Losing my notebook

As a young reporter in Cebu city, I did not cover City Hall. That beat used to belong to Sol, who always landed in the banner headline almost everyday. I did not cover Capitol, either. That beat belonged to Michelle, who also used to grab the headlines with Sol. I did not, could not cover the police beat, supposed to be the training ground for young reporters. Instead, I was made to cover the business and economic beat, not because I was a smart ass but because no one my age and fresh from school would dare cover such a beat. In fact, the one covering it was Pops, an octogenarian so aloof I was afraid of him. I treated him like a sage. He always had sums of money, running in the millions, on his head. I knew it because that was always what came out of his mouth when he stood talking with presidents of the Chamber, another scary thing I had to contend with. Pops used to wear a gray beret that covered his balding head. It gave him an air of style and prominence.

Reporters my age used to describe the business beat as difficult, boring, full of economic jargons one can't understand, numbers, figures, charts. How can you make a story out of mere charts and numbers, no narrative, from BIR, from SEC, or from Neda? But my editor taught me how to make the numbers talk. 

Even during those times, I already had the ability to sit straight quietly and listen as somebody explained to me the workings of the Norwegian ship.   Maybe, it was a result of some neglect I might have suffered in childhood because I could sit there for hours listening to a farfetched subject without complaining. Towards the end of the day, I would hurry back to the newsroom to write the story. My business editor would be waiting for it, as if it were a matter of life and death. She would ask as soon as I opened the door, "So, what's your story?" and I would stare at her, mouth open.

So, I'd never open the door again if I was not sure of the story. 

Our newsroom was on the second floor, so even before I could take the stairs, I would be composing the lead  and two supporting paragraphs in my head to give her a ready answer. Sometimes, I would go to the toilet before opening the newsroom door. The toilet was just near the newsroom door. You can write your lead and two supporting paragraphs in the toilet. 

I was still a dreamy-eyed and clumsy young reporter then. I never actually fully understood what was going on with my life. 

One afternoon, after spending long hours with Norwegian engineers piloting a shipping project in the city, I was already three steps to the newsroom door when I realised I no longer had my notes with me. I panicked. Where could have I left my notebook? Did I drop it in the jeepney? I was about to go back to chase the jeepney when I realised--how could I do that?! There were lots of jeepneys plying the city. How would I know which was the one I was riding? 

So, right then and there, I tried to recall the story. I loved those Norwegians so much. Just like me, they'd be easily dismissed as boring and they never spoke English that fast. They spoke English slowly, as unsure as I was. I could ask them over and over again about the basic concept of their machine and they'd never tire explaining it to me. So, more or less, I already had the story in my head. I can even approximate a quotation, knowing their Norwegian English well. Yes, it was really, really painful to retrieve jottings from a lost notebook in your own mind. It was hell. The story made it to the business page's banner headline the following day. But from then on, I really made sure not to lose my notebook again. 

 

Pasensya! These are dangerous times!

[From a conversation with a noted radio broadcaster]

