ERIC GAMALINDA

Sometime around the late 1980s, I traveled to the island of Calauit in Palawan. Ferdinand Marcos had gifted the island to his only son, Bongbong, and had populated the island with exotic animals from Africa.

After the People Power uprising deposed Marcos and the US airlifted the family to Hawai’i in 1986, there was some concern about the zebras, gazelles and giraffes that had been abandoned there, and an ecological preservation project was underway.

But the island still reminded me of the excessiveness of the Marcos family, who had all but turned the entire country into their personal playground—a kingdom they would rule forever.

When I learned that Bongbong Marcos had won the Philippine presidential elections, I felt a flood of confusing emotions wash over me. Anger and depression, mixed with overwhelming nausea. I felt helpless—for something that was out of my control. I felt a sense of failure—not mine alone, but shared with my entire country.

To understand how traumatic Bongbong’s victory is for those of us who lived through his father’s dictatorship, imagine a Spain with Franco’s family or Chile with Pinochet’s progeny winning national elections.

Jose Rizal famously warned us that “those who refuse to look at where they’ve been will never move forward.” We studied his works in school ad nauseum but time and again, when I see what’s been going on in our country, I realize his words have hardly sunk in. I have always suspected that our country is caught in an endless loop, a sinister Möbius strip where we are doomed to relive our nightmares over and over.

I am only 11 months older than Bongbong Marcos, so we belong to the same generation—the lost generation whose formative years were spent under his father’s repressive regime. I knew of Bongbong as the privileged son who could easily receive an entire island to serve as his own private safari, while the rest of us struggled to make ends meet. But that was all he was, the country’s spoiled but not especially bright brat. No one ever imagined him following his father’s footsteps. Today, some people imagine that Marcos 2.0 would be a benevolent, enlightened version of his father.

That may be wishful thinking. Bongbong has been quoted as saying that his father’s dictatorship was the “golden age” of the country. Golden for whom? His family, no doubt, whose reign had the political and military support of the United States, and who are still alleged to have siphoned nearly 10 billion dollars off the country’s coffers to their private accounts. Or their cronies, who benefited from his father’s largesse and the culture of corruption he had led. But not for the hundreds of thousands whose lives were destroyed, who were incarcerated, tortured, assassinated, or disappeared. Not for the millions of Filipinos who wallowed in deeper penury while his family hosted lavish festivals, mingled with celebrities, and lapped up mansions across the globe.

By denying his family’s culpability and showing no remorse for the suffering the people had endured, he appears as deluded as his own mother, one-half of the rapacious couple who ruled by fear and terror during the martial law years, who had said, without a hint of irony, that she wanted her epitaph to read, “Here lies love.”

We can blame this landslide victory on voter ignorance, or a naïve nostalgia for the past, or a desire for radical change. I understand when our political analysts say this is the result of decades of exclusion, of unkept promises, of frustration with the country’s entrenched oligarchism. But to choose a dictator’s son and hope he would make us “rise again,” as his campaign promised, contradicts everything our revered national hero had told us. We have moved backwards fifty years.

I have been researching on some of the major events that had shaped our country since the beginning of the 20th century and through the 21st for a new novel, and I am amazed at how resilient we always were, if not simply lucky. Our great-grandparents lived through the cholera epidemic of 1902, where over half a million died. World War I left us practically unaffected, and we quickly bounced back from the Great Depression, thanks to a thriving middle class. The Japanese Occupation was possibly the most traumatic episode in our history, three long years of excruciating suffering under a fascist power. This was followed, a couple of decades later, by the dark years of the Marcos dictatorship. We endured all that, and proudly picked up the pieces after. We remained hopeful that we would see the last of Rodrigo Duterte after his term (a hope that has proven false, alas), and we appear to be somehow managing to contain Covid 19, despite shoddy resources.

But another Marcos presidency? Led by a man who has shown no inclination to correct the wrongs done by his family? Who continues to delude himself and his followers about a fabled “golden age”? Would he revisit his private safari in Calauit, and would it remind him of that golden age when his family was virtually omnipotent, their opponents either jailed or dead, their bank accounts awash with the billions they had bilked from us?

The Marcos dynasty might rise again, as Bongbong has promised during his campaign. I don’t believe he will “save” the country, but he will certainly save his father’s dubious legacy and continue to rewrite it until we get used to the lies, just as his father once tried to do.

From EMPIRE OF MEMORY, 1992 / 2014

AT HALF PAST THREE in the afternoon of July 5, 1966, a mob hired by President Ferdinand Marcos chased the Beatles out of Manila International Airport. I remember the jittery footage of the scene being replayed over and over on The News Tonite on Channel 5. A grim-looking commentator was saying the Fab but Discourteous Four had shamelessly humiliated the First Lady and her children by refusing to pay a courtesy call at Malacañang Palace. Imelda Marcos herself hastily issued a statement saying the Beatles were to be treated humanely despite the snub, but this was said after the fact—after the Beatles had been kicked, spat at, cursed, and chased into a waiting jet.

