From the Inq7.net (The Philippine Daily Inquirer and GMA Network Company)
Thursday, August 02, 2001, Philippines

Blood on the mountain

HERE is one book I wish the members of the Abu Sayyaf would read. I don’t know what the book would do to them, how it would affect them. But I want them to read it because they are among the main characters of the story.

"Into the Mountain: Hostaged by the Abu Sayyaf," by Jose Torres Jr., reads like a small novel set on an island and a mountain somewhere, where people go about their ordinary lives, not necessarily the way most of us do, until something terrible happens and changes the course of their lives and their future as well. As the title suggests, the book is about the hostage-taking that happened in Basilan in March 2000. But more importantly, it is about the individuals who died, suffered and survived. Who were they, how did they.

It is also about the people whose middle name is cruelty.

Weaves and reads like fiction, but fiction it is not. As author Torres says, "Every character is flesh and blood, every incident a fact, every village a cartographic reality, every quotation a faithful transcription from the narratives of witnesses and participants."

Torres handles every character’s story with sensitivity and respect. He lets the individuals tell their stories in the way they know how, he lets their individuality stand out by standing aside. Oh yes, that requires a lot of humility on the part of the writer. Especially because this is not fiction.

Well, when one beholds stories such as the ones told by the hostages, one cannot but bend one’s knees in reverence for the pain and the terror they endured. Here is sacred, bloody ground that the writer must tread via the recollections of the characters.

"Into the Mountain" is a story that was crying out to be written. "In the late 1980s," Torres recalls, "when I went home to Mindanao, my Muslim friends told me that if I wanted to become a successful journalist, I should study Islam and understand the religion by heart, because it would become the ‘wave of the future.’ I tried and failed."

Torres did become a successful journalist but "the wave of the future" seemed to have overtaken him. Until...he found the story. Or the story found him.

The story begins with a portent of things to come--incidents that happened even before March 2000, the interplay of characters in what seems to be a surreal setting. The action begins in Chapter 2, "The Morning the Bandits Came." The men in black had arrived.

Many Filipinos have read in newspapers and watched on TV the unfolding of the hostage-taking in Basilan that involved 49 people, among them a Claretian priest, teachers and students and the Abu Sayyaf bandits who held them captive in the mountains for almost two months. There have been first-hand accounts from the survivors that gave us glimpses of what it had been like to stare death in the face and to see one’s companions die, but "Into the Mountain" gives us a more textured picture, more depth, more understanding of what it is to be human. And inhuman.

I think the secret here is that Torres allowed his characters to simply be themselves--in their past and present settings--to weave their stories. If Torres were a camera, he simply followed them quietly and respectfully, not interrupting too much. This is not to say that Torres did nothing. He did the great thing: he knew how to let them tell it.

Says Torres: "This was not an easy story to write because I did not think about it. I just let the pieces fall; I just let the material flow. I did try to provide some context, but still in a story-driven format." As we say, a story writing itself. Well, in fact you need a good storyteller to let this happen. Torres tries and succeeds.

As editor John Nery says in the intro: "I was blown away. With remarkable intuition, Joe had divined exactly where the real story lay. It lay in story--that is, in the narratives of the witnesses and participants, in the retelling and detailing of the protagonists..."

Central to the story is the life of Fr. Rhoel Gallardo who was among those who were killed/beheaded. But his life and death alone would not be able to sustain the plot of "Into the Mountain." There had to be a Mr. Rubio, a bishop, a Khaddafy Janjalani, an Abu Sabaya, a Marissa, a Kipyong, the children, the teachers and the government soldiers. Captors, captives, rescuers, next of kin, friends, neighbors, classmates.

One walks, stumbles and groans with Mr. Rubio who attempts several times and pleads to meet death head-on, but fails. His death wish never realized, he survives with the burden of telling his story about despair and flashes of courage.

On Page 101: "Then he saw another chance to die. They were climbing a steep hill when he fell down and could not move an inch off the ground. ‘Please push me off the cliff and just tell Khaddafy later that I fell off,’ he pleaded. ‘Have mercy on me, kill me now.’

"‘You want to die again?’ a bandit asked. He called on his companions and asked them to help him carry the old teacher. ‘Let us throw him down the cliff,’ the bandit said. They dragged him down the edge. Mr. Rubio could see the rocks down below but he chose to look into the ocean and pray."

I won’t tell you what happened next.

"Into the Mountain" is not simply a novelized, cinematized account of a tragic event. It provides a lot of context woven into the narratives. Separately at the end, it also gives a historical background on the terrorist group ("The Abu Sayyaf Chronology") and the island of Basilan ("The Way to the Iron: From the Queen of Spain to Magsaysay’s Doctor-Priest").

I read Torres’ opus last week when it was about to go to press and I had to read from proofs that were slipping from my fingers. Work like this has to be read like a good book should be--with reverence and awe, in solitude.

***

(Por favor, don’t write to ask me for copies. Order from AVA, PoBox 21104, Oxnard, CA, 93034, USA.
Softcover 8"X12", 40 pages, with black and white photos; (6 pages of color photos).
US$15.95; plus $4.5o shipping (USPS Priority Mail w/tracking)(or request bookrate)

E-mail: pmcmssr@yahoo.com