who pounced on innocent prey.
One part of
Day of Mourning
By Jude Ortega
(An earlier version of this story received
honorable mention at the 2015 F. Sionil José
Young Writers Awards.)
Gayang wakes to the howling of dogs at one
or two in the morning. She gets down the
bed, moving slowly so as not to disturb her
sleeping grandson, and goes to the kitchen,
where she drinks a glass of water. The dogs
out on the street keep howling. She’s
certain that the noise also bothers her
neighbors, but while she wants to throw
stones at the animals to quiet them, her
neighbors wouldn’t. They would not step
into the darkness outside. They’re Ilonggos,
and as such, most of them believe that
there’s an aswangaround whenever dogs
howl.
She doesn’t find the belief of her neighbors
strange or laughable. In fact, she wishes
right now that she belonged to their tribe,
for if she were to interpret the noise based
on the beliefs of her own tribe, she would
have a greater cause for worry—something
much more common and real than aswangs.
As a Maguindanaon, she grew up believing
that whenever dogs howl, they’re telling
human beings that someone close to them
has just passed away.
She puts the empty glass on the sink. The
water hasn’t helped at all. Her heart is still
racing. She thinks of her son in
Mamasapano. He’s the only person whom
she might have lost. He’s the last person
who could be taken away from her. Her
husband and her other sons have been
taken away before.
The noise outside dies down. She goes back
to the only bedroom of the small house and
lies beside her eight-year-old grandson. She
holds him close to her, still thinking of her
son, the boy’s father. The howling of the
dogs has not been the first indication of
what might have happened to her son. The
dogs have only reinforced the fear that has
been gnawing her since the other day, when
the news came out that government forces
had an “encounter” with separatist rebels in
a town in Maguindanao. The news shocked
the nation, and continues to shock as more
information about the incident is revealed.
More than forty have been killed on the
government’s side, allegedly outnumbered
and ambushed by the rebels, and this
happened at a time when the peace talks
are coming to what most Filipinos thought a
successful conclusion.
The news has not mentioned how many have
been killed, if any, on the side of the Muslim
rebels. It seems to Gayang that the rebels
are being portrayed as cold-blooded killers
her wishes it were true so that she wouldn’t
have to worry about her son. But she knows
better. The government forces have not
been sleeping or eating supper in their
headquarters when they were killed. They
were in the rebel’s territory on a mission.
They were armed, and they most likely
attacked with speed, without any warning.
She knows how these things go, even if
she’s just an ordinary civilian who sells
homemade sweets in the public market of
Tacurong. She knows because her family
was living in Pikit when the Estrada
administration declared an all-out war
against Muslim rebels, fifteen years ago.
She lived close to the heart of the battlefield.
At the earliest sign of light, she wakes up
her grandson to take a bath.
“It’s too early, Grandma,” Amil complains,
not rising from the bed, his eyes half-closed.
“I still have enough time to sleep. I won’t be
late.”
“You’re not going to school today,” says
Gayang. “We’re going somewhere.”
Amil’s eyes open wide. He grins. She knows
why he’s delighted. He doesn’t like going to
school. He doesn’t like his classmates, who
are mostly Ilonggos, who are mostly
Christians. They’re not nice to him. He
sometimes comes home red-faced in
frustration or self-pity and with his uniform
disheveled in some parts. She would always
ask him what happened, and he would
always answer, “Nothing.”
However, as suddenly as it came, the delight
in the boy’s face disappears, replaced by a
pall of suspicion. She also knows why. She
can read his mind: Grandmother nags me
every morning to wake up and move faster
so that I won’t be late for school. There’s
nothing else she wants me to do but go to
school every day and learn to read fast and
do numbers quick. There’s nothing special
to this day. There’s something wrong.
Amil sits up and asks her, “Where are we
going, Grandma?”
“To Mamasapano,” answers Gayang, pulling
the boy’s shirt over his head.
“To Father?” he says, excited again.
“Stop asking so many questions.”
“Grandma,” he complains, “answer me.”
