Teng Mangansakan

When I was fourteen, my mother enrolled me in a summer culinary school run by the famous ice cream maker Magnolia at their plant in New Manila. It was an act so curious and abrupt that I have spent years trying to decipher its motive. Perhaps she imagined that if I learned how to braise, sauté, and bake, I might be dislodged from my grand ambition of becoming a doctor. A physician already existed in the family; a chef, however, would have been a novelty.

In another life, I sometimes imagine I might have become exactly a chef in a spotless apron and toque, commanding a kitchen with the precision of surgery. Yet life, as it often does, rearranged its recipes. Or to invoke my Muslim faith, it was simply not my qadr.

My mother would later complain that my cooking was bland, though this was less a culinary failing on my part than a concession to her fragile body. COPD, diabetes, and a constellation of illnesses had transformed flavor into a compromise with mortality. Salt and sugar, once harmless indulgences, were now formidable enemies. I cooked cautiously for her, reducing sodium and muting spice, while secretly perfecting richer, more dangerous dishes inspired by the culinary flamboyance of Ina Garten and Emeril Lagasse whose cooking shows I watched on cable TV. To spite my restraint, my mother would sometimes buy dried fish from the supermarket and insist I fry it; if I turned her down, she would coax my partner, Moises, to do it, reclaiming through salt what illness had stolen from her.

I carry a private guilt that she never truly tasted my culinary adventures, like the chicken steeped in garlic, lemongrass, chili, and oyster sauce; the rich rendang that is slow-simmered dark alchemy of beef and caramelized coconut milk; or the spaghetti made of plump, sweet curls of ocean-fresh shrimp caught in a fiery tempest of garlic, white wine, and crushed red pepper. These were dishes my friends enjoyed, while my mother remained excluded by necessity. Food, I learned early, was a complex bearer of desire, rebellion, and care.

Travel expanded my palate with the force of revelation. Tokyo taught me that ramen at train stations could possess quiet dignity. Venice offered shellfish so fresh they tasted of the tides. San Francisco’s onion soup suggested warmth against loneliness, while Berlin’s crispy duck crackled with histories of migration from Vietnam. Yet among all these places, it was Indonesia with its humid streets, spice-laden air, and layered cuisines that entered me most deeply.

In Brisbane, I once joked to my friend, the Indonesian filmmaker Daniel Rudi Haryanto, that somewhere deep inside me, Javanese blood must be pulsing. He laughed and noted how my surname, Mangansakan, seemed almost gastronomic. In Bahasa Indonesia, masakan means ‘cuisine’ or ‘cooking’. Makan, on the hand, means ‘to eat’. I told him that in the Kapampangan language of northern Philippines, mangan is an invitation to ‘let’s eat’. There is even a popular restaurant with branches all over Manila called Mangan. Across languages and seas, identity folded itself through food. But the bridge between my world and Indonesia was built on more than just shared syllables; it was cemented by cinema.

It felt less coincidence than destiny, then, when I returned to Jogjakarta in 2024 for the Jogja-NETPAC Asian Film Festival, where my film Salome was screened. Jogja held special resonance for me. In 2012, it was here that I received my first international film award, the NETPAC Prize, for my film Letters of Solitude. I still remember, with both amusement and fondness, the press conference where a veteran filmmaker passionately objected to my victory, lamenting in rapid Bahasa that my film moved at a snail’s pace, where nothing happened on screen, and nobody spoke half the time. Though I understood none of his words then, his animated discontent was unmistakable. The festival at first did not want to explain to me what was happening, perhaps afraid that I might feel slighted. Eventually, a volunteer translated. I realized that my cinema, in its stillness, had provoked something fierce and ingrained.

This return to Jogja was accompanied by Moises, whose culinary curiosity had been sharpened by many of my stories of my various trips to Indonesia. Our initiation began during a ten-hour layover at Singapore Changi Airport, where he first tasted curry puffs, those golden, flaky parcels whose buttery crust gave way to warmly spiced potato and chicken, and laksa, with its rich coconut broth humming with chili, belacan, and aromatics. His eyes widened. “Wait until we’re in Jogja,” I told him. Changi was just a prelude.

By mid-morning the next day, exhausted yet thrilled, we arrived in Jogja, that fabled cultural capital of Java. Unlike Jakarta’s restless velocity, Jogja feels contemplative, steeped in artistic and culinary memory. Here, food is nourishment for the body and spirit.

