In the Presence of My Enemies (19 page)

“It’s my understanding that Fidel Ramos is a Protestant,” Martin suggested next. “Maybe that’s what he means; we’re ‘brothers in the faith.’ ”

“Oh, that must be it,” they concluded. We both relaxed.

The Abu Sayyaf were in fact encouraged by this bit of news and thought the negotiation stood a better chance as a result.

Not too long after this conversation, they announced, “We’re going to take you back to rejoin the other hostage group.”

Thus began a several-day walk. As always, Martin was tied with a rope to one of the captors while walking. And, as before, we were both chained to a tree at night. One morning as we were up building fires to ward off the cold, Solaiman called us over and said, “Your kids are going to speak on the radio here in just a minute.” We quickly huddled around the battery-powered radio, which was tuned as usual to Radyo Agong.

Sure enough, we heard their voices!

“Hello, this is Jeff Burnham, the oldest son of Martin and Gracia Burnham. I just want to ask the Abu Sayyaf not to hurt my parents. They really weren’t doing anything wrong when they went to that resort for their anniversary. There’s no reason to harm them. Mom and Dad, I’m doing okay. I love you.”

Then came Mindy. She introduced herself and again gave a message directly to the Abu Sayyaf, similar to Jeff’s.

Even young Zach did a good job. As his mother, I could tell that he didn’t really want to be making a speech, but he carried through for our sakes.

We were so happy. To hear their voices was an unbelievable treat and dispelled the chill from our hearts.

Meanwhile, Solaiman looked at Martin and me with amazement. “Those kids are talking to us!”

“Yes, they are. They don’t want you to hurt us.”

I sensed just a hint of softness in that moment. After all, he was a father too, with kids at home. Filipinos love their families very deeply. I think his heart was touched.

* * *

Finally, we arrived at our destination, which turned out to be House 125. I was disappointed when I saw it, because it meant we were just going in circles, wearing ourselves out for no purpose. The striking force that had left us six weeks before was waiting for us. Sure enough, there was no Guillermo Sobero. The force had gathered a crop of new hostages: thirteen boys, some as young as thirteen years old, from a coconut plantation called Golden Harvest. Two others had tried to run away and been shot to death, they said. All the others had supposedly converted to Islam.

This was our first clue of things to come.

The house had been thoroughly trashed in our absence. Junk was everywhere and the place was filthy. I found an old rag in the corner and brushed the debris out of the room where we would be sleeping.

But as it turned out, we didn’t stay there after all. Near the end of that day, we were put back on the trail again, destination unknown as always. The Abu Sayyaf were especially concerned that we not leave footprints, even when we came upon a stash of sugarcane that some of the guys very much wanted. We hiked all that night, and toward dawn, we arrived at a camp.

To reach this camp, which was along a beautiful river, we had to descend a steep cliff. This was the toughest terrain we had dealt with yet. At one point I lost my footing and went sliding toward the edge. At the last second, I caught a tree.

Hanging down over an expanse below, I managed to climb back up the trunk. We continued inching downward. At the water’s edge, we began moving from one rock to another in the river for a while, then up a hill, finally arriving at the camp, which belonged to the MILF (Moro Islamic Liberation Front). Their dialogue with the government was going better than the Abu Sayyaf’s, we learned. They had recently been granted amnesty for past episodes.

By this point, we were all exhausted. My littlest toes were absolutely ruined. I could barely hobble along.

We found ourselves directed in the darkness toward a thatched-roof house about eight feet square, with a porch of equal size. Once inside, we were shocked to find Angie, Fe, Ediborah, and Sheila waiting there to greet us! What a reunion that was. We hugged each other and all jabbered at once, thanking God that we were back together again.

“Why do you think our two groups have been brought back together?” I asked.

“Well, someone in Malaysia is negotiating a release,” one of the girls said. “They want to release us all together.”

That sounded great to us, of course. We told the girls about all our adventures, the battle in the field, how hard we’d hiked, and how we’d been starving a lot of the time. Then they told us their side of the story—that they had been taken to a really nice location and sat for three or four weeks, with plenty to eat and no soldiers nearby. It made for quite a contrast.

“Reina—where’s Reina?” they wanted to know.

“Well, she’s with Janjalani,” I reported.

“Oh. So it’s true—she’s been
sabaya
ed. We didn’t believe that would happen.”

Reina, who shared a house with Janjalani, was in fact ashamed to come over and talk to the others for several days.

After some more catching up, I turned to Fe and Angie to do what I knew must be done. “This is going to be hard for you to hear,” I began, “but I feel like you need to know. I don’t know what you have been told, but we’ve been told that Guillermo is dead.”

“No, no one told us!” said Fe, her eyes starting to cloud up.

“Well, they did tell,” Angie admitted, “but I didn’t think I should say anything.”

Fe stopped for a moment, then said with tenderness, “He’s not really dead. He’s alive in my heart. I won’t ever forget him.”

She wanted details about his death, of course, but I didn’t have any.

Hardly a day later, however, Haija bluntly informed her that he had been the executioner. He spared no feelings. “It would have been harder for me to kill a dog than to kill Guillermo,” he announced with some satisfaction. “He was a bad guy.”

Fe was furious, of course. “What right does he have to judge Guillermo?” she stormed. None of us knew quite what to say. We just tried to comfort her as best we could.

* * *

We were informed that Sheila and Ediborah had converted to Islam during their time away from us. Apparently, they had been told that if they converted, they would be released. So they had done all the prayers to become Muslims.