“I have something else to do there. I’m not
sure if we can visit your father.
Mamasapano is a big place, you know.”
“Oh why, Grandma?”
She doesn’t want the boy to expect anything
because he might just be disappointed.
However, neither has she the heart to
deprive him of a little something to hope for.
She sighs. “All right. I’ll see. If we have
enough time, we’ll go visit your father.”
“Yes!” Amil exclaims, raising his arms in the
air.
“Hurry now. It’s going to be a long trip. We
have to ride a multicab to Isulan, a Town
Ace to Maganoy, and a Honda to
Mamasapano. We have to start early.”
Amil takes off his shorts and, with just his
underpants on, runs to the pump at the back
of the house.
At the terminal to Isulan, Gayang and Amil
find the first multicab in the queue almost
full already. The national highway between
Tacurong and Isulan is the busiest in Sultan
Kudarat, so early passengers are not an
unusual sight at the terminal. “Go to the
front,” Gayang tells Amil at the door, at the
rear of the vehicle; she spoke in Tagalog,
not in Maguindanaon, as she always does
whenever she’s out of the house.
Amil and Gayang inch their way between the
rows of knees. Passengers of multicabs
usually stay as close as possible to the door
so that they can conveniently get out of the
cramped vehicle, which means that if you’re
among the last ones to get in, you have to
stoop through the narrow path to the front.
Gayang doesn’t mind the inconvenience this
time. She’s taking the farthest seat anyway
because it’s where she can have her
grandson sit on her lap without disturbing
the other passengers and without having to
pay for him.
In less than five minutes, the multicab is full.
The underage barker has cramped sixteen
adults in it, fourteen in the two long seats at
the back and two beside the driver at the
front. As the vehicle rolls off the parking
area, Amil falls asleep, his butt slumped on
Gayang’s leg, his head leaning on her
shoulder.
Gayang isn’t sure how exactly her fellow
passengers came to talk about “what
happened in Mamasapano.” She just noticed
them exchanging information and opinions
as though they’re longtime neighbors or
friends. A middle-aged couple on the other
seat must have been talking about it first,
and then the woman beside Gayang chimed
in. Soon, five or six of the passengers,
speaking in Hiligaynon, are having a spirited
conversation, fully aware that the rest can
hear them.
“It’s a massacre,” the woman beside
Gayang declares, as if she witnessed the
incident herself. When the woman got into
the multicab earlier, she was struggling with
a large reed basket, which she put upright
on the floor, between her legs. She gestures
as she talks, letting go of the handles of the
basket that she’s been clasping together.
The mouth of the basket gapes wider,
revealing more clearly the contents. Gayang
finds out that the woman beside her is her
Ilonggo counterpart. They have the same
occupation. The basket contains the Ilonggo
dessert suman, and the slices have the
same size and are wrapped individually in a
transparent plastic sheet, an obvious
indication that they’re for sale. Instead of
suman, though, Gayang makes the specialty
of her own tribe, tinagtag. “It’s not an
encounter,” the suman vendor adds. “It’s a
massacre. The rebels killed the soldiers
without mercy.”
“They’re not really soldiers,” says the man
who has his wife with him. “They’re SAF—
Special Action Forces. They’re part of the
Philippine National Police. But yes, they’re
not much different from military men.”
His wife beams with pride as she stares at
her husband’s face, as if the information he
knows makes him a cut above ordinary
rumormongers. Her hand is clasped with
his. Gayang finds their display of affection
inappropriate, especially for their age. They
appear to be in their forties, yet they’re
acting as though they’re teenagers who
have just started dating. “Pitiful men,” says
the wife, running her fingers along her
husband’s forearm. “Killed like their lives
meant nothing. The rebels are just making a
fool of the government, and the government
doesn’t know any better. They should know
that Muslims cannot be trusted.”
Gayang freezes on her seat. Obviously, her
fellow passengers don’t have the slightest
suspicion that she’s a Muslim. Not that they
have a reason to. She looks just like them.