Yogyakarta or Jogjakarta, often affectionately called Jogja, occupies a singular place in the soul of Indonesia where history, monarchy, revolution, and artistry coexist with uncommon grace. Founded in 1755 following the Treaty of Giyanti, which divided the Mataram Sultanate, Yogyakarta became the seat of the Sultanate of Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat under Sultan Hamengkubuwono I. Unlike many royal capitals diminished by modernity, Jogja has retained its living court culture, with the Kraton still serving not merely as a historical monument but as an active center of Javanese philosophy, ritual, music, dance, and governance.

During Indonesia’s struggle for independence, Yogyakarta briefly served as the nation’s capital from 1946 to 1948, offering refuge to republican leaders and symbolizing resistance against Dutch colonial reoccupation. This role cemented its reputation not only as a guardian of tradition but also as a cradle of nationalism. What distinguishes Jogja is its extraordinary ability to preserve heritage while remaining intellectually and creatively dynamic. It is widely regarded as Indonesia’s cultural capital, where batik-making, wayang kulit or shadow puppetry, gamelan music, classical dance, and literary traditions remain deeply embedded in everyday life. The city’s proximity to monumental sites such as Borobudur and Prambanan Temple further situates it within a civilizational crossroads of Hindu-Buddhist, Islamic, and indigenous influences.

Yet Jogja is not frozen in nostalgia. Its universities, thriving arts scene, independent cinemas, and street culture make it a place where young Indonesians continually reinterpret identity. In Jogja, one senses that they take pride in their culture, living it, and not just displayed for tourists alone. It is brokered and nourished daily, much like its cuisine that is diverse, enduring, and profoundly rooted.

Our hotel stood just a short walk from Empire XXI Cinema on Jalan Urip Sumoharjo, placing us near the festival’s vibrant heart. Almost immediately, I led Moises to The House of Raminten, a place as theatrical as it is beloved. Even at three in the afternoon, we waited twenty-five minutes for a table, evidence of its near-mythic reputation. Inside, the restaurant unfolded like a dreamscape of Javanese eccentricity with traditional décor, servers in regal attire, the scent of incense mingling with fried shallots and sweet coconut.

We ordered generous versions of fried chicken lacquered with spice, gudeg with its tender young jackfruit stewed for hours in palm sugar and coconut milk until sweet and earthy, and fried tempeh and fresh salads brightened by sambal. Gudeg, Jogja’s culinary emblem, was unlike anything else. Its sweetness is a philosophy on its own, with patience enhancing the flavor. Moises, overwhelmed by the assertive spice, reached desperately for es teh manis, the ubiquitous sweet iced tea that in Indonesia feels like salvation steeped in cold beverage.

Between screenings, we frequented D’Agro Fine Coffee beside the theater, where Jogja’s coffee culture revealed itself in quiet ways. Indonesian coffee is robust, often volcanic in temperament, but here it was served with warmth and intimacy. Jogja’s cafés are less performative than metropolitan coffee houses elsewhere. They feel lived-in, spaces where artists, students, and dreamers gather over slow cups and slower afternoons.

One day, we wandered through Malioboro Street and Beringharjo Market, where commerce, tradition, and hunger converge. The market was an orchestra of aromas of clove cigarettes, ripe fruit, frying oil, cinnamon. We sampled es dawet, a cooling drink of coconut milk, palm sugar, and green rice flour jelly that slid sweetly across the tongue, and spring rolls from a local eatery whispered to be favored by rock star turned President Joko Widodo.

Days later, when Rudi finally arrived from Jakarta, he brought us to a modest sidewalk satay stall for Padang-style skewers. He recommended sate kambing, or grilled goat meat, but the owner initially claimed she had run out. Yet when later customers requested goat meat, she agreed. Rudi, indignant, intervened with theatrical persistence until the coveted kambing arrived at our table. The victory felt communal. The satay, smoky and rich, justified the confrontation entirely.

Then there was durian.

As someone from Mindanao, durian is already woven into my sensory inheritance. But one evening, Rudi took us far across the city to a durian stall outside a television station, where I encountered varieties I had never imagined. Some were buttery beyond comprehension, delicate and almost floral. Others were sweet with an elegance that dissolved all prejudice. And then there were those whose odor verged on decay, affirming every fear outsiders harbor. It struck me then that hatred for durian may simply be an accident of first encounter. Had skeptics tasted only its worst incarnations? Could love, even for something so divisive, depend entirely on introduction?

