The face of war

I.

I have read of the time when the Greeks hid inside Odysseus’ horse to be able to enter the mighty fortresses of Troy, and attacked in the middle of the night. And destroyed Troy and ransacked the glory of the city and raped its women and killed its people. Andromache dropped the infant Astyanax from the tower of Troy in an act of mercy, to spare her and Hector’s newborn from the brutalities and horrors of war.

I have read stories of Aryans who hid Jews in the secret compartments of their houses. I have read of the terror of the Jews every time they heard the footsteps of those hunting for them, and the breaths they had to subdue in the already alarming silence. I have read of the darkness of their rooms, as if they were animals waiting for the winter to pass. I have read of their hunger when provisions became scarce and water was the only sustenance that allowed them to survive.

I have read about wars, memorized the names of conquerors and generals, but seldom read the names of the victims whose deaths were for naught. I have read of historical sites that are now ruins. I have seen photographs of war, with houses reduced to ashes, buildings stained with blood and pocked with bullet holes, people and their faces riddled with desperation, innocents used as shields by monsters.

Not once did I entertain the idea that our homeland will become a battlefield. Not once did I think that in  my youth I will come face to face with the atrocities of war. The fear brought by war, printed on pages and depicted in films, has become reality.

II.

In a short span of time, our once lively city has become a ghost town. The hum of life has turned into a disorienting, clangorous silence.

Bombs are dropped. Guns are indiscriminately fired. Fire has become the inescapable fate of our homes. And we can only hope from far away that the heavens will grant us mercy. Sometimes the sky howls in tears for our tragedy, sometimes the sun mocks the conflagrations. But we are far away; we can only pray and plead…

Photographs of our land circulate in the internet, and suddenly our home has become a stranger to our eyes. Schools, buildings, commercial establishments, residences—they all seem ghosts of what were once vibrant with life.

Corpses sprawl in streets that were once teeming with motor vehicles and sidewalk vendors. Some pictures reveal human limbs devoid of flesh, others reveal a body being feasted on by hounds. When everything left of Marawi are ashes, can we still call it home? Our inged?

When this war is over, can we call all the damage mere scars on our beautiful city?

I can tell you about the demarcation line separating the before and after of our history, the line that mantles the people of the lake in terror.

On May 23, the sun gave no hint of the tragedy that was to come. Always-busy Banggolo was brimming with life as ever. I was traversing the crowded streets to meet my friends. No one knew that lives would change within hours.

It was between 2:30 and 3 p.m. that my friend received a text message from her father about an encounter between soldiers and rebels. No one among us took the message seriously. No one was alarmed. The gravity of the situation only set in when we realized that no jeepney driver wanted to risk going downtown. To cut the story short, I spent the night in a stranger’s house for fear of being caught in the crossfire.

The night was silent save for gunfire aimed at God knew where. The phone lines were constantly occupied; it took multiple attempts before a message could be sent. All night, news of merciless killing of Christians and indiscriminate burning traveled with the speed of light—it was a night when every life seemed to be imperiled, when it took all my strength to keep still, to keep calm and in control of the panic gripping my heart. I thought of no one else but my family.

It was the longest night of my life: A second seemed to extend to a minute or more. There was a most disturbing silence that shackled Marawi, and for the first time, there was no azan to wake us up. Even the roosters seemed mute with fear.

The morning never looked more relieving. I remember how excited I was to see my father, who had come to collect me. I had never been an expressive person, but in that moment I could not help telling him, “Papang, inikadakadali ko seka!” I missed you so much.

May 24, 2017: It was the last time I stepped inside our house, the last time I saw home, set my foot on our floor, touched the railings of our staircase, smelled the distinct odors in our household. It was the last day I walked inside my room without even directing a gaze at the books I had collected, which were piled near the wall. I did not know that a war was starting. It did not occur to me or to many others that the siege would extend for a week, or even a month, or more.

And now, far away from  inged—from home—we speak of it as a faraway memory, too. What is left for us are remnants of what there used to be. The home we built and lived in for decades was destroyed in a matter of weeks. Marawi is burning, and not even our  ranao, our lake, can save it from destruction.

III.

I had not even brought a single photograph of my childhood with me. The wedding albums of my parents were left at home. And yet, I believe that my family is among the lucky ones.

We are lucky because we were spared from walking from the war zone to Saguiaran. Other evacuees shared stories of escaping through the forest. We are lucky because upon leaving the war zone, we had a place to settle in, food to recharge us, and a foam mat on which we could rest our weary bodies. Not all bakwit are as lucky as we are.

Now I know war. It’s not merely this three-letter word draped with images of destroyed buildings and nameless skeletons, and soldiers and rebels firing at each other. For months of being far from home, I have learned that war breeds hunger and beggars, orphans and widows and widowers, and discrimination. Indeed, war is a maito, a bangkit, or a mini-apocalypse, or so they say.

I have read of wars in history, and how the scars they caused seldom heal. War has given me a little kiss, so teach me how to forget…

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Aleah–Hidaya Hadji Rakhim, 24, is a student of Mindanao State University.