     Julian Hidalgo, known by the nickname Jun, took me and my sister Delphi to the Beatles’ concert at Rizal Memorial Stadium. At that time he was courting my sister and was hoping to win me over by playing the older brother. They were both nineteen, and the rituals of this older generation meant nothing to me beyond free passes to a number of movies, where I had to chaperone Delphi. The three of us would witness, not by accident, the Beatles being beaten up at the airport, and for some time we would bond in a special way—conspirators mystically united by an adventure whose significance would only dawn on us long after the event had passed. Jun explained a few details about this incident to me eighteen years later, when, in the ironic twists of fate that coursed through our lives during the dictatorship, he and I became colleagues once again in the censorship office in Malacañang. But in 1966 we were young, brash, and bold with hope, and like the entire country, we seemed on the verge of a privileged destiny.

     Three days before the concert, Jun rushed to our house with three front-row tickets. Delphi’s eyes widened like 45s. “Where did you get the money this time, ha?” she asked incredulously.      “The First Lady gave them to me,” Jun said proudly. And, in response to our howls of disbelief, “Well, actually, this reporter from the Manila Times gave them to me. The First Lady was giving away sacks of rice and tickets last week. This reporter owed me for a tip I gave him years ago, the one that got him the Press Club award. He wanted the rice, I asked for the tickets. He was one of those Perry Como types.”      Imelda Marcos had flown in friends and media to celebrate her birthday on her native island of Leyte. There was roast suckling pig and a rondalla playing all day. She herself obliged requests for a song with a tearful ballad in the dialect, “Ang Irog Nga Tuna,” My Motherland. To commemorate the sentimental reunion, each guest went home with the rice and tickets.      “Now that’s style,” Delphi said. Then, upon reflection: “They won’t let Alfonso in.”      “Of course they would!” I protested. I was just thirteen but I was already as tall as she was.      “That’s not the point,” Jun said impatiently. “I’m going to get myself assigned to cover the Beatles and we can talk to them ourselves.”      “All the other reporters will beat you to it,” I said. Jun was stringing for the Manila Times and was convinced that getting an exclusive interview would land him a job as a staff reporter.      “All the other reporters listen to nothing but Ray Conniff,” he said. “Besides, nobody knows where they’re staying. But I do.”      Jun’s modus operandi wasn’t going to be that easy. He managed to get stage passes for the three of us, which turned out to be inutile. It was the official pass, printed and distributed in London, that we had to wangle if we were to get near the Beatles.      “Go ahead and do your job,” Delphi told him icily. “We’ll see you at the stadium.”      “I can still get you the pass,” Jun said. “Somehow.” He was beginning to realize that concert security would directly affect his personal relationships. But not even his religious coverage of pre-concert press briefings seemed to help. Local promoters announced that the Beatles’ only press conference was going to be held at the War Room of the Philippine Navy headquarters, and that the concert was being staged, not by coincidence, on the fourth of July as a birthday gift to the Republic (July 4th) and the First Lady (July 2nd).      Other questions were left unanswered. Had the Beatles secretly arrived by submarine? “That’s confidential.” Were they actually going to stay at the Palace? “That’s confidential.” In the end somebody asked if the Beatles actually existed, and the joke was that that, too, was confidential.      The excitement was further fueled by a series of wire stories the dailies ran on page one, including coverage of the Beatles’ world tour, warnings of possible riots all over the world, and a rare discordant moment in Tokyo, where a reporter asked the group, “What are you going to be when you grow up?” The reply: “If you grow up yourself you’d know better than to ask that question.”      Radio stations kept playing the Beatles’ hits (most requested: “Yesterday” and “Help!”), and DZUW, Rainy Day Radio, preempted everyone and began playing the new single, “Paperback Writer.” The Philippine Security Corporation created the biggest stir when it insured the Beatles for a million pesos. Two hundred Philippine Constabulary troopers, seven hundred policemen, detachments from the Pasay City and Parañaque police, the Civil Aeronautics Administration, the Bureau of Customs, and the Marines were on red alert. The First Lady bought fifteen hundred tickets and distributed them to volunteer recruits to Vietnam, who were going to be the show’s guests of honor. Pro-Beatle fan clubs were staging rallies, counterpointed by anti-Beatle demonstrations where placards said, “No one is more popular than Jesus!!!” Government bureaucrats had to drive away contractors who were bribing them with concert tickets. On the eve of the Beatles’ arrival, a young colegiala threatened to jump off the roof of the Bank of the Philippine Islands building unless she was granted a private audience with the band.      Backstage at the Rizal Memorial Stadium, an air-conditioned dressing room was hastily installed a day before the concert, complete with state-of-the-art TV monitors and audio equipment. Quarter-page ads appeared in the dailies for a week, announcing concert schedules and sponsors. Finally, on July 3, the day of the Beatles’ arrival, a full-page splash appeared in all the dailies:

LIVE! THE BEST IN THE WORLD! THE BEATLES IN MANILA With Asia’s Queen of Songs Pilita Corales Carding Cruz and his Orchestra The Wing Duo The Lemons Three Dale Adriatico The Reycard Duet and Eddie Reyes & The Downbeats!

