In the Presence of My Enemies (14 page)

June 4

About half a dozen men begin meeting at Rose Hill Bible Church from 6:00 to 6:30 A.M. to pray for the Burnhams’ release. They continue six days a week for more than a year.

The next mealtime, when I had to eat with only my hands, I almost gagged.

Whenever we went through a stream, the guys refilled the water jugs. For some reason, I found that I especially needed a lot of water when we were “mobiling,” the Abu Sayyaf term for hiking. Otherwise, my face would get really red and my breathing would intensify, scaring the others.

I found that if I asked for a drink at certain times of the day, the Abu Sayyaf got very irritated with me. Sometimes they said a flat no. It took me a while to figure out that they were saving the water for the ritual washing that preceded their three prayer times each day—dawn, 12:30 
P.M.
, and sundown.

Those on jihad are excused from two of the five daily prayer times normally required of Muslims. However, an additional prayer time is expected of them at 1 or 2
A.M.
Our guys never did it; they were too tired after long days of mobiling. Once when the group was feeling a lot of pressure from the military, there was a discussion about whether the lack of this prayer was the reason. They tried to get up in the middle of the night a few times to pray but soon lapsed.

Before they could recite their prayers, the captors went through the washing ritual. Every day, three times a day, they did this. The ritual consisted of:

1. Washing their right hand and arm up to their elbow—
twice

2. Washing their left hand and arm up to their elbow—
twice

3. Washing their face—
twice

4. Washing their ears

5. Washing their mouth by taking in a sip of water and then spitting it out

6. Sniffing water up their nose and then blowing it out

7. Patting water onto their hair

8. Washing their feet

(I must confess that the constant spitting and blowing of mucus was not exactly my favorite thing.)

All of this activity consumed a fair amount of water, naturally, and the captors took it very seriously. One evening, we were getting ready to eat and Angie accidentally brushed up against one of the guys after he had washed for prayer. “Why did you touch me?!” he erupted. “Now I’m unclean, and I have to go start my washing all over again!” This meant waiting in a long line at the mountain spring we were using in that place in order to refill his jug. He was thoroughly frustrated as he stomped away.

* * *

A couple of days after we escaped from the hospital in Lamitan we came to another abandoned house. Several of the Abu Sayyaf, along with some of the male hostages, moved into the living room, giving us women a smaller room off to the side.

Just as we were settling in, I heard someone yelling, “
Sundalo! Sundalo!
[Soldiers! Soldiers!]” The army was coming once again. We hadn’t spent even one night in this place. We scurried to collect our stuff for another dash into the woods.

But as we gathered to get ready to go, I noticed that Martin’s shoes were missing. I got upset. Who would have stolen them?

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m sure they’ll turn up.”

“What do you mean?” I retorted. “We’re going to have to go into the forest again, and you don’t have anything to wear on your feet.”

I approached Musab, who seemed to be the leader of our particular cluster. “Martin needs his shoes,” I announced, with little attempt to restrain my anger.

Always slightly aloof, Musab looked around casually and then just shrugged.

Now I was really ticked off. “Martin can’t walk through the forest in bare feet!” I lectured. “You’ve got to get him some shoes. This is ridiculous. He’s going to get injured, and you have to do something about it. Do you understand me?”

All of a sudden, it dawned on me: No, he
didn’t
understand me, because he knew very little English.

His face grew stern at being reprimanded by a mere woman. He turned and walked away. (I later found out Musab was the second in command of all the Abu Sayyaf!)

Solaiman came over and said, “Gracia, you need to calm down. This will all work out.”

At just that moment, Musab’s brother came walking up the hill from where we had been taking baths—and he was wearing Martin’s Boston polos! I was fit to be tied. The guy had even broken them in one place. With a big smile on his face, he calmly handed them back to Martin without a word of explanation.

I was really angry, but gradually I settled down. I realized that if I wanted to get out alive and see my kids again, I’d better get a grip on my temper.