In Jogja, I began to understand food beyond a biological necessity or the object of one’s Instagram daily feeds. It is truly a mirror of the self. My name, my lineage, and my travels all seemed to converge here, in this city where language and flavor echoed parts of me I had not fully articulated. Mangan. Makan. Masakan. To eat is to remember. To cook is to create belonging.

On our final day, Moises and I ate at an unassuming local chicken place called Tojoyo, just across from Empire XXI. For days it had been crowded with locals and festivalgoers alike, its popularity itself an invitation. When we finally sat down and ordered the bestseller, I expected spectacle. Instead, the fried chicken was simply crisp, fragrant, and unpretentious. No elaborate seasoning. No conceptual flourish. It was profoundly itself.

And perhaps that was the revelation.

After days of culinary exuberance, of spice and sweetness, spectacle and rarity, this modest plate reminded me that food, like identity, need not always perform complexity to feel meaningful. Sometimes, home is found not in extravagance but in essence, in the honest taste of what something truly is.

In Jogja, amid festivals and flavors, I discovered that food had always been my quietest language of selfhood. Through every bowl, skewer, and fruit, I was not merely tasting Indonesia. I was tracing ancestral echoes, private griefs, maternal memories, and forgotten hungers. I was finding, in every meal, a deeper articulation of who I had always been.

Gonaranao B. Musor

You will never truly understand something until it happens to you.

It’s so easy to underestimate disasters, tragedies, and other forms of misfortune around us. “That’s life!” – one would easily say. “That’s resilience!” – if you are Filipino. So much so that “resilience” has become sort of a cliche or a convenient excuse for not taking responsibility for whatever bad luck that falls on you.

We were in Singapore when the pandemic happened and it was very difficult to fathom then the dangers of it. I read and understood the toll in terms of human lives lost and economic disruption. It is one thing though to understand based on facts and figures in an academic, impersonal way. But it is entirely different to go beyond understanding, to empathize.

There were times when it felt like it was already becoming too close for comfort, but I would immediately brush it off. “Nah, everything’s going to be okay.” I can still remember my experience with past pandemics – SARS, bird flu – and God was kind enough to spare me. Why would this be any different?

Singapore, however, is a very small and compact island-country. A hub where most travelers transit, if not their final destination. Unfortunately, there are some who not only pass through, they stay behind. Including viruses. What are the chances that I’ll be coming across someone who has COVID along Orchard Road, in Lucky Plaza, or in some other densely populated area of the city state?

Eventually, paranoia set in as we saw the numbers rise in terms of cases and the lockdown, or circuit breaker as they called it, was imposed. Straight from the pages of a dystopian novel, we witnessed the various stages that people go through in the throes of a pandemic – the panic buying, closure of establishments, schools and offices, and of course, the face mask.

A once vibrant city virtually turned into a ghost town. Looking at the pictures of tourist spots, such as the Merlion and Orchard Road, devoid of any people was truly unimaginable. Seeing a large “X” sign on areas where people were no longer allowed gave an eerie vibe that often would have me confused if this was a Zombie or a COVID outbreak.

We were practically prisoners in our own house, with Netflix as our only link to the outside world. Our ears became extra sensitive to any faint sound of coughing from any of our fellow tenants in nearby apartment units.

Draconian or not, such measures at least showed the government’s resolve to fight the spread of a pandemic in a country that has many things to lose if they don’t play it right. It was reassuring for a resident like me to see that determination as fears and doubt continue to plague our minds. We were lucky to have left Singapore in December 2020 without experiencing an infection, only a few false alarms as a result of heightened precautions.

Arriving back in Manila that December still at the height of a pandemic can be reassuring but with a lot of uncertainties. In the middle of a crisis, we always seek familiarity, like family, as a security blanket. “At least, we’re home,” I reasoned. However, the Philippines is no Singapore in terms of political will and its more systematic and modern health facilities. It was even less comforting to see the number of infections in the Philippines rise up, compared to neighboring countries.

One can never truly understand something until it happens to you. And so it did for me.