     Early that morning, Jun called us up. “Get dressed, both of you. We’re meeting the Beatles at the airport.”      “What do you mean, we?” Delphi asked.      “I told you we’d talk to them, didn’t I?” Jun said. “Did I ever break a promise?”      On many occasions, yes, but this was one promise for which Delphi was willing to risk her life—and mine, if need be. She drove our parents’ 1964 Ford to the airport as though she wanted to mow down everything in our way, laughing as irate motorists yelled obscenities at us.      When we finally met Jun at the parking lot, he handed us a pile of obviously used porter uniforms. “I paid the guy twenty pesos to rent them,” he said proudly.      “Does this guy know what you’re renting them for?” Delphi asked, crinkling her nose as she daintily held her uniform away.      Jun held up a bootleg 45, pressed in Hong Kong, in red vinyl. “If I get an autograph, we get a refund.”

THE CATHAY PACIFIC jet swooped in at half past four. The airport was jam-packed with the biggest crowd I had ever seen in my life: girls in bobby socks and leatherette miniskirts and boys in seersucker suits, all perspiring and scrunched against a chain-link fence. This was definitely the wrong place to be. As the jet taxied in, we tore ourselves away from the crowd and wormed our way to one of the departure exits, just in time to catch a baggage trolley rattling toward the plane. Jun hopped on, and Delphi and I awkwardly clambered after him. I was afraid Delphi’s bobbed hair would spill out of the cap she was wearing and blow our cover. But, having regained her composure, she stood handsomely in the last car, gripping the rail; it was no wonder Jun risked life, limb, and career for her.      The trolley rattled past armored cars, fire trucks, riot squads, and troops of motorcycle police who were wearing special cowboy hats for this occasion. As soon as the trolley cranked to a stop under the jet, Jun hopped off. He was about to head toward the stairs when a limousine careened and cut him off. Three official-looking men dressed in formal barong Tagalog got off the limousine and rushed up to the plane. What followed was an interminable, bated-breath pause. Jun walked up the stairs and saw the officials arguing with passengers near the plane’s exit. Somebody was saying, “Is there a war going on?”      Finally, one official tentatively walked out of the plane. This was enough to excite the increasingly impatient crowd, and immediately a cacophony of screams burst from the viewing deck. The screams grew louder as other officials and soldiers walked out of the plane. By the time Brian Epstein groggily stepped out, the screaming had reached earsplitting level—no matter that the soldiers surrounded the Beatles from jet to limousine and we caught glimpses of them only through spaces in the cordon sanitaire: George Harrison, his hair tousled by the humid wind, his red blazer flashing like a signal of distress, Ringo Starr in peppermint stripes and flapping foulard, Paul McCartney, round-eyed and baby-faced, and John Lennon, hiding behind dark glasses.      Jun hurried down the stairs and motioned for us to follow him.      “What happened in there?” Delphi asked him.      “I don’t know,” Jun said. “All I heard was a lot of words your folks wouldn’t want you to hear.”      “What does that mean?” Delphi asked.      “Nothing we can’t find out,” said Jun.

THE MANILA TIMES ran a story about the press conference at the War Room. Jun fumed over his colleague’s story, saying, “This idiot did little more than transcribe the Q&A.” It turned out, however, that the Beatles’ replies would be uncannily prophetic.

     THE BEATLES! YEAH!      By Bobby Tan

     When did you last get a haircut?      In 1933.      Would you be as popular without your long hair?      We can always wear wigs.      How much taxes do you pay?      Too much.      What attracted you to your wives?      Sex.      Do you feel you deserve the Order of the British Empire?      Yeah. But when you’re between 20 and 23, there are bound to be some criticisms.      How will you solve the Vietnam War?      Give it back to whoever deserves it.      What’s your latest song?      “Philippine Blues.”      Mr. Lennon, what did you mean by Spaniard in your latest book?      Have you read it?      No.      Then read it.      If there should come a time when you have to choose between the Beatles and your family, whom would you choose?      We never let our families come between us.      What is your favorite song?      “God Save the King.”      But it’s the Queen now.      “God Save the Queen” then.      What will you be doing ten years from now?      Why bother about ten years from now? We don’t even know if we’ll be around tomorrow.

