A few days after he arrived in Narathiwat, Xavier Comas was approached by two men. They invited him to tea. He went with them, sat down and they started talking.
“Then one of them said, ‘I will show you something about my culture, this place, we call it the palace',” Comas recalls. “That changed everything.”
The result was The House Of The Raja, a haunting, evocative presentation of a crumbling mansion that was once the residence of Tengku Shamsudeen, the Raja of Legeh, who was one of seven Malay princes deposed in the early 20th century when Siam annexed the South. Now, locals see the palace as “a very old home”. Outside the neighbourhood, it is virtually unknown.
Comas may have first discovered the house after a chance encounter, but the Spanish designer-photographer, who’s lived in Bangkok and can communicate in Thai, introduces it to us silently — first with his brooding monochrome photos, then with a change of paper and pace, and some text.
“This project is all in black and white because it is about past and present memory,” he says. “Black is very important in this story because I talk a lot of shadows and darkness.”
The text comes in three parts, stuck in the middle of the handsomely mounted coffee-table book. We start with a set of caption-less photographs that set the tone of mystery. Then there is a story in the middle, detailing the history of the house and the people whom Comas met during his research. Then we have the second set of photographs. Because we’ve read the story in the mid-section, the mournfulness, black dreams and ephemeral beauty of the house and its caretakers now opens into something larger — the historical and emotional trouble that’s plagued the Deep South’s inhabitants.
“The South has been demonised and totally neglected,” says Comas. “I think [my book] could shed some light. People are not interested because of the situation. The news is so negative that people just don’t want to know. How can you make people interested?”
Curiosity about the region drew Comas to the South in the beginning of 2010. He made his first trip to Pattani, then to Yala and Narathiwat, where he bicycled around without a clear idea as to whether he could get something out of his experience. After a few months, he had the chance encounter with the men who took him to see the house. After several more trips, the idea of a photography book took shape in his mind.
In The House Of The Raja, Comas describes in detail the obstacles he encountered when trying to find out about the palace’s history. He attributes this to a reluctance to talk about the region’s past and a general disinterest in the area’s history outside the South.
Yet, he says, knowledge of the history is crucial to both understanding the roots of the conflict and to working towards a viable solution.
“I think this lack of understanding and interest undermines the possibility of achieving peace in the South. The main actors in the peace process cannot be only military or high-profile government officers. It has to be the people, the population — and the whole population, not only from that region, but on a national level.
“I think the book will at least give you a better understanding or more empathy towards the region. Of course, I disapprove of violence. It doesn’t matter where it comes from or from what side. But even if you don’t agree with it, you can at least try to understand. This is very important to start changing people’s minds and attitudes.”
Comas’ research on the Deep South’s history led him to find resonance from his own background. His father is Catalan, from the northern region of Spain, Catalonia, whose capital is Barcelona; his mother from Andalucía, in the south. Through the looking glass of history, he perceived a historical parallel between the Deep South, which was once an Islamic kingdom that would later be conquered, and Al-Andalus — or Andalucia — which was once a frontier between the Islamic and European Christian worlds.
When Al-Andalus, an important trading hub, began to decline, Muslim merchants started to look to the East, taking Islam with them.
“Pattani was one of the first Malay kingdoms to convert to Islam. So more or less at the same time that Granada, the last Muslim kingdom in Spain, fell, that was when Pattani rose,” he says.
Back in Narathiwat, the old palace was abandoned for a time after Prince Shamsudeen’s death (the house is still owned by his descendants, who live in another district). The place is currently occupied by two Muslim sisters with children, who migrated from Si Sakhon district near the border. But its main inhabitant — or caretaker — is a Muslim shaman called Ayoh-ha, who Comas describes as one of the “weirdest guys” he has ever met. The pictures of Ayoh-ha in the book is that of a soulful man, often lit by a shaft of sepulchral light, and his presence seems to embody the idea of the place that’s stuck between a forgotten past and an uncertain future.
The first time he saw The House of Raja, Comas felt right away that it was something special. “As a photographer, maybe because I was struck by the lighting, the way the light went into the house, it was very poetic.”
He admits that he used artistic licence to portray the inhabitants as “mysterious and haunting”, even though in real life “they’re actually very nice and very kind”.
Comas sees himself foremost as a designer, a photographer — but not a photojournalist — and a writer. He oversaw the book’s design and production, but above all, the book itself does not have a specific political agenda.
“As an artist I focus on memory, loss, history, identity, heritage and also I kind of mix the magical with the reality. But it is not apolitical either.
“I focus on that place because I think it’s kind of a symbol of the glorious past that people view with nostalgia and this dramatic present. The house is like a microcosm of the conflict — it’s neglected, it’s been forgotten, people don’t know about it, it’s rotting away. It’s a very strong symbol.”