Not yet vaccinated as I did not qualify then, I became positive but with mild symptoms only. Becoming positive is like having a thief in the night enter your home. A home invasion in the worst possible way. Lucky for me as it was only mild, it was frightening to think of the risks it posed to my family, especially to my daughter who was more vulnerable due to her unvaccinated status.

Alas, we survived the experience with only a few sleepless nights of persistent back pains, other usual flu symptoms, and without spreading the virus to my two girls.

A few months after that came another infection and it was my in-laws this time. Their case was a lot worse and my priority was again protecting my daughter and wife. My instincts told me to take my daughter and wife to someplace safe – to my brother’s house – despite the constant danger of a breakout in their household if we stayed there.

My wife, meanwhile, had to focus on being a daughter and older sister thinking I could handle our daughter by myself. She chose to stay behind in her parents’ house to take care of them as her father, mother and brothers all became positive. Despite being afraid for my wife, I cannot stop her from doing so. I left it to God to look after her, although my wife has always been tough, tougher than I am.

The most tragic of this experience was losing my father in law. It was so surreal, not just shocking and sad, to think that a few days before the breakout, he was there picking up my daughter.

He, who was my daughter’s constant companion in taking my mother-in-law to the office every morning. He who continuously doted on his only granddaughter. My daughter’s hero, in fact.

At her young age of 7, I was not sure if my daughter really understood the gravity of the situation we were in while we were refugees in my brother’s house. For her, it could be just like having an extended stay in her Uncle’s home as she innocently enjoyed the experience of bonding with her cousins.

But I can still remember that day when we broke the news that her Ama, her grandfather, passed away. No mind or heart could be so young or innocent enough not to feel the loss of a loved-one. She cried so hard that it was difficult for me not to cry back as I comforted her.

It has been almost a year since her Ama passed away. During times of frustration, my daughter would suddenly cry for her Ama, realizing that she has lost her constant ally. She sees her Ama everywhere – in the faces of her other lolos and granduncles, even from a canister of cookies that he used to buy for her.

One time, the younger brother of my mother-in-law visited us for a week. As he stayed on the third floor of the house, my daughter, in between her online classes on the second floor, would quickly climb up the stairs just to take a quick peek of her “Ama” before going back to her classes. Those quick peeks were a reminder of the Ama she lost, satisfying a longing that no amount of crying could ever subside.

The feeling of loss for a child seems to come in intermittent waves. The same innocence allows them to forget most of the time and move on with their childhood. But there are sudden emotional gusts, amidst constant reminders of that tragedy. It will always be there, those reminders, like scars from a wound that healed but doesn’t allow you to forget.

How does one explain to a child the concept of death, pandemic and grieving? Do they even properly grieve? Is it that easy for them to move on until time buries these memories in the recesses of their minds?

These are questions that I also continuously grapple with as a father. I may never answer them confidently enough for my benefit and my daughter’s. But I can always be there for her. No words, just my presence. I hope that should be enough.

Razul A. Ariz

Death is the opposite of life. Yet many people live as though already dead, while death itself remains what many fear the most. Often, it is avoided whenever it surfaces in conversation.

When death visits, it leaves pain, grief, sorrow, and scars that never truly disappear. They heal, yet continue swelling quietly within us, bound to be carried for the rest of our lives. Indeed, death is fearful, but perhaps it is also death that reminds humans what it means to be alive.

More than the death of the physical body, I see death everywhere—moving from place to place, slowly devouring the heart, hope, and dignity of people succumbing to their own demise. These deaths ripple outward and threaten the existence of the living.

As a child, I remember how I was always afraid when the news of certain deaths circulated in the community. In my memory, death indexes many signifiers:  the piercing scream of bakwè, birds of omen; the dead calm of trees under windless skies; the sepia reflection of kabamulawág during dusk; the herald of an undulated white pandala; the column of smoke from the bagaluganán; the mujawadah Qur’anic recitation of Abdulbasit echoing from afar; the chattering noises and cry of lamenting mourners; the sound of ripped unúng or sáput prepared for the máyat; the distant roar of chainsaws; funeral processions crossing the road; and graves dug six feet beneath the earth along with prayers from loveones packed into the crumpled mudballs, sealed with coconut slabs that would bury the story of a person into forgotten land.

Death visited me many times. The first time, it tormented me with unbearable pain. The second time, it numbed me so deeply that I could no longer cry or sympathize whenever I encountered it. Yet perhaps this is what I fear most—not death itself, but becoming numb and apathetic toward life.

