Living in the dark

I am a person who loves darkness, or the night. I can still remember the first time I fell in love with the dark.

I was in high school then and my family was not able to pay our electricity bill. At first I was uncomfortable going home from school and seeing our house pitch black among the vibrantly lighted houses of our neighbors. At that time the news in the headlines concerned youth crimes, and approaching our house from a distance made me feel as if I were putting myself in danger. My imagination ran wild, as if I were walking in a dark alley and met someone there who would happily stab me. Or as if from the moment I neared our dark house, bats would swivel around me and I would fall down, just like what the young Bruce Wayne experienced down the hole outside his family’s mansion.

The darkness lasted until I graduated from high school. I was consumed with Christopher Nolan’s genius in creating the “Dark Knight” trilogy. Funny as it may seem, there was something in darkness that made me feel at home. The occasional presence of my mother in the dark would greet me: “You’re right on time. Let’s eat!” We would gather at the table with lighted candles, and the feeling of eating in a fancy restaurant would fill my heart. My younger sister and brother would exclaim, “This is so nice!” Then we would all burst into laughter, knowing that our situation is hardly normal compared to others in the neighborhood. Nevertheless, it was a joyful time for us.

I was born and grew up in Agdao, a slum area in Davao City, which is why I know a thing or two about living in the dark. Our place is quite historic, with the infamous “Alsa Masa” which, according to my mother’s storytelling, was established as a vigilante group in 1984 by a barangay captain named Wilfredo “Baby” Aquino to fight insurgency. I learned from my mother that earlier, the communist New People’s Army had homed in on Agdao and controlled the low-income settlement area. I also learned that our place earned the moniker “Nicaragdao,” after the Latin American country of Nicaragua which went through a similar experience of mass killing.

Listening to my mother’s stories was like hearing a tale of a kingdom bathed in blood. Soon, I became more interested in the dark.

Years passed and hearing reports on killings in our place became a “normal” routine for my siblings and me. They became an additional after-class lesson—knowledge to which we got accustomed. Once, my younger sister asked me, “Why do they kill?” I was mum because I didn’t know how to answer the question. And until now, the question continues to ring in my ears: Why kill? So simple yet so hard to answer.

As a person raised in a country where the level of poverty is quite staggering, I have witnessed many of our fellow Filipinos engaging in the drug trade either by choice or as dictated by their personal situation. Through this illegal engagement, they are able to earn not just meager but actually substantial amounts to support their loved ones.

I can compare our country to Gotham City, which is brimming with corrupt public officials and illegal drugs. I imagine PRRD as Batman remarkably winning the election and implementing his war on drugs, while Joker represents the criminals. When Batman arrives in Gotham in its darkest hours, he becomes a symbol of hope and inspiration. He tries to eliminate the circumstances in which crime and criminals thrive. He takes an extremely proactive approach to fight crime by going after the big fish because he believes that crimes cannot be tolerated. Batman captures the Joker and sends him to Arkham Asylum. Unfortunately, the Joker escapes and, again, commits terrible crimes in the city. The cycle just keeps being repeated.

Both Batman and the Joker are trying to prove a point to society. Batman just wants to have peace and order restored in Gotham. On the other hand, the Joker wants the people to understand his situation. Going back, I believe that Batman didn’t kill the Joker because his commitment to not kill intentionally is his self-control, which becomes his greatest power. But this does not apply to our current reality.

Recently, the House of Representatives approved the bill proposing the restoration of capital punishment. It was one of the darkest moments in the country, which came about despite the opposition of many. This means that Batman is closer to officially, legally, snuffing out lives.

It’s so distressing to think that we are so eager to deal with deaths one after another. Killing people is an act of imbibing poison. It depends on why the poison should be taken, or not. Once the poison is consumed, the ones at the losing end are not the families of the criminals but our own beloved country. We will be addicted to it; the poison will be consumed and the heart of the country will be burned.

I clearly remember the Joker’s lines in “The Dark Knight.” He said: “You see, their morals, their code, it’s a bad joke… They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. These civilized people, they’ll eat each other.”

Maybe this is the time where we push and pull at each other. We become disunited because of our political bets. We become aggressive in laying the blame when in fact we have so much to do to serve our country. We have been living in the dark for so many years now, and maybe I don’t like living in it anymore.

Maybe I can now answer my sister’s question. Maybe we kill because we fear genuine change.

* * *

Chedelyn Gee S. Tabalba, 22, holds a bachelor’s degree in literature from the University of Southeastern Philippines-Obrero and is currently the industrial relations officer and legal researcher of a pharmaceutical laboratory in Davao City.