In the Presence of My Enemies (20 page)

Sweep over my spirit forever, I pray,

In fathomless billows of love!

And in that divine peace, I could rest.

12

Justice or Mercy?

(August–Early September 2001)

Throughout our captivity, our days ran to one of two extremes, it seemed. Either we were mobiling to the point of exhaustion, running for our lives . . . or else we were sitting with absolutely nothing to do, bored stiff. The weeks in the MILF camp along the river were definitely the second of the two.

For some reason, our little shack became the place for our captors to hang out and try to pass the hours. Way into the night, Abu Sayyaf members sat around on the porch just talking and laughing. We woke up each morning to the sight of wall-to-wall guys just lying around asleep.

By now, we were pretty familiar with our captors so I really didn’t mind having them so close, except when they got out their Korans and started their required reading aloud. They used a nasal, singsong chant, and there could be twenty different mumbly melody lines going on at the same time—each person on a different passage. It got so grating I used to tell Martin, “I’ve just got to get away from the ‘choir practice.’ ” I’d pick up my water jug and a
bolo
knife and pretend I was heading off to go to the bathroom, whether I needed to or not.

One of the guys, while reading the Koran, turned every few lines and spit. I started wondering if it was forbidden to swallow while reading the Koran!

Meanwhile, the rest of us were trying to figure out what we could do to stay entertained. We amused ourselves with contests to see how many flies we could catch with our hands. Martin usually won.

Sometimes we sat and watched the ants, who were always busy. We got a kick out of watching them move some pretty amazing loads.

Another insect that fascinated me was the water strider. I loved to watch them walking across long distances of still water—I could never figure out how they did that. They always seemed like such cheerful insects.

At times I told myself we were getting downright lazy. I’d look at Martin and say, “Do you want to brush your teeth now?” And he’d say, “Nope. I’m just going to sit here.” It was pretty pathetic when the most exciting part of our day was deciding whether or not to brush our teeth.

Angie and Fe and I sometimes braided each other’s hair. One day I said to Fe, “Would you like a back rub?”

August 7

The Philippine government signs a cease-fire with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) but continues to stonewall the Abu Sayyaf.

“No,” she replied.

Later, I posed the same question to Angie.

“Sure.” So I started rubbing her back.

Soon Fe was interested after all. “Is that what a back rub is? Yeah, I want one of those!” So we added back rubs to our list of things to do.

In the absence of any grooming tools, I learned to pluck my eyebrows and chin hairs with my fingers. It sounds hard, but it can be done. I simply pinched the hair between my forefinger and thumbnail as hard as I could, then jerked.

It was even tougher to take care of my fingernails and toenails with no clipper or nail file. Actually, my preferred method for fingernails was to chew them off, but of course my hands were almost always dirty, and Martin said, “Don’t chew your nails!” The only other option was to let my nails grow out to a certain length, then get them as moist and soft as possible in the river, and
carefully
tear off the top edge.

Toenails, we found, were far more treacherous to tear than fingernails. One little slip, and we would be down into the quick. Ouch! Every step for the next few days was painful.

About this time I realized that my ears weren’t pierced anymore. Weeks before, during a quick getaway, I had left my earrings lying on a windowsill. Now I found that the holes had closed up.

Whenever Martin’s mustache grew long enough to be offensive by Muslim standards, we borrowed scissors from the guys. Martin was mostly bald but the back of his neck still needed to be kept clean. Several times we ordered razors so I could shave it for him. I’d already been his barber throughout the years, having learned that skill back in mission boot camp in order to save money. We actually kept him looking pretty good out there in the jungle.

Ordering supplies from the guys sent into town was always a hit-and-miss proposition. We never knew if they understood what we wanted, or whether they’d follow through. I giggled at the thought of sending these tough warriors out to bring back sanitary napkins, but I figured that was their problem rather than mine. That’s what they got for holding women hostage, right?

