NMD, runs counter to a similar sentiment of a Moabite lady of biblical antiquity. Just the opposite. The lady was on Moab (now Jordan) who married a man from Bethlehem of Judea, Mahlon, son of Elimelech and Naomi, as mentioned in the Megillot. I guess the story is accepted by the Catholic Church because it is carried in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Well, many years ago, in Israel, when Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated and Jordan King Hussein of the Hashemite Kingdom was invited to attend Rabin’s funeral, he brought up the story of this Moabite lady, and the king talked about the relationship between this lady and her Hebrew in-laws of Bethlehem of Judea, and how when this widow was urged by her mother-in-law, Naomi of Bethlehem, to return to her Moabite family and re-marry, but the widow responded to her mother-in-law in this way. She said, “Why do you entreat me to leave you, to return from following you.” The Moabite widow continued: For whither thou goest, I will go; whither thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and your God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried; and may the Lord deal with me be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” The verse was held by the Hebrew as a symbol of abiding loyalty and devotion, a feeling of love just a bit closer to agape, the love of Jesus for the disciples. The Moabite lady, later, married Boaz, the cousin of her late husband Mahlon. She bore a child Obed. Obed had a son Jesse. And Jesse got a son David who became King of Israel. Thus, this Moabite lady became the grandmother of King David of Israel. And the lady’s name was Ruth. The biblical Ruth. Many hundreds of years later, 1954, that very biblical verse was picked out of the Old Testament Book of Ruth and converted into a song made popular by Les Paul and Mary Ford, as well as by Perry Como. The title is “Whither thou goest.” And it made the Billboard 100 Chart in 1950s. And so, my friend Magahaga, even if you feel that you don’t belong, you do, thus, to me you are a Saipanese through and through, and I am a part Chuukese of Elato, too. And what of the Biblical Ruth? She now belongs to the universe.

Rudy M. Sablan
Garapan