I intend not only to be brief but direct to the point in the narratives of my journey back to a place in time where I lay dead in my mother?s arm and beyond...

I was born on the 6th of Ramadan 1952 to a middle class family at a time when birth control was never heard of and the simple ability to read and write was considered a good education. My father whose face I have no recollection of, must have been a great guy. We had a big house, a lumber yard and a share in a big rice mill. I am the 12th in a family of 13 but more than half of my siblings died in infancy and early childhood. I grew up with four of my surviving brothers and our dearest mother. My father died when I was barely a year old, our youngest being just a week old. I was sickly as an infant (so my mother told me) with my inconsolable infantile screams keeping everyone on their toes at night especially my father. I must have died or almost died at the age of about 3 months so my mother said. My father went to the market and bought a white cloth for my burial shroud but I wriggled back to life before they could wrap me in it. It was my first close call.

On the day my father died, my mother dreamed or had a vision of two men who entered our house. She was conscious trying to take a nap on a mat (bed) spread on the floor but she couldn?t move immobile whenever she tried. Each stood at one side of the bed where my father was lying sick. They spoke in a very low voice that my mother could hardly hear but couldn?t understand. My mother stirred as soon as they walked out. She got on her feet and found my father serene and dead. My mother...I presume must have seen the angels of death.

Lanao del Sur, my beloved province in the south of Philippines is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Lake Lanao is the second highest lakes in Asia after Lake (Srinagar) in Kashmir (India) and the second largest in the Philippines after Laguna Lake. Its virgin forests, temperate climate, afternoon drizzles, chilly fogs and misty dawns are wonders to behold and cherish.

My mother did not know how to run the business my father left. She did not know how to read and write in either English or Arabic. My father was very good at both. One of the things he left behind was a journal written in his own hand of a dictionary in Arabic-English-Maranao. My brothers and I enjoyed going over it when we were very young unfortunately...it has been lost due to our frequent change of residence. Another was a book in medicine. He told my mother that one of his sons is going to be a doctor of medicine; a dream of fantasy it must have been at the time.

The only surviving sister among my siblings died while giving birth to her second child. Both mother and child died barely 3 months after my father passed away leaving a very young son. My mother was psychologically devastated. She was very close to losing her mind, she later admitted. Left with two infants (my youngest brother and I) and 3 spoiled brats, she had reasons to go on living. She sold everything; the house and the businesses and purchased farmlands close to her well-to-do-brothers in the countryside.

She fought fiercely not to live with her brothers. She was extremely independent stubborn woman. Suitors came and went. Her brothers pleaded with her to get married again for the sake of her children. They reasoned with her but she was adamant. My uncles built for us a bamboo hut in the middle of the farm because it was what my mother wanted. My mother later revealed how she cried for hours by the small window of our hut as she watched my elder brothers struggled with the plow and the carabao (water buffalo). My two elder brothers were never meant to be farmers but farm they did so we could survive.

My fascination with school begun when my elder brother Masturah came home from school with ribbons pinned on his report cards. He was the best in his class. I was too young then to enter school but my cousins tugged me along. I still remember vividly how I was beating my cousins in the arithmetic class, a bit of mathematical genius I never thought I had until I was past the age of 40.

Before I could reach school age, we moved back to the city. My eldest brother got married and most of our farmlands were given away as dowry. One of the major events ingrained in my memory was the earthquake of 1955, which I later learned in college as one of the most devastating in recorded history. Towns and villages around the lake were submerged never to reappear. Even at this moment in time, I can vividly see trees swinging in the sun-shine. I can still clearly remember how I used to wake up in the middle of the night hanging in the arms of my elder brothers as we dashed for the door when the earth started to shake and hour bamboo hut starts to swing generating weird creaking sounds. The aftershocks lasted for months. There were those times, I would wake up in the middle of the night wondering what the stars were doing on our roofs and in the morning, I would wake up with the sun on my face. We had been sleeping in the open fields and ignored the frequent aftershocks. I also remember how my cousins and I sat in the field for hours watching a mountain spew black smoke in the distance. Mount Magaturing, a volcano in the province of Lanao had a minor eruption at the time.

The real thoughts that often times bring smiles to my face even at this stage in my life were those moments I would look towards the mountains and wondered how the edge of the world looks like. I really believed then...a kind of innocent childish thoughts that behind those mountains was an abyss where the world came to an end but hey...not too long ago; everybody believed that the world was flat and if you sail towards the sunset...your sail will fall into an abyss.

to be continued...

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