Her blouse, the best that she has, worn just
two or three times before, was from the
bargain section of a local department store,
and her secondhand yet brand-new-looking
skirt was from an ukay-ukay stall in the
public market. She has also decided not to
wear a tandong today; she only covers her
head when selling her product, as a
protection from the sun and because
customers seem to want it that way—they
want their tinagtag authentic, cooked and
sold by an obviously Maguindanaon woman.
Moreover, Gayang has spoken to her
grandson in Tagalog instead of
Maguindanaon.
“They’ll never stop causing conflicts,” says
the husband. “First, there was the MNLF.
When the government signed an agreement
with them, some of their members broke
away and formed the MILF. Now that the
government is having a peace talk with the
MILF, another group has emerged, calling
themselves BIFF. It will never end.”
Many of the other passengers murmur
approval.
“That’s why to this day I remain loyal to
Erap,” says the suman vendor. “Only he
succeeded in making Mindanao peaceful.”
Gayang shudders. How dare this woman
beside her proclaim her loyalty to the
deposed president. What’s to admire in the
former actor and his all-out war against the
Moro separatists? Gayang lost a husband,
two sons, and dozens of relatives in that
war. She was there in the killing fields, going
through the horror of it all, while the
president was sitting in his palace in Manila
or in bed with one of his mistresses, thinking
the lives lost were just characters in the
action movies he used to star in, and this
suman vendor was in her house in Tacurong
or Isulan watching everything unfold on her
television, grieving for the handful of
Christian soldiers who were killed and
rejoicing about the hundreds of Muslim
rebels who met the same fate.
“Noynoy is really abnoy,” says the wife,
calling the current president feeble-minded.
“He lets the Moros have things their way.
Peace talks won’t get us anywhere. All-out
war is the best solution to the problem here
in Mindanao.”
“Yes, there should be an all-out war again,”
says a male voice from the rear of the
multicab. Gayang can’t see who it is
because there are three or four persons
between them. More disembodied voices
agree. Soon, almost everyone seems to
have joined the conversation, each one
speaking loudly. Gayang can no longer
distinguish if they’re simply trying to be
heard over the rumbling of the engine or
they’re carried away. She has not seen such
a thing happen in a public transport before.
Though it’s not unusual for a group of
teenagers to be raucous, strangers
normally don’t exchange more than a line or
two. These people seem to be getting mad.
Gayang suddenly fears for his grandson.
They might hurt her and the boy if they find
out they’re Muslims. She holds Amil closer
to her. He has remained asleep despite the
noise.
Gayang can’t wait to get out of the multicab,
but she knows she has to endure the
company of the Ilonggos for some ten
minutes more. They’re milking the subject
dry, but they show no sign of losing fervor.
At some points, whenever it’s difficult to get
the attention of the whole group, seatmates
have their own one-on-one conversations.
Their points are repetitive: The president is
stupid. The troopers are pitiful. The rebels
are evil. The Moro savages deserve nothing
less than death. All the Ilonggos seem to
share the same conviction, except for the
girl of thirteen or fourteen sitting opposite
Gayang. The girl, in jeans and a pink shirt,
looks like she has not washed her face and
combed her hair since she woke up that
morning; she must have spent the night in
someone else’s house. Inside the multicab,
she’s lost in her own world. Her eyes are
glued to her pink cellphone, her fingers
moving furiously on the keypad. Every
message she receives and composes seems
to make her giggle. Every now and then,
though, probably while waiting for a reply,
she would look up from her cellphone and
listen to the conversation of the other
passengers, but before could be affected in
any way by the passionate exchange of
opinions, her phone would vibrate and she
would withdraw again from the world
around her.
Gayang is relieved a little that the
unconcerned girl is seated in front of her.
No one would wonder why she has not
joined the conversation and expressed her
own sentiments against Muslims. She’s fully
relieved when she notices from the
landscape that the multicab is already near
Isulan and the trip will be over soon. The
terminal of Town Aces bound for
Maguindanao is near the traffic circle, and
multicabs from Tacurong pass by the traffic
circle before the public market, so Gayang
and Amil will be getting off the vehicle ahead
of the other passengers. Gayang lightly
shakes the boy. “Wake up,” she whispers to
him in Tagalog. He stirs.