To their great disappointment, they didn’t get released after all, but their daily treatment began to show a marked improvement. They were given more to eat, and they received a more steady supply of deodorant, shampoo, and other amenities. Omar, the leader of their group, also seemed to be showing a personal interest in Sheila, so he was especially looking out for her welfare.

All of this, understandably, did not sit well with Angie, who held to her Catholic faith, and Fe, who was Mormon.

“There are six of us here, but only four of us are hostages,” Angie complained to me one day, speaking of the six of us in the house.

“Well, Sheila and Ediborah are still hostages,” I replied. “They obviously can’t leave. Angie, we all need to stick together; we can’t afford to be at odds with one another. We’ve got to live in this little tiny hut.”

“We’re already at odds,” said Angie. “Fe and I think that at night, you and Martin should sleep in the middle, and the two of us can sleep on one side of you, while the two of them sleep on the opposite side. That way we won’t have to even be near each other.”

But soon that plan was discarded, because the Abu Sayyaf weren’t going to let a man sleep beside a woman who wasn’t his wife. So they put Martin tight up against a wall, then me, then Angie and Fe, followed by a wide space, with Ediborah and Sheila against the opposite wall. Again, I found myself pushing all night long trying to get a decent amount of room.

As time went on without proper sleep, my emotional state continued to deteriorate. It was our tenth week in captivity, the time I had set in my own mind for our release back on the speedboat.
Worst-case scenario, we’ll spend the summer with these guys and be out by the time the kids go back to school,
I had told myself. Now August was nearly here, and I could see no hope for progress. The feelings of despair were overwhelming.

I often found myself sitting on a rock by the river, staring at leaves caught between rocks in the water. Whenever a leaf would break free and start floating down the river, I would be happy for that leaf. I’d just sit there and watch it, wishing I could go down the river with it and be free.

In the constant rumble of the river, it was like I could hear Satan laughing at me, saying, “You trust in the Lord—but you’re still here.” I found myself beginning to believe Satan’s lies.

Sometimes Martin would come and sit with me by the river. He’d say, “I just hate to see you giving up your faith like this.”

“Oh, I’m not giving up my faith,” I’d tell him. “I still believe that God made the world, he sent his Son, Jesus, and Jesus died for me. I haven’t given up my faith—I’m just choosing not to believe the part about God loving me. Because God’s not coming through.”

“It seems to me that either you believe it all, or else you don’t believe at all,” was Martin’s gentle reply.

Music had always been such a big part of my life; I sang softly to myself all the time. Now, I found that I could still sing songs like “I Sing the Mighty Power of God” and other majestic anthems. But I refused to sing “O Love That Will Not Let Me Go.” I was really mad at God.

After about three days of living with this torment, I was totally miserable. When I wasn’t at the river crying, I was in the house crying. Finally, Martin learned not to say anything, because he knew this was something I had to work through myself.

One day as I was sitting at the river, I thought about some of the things Martin had said. I realized that my depression and anger against God weren’t doing anything to make our situation more bearable. In fact, they were only making it worse—for me as well as for everyone around me. I knew that I had a choice. I could give in to my resentment and allow it to dig me into a deeper and deeper hole both psychologically and emotionally, or I could choose to believe what God’s Word says to be true whether I felt it was or not.

This was a turning point for me. It was as if God were saying to me, “If you’re going to believe that I died for you, why not believe that I love you? Why don’t you let me put my arms around you and love you?”

And I did. I simply gave in and handed all my pain and anger over to the Lord right then and there. I didn’t have a Bible or anyone but Martin encouraging me. But from that day on, the Lord somehow let me know in my spirit that he was still faithful.

* * *

Back at the cabin a day or so later, I apologized for the way I had been behaving and said that God and I had come to an agreement: He loved me and I was choosing to believe it.

Gradually, my singing increased. Fe knew some of the same hymns I knew and so we sang together. “How Great Thou Art” became our favorite. I’m sure the songwriter wasn’t thinking of Basilan Island when he penned those words. But living in the jungle under the open sky, we could certainly identify with them. Angie didn’t know the song, so we borrowed a pen and paper and wrote out these words for her:

O Lord my God! when I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds
2
Thy hands have made,

I see the stars, I hear the rolling
3
thunder,

Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee:

How great Thou art! How great Thou art!

The second and third verses expressed our circumstances even better:

When through the woods and forest glades I wander

And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees,

When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur

And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze,

And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,

Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;

That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,

He bled and died to take away my sin.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee:

How great Thou art! How great Thou art!
4

Within a day, Angie knew the words by heart. I was able to harmonize with them, and we sounded quite good. We sang this song every day, sometimes several times a day.

The Abu Sayyaf never hissed at us for singing it. It sounded beautiful, and they liked music. More than once, Martin said to me, “Maybe God has us here just to praise him in this very dark place.”

Gradually, my crisis of faith passed. I realized it would do no good to be angry with God. He had neither inspired the Abu Sayyaf to abduct us nor would he force them against their will to release us. Instead, he would sustain us day by day, night by night, mile by mile, for as long as it took.

Martin sometimes helped me get to sleep with his favorite hymn, “Wonderful Peace.” He would hold my hand and quietly sing:

Far away in the depths of my spirit tonight

Rolls a melody sweeter than psalm;

In celestial-like strains it unceasingly falls

O’er my soul like an infinite calm.

Peace, peace, wonderful peace,

Coming down from the Father above!