ON THE EVE of July 4, Philippine-American Friendship Day, President Ferdinand Marcos urged Filipinos to “recall the lasting and valuable friendship between America and the Philippines” and issued a statement saying a revamp of the government bureaucracy was imminent. “Heads Will Roll!” the dailies shrilled, their bold prediction thrust audaciously by homeless street children against car windows along Highway 54. At the Quirino Grandstand the next day, the President sat in the sweltering heat as troops paraded before him. Three stations covered the Friendship Day rites, but Channel 5 ignored it completely, running instead a 24-hour update on the Beatles. Marcos seethed on the grandstand, and cameras caught the expression on his face that might have said: Damned Trillos, they really get my goat. The Trillos owned the Manila Times and many broadcast stations and refused to accommodate the First Family’s whims. But Marcos had the last laugh. On this very afternoon, back at the Palace, Imelda and the children would be having lunch with the Beatles. All television stations and newspapers had been invited for a five-minute photo opportunity—all, that is, except the Trillo network. Marcos tried to stifle a smirk as he saluted the troops. Proud and dignified in his white suit, he stood out like some sartorial titan: people said you could tell he was going in for a second term.

CALLA LILIES were brought in at nine by Emma Fernandez, one of the Blue Ladies, so-called because Imelda Marcos had them wear nothing but blue. The flowers adorned the corridors of the palace all the way to the formal dining hall, where about a hundred youngsters, ages three to fifteen, listlessly waited for the Beatles. Imee, the eldest of the Marcos children, sporting a new bobcut hairdo, sat at the head of the table. Her younger sister Irene sat beside her, reticent and uncomfortable in Sunday clothes. Ferdinand Junior, master Bongbong to one and all, was wearing a bowtie and a starched cotton shirt, and his attire apparently made him restless, as he kept sliding off his seat to pace the floor. Around them were children of ministers, generals, business tycoons, and friends of the family, sitting under buntings of red, white, and blue and paper flags of the United States and the Philippines.      Imelda Marcos walked in at exactly eleven. Emma Fernandez approached her, wringing her hands, and whispered in her ear: “They’re late!” Imelda brushed her off, an imperceptible smile parting her lips. She kissed the children one by one, Imee dodging and receiving instead a red smear on the ear. She inspected the cutlery, the lilies, the nameplates: two R’s each for Harrison and Starr, check; two N’s for Lennon; and no A in Mc. She scanned the room proudly, deflecting the grateful, expectant faces, the small fingers clutching cardboard tickets to the concert.      At half past eleven the children began complaining, so breadsticks and some juice were served. Imelda walked around the hall, stopping to strike a pose for the palace photographers. “Good shot, Madame!” The photographers were the best in the field, plucked out of the newsrooms to accompany her on all her itineraries. They had been sufficiently instructed on which angle to shoot from and which side to take, and anyone who took the wrong shot was dismissed posthaste, his camera and negatives confiscated. The children were more difficult to shoot: bratty and impatient, they always came out pouting, with their chins stuck out. It was always best to avoid them.      Unknown to this gathering, a commotion was going on at the lobby of the Manila Hotel. On hand were Brian Epstein and members of the concert crew; Colonel Justin Flores and Captain Nilo Cunanan of the Philippine Constabulary; Sonny Balatbat, the teenage son of Secretary of State Roberto Balatbat; Captain Fred Santos of the Presidential Guard; Major Tommy Young and Colonel Efren Morales of the Manila Police District; and local promoter Rene Amos.      “We had an agreement,” Colonel Flores was saying. “We sent a telegram to Tokyo.”      “I don’t know about any fucking telegram,” Epstein replied.      “The First Lady and the children have been waiting all morning.”      “Nobody told them to wait.”      “The First Lady will be very, very disappointed.”      Brian Epstein looked the colonel in the eye and said, “If they want to see the Beatles, let them come here.”      At the stroke of noon, Imelda Marcos rose from her chair and walked out of the dining hall. “The children can wait,” she said, “but I have more important things to do.”      As soon as she was gone, Imee pushed back her chair, fished out her ticket, and tore it in two. The other children followed, and for a few seconds there was no sound in the hall but the sound of tickets being torn. Bongbong hovered near the plate that had been reserved for John Lennon. “I really much prefer the Rolling Stones,” he said. Photographers caught the young master at that moment, his eyes wide and blank. Imee looked at him and remarked, “The only Beatles song I liked was ‘Run for Your Life.’” She looked around the hall defiantly. She had never been so embarrassed in her life. People always said that among the three Marcos children, she was the sensitive one. That morning she seemed she was about to cry.

     The Beatles: Mass Hysteria!      By Jun Hidalgo

     Eighty thousand hysterical fans cramped into Rizal Memorial Stadium to watch the Beatles, the largest crowd Manila has seen since the Elorde-Ortiz boxing match in the same stadium.      While traffic snarled to a standstill along Dakota Street, 720 policemen, 35 special detectives and the entire contingent of the Manila Fire Department stood guard as the Liverpool quartet performed their hits before thousands of cheering and screaming fans, many of whom had waited to get inside the stadium since early morning…

WHEN THE GATES finally opened, all hell broke loose. I held on to Delphi, who held on to Jun, and the three of us braved the onslaught as we squeezed past security and found ourselves, miraculously intact, on the front row beside the Vox speakers.      “I don’t want to sit here,” Delphi protested. “We’re going to blast our ears off!”      “Relax,” Jun said. “Everybody’ll be screaming anyway. We have the best seats in the house.”      Everyone in the stadium was a mophead, except the Vietnam volunteers sitting in our row, whose heads had been cleanly shaved. They were young men plucked from the provinces, and many of them were never coming home again. I was so relieved I had grown my hair longer that summer. My hair was a clear sign that, despite my young age, I had gained honorary membership in the exclusive cabal of this generation. You could tell who the pigs were: they were the ones who roamed around, their ears pink and their heads shaved clean like the Vietnam volunteers. Some of them had guns under into their belts; they had been warned that a riot could break out.