When the multicab is near the traffic circle,
Gayang knocks on the thick glass behind the
driver. The vehicle pulls to the side and
stops. Gayang shakes Amil more strongly.
He opens his eyes and asks her in
Maguindanaon, “Are we there yet,
Grandma?”
The multicab is filled with silence, and the
other passengers stare in surprise at
Gayang and Amil. When the vehicle has
been slowing down, the volume of the voices
has also lowered, so many of the
passengers heard Amil speak.
“No,” Gayang answers Amil, also in
Maguindanaon since there’s no point now in
keeping her ethnicity from the others.
“We’re still in Isulan. Go down now.”
Amil obeys and walks between the queues
of knees. The other passengers seem
ashamed of the words that they uttered
earlier. The wife buries her face behind the
shoulder of her husband. The suman vendor
pulls her large basket closer to her so that
the boy can pass more easily. Indeed, how
could they forget that there’s a good chance
that at least one of their fellow passengers
is a Muslim? Maguindanaons constitute a
considerable portion of the population.
Gayang feels a little better upon sensing the
remorse of the Christians. They’re not
completely callous, after all. However, when
Gayang looks at the teenage girl in front of
her, she’s stumped to find the girl glaring at
her. The girl stares at Gayang from head to
toe and then up again. Gayang stands up
and follows Amil out of the vehicle. She
holds her grandson by the hand and walks
to the front of the multicab to pay for her
twenty-peso fare. It’s a relief for her that this
is how passengers pay the driver in Isulan
and Tacurong. She heard that in busier
towns and cities, passengers pay while the
vehicle is running and the passengers at the
back have to hand their money to the
passengers near the front. It would have
required her to interact more with her fellow
passengers.
Even when the multicab has left her and
Amil, Gayang can still feel the stare of the
teenage girl—she who has been busy
texting all the time and who has seemed to
not know or care enough about the issue.
Why is the most ignorant the quickest to
judge?
Gayang leads Amil to a Town Ace parked at
the side of the road. Town Aces, which look
like multicabs, only bigger, travels all the
way to Cotabato City, but Gayang and Amil
will ride only for the first half of the trip. They
will get off in Sharif Aguak, and from there,
Gayang and Amil will finally go to
Mamasapano by riding a public utility
motorcycle, called Honda by the locals
regardless of the brand.
While the grandmother and grandson are
waiting for the Town Ace to be filled, a
female passenger remarks in Tagalog to no
one in particular, “So it is true. They
wrapped the round ball with a black cloth.”
Gayang and the other passengers look at
the direction of the traffic circle. She can’t
see what the woman is referring to. The very
tall pedestal, made of intersecting arches,
and the large statue of Sultan Kudarat on
top are not covered in a black cloth. It takes
a while for Gayang to notice the one-meter-
high cloth wrapped around the base of the
monument.
“It’s for PO2 Gregorio, one of the Fallen
Forty-Four,” says a male passenger, also in
Tagalog. “He’s from here.”
“It’s so sad,” says another female
passenger. “They say he was supposed to
marry his girlfriend this year. He was just
twenty-three or twenty-four.”
Gayang feels uneasy. What happened in the
multicab has been unpleasant, to say the
least. She doesn’t want to go through it
again, especially since the trip will be much
longer now. It will take the Town Ace about
an hour to reach Sharif Aguak. To Gayang’s
relief, none of the other passengers seems
keen on talking about the issue further. They
probably don’t want to take the risk of
offending anyone, for normally, those who
are traveling to Cotabato City belong to
different tribes and Muslims outnumber
Christians.
At nine in the morning, Gayang and Amil are
already in Barangay Tukalinapao in
Mamasapano, standing in front of a hut
beside the muddy road. A woman comes out
of the hut. “Come in,” she says, staring at
Gayang with anxiety and then at Amil with
pity.