That is not who I am—I am not numb nor apathetic. I was raised in a household that upholds justice, humility, and respect. Whatever sense of compassion I possess, I owe it to my parents.

I grew up in Palimbang, one of the coastal municipalities of Sultan Kudarat. Our place has witnessed bloodshed and historical violence firsthand. It carries the scars of injustices rooted in imperial Manila and in the long history of dispossession in Mindanao.

I came from a family of Ilocano-Magindanawn farmers, scarce in resources yet rich in wisdom and principle. My paternal lineage traces back to the government-sponsored intra-ethnic resettlement program in Mindanao during the post-colonial period. What pains me most is that these movements unfolded alongside the Massacre in Malisbong. Reading Fahmiya Dimakilang’s Dig Your Own Grave awakened me to the brutality inflicted upon our people. It helped me understand why many from our older generation carried commitments to liberation movements and why memory remains deeply political among Bangsamoro communities.

Back in 2019, there were attempts to weaponize writing and frame the massacre as a hoax, even at the expense of survivors’ testimonies. In 2022, history repeats itself, but this time it’s not the usual tragedy but a farce. Our people seem to have historical amnesia for accommodating the late dictator’s son and giving them a seat in national power along with the daughter of the former president, who administered the same state-sponsored impunity and allowed the cadaver of the brutal dictator to be laid on the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Witnesses say that the Tacbil masjid, where the Malisbong massacre took place, soaked in bloodbath even after they wiped it out many times every Friday over the years after the massacre. It seems like the blood of the victims was poetically calling for justice. If so, may those streams of blood flood and asphyxiate those who failed and continuously fail them with endless guilt.

It was then that I realized the importance of writing. That writing should always be political—and is never neutral. For indeed, writing can erase, distort, and silence. But writing can also resist forgetting. It can document truths that power wishes to bury.

Over time, I immersed myself in writing through reading books despite their inaccessibility in our community. Writing became my refuge. It made me feel safe, validated, and visible.

I don’t exactly remember when I first became drawn to writing. But one afternoon during Kindergarten, Ámà burst into laughter after seeing my notes. There, I had written “Abukantol,” a playful fusion of abukado and santol, simply to maximize the remaining space on my paper. He laughed not to mock me, but out of amusement. Perhaps, even then, he sensed something growing in me.

Growing up, Ínà and Ámà never failed to nurture our curiosity. In the absence of books, we had alingà. I loved listening to their stories. At night, they would tell us tales of fantasy, adventure, comedy, and ordinary life in exchange for massages to ease their exhaustion from farm work. Those stories shaped my imagination long before I encountered literature in classrooms.

Eventually, television arrived, and the practice of alingà slowly faded from our household and from my own memory until it faced its own kind of death too.

My writing journey formally began in high school. It was Ámà who taught me how to express my thoughts in writing. I experimented with poems, fascinated by rhythm, rhyme, and the playfulness of language. I even wrote acrostic stories heavily influenced by Wattymanian culture and high schooler idealism.

Deep inside, I knew I had the capacity to write, yet my impostor syndrome prevented me from claiming that label. In college, I once wrote an eco-poetry piece that received a backhanded compliment from a professor. A remark was made saying that the piece sounded familiar, as though it had already been written elsewhere. Much of the speculation came from the fact that I had mispronounced a word while reading it to them aloud. A word that I only learned from reading. I felt both flattered and wounded because I knew the piece was my own.

My relationship with writing changed further in college when we were tasked with composing poems using our first language. I wrote mine in Magindanawn, and after posting it online, it unexpectedly gained traction on social media.

Before this, I always placed the English language and Western literary culture on the highest pedestal. Whenever I wrote, everything became Anglicized—the characters, the settings, the worldview. If not Westernized, I often aligned my writing with Manila-centric sensibilities to comply with what I believed were literary standards.

My late professor helped me realize that writing in the local language was neither odd nor inferior. Through her, I encountered the works of writers in Mindanao and independent publications such as the Cotabato Literary Journal. I read the writings of Mubarak Tahir, Jude Ortega, Jade Mark Capiñanes, and other writers whose works carried the texture of our own realities.