     …Soaked in sweat, Beatles fans impatiently heckled the opening acts, and emcees had to threaten the crowd that the Beatles would not perform until the audience simmered down.

And when the Beatles finally opened with “I Wanna Be Your Man,” you could feel the excitement ripping through you, a detonation of such magnitude your entire being seemed to explode. I couldn’t hear anything except a long, extended shrill—the whole stadium screaming its lungs out. I looked at Delphi. She was holding her head between her hands and her eyes were bulging out and her mouth was stretched to an 0, and all I could hear was this long, high-pitched scream coming out of her mouth. I had never seen Delphi like that before, and I would never, for the rest of her life, see her as remorselessly young as she was that afternoon.

THE MORNING AFTER the concert, Jun asked Delphi if we could take the Ford to Manila Hotel.      “Why do you have to take us along?” Delphi asked him. It was clear that for her the concert had been the high point of our adventure.      “We still have to get that interview, don’t we?” Jun reminded her. “Besides,” he added, “I need you to cover for me,” Jun said.      “Cover?” asked Delphi. “As in war?”      “Looks like war it’s going to be,” said Jun.      Jun had bribed someone from room service to let him take a snack to the Beatles. I was going to pose as a bellhop. Delphi was going to be a chambermaid. Apparently our plan was to swoop down on them in the name of impeccable service, with Jun secretly recording this invasion with the help of a pocket-sized tape recorder. As usual, he had the uniforms ready, rented for the day for half his month’s wages. “The hotel laundry boy’s a childhood friend of mine.”      “You’re the company you keep,” Delphi teased him, because she knew it tortured him whenever she did that.      I wore the monkey suit perfectly, but somehow it still didn’t feel right. I looked at myself in the men’s room mirror and knew I was too young for the role. And Delphi looked incongruous as the chambermaid: her bob cut was too in.      As it turned out, all my misgivings would be proven true. We crossed the lobby to the service elevator. Jun walked several paces ahead of us, nonchalantly jiggling the car keys, but I kept glancing nervously around.      “Hoy, where you going?”      Jun didn’t seem to hear the house detective call us, or maybe the detective didn’t notice him walking past. I felt a hand grab my collar and pull me aside. Immediately, Delphi was all over the detective, hitting him with her fists: “You take your hands off my brother or I’ll kick your teeth in!” Struggling out of the detective’s chokehold, I could see Jun hesitating by the elevator. I motioned for him to go. The detective dragged Delphi and me out to a backroom where several other detectives were playing poker. “Oy, got two more right here!”

AS HE RECALLED LATER, Jun wheeled the tray into Suite 402 expecting to find telltale debris of a post-concert party (and hence an excuse for us to mop up). What he came upon was something less festive.      “Compliments of the house, sir,” he announced cheerfully as he came in.      George Harrison and Brian Epstein were sitting on the sofa, and Paul McCartney was precariously perched on the TV set, brooding. The three of them apparently had been having an argument and they all looked up, surprised, at the intruder.      “All right,” Epstein said, curtly. “Bring it in.”      “I’ll have to mix the dip here, sir,” Jun said, to prolong the intrusion. “House specialty.”      Nobody seemed to hear him. George Harrison continued the conversation, “We came here to sing. We didn’t come here to drink tea and shake hands.”      “That’s precisely the reason we’ve got to pay customs the bond for the equipment,” said Epstein.      “Let them keep the money then,” Paul said. “Everyone says here come those rich mopheads to make more money. We don’t care about the money.”      “We didn’t even want to come here,” George reminded them.      “The only reason we came here,” added Paul, “was because these people were always saying why don’t you come over here? We didn’t want to offend anyone, did we? We just came here to sing. You there,” indicating Jun, who jumped with surprise. “Do you speak English?”      “Fairly well,” replied Jun.      “Does the government control the press here, as they do the customs people, the airport managers, and the police?”      “Not yet,” said Jun.      Paul then observed that everything was “so American in this country, it’s eerie, man!” He also remarked that many people were exploited by a wealthy and powerful few. Epstein wanted to know how he knew that, as the others had simply not heard of the country before, and Paul replied that he had been reading one of the local papers.      “What are we supposed to do?” he asked. “Show up and say, ‘Well, here we are, we’re sorry we’re late!’ We weren’t supposed to be here in the first place. Why should we apologize for something that’s not our fault?”      At that point John Lennon and Ringo Starr, who had been booked in the adjacent suite, walked in. Ringo, sweating and tousled, plopped into the sofa between Epstein and George Harrison. John Lennon, wearing his dark glasses, walked straight to the window and looked out. “We’ve got a few things to learn about the Philippines, lads,” he said. “First of all is how to get out.”