As soon as they’re inside the hut, Gayang
says, “Do you know what happened,
Warda?” Gayang feels that she doesn’t need
to specify what she wants to know.
Warda shakes her head. “No. I can’t tell you
anything, Gayang. You have to ask Rakman
about that.” Rakman is Warda’s husband
and Gayang’s cousin. He’s a local
commander of the Moro rebels.
“Where is he?” Gayang asks.
“I’ll send for him.” Warda calls one of her
children and gives him instructions. The
child leaves running through the backdoor.
“He won’t be back right away,” Warda tells
Gayang. “Let’s have coffee first.”
The two women have coffee while watching
the children play. Warda is much younger
than Gayang and Rakman, and her children
are still kids. That’s because she’s
Rakman’s third wife. She points at Amil and
tells Gayang, “Is that your grandson? He’s
so big now.”
“Yes,” says Gayang. “He’s already in grade
two.”
“Any news from his mother?”
“No. She left the boy to me when he wasn’t
even a year old. She said she was just going
to Gensan to look for work. I haven’t heard
from her since. Someone told me last year,
though, that she’s in Manila.”
Warda shakes her head. “Young Muslims
nowadays,” she says, though she’s only a
few years older than Gayang’s son. “They
live together and part ways without any
formal marriage and divorce. They’ve been
influenced by Christians.”
It occurs to Gayang that Warda herself has
been influenced by Christians. Warda did
not marry Rakman until he built her a hut of
her own beside the road, away from the first
two wives, who live in the same hut in the
hills. She’s more like a mistress than a third
wife. Gayang, however, doesn’t say
anything about this to Warda. “I can’t blame
the girl, Warda,” she says instead. “She
wanted to be married to my son, but we
couldn’t give her family any dowry, and after
she gave birth to my grandson, my son left
her and decided to stay here in
Mamasapano. Anyway, I don’t think much
about it now. I’m just happy that I have a
grandson to keep me company.”
The two women sip their coffee in silence.
There isn’t really anything much that they
can talk about. They barely know each
other. Gayang seldom comes here in
Mamasapano. It’s her son who visits her and
Amil in Tacurong every two or three months.
When their mugs have been emptied, Warda
excuses herself to prepare for lunch. After
putting on the fire a pot that contains rice
and water, she returns to Gayang. It has
been an hour since Gayang and Amil
arrived, and there’s still no sign of Rakman.
The young messenger hasn’t come back
also. “Rakman must be attending to
something,” says Warda. “But he’ll be here
for sure. He’ll find time for you.”
“Is he in your farm?” Gayang asks.
“No. With what happened, none of the
people here will be doing what they
ordinarily do. No one will be looking after
their farms for days and even weeks.
Rakman must be in his other house, where
his first and second wives live. I told my son
to look for his father there. My husband has
been going there frequently since the other
day, and of course, it’s not to sleep with
those two hags. He meets his fellow
commanders there. They’re probably
planning what to do next. I heard the Justice
secretary is coming over to investigate.”
“What about my son? Where is he? You must
know something, Warda.”
“I can’t tell you what I don’t know for sure,
Gayang. Your son has his own hut in our
farm, and I heard he stays often in a camp or
something. I don’t get to monitor his
whereabouts. Only my husband can answer
your questions.”
“You must have heard the shots.”
“I did. It went on the whole day, although not
constantly. There would be silence for a few
hours, and whenever I thought it had ended,
it would start again. I even packed some of
our stuff, in case we had to evacuate. I really
wish I could tell you if your son was there or
not, Gayang. But I know nothing much. In a
place like this, it’s better to know nothing
than to be good at keeping secrets. I avoid
getting involved in Rakman’s activities as
much as I can. I focus on raising the children
properly, on making sure that they get at
least a semblance of a normal family life.”
Gayang nods. “I understand. That’s what I
also tried to do when we were still in Pikit,
though my husband was not really actively
involved in the insurgency.” She steals a
glance at Warda’s children. Their clothes
are gray with dirt. Snot drips from their
noses. She wonders how much attention
Warda is really giving them. “Aren’t they
supposed to be in school today?” she asks.