When I told him about it, he did not laugh. Unlike most people who learned about what happened along the boundary of barangay San Isidro in Carmen, Davao del Norte at 9:24 to 9:34 am on Black Saturday, he did not even pass judgment over what we did or did not do, as if there were really some right things and wrong things to do under those circumstances; as if the incident itself was our fault.
Things like that always happen, he said. It was designed to scare you, he said. It also happened to me before, he said. Two times.
The first time it happened to me was back in the 80s somewhere in Ecoland. I never knew I ventured into the territory of intelligence agents.
We were just looking for corpses in a sack because someone called the radio station about the corpses hidden in a toilet of Kabacan elementary school. The one who called said the corpses were hogtied and placed inside the sack. This was in the 80s, when Davao City was the killing fields. I used to work for DXRH and four of us--three regular reporters and a volunteer--took quick notes of it and went to find the corpses.
We did not know where Kabacan elementary school was, so we kept asking.
We went all around the place looking for the goddam school. We reached where the Hall of Justice building is standing now, asking where Kabacan was. There was no SM City yet. There used to be the headquarters of the CHPG (Constabulary Highway Patrol Group) nearby in a building they shared with the police. We were so determined to find the corpses that when we came upon the headquarters, we asked the policemen on duty whether they knew where the Kabacan school was.
"Why?" The policeman asked.
"Someone told us there were corpses inside the toilet there. We want to verify if it was true because we want to report it on air."
The policemen told us to wait. One of them went inside to tell the chief. Afterwards, the policeman who went inside came back. He said the chief wanted us all to go down.
We were using the Pinoy 2 vehicle, the mobile patrol of DXRH, at that time, and the vehicle did not have a lock. We brought along with us the mobile radio base at that time and I was afraid it might get lost if I leave it alone in the car.
So, I told the police, maybe, I should stay in our vehicle to watch over our equipment. But the policeman said, no, the chief asked all of you to go down. All of you, he said. So, I was forced to go down.
But before that, they took our tape recorders, our IDs, even our wallets. When they took our wallets, I was alarmed. Why would they take our wallet? I asked myself. I began to feel helpless. They all forced us all to go down.
“Get inside!” said one policeman who shoved me into the door using his armalite butt because I did not want to follow inside.
Then, we were led into a room in a basement which only had a stair going down. We were practically under the earth, then. When we reached the bottom, we saw the chief. He had a desk. So, I realized, it was his office.
I never knew until then that the building had an underground; and that they used that underground office as base of their operations.
He made us stand in the middle of the hall. All of us, made to stand in the middle. Do you know how it felt? They could just have shot all of us there and nobody would know. We were under the ground. They’ve taken all our IDs.
The next thing that the chief ordered was, take off your clothes, meaning, the upper clothes. So, we took off our shirts. Then, he ordered us to take off our pants and we took off our pants.
Then, the chief asked, “So, what brought you here?”
“We’re just looking for the corpses, sir,” we said. “Somebody told us there are corpses hidden in the toilet of Kabacan Elementary School. We’re only here to cover the news.”
“Ahh,” the chief said. “Maybe, those were dogs.”
That’s all what the chief said.
Then, he said, “You may dress up now.”
Then, he said to his men, “Give them back their belongings.”

On our way home, we were all so shaken no one said a word.

Actually, they always do things like this to scare you. Especially when you venture inside their territory.
It happened to me two times, he said. The second time was when I was walking along Jones Avenue, this black jacket.
Jones Avenue, somewhere in Acacia, used to be the site of big protests in the 80s. This used to be where the protesting groups meet. This was also where the three (or four?) Davao lawyers, among them Lawyer Larry Ilagan, the husband of Luz Ilagan, were arrested.
I was walking through this area wearing this black jacket one day, the recorder clipped in my arm, when a car stopped just beside me, all its windows opened at the same time, with a full-cocked long firearm protruding from each window, all pointed at me. Somebody inside the car ordered me to raise my hands.
I could not immediately raise my hands because my recorder was clipped in my armpit. If I raise my left hand, my recorder will fall.
But they compelled me to raise both arms, so, I was forced to do just that. My recorder fell crushing to the ground. Yes, the recorder fell! I was lucky no one pulled the trigger.
When everything was cleared, they said, “Sorry, Bay, pasensya! These are difficult times, you know.”
They must have mistaken me for an NPA (New People’s Army).
I picked up my recorder. It was totally shattered.
They just sped away.

HE SAID these are the things they do to you when you venture into their territory, their operation base. That is where the body was found. That was also the place where they throw away the corpses. Who said there is such thing as the right thing or the wrong thing to do under those circumstances? You could never guess what’s on their minds!
When they come upon you and isolate you from the rest of humanity, the first thing for you to do is to find connection because you never know what will happen next. When they take away your phone, your last chance is gone.
It’s better to err on the side of caution.
You would never know whether or not your press ID can save you.