Their main purpose in town, of course, was to buy food. The term they used for groceries was “budget” (in the sense of quota or allotment). When the meal was ready on the fire—rice and maybe something to go with it—they’d yell, “Budget, budget!” and we’d all run to the fire with our banana leaf or a plate or pot or whatever we had to hold our little portion. On other occasions, the captors brought the budget to us.

One time Martin cracked a joke by saying, “When we get out of here and back to Rose Hill, I’m going to have so much fun driving down to the IGA [supermarket] for the budget!”

By now, I was totally sick of rice. I like rice—but I’d never had to eat it morning, noon, and night, seven days a week. Often we had nothing to go on top of it, not even salt.

One day I threw a little fit. I told the other hostages, “I can’t stand any more rice! Every time it comes, I’m so hungry and know I need to eat some—but I’m so sick of it.”

The next morning I announced to Martin, “I’m going to skip my meal. I’ll be at the river.” I stayed there for a long time so I wouldn’t even have to smell the rice.

When I came back to the cabin, Martin didn’t say anything. But waiting there on my plate was a big round
apam
—the Muslim version of a pancake made from flour, water, and sugar! We had never received one of these before. In fact, I couldn’t remember getting anything made with flour at all. I was totally humbled and felt awful for complaining. I prayed,
Thank you, Lord. You knew I truly couldn’t handle any more rice, and you sent me a pancake!

Fe and Angie, on the other hand, had their own ways of adding variety to their diet. I told them they had “sticky fingers,” an English expression they found amusing. One evening, they went off and didn’t return for a while. When they finally came back, they were laughing.

Throughout August

Jones family members want to raise public awareness but are persuaded by New Tribes Mission to keep quiet for the time being.

“We’ve just been over at Musab’s fire, and as we were leaving in the dark, we stole these sardines!” They proudly showed four cans.

“You guys!” I exclaimed. “You’re gonna get in big trouble!”

“No, no, people steal food all the time. We were just taking our share.”

Soon after, when our rice was brought around, Martin was off talking to Solaiman for some reason. The three of us found something to pry open the cans and poured on the sardines in tomato sauce.

“Do you want to pray for the meal?” they asked. I agreed.

“O Lord, I thank you so much for these girls with ‘sticky fingers,’ ” I prayed. Everybody burst out laughing.

Angie and Fe had another talent that I could never quite master. We called it
langaw
ing, from the Tagalog word for housefly
.
If, for example, you have some food, and others come swarming around saying, “Can I have a bite?” you’re obligated to feed the
langaw.
It is not culturally acceptable to refuse.

These two girls were really good at
langaw
ing, while Martin and I couldn’t bring ourselves to beg. Occasionally, I swallowed my pride and tried it, however—and often the person said no! After all, I was
(a)
not Filipino and
(b)
a woman, so they felt no cultural pressure to share with me.

Sometimes I got really tired of being viewed as incompetent and stupid—a lower life-form—all because I didn’t
langaw,
know how to build a fire, or like going to the bathroom in the open.

When it got to be the right season for marang fruit, we all were happy. One of the boys climbed trees all over the place and brought back the fruit for us. Marang are green with spiky skin, and they hurt if you grasp them too hard. But if you stick your thumbs in at the right place, they kind of fall open. Inside is a gooey mass of little white pods, and in each little pod is a black seed. You stick each pod in your mouth and spit out the seed. What’s left is wonderfully sweet.

I forgot to mention that when the guys went out for budget, they’d pick up ammunition as well. You may wonder how such a group as the Abu Sayyaf always seemed to be well supplied with weaponry. Were their al-Qaeda friends sending them supply boats in the middle of the night?

No, no—nothing so exotic as that. The Abu Sayyaf told us their source was none other than the Philippine army itself. More than once I heard Solaiman on the sat-phone calling Zamboanga, talking to a lady named Ma’am Blanco. He would give her all his specifications for guns, bullets, you name it.

