In the Presence of My Enemies (32 page)

Ediborah, being a nurse, had been urging Musab to figure out some way to help the kid. After all, Akmad was his nephew. We joined in as well. “Somebody really needs to do something,” we said. “Why is he continuing to suffer like this?”

“It is the will of Allah,” came the response. “He has been confessing his sins: stealing food from the group, not saying his prayers, not reading his Koran. So this is Allah’s punishment for him.”

I wanted to scream back that the suffering had nothing to do with Allah; it was all the fault of the Abu Sayyaf leaders. They had control of Akmad’s life.

Now, just as we were walking out of this house on stilts above the ocean, I peeked in another room and caught my last glimpse of the boy. A baseball cap was pulled down over his eyes. He was so skinny I could see the bones of his elbows through his skin. His arms and feet were tied down to anchor points in the floor and wall, and a sock was tied into his mouth with a bandanna to gag him. He thrashed pitifully against the restraints.

My heart just went out to him. The irritation of weeks before when he had thrown rocks at me was long gone. I felt nothing but sorrow for the agony he was now enduring.

Later I was told that the AFP raided that house, captured him, and tried to question him. Where is Akmad today? In an insane asylum somewhere? Or has he died? I doubt I will ever find out.

* * *

Another long night on the sea. Martin and I realized we had a serious problem to manage: our diarrhea. I thought to myself,
This situation is going to get very embarrassing.

Would you believe that we traveled across the water all night long, and neither of us ever had to go?! By the time we got to the peninsula coast, daylight had come. As soon as we stepped onshore and found a log to hide behind, the need struck us both with full force. I believe that was just the Lord’s goodness—a small shield from needless humiliation.

The night had its terrors, however, in that we were out on the open ocean in the darkness, and whenever another boat got close to ours, we had to crouch down and stay covered under a tarp. At one point, a government patrol boat, complete with cannons poking over the side, was spotted. My heart began to pound as I thought,
This is it. This is the end of us. In just a few minutes we’re going to get blasted into the sea, and we’ll drown.

I pled with God to spare our lives. I found myself repeating one phrase over and over: “O God, save us! O God, save us! O God, save us!”

Our captain turned on one small light at the back that shone down into the water, thus pretending to be a fishing boat. His ruse worked, and the patrol boat passed by without investigating.

We soon learned that an older man aboard our boat named Mirsab, who was about fifty-six years old, knew the immediate area from his earlier days with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. He became our guide.

Once we landed, we set up camp in the jungle once again. We hadn’t been there long when a group of civilians arrived unannounced to talk to Musab. This was problematic, because they obviously saw the white faces of Martin and me; there was no chance to hide us. Who knew what this group would do with that information?

We promptly moved again, but the pattern kept repeating itself: discovery by civilians, another march to another place. Talk of negotiation and release faded; we were back to the same old grind as on Basilan, only in this case, it became apparent that the Abu Sayyaf didn’t really know where they were going. Once we mobiled beyond the territory that Mirsab knew well, we just wandered aimlessly in the jungle.

At this time, Martin developed worse intestinal problems than ever before. His need to go into the woods was unceasing. He worried that at night he wouldn’t be able to get someone to unchain him fast enough so he could go. Bless his heart, as a precaution he began wearing some of the rags we had brought from Island 11, almost like a diaper, just in case he had an accident.
Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a single bottle of Pepto-Bismol or a few tablets of Imodium A-D to help him,
I thought. But there was none.

Meanwhile, we pleaded with the Great Physician for relief. And within a few days, the worst of it passed.

By now his weight loss was obvious to everyone, not just me as his wife. The Abu Sayyaf needed to keep him alive for obvious reasons, so his food budget was improved. He began to regain a little weight. At least his bones weren’t protruding to the point that they were visible through his T-shirt.

We would look at each other and sigh. I remembered back to our early years of marriage, how we would romanticize, “Won’t it be nice to grow old together someday?” Well, that was exactly what we were doing there in the jungle. Only we weren’t in our seventies or eighties. We just looked like it. For a time, we weren’t allowed to bathe in the river for fear of being discovered. We were so awful and messy from the diarrhea. I finally went to Sabaya one day and said, “I can’t go on like this. I need to do laundry, at least. If you don’t start treating us differently, you just may as well go ahead and shoot me.”

Martin, of course, kept trying to get me to calm down and be less dramatic, but that is truly how I felt. He went to Sabaya and said, “You know, really, if you’ll just let us get back to bathing and taking care of ourselves, we won’t be so dejected. Our depression is coming from being so filthy.”

This succeeded in getting us back to the water on almost a daily basis, but not during the daylight hours. We had to bathe at twilight or even after dark, when they thought civilians were probably elsewhere.

One day I said to Sabaya, “Remember that book about almsgiving that Musab loaned me a while back? I read something very interesting in that—in fact, I even memorized the page number.

“On page 65 it says that some people asked Muhammad one day, ‘How can a man be closest to paradise and the furthest from hell?’ Muhammad said, ‘Free a slave or let a captive go.’

“What about this? That’s how the Prophet, may his name be blessed forever, answered the question.” I thought I was really being clever by using their verbiage.

Sabaya was not impressed or convinced. “Oh, he was talking about some Muslims who had taken other Muslims captive. That passage refers only to a Muslim-Muslim thing; it has nothing to do with you.”

So much for my efforts at theological persuasion.

But Martin wasn’t making a lot of headway, either. One time Sabaya confided that he missed his wives. He said he also missed Angie, his “booty of war.” That led to a discussion of American courtship.

“We try to teach our sons the biblical standard of staying pure until marriage,” Martin explained. “I wish I could be home teaching that to my teenage son right now, in fact. Boys need to learn to be responsible when dating.”