The realization transformed the way I viewed literature—that it is not the West nor Manila that is the heart; it’s Mindanao, it’s the Bangsamoro community, it’s ours. I began unlearning the notion that the literature only becomes valuable when detached from locality. I started writing about the ordinary, the awkward, the funny, and the culturally intimate—the things often dismissed as “cringe” or insignificant.

After graduating from college, I experienced an existential crisis. I felt lost, drifting, and emotionally hollow, as though I had become one of the living-dead I once feared. During that time, I longed for the nights when Ínà and Ámà would gather us for bedtime alingà until we drifted into hypnagogia and yielded into a sound sleep. I longed for stories that once made the world feel less lonely. Only to wake up without remembering even a single alingà. Without them.

To recuperate, I turned to translation. I bridge foreign realities and tailor them to mine.

I translated poems by international writers whose works revolved around liberation, hope, longing, and personal struggle. Translating became more than a literary exercise; it became a way of reclaiming language and proving to myself that Magindanawn could carry universal human emotions.

One of the pieces I translated was Maya Angelou’s Caged Bird, rendered into Magindanawn as Nalugën a Papanuk. Beyond reflecting social inequalities, the poem also resonated deeply with our vanishing biodiversity and the condition of marginalized communities. I also translated Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken into Su Lalan a Di Tatap Bagukitan. This piece mirrors the uncertainties of pursuing writing in a society that often treats literature as impractical.

Most of my writing emerges from personal experience and observation. I write about grief, longing, language, memory, faith, liberation, and mundane realities of the Bangsamoro. I always try to ensure that the voice of Bangsamoro resonates in my works, not as an exotic image, but as a living and breathing reality.

Back in 2024, my piece Mapya pën Silan was published in the Bangsamoro Literary Review. The piece reflects my personal struggles and the collective realities of Bangsamoro Muslims in relation to their faith, doubt, and devotion. Through it, I tried to explore how belief becomes both a refuge and a struggle in the everyday lives of Bangsamoro communities.

Yet faith was not the only thing I found myself writing about. I once wrote Panganganún (“Yearning”) in Magindanawn—a recollection of grief and separation shaped by memory and distance. Writing in the language, however, also made me confront its fragility. Literature in Magindanawn remains scarce not only because of limited readership and interest, but also because of the lack of a unifying orthography and the complexity of its dialects. The language itself carries diverse textures: the schwa dominance of Tëw sa Biwang; the layered stresses of Tëw sa Suk; the singsong omission-contractions of Tëw sa Laya; the syllabic pronunciation of Tëw sa Ilud; and the lesser-explored accent of Tëw sa Kawánan. These differences reveal the richness of the language and the histories carried by its speakers. Yet they also reflect the long and complicated history of the language itself.

Magindanawn was once written in Kirim or Jawi before the colonial infiltration, documenting and standardizing the language from an etic perspective. Then, this gradually shifted toward Latin orthography. While these records preserved the fragments of the language, many of its sounds and textures could not be fully carried by the colonial alphabet. Perhaps this is why I feel compelled to gather those fragments and piece them into a mosaic so that the subaltern can finally speak.

In many ways, this complexity also encouraged me to pursue language documentation and mainstreaming through my advocacy page, Magindaknown. Through this initiative, I connected with fellow language advocates and researchers, including Mubarak Tahir, whose works inspired me to continue similar efforts within our own community.

Along the way, I began to realize that language is deeply tied to the environment and the everyday life of our people. Growing up in a far-flung community became a blessing in disguise. I immersed myself in the landscape rich in biodiversity, one that is embedded in our way of life, and made my childhood both colorful and meaningful.

Eventually, this led to the expansion of my language documentation efforts into Magindanawn biodiversity. I began by noticing how disconnected many young Magindanawn have become from the ecological world surrounding them. Many can no longer name endemic plants, coastal terrains, birds, or traditional environmental knowledge once embedded in our vocabulary and daily life. Some of these names now survive only through fragments of memory and language.

The kalyáwà (Ruffous hornbill), once known as the clock of the mountain, is no longer familiar to many today. It might be forgotten, but it is embedded in the Magindanawn language, evident in the onomatopoeic term “migkalyáwà,” which refers to a cacophonous or rowdy crowd, echoing the ways it once reverberated from the mountains.

And perhaps, this is another form of death.

I fear that one day, similar to the kalyáwà, the bakwè will no longer scream to warn us of impending death—of body, heart, hope, dignity, memory, or language—because they themselves have already disappeared before us.