We walked all afternoon and toward evening stopped at another coconut hut to sleep. But just before sundown,
sundalo
were spotted again. So we took refuge on top of a ridge. When gunfire erupted at the bottom of the hill, several Abu Sayyaf ran down to engage the enemy.

They returned later, exulting in their achievement. We learned that they had beheaded three AFP soldiers and ransacked their belongings. One of the victims had been a medic. They brought back his medical bag for our future use.

Another had the company radio. Along with the radio, they found detailed paperwork that outlined the AFP’s full strategic plan for seeking the Abu Sayyaf, complete with detailed maps. The goals were enumerated and included a list of all the battalions deployed in this effort.

Chito stared at the list and exclaimed, “Look at all the people looking for us!” We’d had no idea the deployment was this large. Obviously, we were in the crosshairs of a major military operation. Unfortunately, that thought was not comforting at all.

In this particular skirmish, several Abu Sayyaf members had been wounded and one was killed. His comrades cut down small trees to make poles, and by using
malong
s, they put together stretchers for the casualties. When we passed through a Muslim village during the night, they left both the dead and the wounded. The rest of us walked onward all night long once again.

The next morning, we stopped to rest. The nurses who had joined us at Lamitan tended to those with smaller injuries.

We continued this trek for several days. Along the way, Martin and I finally learned who the real Abu Sayyaf leader was. He had been part of our group from the time we landed on Basilan, but we didn’t suspect, from his quiet way and his baby face, that Khadafi Janjalani was the man in charge. He also used the name Moktar.

Janjalani’s older brother, Abdurajik Abubakar Janjalani, had founded the group more than a decade earlier, after returning from the Afghan jihad that evicted the Soviets back in 1989. Inspired by his Islamic professor there, whose name was Abdul Rasul (Abu) Sayyaf, the older Janjalani had settled in his hometown on Basilan to start up a similar effort. The AFP had finally gunned him down in December 1998, and now his younger brother had inherited the mantle.

Our group kept getting bigger and bigger. One day around noon, we came upon a school. Although classes weren’t in session, there were a few teachers around, and for some reason they weren’t afraid of us. We all looked a mess by this time, and we could tell they felt sorry for us. They graciously had someone in the community kill a cow, which they prepared for us. Boiled eggs, Maggi brand noodles, rice, and hot sweet milk were all added to the menu—a feast! It was the first real meal we had enjoyed in a week, since leaving the boat.

June 5

Martin’s brother Brian, his wife, Arlita, and their family arrive in Rose Hill from their mission post in Papua New Guinea to give support during the crisis.

The ladies also gave me a change of clothes: some pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a bra, more underwear—and even an expensive green Penshoppe hand towel! The other women hostages received similar outlays. We were overwhelmed with their kindness. I tucked everything into my sheet knapsack, which I always carried either in my hand or over my shoulder.

We stayed long enough at the school to eat and catch a few minutes’ rest before heading back into the jungle. Not long after that, we arrived at a place I dubbed “House 125,” which is what the leftover census sticker on the front wall of the house said. A two-room hovel with a thatched roof, it had no electricity, no plumbing, and no glass or even screen in the window openings. It was elevated on stilts some five feet off the ground, like most rural houses in the tropics, and it was accessible by a wooden ladder. The space underneath the house was designed as a place to keep pigs and chickens—although now, with no animals around, some of the terrorists used it for their hammocks, slinging them from the supporting poles. Others tied up to nearby trees.

To the Abu Sayyaf, this was a safe haven: remote enough to avoid the armed forces that prowled in search of them, yet close to villages and farms with food supplies and a river only a few minutes’ walk away. Here they could use their sat-phones to keep up the media pressure on the Manila government to accede to their demands.

As we settled into the house, we hostages had a big discussion about how we would sleep. Our Muslim captors had made it clear that Martin and I, as a married couple, should be in the middle to serve as a dividing line between the sexes—something about preserving decency. Next to Martin came Guillermo, since our captors were handcuffing the two of them together each night so as not to lose their prime bargaining chips. The rest of that side included Francis, Chito, and Joel, the young hospital orderly.

