Valentin Vargas Asiddao went to school from kindergarten through high school in the same school located literally just over the wall from Malacañang. He was in second grade when martial law was declared and remembers the chaotic streets leading to school the morning after the declaration and the soldiers blocking the streets. He left for the U.S. to do graduate work three weeks after Marcos and his family had fled.
IN TRANSITION
by Valentin Vargas Asiddao
Books stared up from a piece of luggage. Only books were packed in that one. His clothes were in another, in disorder now. The Distance to Andromeda and Other Stories. The Woman Who Had Two Navels. Utos ng Hari at Iba Pang Kuwento. The Pocket Book of Modern Verse. Goethe's Faust, in English and Chinese, a graduation gift to him from a Chinese high school teacher. The load of books was in disarray, having been rummaged through by the immigration agents. He sat in a room somewhere inside the international terminal. Two agents were in the room with him. One looked and sounded Filipino. The other mostly stood behind him. They had been questioning him for a while. He looked at his wristwatch. He had been in the room for almost two hours.
"Why do you have so many books?" the Filipino-looking and sounding agent asked.
"I'm going to school here. To do my Master's in English Literature," he said.
"English Literature! Really! But why bring so many books? You can buy them here."
"Those are books I own. I want to have them with me."
"What part of the Philippines are you from?"
"Manila."
"So, do you intend to return to Manila after you finish school?"
"Yes."
"What do you think of Marcos?"
He wondered why he was being asked that. He hesitated to answer. Marcos had hurriedly left the Philippines with his family only three weeks earlier, forced out by a popular revolt. They arrived in Hawaii, bringing with them crates of jewelry and cash. The news reports did not mention books.
It was his first time in Los Angeles. In America. He was 23 years old. His first time leaving home. At this point, he had seen only a portion of an American airport through a plane window. A crowded immigration area with several lines of people. The white room where the agents had led him after taking him out of a passport inspection line.
He did not know then he was under interrogation. He did not know much about life outside of a sheltered home life, outside of books. But his mother had encouraged him to go to America to study, away from the street protests he had often joined. Marcos, the Philippine dictator, was corrupt; his regime, murderous. He had known that much. His head was full of Camus. Life was absurd but all the more reason to find what dignity in living there was to find. And Jose Garcia Villa, who had shown him that one can challenge god, after all. Villa’s audacity had been new and shocking to him, a Catholic school boy, in a Chinese school at that. “I will not/Murder thee! I do but/Measure thee.”
But fresh in America, he thought it was normal procedure for everyone entering the country to be taken to a room for questioning.
"What do you think of Marcos?" the agent who looked like a Filipino and spoke English like one asked him.
There was a knock on the door. An Asian woman in an airline uniform appeared at the door. She said she represented the airline he had flown in. She had been looking for him for a long time, she said. The people picking him up had asked about him. The airline was getting worried about him. They finally were told where he was.
“He is a foreign student,” she said. “He is in Los Angeles to go to school.”
"We were just having a conversation about Marcos. His documents check out. He can go now."
The airline woman gave the agents a big smile. He closed his luggage. She took his arm and gently pulled him out of the room.
“There was no reason for them to do that,” she said.
He was just glad to be leaving.
She walked him out of the immigration area and said goodbye. Walking up the ramp toward the exit out of the airport terminal, he looked around for a familiar face. So many faces. There were people holding up white cards with names. In time, he would know the names of the streets in Los Angeles. He would drive the length of Sepulveda from the South Bay to the Valley. He would take summer drives up the Pacific coast to Big Sur. He would visit the Philippines many times. He would lose faith. He would find a way to arrange his life so that he could keep the absurd in the back of his mind. Like the Marcoses, he was in America now. He had been quick to say "yes" when asked whether he would return to the Philippines after his studies. Would he? Was it not true, one could not set foot in the same river twice? It was not only because the river flowed continuously. It was also because one would not be the same person the next time around. Would a popular revolt finally remove all the ills of Philippine society? Would Filipinos remain so pure and inspiring? Would they overcome the absurdities Filipino politicians force upon them? Would the Marcoses ever return to the country they robbed clean?
-----------------
About the Author:
Valentin Vargas Asiddao has lived in the U.S. longer than he lived in the Philippines. He recently visited the Philippines with two of his children, who said that they experienced nothing but kindness while there.