Raihana K. Lamalan

♬ Eid is joy.. and the most beautiful joy
Reunites the close and the far away
being happy about it… makes it
A beautiful memory, beyond Eid time ♫

I remember this song playing on our favorite channel, our big, fat TV screen showing it in Arabic while we cleaned the table after eating Iftar. It signaled that Ramadan was nearly over and Eid was within our reach. After mouthing the words I didn’t understand back then, my brother and I raced to the bathroom to perform wudhu. Our salah followed, and then we prepared to go to school.

♫ Eid is joy… and the most beautiful joy

I was merely seven years old the first time I practiced fasting. Growing up, it was never an issue for me to endure temptation during Ramadan. The heat was nothing compared to the discipline of hunger. One of the perks of growing up in a Muslim country was that the odds were always in your favor.

Like when we were in high school, our class started at 7:00 p.m. Isha began around 8:20, and taraweeh followed. During this holy month—whether it fell in early August or late July—we were almost free from schoolwork because we were always excused to practice our belief system. It wasn’t challenging; it was an honor to witness Ramadan again.

Dada said that celebrating Ramadan used to be almost as cheerful as Christmas. He told us that apartments and houses were once covered in lights, even the trees, and the phrase “Ramadan Kareem” was written in English and displayed in lights everywhere. He said it was unfortunate that we never witnessed it ourselves, but he promised me that the real joy of Ramadan was always in being close to Heaven. Our wishes, he said, would be heard by the Almighty God, and they would always come true.

So I prayed for a home. A house with a kitchen and a clean toilet.

But I couldn’t help disagreeing with my father sometimes. Considering that our class started at 7:00 p.m., we were often excused to go to the masjid, allowed to arrive late, and our attendance was loosened enough that class ended at ten thirty, even though dismissal was technically at midnight. Because no, we didn’t go home right away.

Jeddah was awake. The city was alive. People swarmed the streets, and Qur’an recitations could be heard almost everywhere. Our day started at Maghrib. During the daytime in Jeddah, it felt almost like a deserted town. Most establishments were closed, and nighttime was the only time they could sell. Not that the government forbade them—no, they were also observing the fast.

Our practices as Muslims were our priority then.

Our male friends followed behind us and carried our bags while we, the girls, walked ahead of them. Men and women were not allowed to be close to each other unless they were married. Otherwise, a mutawa would call you out, sometimes even making you perform salah in the middle of the street.

But our boys were mostly our brothers, classmates, and childhood best friends. We would go to the malls, grab some ice cream, or eat shawarma from our favorite Pakistani, Egyptian, or Jordanian shops, and then go home at three in the morning to prepare for suhoor.

On Palesteen Street, where we lived near our school, the culture was rich enough that everyone seemed almost identical to one another. We could never quite tell who was Arab and who was Masri, not that you should try to do that, but for us, it was never a big deal.

Those were mostly the highlights of my childhood, and whenever Laylat al-Qadr came, I prayed harder. Dahil simple lang ang gusto ko –bahay.

But maybe that was too much to ask, too ambitious, especially for someone like me, who had no resources. The house came true, but maybe I should have been more specific.

One thing that weighed heavily on us when we returned to the Philippines was that people assumed we would never run out of fortune, that we were bound to sustain them indefinitely. To our shock, we arrived at a house with no kitchen. No windows either. Walang pinto, walang kubeta ‘nung pag-uwi namin, samantalang nagkandakuba sa pagkayod sina Mama para maipatayo ito.

It was painful to watch Mama’s hands tremble from labor, her tears soaking the bare walls. There was no evidence of our hardship abroad. We had been deprived even of receipts to justify the cost of the house we had worked so hard to build. May mga bagay na hindi nagtugma, hindi ko alam kung saan napunta ang ilang bahagi ng pangarap at paghihirap nina Mama.