Warda shifts a little on her seat. “Oh. I’ve
been allowing them to miss school. It’s
dangerous for them to go anywhere. After
the incident a few days ago, who knows
what the crazy soldiers would do?”
Gayang has a feeling that Warda has been
allowing her children to miss school even
before the incident. Warda’s words often
exceed her actions. But Gayang doesn’t
take it against her. Gayang feels that a
woman with such a personality is in a way
good for Rakman, who treats women,
especially his first two wives, like servants.
Rakman doesn’t appear until one in the
afternoon, after the women and children
have taken their lunch. Like most of the
rebels, the commander is wearing a T-shirt,
fatigue pants, and rubber shoes, and a long
gun is slung on his shoulder. He was also
wearing sunglasses, and wound around his
neck is a gray scarf printed with tiny black
squares. Perhaps the only indication that
he’s a high-ranking official is his potbelly
and the overbearing way he carries himself.
“Where’s my son, Rakman?” Gayang asks
him right away. “Take me to him.”
“You can’t see him,” says Rakman. “You
wouldn’t like what you would see.”
“I’ve seen everything. I’ve lost a lot of loved
ones, some of them right before my eyes.
Don’t be protective of me. It’s too late for
that. If you care for what I feel, you shouldn’t
have persuaded my son to come here and
fight with you.”
“Your son needed no persuasion. He came
here of his own accord.”
This always happens whenever Gayang
sees her cousin. She believes that Rakman
brainwashed her son. The young man
originally came here in Mamasapano to
work a small piece of land owned by
Rakman. Months later, she found out that he
was spending more time with a gun than
with a plow. Rakman claims that the young
man approached him, not the other way
around, about fighting for the separatist
movement. Gayang takes a deep breath.
She doesn’t want to argue with Rakman
right now. Blaming him has caused a rift
between them, but it did nothing to change
her son’s mind. “Just take me to him
please,” she says.
Rakman shrugs. He let Gayang and Amil
ride with him in his motorcycle. They cross
cornfields, rice fields, coconut farms,
banana plantations, and fallow lands. They
stop in a small clearing in a wooded and
weedy area. They got off the motorcycle.
“Why are we here, Grandma?” Amil asks. “I
thought we’re going to see Father.”
Gayang doesn’t answer the boy. Her eyes
are fixed on the clearing. The topsoil is
upturned, which means that the ground has
been dug up and refilled recently. She
knows now what happened to her son. The
howling dogs were indeed giving her a
message.
She has felt that this is what she would find
out, but the intuition, the premonition, and
her experiences have not been enough to
prepare her. The pain that engulfs her is
rather physical. It doesn’t just wrench her
heart. She feels as though she has been
punched in the gut. She’s dizzy and weak.
She falls to her knees and wails.
“Stop that, Gayang,” says Rakman. “There is
nothing to grieve. Your son died an
honorable death.”
Amil suddenly understands what’s going on.
“Father!” he says, tears welling from his
eyes.
“Be quiet, the two of you!” Rakman orders.
“The men in this grave gave their lives for
the nation—our nation. They gave their lives
so that our people can be free. They did
what they wanted to do. Don’t be like the
Christians. They’re crying murder,
massacre even, for the deaths of the
policemen, but aren’t those policemen just
doing their job? Isn’t dying a risk that goes
with their duty?”
“Don’t tell me not to grieve, Rakman,” says
Gayang. “You didn’t lose a son.”
“I treated your son like he was mine.”
“You didn’t give birth to him. You didn’t raise
him. He is mine alone, and no one has the
right to take him away from me.”
Rakman walks away, cursing under his
breath. Gayang takes Amil into her arms.
They cry the name of the person they have
lost. They weep without restraint. Rakman
squats in front of his motorcycle and tinkers
with the engine, though there’s really
nothing to check or fix. He only walks back
to Gayang and Amil when the weeping
subsides a little. He wipes the tears off the
boy’s face. “I was there with your father,” he
tells Amil. “You should be proud of him. He
did not shout or cry. The pain was nothing to
him. He was very brave. You should also be
brave.”
