‘Que sera, sera’

PINOY KASI


‘Que sera, sera’
By Michael Tan
Inquirer

Last updated 01:49am (Mla time) 05/04/2007

MANILA, Philippines -- I’m sure many of you know the song. Hear the music now? Let’s begin: “When I was just a little girl (OK, so if you’re a guy then change the lyrics)/ I asked my mother / What will I be?/ Will I be pretty?/ Will I be rich?/ Here’s what she said to me.”

Do I hear you humming now? “Que sera, sera./ Whatever will be, will be./ The future’s not ours to see./ Que sera, sera./ What will be, will be.”

Legend has it that when Doris Day first heard the song, her reaction was that it was a “forgettable children’s song.” Eventually, she recorded the song for Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” The song won an Oscar for best original song.

My parents tell me I loved the song when I was a child, oblivious, of course, of the lyrics and content to repeat “que sera, sera.” Children love the song because it is catchy, while adults, well, it is a sticky tune -- you hear the first two lines and you hum along, and again, and again, but it isn’t irritating like many other glue-y songs.

Hebrew, English and Tagalog

The other day “Que sera, sera” returned to haunt me when I got a DVD film, which opened and ended with the song. It was a film entitled “Paper Dolls” and the cover showed what looked like a showgirl, all decked out in costume ready to dance. No, it wasn’t some adaptation of “Dream Girls”; rather unexpectedly, it was a documentary about Filipinos in Tel Aviv, made by an Israeli, Tomer Heymann. The back cover said the film ran 80 minutes, in color, widescreen, in Hebrew, English and Tagalog with English subtitles.

I don’t remember reading about the film here in the Philippines, but I may have just missed it. On the other hand, I would have thought that if the film had made it here, it would have attracted more attention in the media, including rave reviews.

The film is about a group of Filipino “bakla” [gay men], living and working in Tel Aviv as caregivers. Yes, it is a true story, with Heymann following them around as they care for their wards, all elderly men, and making the oddest of couples (imagine them walking around in semi-drag, dressed like women as the bakla are over here, while wheeling around their elderly wards in the B’nei Brak district of Tel Aviv, an Orthodox Jewish section with very conservative residents).

We learn that these Filipinos were undocumented, meaning illegal, workers, but then after the second Palestinian Intifada (uprising), the Israeli government found themselves lacking laborers, and relaxed their immigration rules. The Filipino “bakla” were able to get jobs as caregivers, and by Israeli laws, could stay for as long as their employers would vouch for them.

The main characters in this real-world drama are Cheska (originally Francisco), Sally (Salvador), Jan (Troan Jacob), Giorgi (Eduardo) and Chiqui. All are in their 30s. All have lived in the Middle East for several years.

As their stories unfold, we are reminded that there are Filipinos who go overseas not just for economic reasons but also because they’re sexual refugees, people unable to find acceptance from their own families back home. They venture overseas, hoping to find a new life, sometimes even risking it by going to places that may seem even more inhospitable.

In Israel, this motley band of adventurers end up as caregivers by day, but occasionally launch night performances as female impersonators or drag queens. The caregivers are, to put it politely, on the matronly side, so their shows border on parody. Heymann introduces them to a nightclub owner, and for their audition number, they perform the Hebrew folk song “Hava Nagila,” yes, another sticky song that means “Let us rejoice.” But the nightclub owner wants them to pretend to be Japanese geisha. They quit.

The drag shows become almost incidental. What we see are the bonds the caregivers build with their elderly patients. We are reminded of the difficulties of caregiving, with one of the Paper Dolls describing how her ward, who has Alzheimer’s, was constantly wandering off. What makes their work even more valiant is the way they adjust to cultures so different from our own, sometimes almost outrageously. There is one scene that left me partly in shock: an orthodox Jewish old man devoutly praying, apparently oblivious to the Filipino caregiver at his side, headphones on, singing away a bit too loudly -- inside a synagogue.

Throughout the film, we hear the “bading” [gay men] speaking in Hebrew. I have no way of telling how good they are at it, but they seem to be comfortable and articulate.

Sally is something else. She is the most endearing among the Paper Dolls. Caring for Haim, an elderly man with throat cancer who has lost his voice, Sally has learned to read Hebrew so she can figure out Haim’s written instructions. Not only that, because Haim wanted her to learn more Hebrew, he had her reading aloud the poetry of Yehuda Amichai, which she does quite well.

The documentary reveals the difficult life of the Paper Dolls: cramped living quarters, fears of police raids, fears of terrorist bombs. There is one scene showing the chaotic aftermath of a bombing: The authorities call on everyone to seek medical help and not to worry about being arrested. The authorities know the area is full of illegal migrants, including the Filipinos.

One of the Paper Dolls talks, too, about missing her mother, bringing home the message that we export Filipinos to care for other nations’ elderly, at the cost of being separated from their own elderly.

And yes, there is discrimination, even in cosmopolitan Tel-Aviv. We hear an Israeli taxi driver calling them perverse, even as he describes his own trip to the Philippines where he could pick up sex workers for a few dollars.

Half-Jewish, half-Filipino

The warm moments come, unexpectedly, from the elderly patients. Early on, Haim’s kindness and good heart show. He says that he hired Sally as a man, but it’s become inconsequential that she didn’t quite prove to be as manly as he had expected.

I want you to watch the film to appreciate how Sally and the other Paper Doll, find their place. I don’t want to give you the ending except to say that eventually, they go on to Britain, still caring for the elderly.

In a talk show interview, Heymann recalls, with amusement, how Chiqui was beginning to feel she had found her place, describing herself as “half-Jewish, half-Filipino,” again oblivious to the realities of politics and citizenship in Israel, or of Jewishness.

And yet when you think about it, the Paper Dolls’ situation is probably only more dramatic than that of most other Filipinos. Given our age of diaspora, what is the Philippines for us? What does being a Filipino mean?

The Paper Dolls become Filipino icons in the way we all are liminal -- never home, never away from home. Maybe, too, “Que sera sera” is appropriate, almost an anthem for us. There’s irony in the way we actually face so many choices now of where we can live, where we can work, and yet we make our choices, sighing, “Que sera sera.”