♫ Reunites the close and the far away

Like the essence of the song I used to hear as a child, we let things slide because we knew what was at stake if we spoke out. May mga salitang hindi mo na kayang bawiin. Kapag bagong salta ka at walang karamay, mas pipiliin mong manahimik kaysa mapagtulungan ng marami.

Unlike abroad, I find people more free-willed here. It surprises me that I’ve encountered some who ditch fasting because they are thirsty or because the hunger is unbearable. I have always treated fasting as an honor. Our parents introduced us to Islam at a young age, and in this religion, one of our pillars is to fast—or as we call it in Maguindanaon, puwasa. I guess it is safe to say that I am more culture-shocked here than I ever was abroad, even among our neighboring cultures in Sarangani.

Nostalgia filled my nostrils when I smell the mixed spices from our neighbors cooking sambuza for their bukā. The aroma is rich; my stomach trembles as I endure the last minutes of fasting. I stare closely at the Lucky Me Beef Labuyo that will break my fast. Mama is at the masjid helping prepare food for the townsfolk. Dada is in Marbel, spending Ramadan with his sisters. My kuya, who could no longer bear the weight of our dearth, is in Davao looking for a third job to support my studies.

I have always imagined myself having a house to call my own. Even when we were still in Saudi Arabia, I would watch vlogs and entertainment about houses in which they create spaces to suit the style the owners dream of. And I feel envious, dahil wala kaming sariling bahay. Walang magagamit tuwing bakasyon. Walang lugar para ipagdiwang ang kahit anong uri ng tagumpay, walang lugar para pagsaluhan ang lungkot, walang mapagpahingahan kapag tagatak ang pawis.

This isn’t how things are supposed to be, but this is how it is.

Kaya simple lang ang pakiusap ko. Ang pag-unawa.

While being poor is often taken as a punchline nowadays, it becomes easier for barbed jokes to slip out. I often wonder why I cannot relate to my peers. They ask for something simple and receive it right away. I, on the other hand, learned early how to ask for a rain check. Now I can clearly see it, the subtle lines that divide us: the children who have and the children who cannot. The silence. The exchanged looks. The way they talk behind your back, not to backstab you, not even to exclude you, but because you cannot afford to be part of their world.

I am humanized by grace. And if I’m being honest, all I feel is… guilt.

My presence is more tolerated than welcomed. What I bring simply does not seem to belong in their world. This is something we cannot talk about—money. The wall between us becomes impossible to ignore once it enters the conversation. It is the kind of truth everyone recognizes, yet no one dares to say out loud.

Hindi mo nga nabibili, mas lalong hindi mo rin mahahawakan kung hindi ka maglalabas ng pera.

They say they understand you, but they don’t.

But the right people will understand, and it will feel natural.

Scarcity has followed us across continents. We wear our poverty as if it were a debt we owe to everyone else. Hindi mo man pinili ito, pero parang kailangan mong humingi ng tawad sa mundong hindi kayang makisalo sa kakulangan mo.

And still, I cling to the simplest prayer: bahay.

♫ Being happy about it makes it a beautiful memory—beyond Eid time

Ayokong maging komportable sa kakulangan.

Dito, buo at kampante akong magpapahinga. When the sun sets, I want to hear the call to prayer echo across the streets. Jinn will bask in the glow of sunset, but I don’t mind. I know the malaikat will descend from heaven as the clock strikes to signal Maghrib. I hope they will be kind enough to hear prayers, the same way they listen to our pleas.

Dito, hindi ko na kailangang mag-alala kung saan sila Mama magfu-futūr, dahil may nakahanda nang hapagkainan at may pintuang nag-aantay sa kanila—hindi para makaalis, kundi dahil may uuwian na sila.

Anna L. Mamalampac

When I was a small girl, I thought that the moon was following me.

It was a summer night in the quiet, rustic town of Salvador, Lanao del Norte. My family and relatives had gathered at my Ina’s house for a celebration. The occasion has since slipped my mind, but I vividly remember how happy we all were. I was especially thrilled to finally reunite and play with my cousins, whom Ina –our grandmother— equally loved and cherished.