THE MANILA HOTEL DETECTIVES deftly disposed of Delphi and me with a push via the back door, where a sign said THROUGH THIS DOOR PASS THE MOST COURTEOUS EMPLOYEES OF MANILA.      We walked back to the Ford in the parking lot and waited for less than an hour when Jun, struggling out of the hotel uniform and back to mufti, sprinted toward us and hopped into the driver’s seat. “Get in!” he shouted. “We’re going to the airport!”      “Did you get the interview?” Delphi asked.      “Better,” Jun said. “The Beatles are going to try to leave this afternoon. They’re paying something like forty-five thousand dollars as a bond or something. Customs is charging them so much money in taxes for the concert.”      “Wait a minute,” Delphi protested. “Is that legal?”      “Who cares?” Jun said. “All I know is they’re paying the bond and now all they want to do is to get out. But they think something’s going to happen at the airport. There’s been talk of arrest and detention.”      “Who said that?” Delphi asked.      “John Lennon, I think. I don’t know. I was mixing that stupid dip.”      We were driving toward the south highway now, past the mammoth hulls of ships docked at Manila Bay. “You know all those people who’ve been trying to get the Beatles to go to the palace? You know why they were so keen on bringing the band over to Imelda’s luncheon?”      “Can’t waste all that food, right?” Delphi said.      “Bright girl, but no. There’s going to be a major revamp soon. It’s all over the papers, if you’ve been paying attention. All these guys are going to get the top posts. Well, most of them were, until the Beatles screwed everything up.”      “What guys? Who?”      “That Colonel Fred Santos, the one who led the group to talk to Epstein, he’s being groomed to head the Presidential Guard. Real heavy-duty position, accompanying the First Family all over the world, luxury apartment at the Palace, the works. There’s one Colonel Flores, Justin Flores I think, who’s bound to be chief of the constabulary. Then there’s Colonel Efren Morales, most likely head of the Manila Police.”      “But these are junior officers,” Delphi said. “Marcos can’t just promote them to top posts.”      “That’s the point. Marcos is going to bypass everybody and build up an army of his own. All these new guys will be licking his boots and there’s nothing the generals can do about it. That young mophead, the son of Balatbat, he was there for his father, who’s going to be reappointed secretary of state. And if I’m not mistaken, Salvador Roda, the airport manager, wants to take over customs. The man’s going to be a millionaire, kickbacks and all.”      “How do you know all that?” Delphi demanded.      “Homework,” Jun said, swerving the car toward the airport, his reply drowned out by the droning of jets. “I’m the best damned reporter in the city, and everybody’s going to find out why.”

SALVADOR RODA was briefing the press agitatedly at the VIP lounge of the airport that afternoon, explaining why the republic was withdrawing security for the Beatles and why customs had slapped a hundred-thousand-peso tax on Liverpudlian income. “Too much Filipino money wasted on such a paltry entourage, gentlemen of the press, and not one centavo of the profits going to the nation. Puta, that doesn’t make sense, di ba?”      We walked up the escalators to the second floor to change into our porter uniforms, which we had lugged in backpacks.      “This airport gets worse every time I come here,” Delphi complained. “Nothing’s working.”      “And there’s nobody around,” observed Jun. The entire second floor was deserted. “Lucky for us,” he said, pushing Delphi into the ladies’ room and then pulling me into the adjoining gents’. We changed into the uniforms and stuffed our clothes above the water tanks.      “You think there’s going to be trouble?” I asked Jun.      “Will you guys back out if I told you there might?”      I had to give that some thought. In the past Jun had taken Delphi and me on some insane adventures, mostly juvenile pranks that left us breathlessly exhilarated, but with no real sense of danger. For the first time I was afraid we were up against something, well, real.      “We’ll stick around,” I said, tentatively.      He put his arm around me and said, “Kapatid! That’s my brother!”