Meanwhile, on my side came the three nurses: Sheila, Reina, and Ediborah. Beyond them were Angie and Fe. The teenagers, Kim and Lalaine, huddled up against the wall. We were crunched together so tightly that every time I’d wake up and want to turn over, I couldn’t get leverage. It reminded me of being nine months pregnant and trying vainly to get comfortable during the night.

“Hey, I have an idea,” I said after the first miserable night. “What if some of you sleep over here at the foot of the row in the extra space? We’re not using that. How about you, Lalaine and Kim? This would be a good spot for you two.”

They looked at me as if I were crazy. “We
can’t
sleep there! Don’t you know it’s bad luck to sleep facing a door?” Almost every Filipino apparently knows that you have to sleep at a right angle to a doorway, or something terrible might happen to you.

“Okay, then Martin and I will do it. That will give everybody more space.”

“No, no, no!” they all protested in unison. “You’ve been assigned to sleep in the line with all the rest of us.” I could see I wasn’t going to win this debate.

I woke up one morning and I could hear the birds twittering in the jungle trees and the
thwack
of wood being chopped for the cooking fires. The clanking of pots made me think there might be coffee this morning. At the same time, the mournful prayers of our captors droned on. They began the day with at least twenty minutes of this ritual.

I tried to smooth out my pair of brown
pantos,
which are like pajama bottoms, that someone had given me. I arranged my
terong,
or head shawl, so as to ward off the disapproving stares of our captors. I still didn’t have a pair of socks.

June 6

An FBI team spends six hours in Rose Hill gathering information about the Burnhams for their case against the Abu Sayyaf.

Necessity being the mother of invention, however, I had come up with a substitute to protect my feet. A day or two before, Lalaine had said to me along the trail, “Would you like an extra shirt I found?”

“Oh, thank you!” I was thrilled at her thoughtfulness.

She tossed a garment my way—and it turned out to be a little girl’s Brownie uniform, about the right size for an eight-year-old. I was disappointed. But after looking at it, I realized that if I tore off the two sleeves, I could pull them onto my feet, folding an end over each set of toes, and then I’d have some padding inside the old blue rubber boots.

Soon it was time for breakfast. A couple of the “boys”—young cadres still in their teens—brought in our food on a big banana leaf. The rice was piled high, with a can of sardines in tomato sauce dumped on top. There were no bowls or utensils for eating; we simply dug in with our hands—and quickly, I soon learned. We hostages were friends and allies of each other, except when it came to nutrition. If we didn’t grab quickly, we went hungry.

Something about the frenzy just saddened me this particular morning. I couldn’t force myself to get in there and fight for my food yet again. It made me feel like an animal. I sat over at the side of the room and watched the scramble, until Guillermo noticed.

“Come on, Gracia—time to eat! You’ve got to keep your strength up.”

“I just don’t want to grab,” I replied.

Francis overheard me, and after the banana leaf was wiped clean, he came over to sit beside me, a pensive look on his face. “You know, my dogs at home eat better than this,” he volunteered in a low voice.

June 6

Jeff, Mindy, and Zach arrive in Rose Hill, escorted by their aunt and uncle, Cheryl and Walt Spicer. Everyone moves in with Paul and Oreta Burnham.

“Well,” I replied, “to be quite honest, this is exactly what we
do
feed our dogs—rice with a bit of sardines and tomato sauce.”

Neither of us was really complaining. We were just reflecting on what was becoming of us here in the jungle, pawns in the dark drama of a desperate face-off. We knew the government in Manila viewed the Abu Sayyaf as nothing more than greedy thugs to be squashed. The fact that they held innocent bystanders as hostages was a complicating factor, to be sure. But the battle must go on.

The only trouble was, the Abu Sayyaf knew every valley and ridge of this rain-forested island far better than the AFP, and they were not about to be caught in the open.