The darkest day of my childhood [re-posted]
While I’m into organizing things for what’s left of summer, hoping to accomplish things before the first autumn leaves fall, I’m just gonna share this post I’ve written on my defunct blog (Kagahapon, Karon ug Ugma) posted last June 22, 2005. Some of you may have read this already… sorry it’s quite a long post.
I was around ten. The atmosphere of my barrio has completely changed.This was the barrio that filled my childhood with adventures, fun, laughter and heavenly happiness. My playground consisted of blue sea, rivers, wide-open irrigation canals and rice fields as far as the eyes could see. This was where I developed my “tarzan” skills by climbing up mango, star apple, guava, banana and coconut trees. And learnt how to swim in the ocean, rivers and canals. School recess meant fishing crabs, shrimps and fish. Or swinging in the branches of mango trees. It was simply heavenly.
Until fearful and deathly circumstances begun to creep around my little paradise.
Terror creeps in
For the past months, before Marcos power was toppled down, my barrio and the neighboring areas became a haunted town. Little by little, many of my relatives and friends have lost someone through killings and massacres. NPA and military were a hush-hush topic, adults talked about them inside closed doors.
Our priests had received warnings of death.
Curfew was set in our village. Gone were the nights when we played hide and seek, bato-lata, and dakop-dakop under the stars and moonlight. People started having dinner before dusk as if the very sight of it would bring terror. Windows and doors were completely locked, tvs and radios tuned down. People whispered. I could remember feeling the stillness of the night, even crickets stopped their chirping. I was scared washing dishes at night thinking that someone was peeping through the kitchen. I recalled that whenever I had this feeling that someone was watching and the hair on my nape begun to erect, I sung loud believing that whoever was watching me would think I was just a good girl washing dishes!
I remember some of our neighbors; mostly relatives would sleep in our house since they started hearing bumps on their elevated wooden floors. They believed there were unknown people roaming around at night. Our concrete house then was street-levelled. I remembered once when all of us were lying on the floor, an uncle joked about sleeping inside our refrigerator because he thought it was the safest place to hide in.
Death comes with no face
Death finally came to our neighborhood. A body was found at the bank of the river where I, my brothers and cousins used to swim. The man’s throat was severed open, his eyes hooded, his arms and legs tied up to the tree where he was left standing bleeding to death. No one knew who the person was; we learnt later that he came from another town.
Warnings of death
Then my two uncles, both being known to be hateful people, received their death warnings. The first got it through an unstamped mail deposited in his mailbox, the other one, a red paint written on the concrete walls of their fence. We were terrified. Both families lived just across our house. Since the reception of these warnings both my uncles hardly ventured outside, if they did, they did it during broad day light and with companies. Many people had received the same kind of warnings and all of them were known to be drunkards, wife-bashers, cruel and immoral people. It could have been considered as some kind of “moral-cleansing”, only if our noble priests were not included. Many questions were left unspoken, unanswered. People were terrified even just to say the word NPA or military. The enemy was so tangible and yet it had no face.
The recruit
Then one day, my mother who had just arrived back from a bible study talked to my thirty-year-old-something cousin. They talked long and in closed doors. It was only years later my mother told us about that visit. She said, that my cousin asked her to join the NPA. It was to be them or the other side, the government. And that if she refuses to join, she must stop going to church for the time being as the military was tipped off that many people who went for a religious study group were rebels. My mother was horrified.
He also told my mother that the next time my father would come (my father was working in a different place and he came to visit us twice a month only, during weekends and holidays), he should be extra careful. My mother went wild with this and demanded my cousin what he meant. The night my father arrived, he and mother were talking in our backyard. It was pitch-dark. My parents didn’t notice that someone was standing behind our guava tree eavesdropping to what they were talking about. I was so terrified when I heard this story even if it happened long time ago. My cousin assured my mother that no one would touch my father as he explained to his “group” who he was.