JULY 5, 2 P.M. THE BEATLES arrived at the airport in a Manila Hotel taxi. They weren’t wasting any time. They ran straight up the escalators, their crew lugging whatever equipment they could carry. At the foot of the escalators a group of women—society matrons and young college girls—had managed to slip past the deserted security posts and, seeing the Beatles arrive, they lunged for the group, screaming and tearing at the band’s clothes. Flashbulbs blinded the band as photographers crowded at the top of the stairs. It would have taken a miracle for the band to tear themselves away from the mob and to reach, as they did in a bedraggled way, the only booth open for passport clearance, where Roda had been waiting with the manifest for Flight CX 196.      “Beatles here!” he hollered imperiously, and the band followed his voice meekly, almost contritely. Behind the booth a crowd that had checked in earlier restlessly ogled.      “Those aren’t passengers,” Jun observed as we stole past a booth. “They look like the people we saw earlier with Roda.”      “Beatles out!” Roda boomed.      And then it happened.      As the Beatles and their crew filed past the booth, the crowd that had been waiting there seemed to swell like a wave and engulfed the band, pulling them into an undertow of fists and knee jabs. There was a thud—Epstein falling groggily, then being dragged to his feet by security police. Someone was cursing in Tagalog: Heto’ng sa ‘yo bwakang inang putang inang tarantado ka! Take that you m*#f@%ing*@^*r!!! Paul McCartney surfaced for air, his chubby face crunched in unmistakable terror. He pulled away from the crowd, and the other three staggered behind him. Somebody gave Ringo Starr a loud whack on the shoulder and pulled at John Lennon, who yanked his arm away, tearing his coat sleeve.      That was when we started running after them—the three of us, and the whole mob.      The crowd overtook Delphi, who was shoved aside brusquely. They were inching in on me when the exit doors flew open into the searing afternoon. From the view deck hundreds of fans who had been waiting for hours started screaming. The band clambered up the plane. I kept my eye on the plane, where Jun was already catching up with John Lennon.      “Please, Mr. Lennon,” he pleaded. “Let me help you with your bags!”      At the foot of the stairs a panting John Lennon turned to him and said, “A friendly soul, for a change. Thanks, but we’re leaving.”      “I’m sorry,” Jun said, trembling.      John Lennon bolted up the stairs. At the top he stopped and took off his coat and threw it down to Jun.      “Here,” he said. “Tell your friends the Beatles gave it to you.”

A FEW WEEKS after the Beatles’ frantic egress from Manila, Taal Volcano erupted, perhaps by way of divine castigation, as happens often in this inscrutable, illogical archipelago. The eruption buried three towns and shrouded Manila in sulfuric ash for days. A month later a lake emerged from what had been the volcano’s crater—a boiling, putrefied, honey-yellow liquefaction.      The Beatles flew to New Delhi, where they were to encounter two figures that would change their lives and music: the corpulent, swaying Maharishi, and the droning, mesmerizing sitar. Back in London later, a swarm of fans greeted them carrying placards with mostly one message:

SOD MANILA!

many times the clear liquid truths run through my fingers—forever elusive. though i bare my soul and lash my back my head thrown back and up, eyes open, only a glimpse is afforded me… to one as dull as i, a moment is not enough. i need a passing look, a sudden touch, a bit of light in doubt’s darkness.

I get it. Only someone who hasn’t had the inestimable pleasure of a face-to-face encounter with American racism would say this: “As for Eric’s own occasionally problematic experience with international publishers, I am sure that his multitudinal skills will eventually prevail, and gain their nod, the way more and more of our compatriots are doing. On which, by the by, I do not recognize their worth only because they were vetted by the West, but rather due to my own reading appreciation (still ongoing) of most of them.” I really don’t want to belabor the point, but “occasionally problematic experience with international publishers” bothers me, because no, the problem is not occasional but systemic, and this statement rather trivializes (unintentionally, I hope) what many of us have to endure, and makes it sound like my statements about institutions such as the mainstream American publishing industry are nothing more than the petulant rant of someone who feels he hasn’t received his due. But to try to explain how, despite our multitudinous “skills”, we are still subject to the prevailing biases, preconceptions and ignorance of the industry, demands more than a column, or a response to a column. After all, so many cultural analysts have adequately addressed this issue, which circles back to America’s historically racialized perception of the Filipino. Indeed, this issue pertains to all writers of color, who have to carve a space in the public sphere inexorably controlled by the white majority; for reference, consider the recent case of American Dirt and the eternal problem of stereotyping and misrepresentation that Chicano writers—and the Mexican community—have always had to deal with: 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/30/american-dirt-book-controversy-latinx-writers-angry

First off, a disclaimer. Krip Yuson has always been a friend of mine and I will always be grateful to him for convincing the Philippine Literary Arts Council to take me under its wing. And I appreciate his constant praise of Filipino and Fil-Am writers in the US, and his latest kudos in his recent column in the Philippine Star.

I must, however, take issue with some of his closing remarks, where he compares Fil-Am writers against those based in the Philippines. He situates this connection as a competition, with Fil-Am writers having an edge in “proficiency and excellence” by the mere fact of the “training they get in their adopted environment, competing with the natives.”

This reminds me of something that has always bothered me about the Filipino mindset: that we think we are worthy only as far as America (or the West) says so. We celebrate those who “make it” abroad, and by reference we imply that those who publish at home are inferior, and not worth as much of our attention. We see the same phenomenon in almost all aspects of our culture: consider Lea Salonga, Manny Pacquiao, Arnel Pineda, even Miss Universe—the list goes on—people we started to celebrate once the West said it was OK to do so.