The Language of Birds

On February 16, 2010, I paused after I finished Batman’s part in, “On a Deadly Trail: Three Journalists Killed in the Philippines” when I noticed a piercing sound that began at the neighbor’s ground and increased in intensity as it approached my window. It sounded like a fierce warning—so I thought it was somebody downstairs, a possible assassin, perhaps, whistling a secret code.
Ja said I was becoming neurotic because of what I was writing—but there was something about this particular sound, which was so shrill and so piercing as if it tried to attract attention. When the whistle grew very painful to my ears, I turned around to find out what was going on.
And when I did? Lo! A yellow bird, a tamsi, perched itself on my window grill, chirping with delight; its companion, perched on the clothesline, returning a piercing chirp. The sight was a treat after days of wrestling with my thoughts, staring at an empty computer screen for long hours. The birds made me think of Batman, a Davao broadcaster killed on Christmas Eve in 2007 and Geneboyd, a young photojournalist killed in Jolo, Sulu on November 12, 2004.
I remember how Batman last waved at us at Yellow Haus while I and Mandaya and Jepoi and Di were brainstorming for the maiden issue of I Love You, Baby magazine, the magazine that circulates in our mind. It was late at night and Batman and Tec, talking at a table away from us, stood up to go. He was gone a few weeks after.
I did not get to finish our last conversation with Geneboyd. We were at the Waterfront Hotel waiting for the press con to start and he was talking about that cartoon show a lot better than Spongebob Squarepants we used to be so crazy about in 2004. We had to stop because the guests had arrived and we had to listen and he had to take pictures. We all got down to work and rushed to write the stories afterwards. But the next thing I knew, he was in Jolo and something happened.
The whole thing was so unacceptable and senseless, I got the sudden urge to ask him, who was that cartoon character, again, Boyd? Please tell me. Please tell us what happened in downtown Jolo. But he could no longer reply.
I thought about the two journalists as I watched the bird on my window grill pointing its beak to the sky. I never knew a bird’s beak could be so beautiful. It was so extraordinarily sharp and I gasped at its thinness. I wanted to grab my camera and capture the moment. But the birds must have noticed. They started to fly, still chirping at each other and shrilly calling back to me. I strongly felt they were trying to tell me something I couldn’t make heads or tails of, a message that must be very important.
Suddenly, I wish I could understand the language of birds.

12 graves

The place was deserted when the group arrived. But we can still see the telltale signs of the day before: The footprints on the fresh, sandy earth; the flowers, once fresh, beginning to wilt; the streamers soiled by the wind.
The sun burning furiously on my temple, I took the camera to frame the 12 newest graves. Twelve, I heard Richel say in a car on our way here, was the highest number of dead ever buried in the history of this cemetery. Behind the lens, a photojournalist once told me, one should detach oneself from the scene one was about to record; one should stop being herself and put ones self at the service of an image. So, as I crouched to frame the 12 graves, I was a bit puzzled by sounds. A sniffling or two coming at intervals and in increasing regularity, as each journalist crouched before each grave to offer a single flower, or light a candle. Until I put down the camera to take a candle to light, I never understood that sound.Until I, too, crouched on to the nearest grave, and caught sight of a name—just a name—and realized she was a woman. She must have been looking forward to do a story that day, aboard the convoy that left Buluan town in Maguindanao on its way to the capital town of Shariff Aguak; after an imam said a prayer at the house of the politician set to run for governor; after they took breakfast and went aboard the convoy, smiling--maybe, laughing--as they heard women in the clan saying, ‘women should be given more space in the leadership’ of that province because they can do many wonderful things simply because they were women. It suddenly crossed my mind that this woman journalist, whose name I happened to read, whose grave I happened to see, had left behind a son or two, a daughter or an eight month old baby, and may not have known what awaited them along the road to Shariff Aguak. She may not have known or believed there was this reigning culture of impunity in our midst, and that press freedom in this country was merely skin-deep. Did she secretly love covering that story? Was she thinking it was a big scoop?But there was no longer a story to cover that day. Over a hundred men armed with the most powerful weaponry under the command of a warlord clan who had powerful links with Malacanang, had killed the story right on the road to Shariff Aguak, in an isolated lot in Ampatuan town. They tried to kill the story by killing the representatives, lawyers and supporters of the political clan who wanted to challenge the ruling governor. They killed the journalists so that no one could write about it. They buried everything under the crunch of a backhoe, thinking that in burying the bodies, everything can easily be forgotten and everything will be business as usual in the province ruled by terror.
But the sheer monstrosity of what they did was a story that could not be contained; not by the perimeters of their power, not by the bounds of their territory. It was beyond words to describe; and because it was indescribable, it escaped language, itself. It escaped their hold and spread to the remotest corners of the world.
No one could probably know the extent of the horrors that those killed in the carnage suffered—not one among those journalists was able to file a story. But they continue to speak to us in many other ways; and the task of writing that story fell upon us, who remained.

I won't weep for the women

I won't weep for the women who died in the carnage in Ampatuan town in Maguindanao; I won't weep. I won't weep to satisfy their murderers, whose brutality and ruthlessness shock people around the world. I won't weep for the journalists who died, whose names have joined the growing lists of journalists killed in the Philippines. I won't weep for the culture of impunity and the reign of terror in my country.I won't weep for the government's reluctance to punish the perpetrators. I won't weep for the unholy alliance of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the political clan that puts her in power.
Sorry, I won't weep. I won't weep because the victims deserve more than what anyone's stupid tears can bring. They deserve justice and we, who remained--we who are here--, should see to it that it must be served. We shall never settle for less.