“Well, men think about women all the time,” Sabaya countered. “It’s just ridiculous to think a man would restrain himself. ‘Boys will be boys,’ you know. But if a girl sleeps with someone before marriage, she is to be put to death. Or at best, she is only good enough to be a slave the rest of her life. That’s just the rules.” The blatant injustice of this setup apparently didn’t cross his mind.

* * *

Days dragged on. We heard Sabaya on the satellite phone threatening to take matters into his own hands if the intermediary didn’t start producing results. Where were the other 30 million pesos? he demanded.

What neither he nor we knew was that among the American advisers, the tide had turned against making further payments. Their intelligence seemed to indicate that the first money had only produced squabbling within the Abu Sayyaf. The conclusion was that to pay more would simply be throwing good money after bad.

Finally, Musab decided to go to the city and take charge. This would also give him a chance to see his family again, which was a priority for him. We got our hopes up once more; after all, Musab was the second-in-command of the whole organization.

He said he would be gone only a few days. Time passed, and we all waited. Musab didn’t return.

We kept waiting.

In fact, he never returned. Sabaya was furious. “Here Musab was always our preacher,” he complained. “He was the one to get us together on Fridays and tell us we all needed to be tough and endure hard things in our struggle for Allah. And now he abandons us!”

Every once in a while, Musab called on the sat-phone to talk to Ediborah. “I’m going to send for you this coming Friday,” he would promise. She would get all ready to leave, parceling out her stuff to others. I would get her deodorant, perfume, and soap.

April 24

Another family statement of encouragement airs on Radyo Agong but is not heard by Martin and Gracia.

“Ediborah, why don’t you just keep these until you actually leave?” I would say.

“No, no—he’s promised me a boat is coming this Friday.”

The day would pass, and no boat would show up. I would give her back her belongings. Others, however, did not; she ended up losing a long-sleeved shirt, among other things.

Obviously, Musab was not going to play the liberator role for either her or us.

Martin and I were journaling nearly every day. The Abu Sayyaf had even started ordering pens and paper when they saw us writing so often. Martin’s journal entries pretty much convey the mood:

April 25, Thursday

It’s hard to feel like something is really going to happen even though they say it will. We’ve been promised before. Sometimes it’s as though we’re just being strung along. There is nothing else to do but just keep going. . . . The Lord is faithful, and he is our strength.

April 26, Friday

The boat didn’t come last night, so no new treats (or anything). There was the usual Friday [Abu Sayyaf] meeting that turned into a surprise when one of the members was taken into custody for expressing some form of dissent. Not sure what his fate will be. . . . One of the guys came running at me with his gun and a rope. I thought maybe things were over, but they [only] wanted my handcuffs for the new prisoner who has been declared more dangerous than I. First time I’ve had the cuffs completely off since I don’t remember when. Feels kind of funny. It’s like I forgot to get dressed or put on my watch.

We’re still waiting for news. No idea what will happen.

April 27, Saturday

Who would have thought we’d still be here after 11 mos.? It just keeps going on. The boat didn’t come again last night—engine trouble again. I was not chained last night because they’re chaining their member. Good thing, as I had bad LBM. Many trips up the mountain. Not too much sleep for me as I didn’t trust myself.

April 28, Sunday

The boat arrived finally last night. More rice and reinforcements, although 2 did go out. My “personal” was new handcuffs. Just what I wanted! . . .

Sabaya did a radio interview. He denies that our ransom has been paid. We’ll have to see what the story is when we get out. I still believe it will happen. Just don’t know when. Maybe next week.

In a letter to the kids at this same time, which was written but never dispatched, Martin wrote:

Jeff, are you driving yet? I have been wondering. If we take a family vacation you can help with the driving now. That should be strange.

We have been trying to imagine life outside for some time now. We wear the same clothes all the time. They’re like pajamas. . . . Someone gave me a button shirt and that has been nice.

. . . We will never get back this lost year, but hopefully we will all be stronger for it. Your mother has had a hard time with all this—more than I, I suppose. She just wants a friend. I need to keep trying, and we all need to be supportive of her. She still thinks sometimes that this is her fault because she made the plans for Dos Palmas. God has much to teach us about forgiveness, but the place to begin is forgiving ourselves. This is the fault of the Abu Sayyaf, and no one else.

God has a purpose. I will never understand why he has allowed it to go on so long. Guess we still have need of patience. I will say that my faith has been strengthened. I think your mother’s has as well. We do struggle, though.

Love, Dad

19

One Rainy Afternoon

(May–Early June 2002)

With each move, we seemed to be heading inland into the higher, more remote elevations of the Zamboanga Peninsula. We knew this was not good because it portended more hiding out and a continued stalemate.

At least the Abu Sayyaf had new phones, thanks to the ransom money, which allowed us to order supplies. One day when Alvin Siglos asked what we wanted, I said, “How about some new boots for me?”

He did try to get the boots, but every time a new pair arrived in camp, they were pilfered by others who wanted boots, too. Finally, on the sixth try, I got my boots.

Since the money was still available, we decided to ask Alvin for a Scrabble game. We were looking forward to some friendly competition to keep our minds sharp. I heard later that three or four Scrabble sets had been bought, but none of them ever reached us.

At times, we were forced to hike on terrain that was so steep we could hardly keep our footing without hanging on to a tree. Once on a steep hill, I dislodged a rock that rolled down and hit Martin’s leg. He limped for the rest of the day, and I felt horrible about that.

One night when the guys went down to wait for the
banca
that would be carrying our supplies, a boat pulled up and started to unload. Our guys went out to greet them with the usual
“Salam alaikom!
[Peace to you!]”—only to discover that these were AFP troops! We hadn’t seen the armed forces for weeks, ever since leaving Basilan. Now they were back on our trail.