This is our infantile neurosis: that we believe we are respectable only when the dominant culture says so. We believe a writer has “made it” once she has been published outside Philippine territory. We are still so enamored by our colonial master that we view anything “written in America” as superior and more desirable. This is the self-hating attitude embedded in us by our contact with the Spanish and American racists, and we continue to internalize it as absolute truth. Bewitched by the falsehoods they waterboarded upon us, we cannot look at anything American beyond its dazzling glamour—in other words, its magical illusion.  

But think about the “environment” a Fil-Am writer has to live with. Fil-Am writers, indeed all writers of color, have to contend with the racism and condescension of the American publishing industry, where whiteness is considered eminently marketable. There’s a likely chance that nearly all Fil-Am writers have once been told that nobody is interested in the Philippines or a Filipino narrative or in Filipino characters. At best, they may be accepted by the mainstream for being “exotic.” The publishing industry discriminates against the Filipino narrative, and therefore the Filipino. This problem extends way beyond geography, regardless of whether one is Fil-Am or Filipino. It is an indelible part of our common history.

A national literature, a literary identity and heritage, must encompass all texts written within that “nation,” which in today’s global world, and considering the Philippines’ long history of diaspora, is a fluid concept, and cannot and should not be considered in the binary perceptions of Filipino and Fil-Am. It is not a “competition,” and it is not a zero sum game. A writer contributes to a collective voice that seeks and defines who we are and where we are heading. Ours is a complicated history, as we all know, and we contain multitudes.

To imply that one becomes a better writer because of one’s proximity to the colonial masters is truly sickening. It does a great disservice to the work being done by our own educators in the Philippines and the prodigious output of writers based at home. I have met some of these writers and I have read some of their works, and to imply that they cannot “compete” with those “schooled abroad” is disheartening, if not untrue. When I joined PLAC, I personally felt such growth in my artistic and intellectual education through my conversations with the likes of Gemino Abad, Cirilo Bautista, Rayvi Sunico, Marjorie Evasco, and others. I have not found such inspiration from the “natives” this article refers to. We must not forget the impact we may have, whether we are conscious of it or not, among our juniors or peers.

The only difference between the Fil-Am and Filipino writer is that their publishers—and their marketing and distribution capabilities—are unequal on many levels, due to a number of reasons. There are many ways we can suggest to alleviate this. Why not create a more effective system of publishing and distribution, and offer help to our local publishers so that they can open themselves to an international market, and audiences abroad can finally appreciate the remarkable talent we have at home? Why not support recognition that truly honors our writers? Why should we expect America to celebrate our own writers when we ourselves are reluctant to do so, unless they are published abroad? Why wait for the West—which has its innate biases—to recognize our worth? Our problem is not geography but invisibility. The issue is not proficiency or excellence but self-hate and shame.

Writing is a personal journey, and one’s development as a writer is influenced more by one’s determination to be so. Environment matters, of course, if only as a source of raw material, but the nature of that experience cannot be judged by one’s exotic or foreign location alone. There is an eminent role played by memory, identity, beliefs, and values, which are intrinsic to our soul.

This is my adaptation of a poem from Jalal al-Din Rumi’s Divan-e Shams, based on the translation by Professor A.J. Arberry. Obviously, nothing matches Professor Arberry’s version, but I just had to give it a try.

256

I heard that you were going away: please don’t. That you love someone else: no, don’t.

You are a stranger to the world, but why be a stranger to me? My heart is already wounded, and you wound it further still: I ask you, don’t.

I catch you stealing glances at other boys. Please don’t. I don’t know what’s up or down. You make me crazy like the moon: don’t.

Don’t promise this or swear by that, don’t let your promises hold back something you can’t give.

You have led me to this paradise. But don’t let anyone turn it into a curse for the wicked.

For the sweetness between us can make sugar seem like poison. Don’t let anyone turn it to poison.

My soul burns and burns and burns. If you leave I will smolder to nothing the way fire melts gold: please don’t.

All right, go ahead and leave. Let me lie awake moonstruck in the gloom of your eclipse: or don’t.

My lips are dry, my eyes flood with tears. All because of you: don’t.

Love is a fetter, you chafe at it, but do you really think logic can untangle this confusion? Just don’t.

You don’t feed a fever, you can’t hurt me any further when I am sick with the fever that is you. Don’t.

I am criminal, my eyes have stolen away with your beauty. Beloved, you want my eyes to keep on stealing you: I beseech you, don’t.

The earth is my country.

My place of birth is love. My language is music that anyone can sing.

My faith is the one that says the light of heaven shines on all.

My color is the color of everything that is beautiful to me.

I belong to one people, the race of you and me.

Is this the world of dreams, or the world of possibilities?

The earth is my country, I look after it as it looks after me,

and for everything I’ve lost something else is given back in full.

I will name it Here and Now. I will leave all roads open

and hope that I will find you, or you will find me.

I will keep the light on and wait for you to enter the dream.