Tattoo talk

Some conversations with the staff nurses can be very interesting. When I was on call on Thursday I sat at the pantry with Kak Burak and Winnie amongst others and the conversation started to drift to tattoos.

“I saw one old guy upstairs with really nice tattoos. Those bunga terung,” I remarked.

“Oh, you shouldn’t play-play with those Dr Aizat. In the old days you were not allowed to have a bunga terung tattoo unless you have taken a head,”

“Eh what about all those kids with bunga terungs one?”

“Those are modern tattoos. In the old days one head meant one bunga terung. If you see a tattoo of a complete band around an upper arm, it means that he was a brave warrior. An incomplete band however...”

“Not so brave? Who decides who gets what tattoo?”

“Yes... not so brave. The chief head hunter. At my house there are five heads,”

“What? Your house? Where?”

“My longhouse. They scare me sometimes,”

“What kind of Iban is scared of heads?”

“Modern Ibans.”

So the conclusion that I can draw from such conversations are thus – modern Ibans sometimes just simply get traditional tattoos without regard to old traditions (which may actually be a good thing especially if ‘old traditions’ meant someone should lose his head) because they are afraid of heads.