Given the freedom to roam the neighborhood, we became “partners-in-crime,” letting our carefree and mischievous natures run wild. We spent the night playing with the local children, eventually settling on our favorite traditional game: batir lata. Even in the near-darkness, illuminated only by a sliver of the moon, we could just make out the shape of the tin can as we threw our slippers with all our might to knock it down.

We ran around barefoot, with slippers held tight in our hands, taking turns guarding and throwing at the can. Some of us would hide behind the plants of our Ina, and others behind a coconut tree, waiting for the chance to dash out and kick the can without being caught by the ghakowa. And laughter started to echo as we shouted and teased each one of us. There are times we tripped on the ground but never minded the scratches caused by it because the fun was greater.

The thrill of running in the dark, the sound of slippers hitting the can, and the loud cheers when someone finally kicked it made the night more alive. It was as if the whole neighborhood joined in our joy, with the celebration laughter in the distance blending with our voices.

Right after the game, we would rest on the Bermuda grass outside Ina’s house. Lying there, we looked up at the stars and the moon above us. Childhood questions spilled easily from our mouths. What do stars really look like? Do they have their own light? Are they shaped? How big is the moon?

Soon our thoughts turned fully to the moon. It was very bright that night. It was summer, after all. I remember how proud I felt when I told my cousins that the moon followed wherever I went. That night, I learned it was nothing special. We all had the same experience.

Still, I wondered. Perhaps the moon was a person, I told myself. A being who could see us from above, who followed us, guided us, and kept us from danger.

In those moments on the grass, I did not yet know the weight of the world or the passing of time. Everything felt whole and endless. The night, the laughter, the quiet glow above us. I believed in things easily. I believed the moon could follow me, that it watched over us like a gentle guardian. Childhood made space for such thoughts, where wonder was not questioned but simply held, soft and certain, in the heart.

The following afternoon, I approached Ina. She sat outside in her korsi a tam’lang, sipping her coffee. I asked her about the moon, because after our talk the night before, my curiosity about that heavenly body had only grown.

“God created the universe. He created the moon,” my grandmother told me.

Overwhelmed by the thought of God’s power, I can no longer remember the rest of what she said. But that night I shared her words with my cousins and friends. They listened closely. For a moment, our laughter faded, replaced by a seriousness we had never felt before. Her words gave us something larger to think about.

It was a profound realization for us to know that the moon had been created by God Himself. We began to wonder what God looked like and how powerful He must be to create the universe, especially the moon that shone so brightly above us.

Something shifted in us that night. We were filled with awe, and our belief quietly began to change. Through the simple miracle of the moon, we sensed that there was a God. The prayers we heard from our parents no longer seemed like empty words. Perhaps, as children, we had been content simply to play, without thinking about the world beyond us.

Ina, without my fully realizing it then, was the keeper of answers to questions I had not yet learned how to ask. She spoke with a calm that made everything seem true and steady. When she told me about God and the moon, it was not just information she gave, but a way of seeing the world. Looking back now, I understand that she was quietly shaping something in me, a way of believing, searching, and becoming. Perhaps that is how girlhood slowly leans into womanhood, through small moments, through stories passed down, through the voices of those who came before us, teaching us how to look up and find meaning in the light.

Everything changed for me that summer. As I grew older, I began to understand that everything around me is a sign of God’s grace. The little girl who once believed the moon followed her now sees it differently. The moon has become, for me, like the face of God in the dark—beyond my reach, yet always shining, illuminating my path, a quiet light that keeps me moving forward.

Raihan A. Yusoph

On November 30, 2024, I stood quietly before the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima City. The late-autumn air was cold, and the river flowed gently beneath the bridges, carrying reflections of a city once reduced to ashes. Around me, visitors walked slowly, some in silence, others taking photographs. For them, this is a historical site. For me, it is something else, an encounter between two cities, two memories, and two unfinished stories of war.

I had traveled to Hiroshima as a scholar, but I arrived as a survivor.