My mother was helplessly furious. She told my cousin that for whatever cause they were fighting for, it was bound to hit back with much greater pain and terror. She begged him to stop what they were doing before hell would break loose. Her pleas were received by oblivious ears.
Enemy reveals himself
Another visit. A cousin who was one of the bodyguards of the town’s mayor. He was close to my mother just as she was close to now my “NPA” relative. He confided to my mom how tired he was of his work. And that how the mayor had managed to procure as much wealth as enemies. Life was dangerous he said, and he was scared. He wanted out but knew perfectly well the consequences. The mayor’s office received threats every day and that it was just a matter of time. My mom also learnt that many of the killings of innocent people were ordered by a higher authority. In the absence of legitimate proofs of who was the group behind the mission of killing the mayor, terror was his ultimate weapon. My mom tried her best to console my uncle and asked him to leave town and just go hiding for the meantime. He declined. He didn’t know his enemy and going solo was just as dangerous as guarding the mayor’s life.
There were certainly many factions of the NPAs, each one with its own objectives and missions. He told my mom that for all that was happening, it was just the beginning. Before he left my mom warned him that time will come when someone has got to pay and she was scared it would be compensated through the innocent people.My little paradise was in total chaos. The only normalcy during this time was school.
Death strikes again with the greatest terror!
It was almost dusk, I could remember it so clearly as if it just happened yesterday. My mother and I just arrived from the market. I took my clothes off to put on my pyjamas. Then I heard gunshots. Bang! Bang! Bang! I was terrified. Hands tangled in the sleeves of my dress, I cowered down next to the bed. I heard my mother calling my auntie and my brothers. We gathered together in the bedroom squatting on the floor. The night stood still, time has stopped and the world has gone quiet. The only noise I could hear was the beating of my heart. No one spoke for a long time. Then suddenly a howling of a woman penetrated through the denseness of the air. It took us just a second to realize it was my auntie (my mom’s cousin). We knew there and then that my uncle, the one who received a death threat through his mail, was killed. We didn’t move. We waited and waited and waited. After like eternity, my mother and my auntie went to check what has happened.
I can’t remember how I managed to come along, I might have convinced my mother, but I remember getting inside my auntie’s house, hearing her wails. We went to the stair going up to their bedroom, and there I saw my uncle scrunched down in his chair, his head held by his wife, his front covered with blood.
Dead.
There were people there already trying to help. We went to the kitchen and I sat there listening without understanding. I can’t remember where my cousin, the only child of my uncle, was. Someone must have taken her away from the nightmare!
After few hours later, we heard another gunshots echoing in the night at some distance, but this time, it wasn’t just a bang or two. It was ratatat, ratatat, ratatatatat!!!!! Everybody cowered down. I was hiding under the dining table, I was so scared. I heard my mother scolding me about coming in my uncle’s house. She told me not to move an inch. It was the first time I heard what sounded like a massacre.
I can’t recall what happened the rest of that night.
The following day, I learnt that a couple was killed with their three year old daughter. The wife was heavily pregnant. They were on their way home. They were stopped by armed men and when the couple realized what was going to happen, they enfolded their daughter in-between them.
They were found drowned in their own blood, embracing one another, their daughter in the middle.There were no words to describe my fear and sadness. I knew them because they lived just at the back of my school. I used to pass by their house. They were jus simple farmers.
The reason of their killing? Military thought they were rebels. That was what we heard. No one believed it. There had to be some reason why a three year old girl and a wife who was eight months pregnant had to be killed.
On the day of my uncle’s funeral, I saw their three coffins on the head of the procession. One of them was small. Hundreds of people came to the burial.The whole town was mourning. And in my ten-year old head I didn’t understand what my world had come to. I just knew I was terrified.
* Months later our mayor was ambushed. Killed with him were my mother’s cousin and other bodyguards. At this time, we have already left our barrio and settled in the place where my father was working. Few years later I came back for a summer vacation, I cried a bucket. My childhood paradise was totally gone.
