DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 07 December) – Pioneering Tausug poet, fictionist, and essayist Said K. Sadain, Jr. died of heart failure on Sunday, December 3, in Davao City.
Jun Sadain was born on March 15, 1958, in Jolo, Sulu, the second son of Said Sr. and Angelina K. Sadain. Due to the peripatetic work of his father, he attended a number of schools as a young boy: Notre Dame of Jolo for kindergarten and Grades 1 and 4, St. Michael’s school in Iligan for Grades 2 and 3, and Ateneo de Zamboanga for Grades 5 and 6. He finished his secondary education at the Dayang-dayang Hadji Piandao Memorial High School for Boys
Department (formerly Sulu High School) in 1974.
In all these schools, he enjoyed working in the vegetable gardens and reading books in the library. He passed the UPCAT for UP Diliman and became the first Muslim scholar of the NSDB, taking up BS Physics in his first two years before
transferring to the College of Engineering where he obtained both his BS Electrical Engineering (1979) and MS Electrical Engineering (1984) degrees.
He taught in his alma mater for five years before leaving for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to work as Computer Operations Supervisor. Then he and his family moved to Jeddah, where he worked as Systems Manager at the Saudi Building Systems Manufacturing Company. He retired in 2021 and returned to the Philippines where he and his wife stayed in Davao with their daughter who worked at the Southern Philippines Medical Center. He is survived by his wife Liza Zaldarriaga, four children, and a couple of grandchildren.
Jun first wrote a poem in grade school at Notre Dame about a “mountain so high…up in the sky” and was an editor at the ADZU elementary school’s The Quill. In high school, he focused on writing songs and drawing cartoons with stories for his family. Some of his poems and short essays began to be published in Focus Philippines in 1974.
At the U.P., he studied literary analysis under Prof. Concepcion Dadufalza and creative writing under Prof. Francisco Arcellana. His first short story, “Spirits in a Box” was published in Focus in 1978. He referred to it as “probably the first
ever story that depicts life in a relocation center in Jolo.” He also wrote more experimental stories like “Pages” (on numbers) and “Babel Rising” (on the internet).
His poetry won awards from Focus in 1976 and 1980. In 1978, two sets of his poems, “Mt. Tumantangis and Other Poems on Sulu” and “Silent Verses” won first place in the 1st Literary of the U.P. English Club under the pseudonyms “Isnani” and “Dias” respectively. Many of his other poems, as well as his stories, were published in Focus and in the Bugs & Bytes newsletters and website that was also home to his numerous essays on sundry topics. He has also published many
technical papers on his chosen profession.
After Ibrahim Jubaira, Said Sadain, Jr., is among the first generation of Moro writers in English, together with his brother Mehol, Noralyn Mustafa, Rita Tuban (who had just published her creative works), and Anthony Tan.
Jun’s works can be read in Bugs & Bytes, In Bigger Prints, a desktop-published book launched in 1999; The Many Ways of Being Muslim, ed. by Coeli Barry (2008); Voices on the Waters: Conversations with Five Mindanao Writers, ed. by Ricardo de Ungria (2018); Kalandrakas, Vol.2: Stories & Storytellers of/on Regions in Mindanao 1946-1990, ed. by Ricardo de Ungria.
Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un! (Ricardo M. de Ungria)