Amil says nothing, but his sobs become
more controlled.
“We are a family of brave men,” Rakman
continues. “We’re not like those Christian
soldiers. They wept like girls, calling for
their mothers, as we—”
“Leave the kid alone!” Gayang shouts. She
pulls Amil away from Rakman. “Don’t poison
my grandson’s mind. I’ve had enough. I’ve
lost so many. He’s the only one I’ve got left.”
“We will never stop until we get what is
rightfully ours,” says Rakman. “The deaths
of your husband and your sons will be for
nothing if we stop now.”
“You were not trying to get what is rightfully
ours. They say you were coddling a
terrorist.”
“Who’s a terrorist in this war, Gayang? You
and your family were innocent civilians in
Pikit, but what did the government soldiers
do to you? Weren’t they terrorists too?
Who’s the terrorist and who’s the hero? It’s
not for the government, for the Christians, to
decide!”
Gayang closes her eyes and breathes
deeply. When she opens her eyes, she says,
“I just lost a son. I just lost yet another loved
one. I don’t want to talk about peace and
honor and love for one’s people.” She wants
to stay by the grave for as long as she can,
but she knows that Rakman won’t stop
blabbering against the government and the
Christians. He will keep on dictating her how
to take the death of her son. She tells him,
“Please take us back to your house. I want
to go home.”
“What home? Are you referring to the
Christian-dominated city where you peddle
tinagtag like a beggar? That’s not your
home. It will never be your home—you will
never have a home—until we get back all the
land that the Christians have stolen from
us.”
“Please. Just take me and my grandson now
on your motorcycle.”
her arm. “Don’t make me mourn for you,”
she whispers. “Wait for me to die.” The boy
stares up at her, clueless of what she’s
talking about, and when she doesn’t say
another word, he returns his gaze to the
gun. They ride in silence the rest of the way.

Gayang feels as though Rakman wants to

crush her with his stare, but without any
additional word, he walks to his motorcycle.
It’s around two in the afternoon. Gayang and
Amil have enough time to travel. They’ll be
back in Tacurong before sunset. She stares
at the grave for the last time.

Her memory takes her to a similar grave

fifteen years ago, in the wake of the all-out
war. One of those who had been buried in
the grave was one of her loved ones, either
her husband or her eldest son. No one could
tell her for sure. The bodies had been hurled
into the pit without being properly identified,
for the diggers had been working in a hurry.
They had been afraid of the gunfire ringing
out in the background, and they had been
racing against the setting sun, for it’s the
custom of Muslims to bury the dead on the
day of death. Gayang had only learned of the
burial days after it happened. When she
visited the grave, she did not know whom to
cry for. She cried for everyone, for no one.

The uncertain details of her loss made the

scene indelible in her mind. Gayang can
clearly remember until now that she had a
child with her that day. The child was
already heavy, but she carried him in her
arms so that she could whisper to him that
she would never allow the same thing to
happen to him. They would leave Pikit and
live in Tacurong, where her family had a tiny
home lot, where she believed they could live
peacefully, far enough from the armed
conflicts between the government forces
and the separatist rebels. That child was
now a dead man, buried in an unmarked
grave in Mamasapano, along with probably
a dozen of his brothers in arms, judging by
the size of the clearing.

Gayang stares at Amil. She wants to pull him

up and tell him that his will be a different life,
that he will be spared from the decades-old
violence that plagues Mindanao. But he’s
much too heavy for her. Her bones are no
longer as strong as they have once been.
Her thighs are now aching merely from
letting him sit on her lap on the trip earlier.
More importantly, she no longer has the
heart to make promises.

Gayang and Amil ride Rakman’s motorcycle.

They once again travel along farmlands and
fallow areas. Rakman’s gun is slung on his
back, the long barrel pointed above, and
Gayang notices that her grandson is staring
at the gun. She wraps an arm around the
boy, and he leans back on her and touches