The Magic Hour

We always walk – more at night than during the day. The magic hour at sunset is our time to rest our aching bodies.

Night and day, we move onward to where land takes us. Almost always, we move to whatever direction – so long as we get farther and farther away from the sound of gunfire.

We have no permanent homes, and no property. We have all lost our farms and animals. The only things we have are the few plastic bags that we can manage to carry as we walk interminably.

Since strife began here, natives of this land have been displaced within their homeland. It’s been a war between those who want to claim their land back and a government that has always supported landgrabbers. The main contention is called ‘ancestral domain.’ It’s the title of the peace process where even foreign countries had come into the scene as a negotiating go-between.

We, the natives, owned our land till the landgrabbers from outside, as well as foreign multinationals, took our lands from us and drove us farther up the mountains.

It’s what this war is all about, really – a war about people wanting their homeland back.

Some of us have taken up arms to fight back. What else can a people do when left with no choice? The government can’t seem to make us stop fighting back. So, they proclaimed a bigger war, and chose to call it jihad. The word gives an excuse for soldiers to kill our people. You see, jihad has been made to mean a violent revolt. Calling it jihad gives the military a random order to quell the revolt.

We die for the sake of a convenient choice of word.

The problem here in Mindanao has nothing to do with religion that we, Muslims, are being killed in the name of. It has become a religious issue only because the government has conveniently called it jihad.

The real problem here is economic, not religious. Our people have become very poor – poor because the landgrabbers have taken our land and farms and livelihood, while driving us farther and farther up the mountains.

And because the fighting happens more in the jungles, the more jihad it is.

And it’s been interminable walking since. To where? We ourselves don’t know. The government has always used force, and what better and faster way to send us walking on and on than having the sound of gunfire at our heels.

We fought back even more. So, they offered peace. But the negotiating table is as much a sham as the government’s intention to give us peace. How can outsiders who have made obscene earnings from our land suddenly decide to give our lands back to us? They probably don’t even know what ancestral domain really means. As landgrabbers, it is their nature to settle upon a land that is not theirs.

The peace negotiations are a futile effort. The peace process is total hypocrisy.

And now the fighting is back – once more. And we shall walk once more – farther and farther away from the sound of gunfire.

Besides war and walking, we’ve also known very well the hours of the day. We walk more at night, hidden by the dark. We sometimes walk during the day, too, but that poses much risk. Noon is harsh, and the heat is too much. The stark daylight exposes us too much. Soldiers do not really discern very well who they fire at. We are innocent civilians. We are families, and women, and children, and elders. But because there’s a jihad, anyone but anyone is a rebel.

My particular favorite is called the magic hour. It is one specific hour of sunlight during the day when everything is bathed with a golden glow, and the world is softer and warmer. This is the time when the sun is so close to the horizon. There are long shadows during the magic hour, but they are not harsh.

The magic hour for us is that short and fleeting moment when we know that we should rest our weary bodies to prepare for another long walk in the dark – to somewhere.

It’s like a lull in the peace process that’s been going on interminably between our people and the government that should really protect our interest since we still belong to this nation, though driven from our ancestral lands.

In our quest for the elusive peace in our land, we experience the golden hour – short, fleeting, and temporary – till time gives way to night where the bursts of gunfire are the only light in the dark.

Shadows are longer during the magic hour. It is also the time when we see the shadows of enemies as much as they see ours.

Internal displacement and internal migration have not given us, natives of Mindanao, a normal life. The story of Mindanao in the Philippines is a story about endless walking.

It’s also a story of short, fleeting and temporary magic hours that happen between the lulls in an interminable peace process and the never-ending struggle with a recurring war in the dark.

The magic hour is just an hour, and it comes back over and over again.

The endless military clashes known as the Mindanao War in Southern Philippines have reached genocidal proportions for nearly 40 years. It has also been under an interminable peace process or negotiation between the Philippine government and the Muslims of Mindanao who have been fighting to reclaim their ancestral domain and form an autonomous region. Malaysia and some Arab countries had been brokering the deal but gave up and abandoned their participation. This war has figured in headlines lately because the peace negotiations have bogged down once again, and war has resumed – once again.