That’s why I write.

I write to remember what is slowly vanishing. I write so that our stories, languages, memories, and ways of seeing the world may continue to live, even in a time that constantly teaches people how to forget.

Mirra-Edora Esmael

There was a house. And then there was a time.

In Barangay Simandagit. Along the stretched, cow-milk shoreline. By the turquoise, crystal-filmic seawater lapping contentedly fifteen meters from the road. House and time stood. Warm. Indifferent. Harrowing.

Before my father decided to move our home and warm it up with his kata-kata, that house already stood beside ours. It’s either green or blue, my memory cannot decide. Sometimes it’s a twin of our house, just bigger. Other times it’s green, charming, and poignant, but it’s always sun-showered. Its sea-weathered wall is always infested by reflections of the busy, fidgety sea.

The family who lived in that house is loud. I cannot remember if they were boisterous, or just passionate, or both. My memories are full of them calling each other and shouting, dictating what errands to run or how to do it.

“Amilli gih ka toyu! Meheh ma si Auntie Orang, daa ka ma lannang heh!” Buy soy sauce first! At Aunt Orang’s not at that Chinese!

“Ay heh?” What was that?

“Ma si Auntie Orang daa ma lannang! Pag-ubus nu, amilli labayin na boheh eh. Bay ni isihan na du!” At Aunt Orang’s not at the Chinese! After that, get the water. It’s already been filled!

Their voices would disturb and intrude every space of mundanity, along the tiny gaps of colorful laundry clips, across mixed scents of bang-bang, detergent, and salt-tanged breeze, or meandering along the length of sunrays during golden hours.

As a little girl I tried to avoid them. I didn’t make friends with any of the children, nor did I make eye contact, but I knew them.

I knew they had relatives from Sabah. Papa said they were originally from Malaysia.

I knew the intense, bespectacled chubby grandmother.

I also knew that one of her sons, Uncle Rosly, was a troublemaker. He has similar strides with Papa. The house would wobble lightly when they came or went. Uncle Rosly’s steps are firm even when he’s drunk. His arms always swayed with the determination of an anxious pendulum tongue.

He always left the house like he’s never coming back, and one night he never did. One night and three consecutive gunshots.

My memories always start with scents, bubbling up a bloated foam of laundry water, then popping once air sands its walls thin. That’s when the memory comes unbidden. Surging. This one, however, started with familiar beats—one, two, three, four, five—the pulse of a firework. One and two came right after the other. A pause. Then the last three came almost tumbling over themselves, urgent but cautious.

It was New Year’s Eve. The fireworks blew sparks to the black expanse the moon cannot comfort, letting the night heave and groan satisfyingly.

I was pretending to walk on a ramp like a model. My siblings were playing around me. Mama was in the kitchen. Mboh Hadja was watching us. Papa was somewhere around the house.

When the first series of gunshots was fired, we didn’t panic. It was probably just the fireworks. Then the shots became distinct. Rhythmic. Tgg. Tgg. Tgg. Tgg. Tgg. It charged the air with the premonition of a jinn’s three-knock patterns my brother warned me about. The gun, or guns, fired more before Mboh Hadja shouted. She was the first to acknowledge the fear.

“Pa kobel kam! Pa kobel kam!” Take cover! Take cover!

We dropped to the maroon-varnished floor. Some of us looked at each other, confirming the fear as it curled comfortably around the eyes. Expanding. Bitter-stark.

I looked for Mama and Papa and searched their eyes too. I wanted to confirm how much of the fear I should welcome. I was scared, but should I cry? Should I let the fear scooch closer to my heart? And eat more of the firework residue sprinkled around it?

Here, the memory dwindles. I can’t remember what happened next, but Mama probably left the fish to sizzle. Papa must have run to us. His fear would have been so palpable I would have tasted it. I imagine him pulling us into a tight hug, his arms, big and strong but uncertain, shielding us from the bullets and what they meant.

Papa must have insisted on going outside and checking what was going on. Or maybe he called his friends from our Winnie-the-Pooh Motorola phone. And that would have been how we learned that the other party in the shooting was Uncle Rosly. Drunk, steps-firm, arms-swaying Uncle Rosly.

