Mayhem
In the friendliest country in the world, where tarsiers grin under coconut suns, and waves sparkle blue against the whitest of white sands, the luckiest man west of the Pacific discovered his luck the same day the Department of Health discovered 136 bags of HIV positive blood.
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The house on Panay Avenue
I make my living telling stories; have woken daily to the hunt for the next story, and the next. No matter what we do, or how many stories we tell, it always seems to be the same cramped alley we pass through, past the same woman crouched at a doorway with a tin tub washing clothes, past the same shirtless men with their bottles of gin, past the same teenage girls in their faded pink shorts, to listen to the same story of persistence and tragedy and grim hope.
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Alysha
A small girl sits on a cement ledge bordering a sandbox filled with dirt. There are flowers growing inside, blush pink and blooming. The girl is maybe 4, maybe 5 years old, in a wrinkled blue-and-white school uniform, a streak of dirt on her cheek, a dimple popping out as the small feet kick against the ledge. Hold the picture, we tell her. Look at the camera.
Her name is Alysha. Her grandmother Arbaya tells the story. Of how her daughter Rowena left home early on a Monday morning with several of the neighboring women. Of how Arbaya got a phone call from her panicked daughter, past nine, that their convoy of cars had been held by the Ampatuan men. Of how her daughter said she was going to die, and that the media men were outside the van, already sprawled on the ground.
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Jude
It is Monday, high noon, when you hear the story. Your son tells you he heard about it from his teachers. He says it’s the talk of the school.
At first they say it was a kidnapping. You brush it off, there’s no reason to be afraid. Politicians are involved. They will kill each other off and haul each other to hell, and life will go on because this is Mindanao.
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Reynafe
It is Monday, high noon, when you hear the story. Your son tells you he heard about it from his teachers. He says it’s the talk of the school.
At first they say it was a kidnapping. You brush it off, there’s no reason to be afraid. Politicians are involved. They will kill each other off and haul each other to hell, and life will go on because this is Mindanao.
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Arrogance
THIS IS the story as told by one Fatima Aliah Dimaporo, the London-educated granddaughter of the warlord of Lanao, third generation in a dynasty whose most recent pitch for power included mother and daughter running for Congress, the son for governor. Dimaporo says she had approached Secretary Teresita Quintos-Deles, head of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, while at a break from budget deliberations to clarify points on the peace process. Dimaporo said Deles’ responses demeaned her, insulted her, and implied she did not know enough of Mindanao and the complex workings of the peace process and should read more books. According to Dimaporo, Deles also committed the unforgivable sin of “even raising her voice.”
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The Montalvan morality
On Oct. 11, 2010, Antonio J. Montalvan II, whose column appears in this paper, denounced performer Carlos Celdran’s recent and controversial theatrics at the Manila Cathedral. Celdran interrupted a Holy Mass to throw down his gauntlet before the friars, an act that should rightly offend anyone of any religion, whoever the deity, whatever the prayer.
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