Religious diversity - that is the best
way to describe the Kudee Cheen area, in Thonburi district. One Buddhist temple, one catholic Church and one Mosque are displayed less than 300m far each one from the other.
During two months, I have followed the Muslim community living around Bang Luang Mosque, in the southeastern part of Kudee Cheen area. I thought it would be interesting to see how this
religious minority lives in Bangkok. After all, they are in a country which faces serious problems with this religious minority, in the three southern regions of Thailand.
But here in Bangkok, I realized that they were so well integrated that nothing can really differenciate them from the other people of Kudee Cheen. Even some of them have been raised in the near
Santa Cruz Covent. Hey Pattaporn, 41, is one of them.
"I had many Christian friends, and I prayed with them at the church," she says. "But I did not eat the wafer."
Ba Narisara, a niece of 17 months, is playing with a rattle on Hey's knees. She is under her aunt's surveillance almost every afternoon, while her mother is at work. In the family,
everybody helps each other. They are two families leaving in the grand-mother's house, ten people in a whole.
They do not complain. On the contrary, Pattaporn says it pleases her grand-mother that everybody can live together.
"She loves us very much," says Pattaporn. " For the Aid [a Muslim feast] she wants everybody at home to have dinner."
The Aid Feast is on November 28th this year. The days before, cows and goats were parked in the cemetery for their coming sacrifice. There is no other open fields for them in Kudee Cheen.
The sun is not very high on Aid day when the community around the Mosque awakes. Pattaporn and the other wives of the family prepare the food and the outside tables, where the other families
around will share the traditional meals.
At the top of the minaret the children are playing drums. The regular hits rythm the singing calling for the pray, the muezzine. It is a sorrowful complain to my ears, but the faces around show
excitement and joyful.
I mean, most of them. Under the outside hall of the mosque one woman seats alone, apart from the ongoing agitation. She sobs in her imaculate white veil. One of the women passing by tells me she
has just lost her husband.
After a while other women join her, and I feel strong enough to come next to them and shoot a bit. The women first dress. They all have clear green and pink veils. I feel a little
bit unconfortable with my veil, which black color was supposed to make me discret. But no one seem disturbed and they began to greet me as they enter the space reserved for women.
Unfortunately, I had another
appointment and had to leave soon. I did not assist to the rest of the feast.
While going out from the narrow passage leading to the mosque, I saw a small Buddha statue at the entrance. Indeed, they share beleives, here.
Monday, November 29th