In 2024, I was given the rare opportunity to become one of the sixty-three Filipino recipients of the Japanese Government MEXT scholarship. To my knowledge, I was the only Moro and Mranaw among the recipients. It was a moment of pride, but also a quiet burden. I carried not only my academic aspirations as a PhD student in International Peace at Hiroshima University, but also the lived experience of being an internally displaced person from Marawi City, which, like Hiroshima, had experienced destruction, loss, and the arduous work of rebuilding.

From my apartment in Sun Square, Saijo, the train ride to Hiroshima City took about thirty-five minutes. It was a short distance geographically, yet a long journey in reflection. Hiroshima is now a city of prosperity, beauty, and resilience. It is a place where tragedy has been transformed into a global symbol of peace. Yet as I stood before the remains of the Atomic Bomb Dome, I could not help but think of another city, my own city, Marawi.

Hiroshima lost approximately 140,000 lives in a single moment, and many more in the years that followed from radiation exposure. The scale of devastation is almost unimaginable. Marawi, by comparison, did not suffer the same immediate death toll. Yet the violence that unfolded in 2017, marked by urban warfare and aerial bombardment, left its own deep scars. Many civilians were killed, and others remain unaccounted for, their names missing from official records. The destruction was not only human but also spatial. Entire neighborhoods in Barangay Naga and Perez Street were erased. The schools, homes, historic padian, and Bato Mosque, which is unrecognizable today due to changes in its structure and design, along with other mosques and spaces that once held life, were reduced to rubble.

What is lost in war is not only life but also memory. As I gazed at Hiroshima’s preserved ruins, carefully protected and contextualized within a narrative of peace, I thought of the spaces of my childhood in Marawi. I remembered the simple pleasures that gave meaning to everyday life. The ten-peso halo-halo in Banggolo and the kwek-kwek stalls, open from late afternoon until evening, lingered beside the restless hum of traffic, a familiar road traced by the routes of Saduc Public, ISIS (named after the Ibn Siena Integrated School Foundation and carrying locals toward Basak Malutlut to Sarimanok to Prep), Mapandi, and MSU Armak. Along Barrio Paypay, close to towak a bata, rows of smoky grilled chicken filled the streets, mingling with the rich scent of spices and sauce that hung in the air. Osmeña Street awakened to the quiet rhythm of morning jogs, and before the day fully unfolded, we would pause to share apang sa malaig, a simple, generous rice pancake, still warm in the early light. And then there was the Padian, the beating heart of Lanao, where the city gathered, traded, argued, and lived, its pulse steady, its energy unmistakably our own.

Inside the Padian Mall, I remember the karinderya where meals were shared without ceremony and conversations flowed as easily as the rice served on plastic plates. There were stalls selling affordable Levi’s jeans and imitation branded clothing, where commerce blurred the lines between necessity and aspiration. In the Sultan area, one could find delicacies such as dodol, amik, and other Mranaw foods that carried the taste of tradition. In the wet market, I watched my mother negotiate prices with quiet determination, asking for discounts on fish, shrimp, or chicken, not out of stinginess but out of care for a family budget stretched thin. These were not grand monuments. They were ordinary spaces. But they were ours.

Today, many of these places exist only in memory. In Marawi, reconstruction is framed as progress, with roads widened, buildings redesigned, and new structures rising over ruins. Yet beneath this narrative lies a troubling reality: rebuilding has often been imposed from above, with little regard for memory, culture, or the lives once rooted in these spaces. Marawi risks becoming not a restored community but a project. For thousands of internally displaced people, rehabilitation remains unfulfilled. Nearly a decade after the siege, many still live in temporary shelters, facing daily uncertainty, limited water, unreliable electricity, and fragile livelihoods. The promise of return has become a prolonged wait. The younger generation now inherits a city without memory. In Hiroshima, memory is preserved. Ruins are protected, history is taught, and loss is acknowledged. Marawi is still searching for its story. Reconstruction must go beyond rebuilding; it must restore dignity, memory, and justice.