“Who are you ordering from?” we asked him one day.

“Oh, the army,” he replied. “We pay a lot more than it should cost, of course. So somebody’s making a lot of money. But at least we get what we need.”

I was amazed. The fact that such firepower could quite possibly wind up killing one’s fellow soldiers seemed not to matter at all.

* * *

Solaiman was just as bored as we were, so he had ample time for theological discussions. He really wanted us to understand Islam as a religion of justice.

“We are trying to get justice for everything bad that has ever happened to us,” he explained. He recited all the atrocities against Muslims starting back before the Crusades and explained how they were seeking retribution.

He talked about how awful the Philippine army had been to Muslims. Years ago, he claimed, the government couldn’t get control of the southern Philippines because Muslims were such fierce warriors, so they sent down Christians (his term) to colonize the area. They eventually outnumbered the Muslims and took away their land, he said.

He described AFP atrocities against Islam. He claimed there was a radar station on a high hill on the Zamboanga Peninsula, accessible only by helicopter, where AFP officers held Muslim women captive for their personal pleasure. (I couldn’t help wondering how this, if it was true, differed from Reina’s present condition with Janjalani.)

All of this, said Solaiman, was the justification for jihad.

Martin said, “Well, I guess Christianity is a little different. Jesus told us not only to love our neighbors but also our enemies. ‘Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who despitefully use you [Luke 6:28,
NKJV
].’ ”

A big sneer came across Solaiman’s face. “Where’s the justice in that?!”

Muslims fully accept the fact of sin and believe everybody is going to be judged. We had already agreed on that general concept. So I said, “I, for one, don’t want justice, because I am a sinner. I believe Jesus is God and came to earth to die for my sins. I don’t have to pay for my sin, because it is already paid for.”

He looked at me and said, “I don’t want
anybody
paying for my sin. I’ll do my own paying.”

Later on, Martin reflected on this remark and said to me, “You know, that’s exactly what Solaiman is going to do. Someday when he stands before God, he’s going to pay for his own sin, and it’s not going to be pretty.”

We had already been praying for our captors every day, but now we felt an even greater concern to pray for their salvation—that somehow the offer of God’s grace would break through.

In this connection, it was interesting to hear Allah described as Most Merciful—“more merciful than there are bubbles in the ocean,” Solaiman said. Yet Muslims weren’t expected to imitate this quality. To them, a merciful person was a weak person. Allah could be merciful if he wanted, but his followers had to be tough warriors in search of justice.

Martin said at one point, “You know, Solaiman, I hope my children don’t take up the same attitude you have. I hope my kids back in the States don’t ever go get a gun and shoot some Muslim because of what you have done to us.”

A look of shock crossed Solaiman’s face. “Done to you? What’s my sin against you? I’ve never done anything to you!”

Martin looked at me incredulously, as if to ask,
Can this guy really not see? He’s taken us at gunpoint from our families, forced us through the jungle, starved us, subjected us to gun battles—and he thinks his record is clean?

We talked with Solaiman about the Koran and how only two of our Abu Sayyaf captors seemed to have read it completely through, even though it is only a couple hundred pages long, shorter than the New Testament.

“If I were betting my eternal destiny on the teachings of the Koran, I’d sure want to know what it said,” I told him.

“Eternal destiny? Okay, let me explain for you how Judgment Day is going to be conducted.” Solaiman then proceeded to tell us that everyone will stand facing in one direction, like Muslims do when they start their prayers. Everyone who has ever been born in the entire universe will stand,
totally naked,
for forty thousand years,
waiting for Allah to pronounce his judgment of whether they go to paradise or hell.

People will understandably get impatient during this long wait. They will start going to the various prophets. First, to Adam they’ll say, “Please go to Allah and tell him to judge us. We can’t stand it anymore.”

But Adam will reply, “I’m not worthy.”

Then they will go to Abraham. He will say that he isn’t worthy, either.