At some point we went back to lying face down on the floor; hands up, palms out. Just like how villains surrender at the end of every Cinema One movie. The police always arrive just after the starring defeats the boss, guns poised and cocked. Chk. Chk. Then men—puffy leather jackets, denim pants, and white face towels wrapped around foreheads—would spill out of the vans in a practiced tactical dismount. But that was Retrica Daydream-filtered Channel 9. In our barangay’s shooting, there weren’t any police who came to save us, nor did the firing stop for the next twenty-four hours.

We quickly learned that Uncle Rosly’s enemies were able to control the entrance of Simandagit, so no police could come.

My parents didn’t tell us, but they must have worried about the fact that one of the parties was our neighbor. That our houses, separated only by a few-meter gap, conveniently respected privacy but impressed kinship. I can almost imagine the people thinking, deducing: no other neighbors, no clustered roofs, just two houses, both Sinama, both big families—family friends.

We couldn’t possibly wait for the neighbor’s enemies to come knocking. So, in the middle of a chilly, shadow-choked night, I and my family marched hand in hand out of our barangay. Crickets whirred restlessly as I clutched Papa’s calloused forefinger. Hours before this I know I must have asked many questions. As though knowing more would help ease the threat carefully molding the lump on my throat. I imagine being reprimanded for asking too much. After that I must have focused on searching their eyes, ready to respond to any hint of fear and tension. I remember constantly looking up at Papa. My eyes kept asking what role I should assume, seeking permission to cry, to welcome the goosebumps writhing under my skin.

I was six or seven, petite and small. I hadn’t yet forged a physique that could hold and carry events, words, and meanings bigger than my frame. All three languages I spoke at the time were not yet mature. So, I depended so much on facial expressions. I couldn’t see my mother’s since she was holding our youngest. But I saw certainty clinging to the hem of her battik pajama like another confused and frightened child. My father’s face was grave. He didn’t have to say anything, but I understood. We all did. The idea of death created a shared intimacy among us.

I was six or seven, and I knew. Death. It wasn’t as far as the entrance.

After coming out of Simandagit, our family moved to Barangay New Housing. We stayed there for two or three years. During those times, the loud neighbors disappeared. Perhaps they went back to Sabah, Malaysia, who knows? Only their house, hollow and abandoned, was left. Its walls, as ever, remained infested by the wriggling sea reflections.

Stories of what happened to the loud family circled around until they found a sense of mundanity. It became one fragment of the Simandagit backdrop, a local legend. In reality, it was the first seed that stretched and coiled one end of infinity up in a continuum, morphing into a capsule. This mental archive was carefully woven by the community from every kissa or kata-kata about the house. Fluid. Ever-living. Tenacious.

Years melted. They folded into nostalgia and rolled along my tongue whenever Mama told me to practice singing on our karaoke. Although most times they hid on the soles of my feet, propelling me to make bigger steps. Until my own stride made the wooden bridge wobble.

Fear only settled inside me for a few days. As a child, when emotions come in swells, they exude out of my body like a fever breaking. After expelling the heat, it recoils and runs away from me, leaving my body flitting like a ghost. So, I shoved and delegated all of those to my parents. It was their role, not mine. Maybe that was how I was able to join my friends and play at Uncle Rosly’s house. By then, it was a make-believe market. The goods were glossy, sometimes pearlescent seashells. The money was crisp candy wrappers and flattened crown corks.

I was warned not to go there. They said only naughty children played in it.

The house, even as time moved, stood in the same timeframe and is seen from that same incident. It’s encased in the same December night, watching the same fireworks. Tgg. Tgg. Tgg. Tgg. Tgg. No police, just guns, cocked—chk-chk—poised and pointed, but not fired. Target—house and time—frozen.

I didn’t heed the warning because I didn’t understand the danger, nor did I know where it could come from. So, I and my friends continued to play at the house. By then we called it our playhouse. Sometimes we would run around it playing pulismatik, apas-apas, and tapuk-tapuk. Other times we’d just go and see what fun games we could join. And in one of these particular times, the danger came from a neighborhood kuya.

I was playing yet another game the adults warned me not to ever engage in sugal-sugal or card games. We watched as a boy and kuya played against each other. There were cheers, teasing, and envy for the many cards they passed to and fro. At one point they ended and went to one of the empty rooms of the house. Kuya told us not to follow. We were so loud earlier that they couldn’t concentrate and spoiled their game. So, we didn’t.

Instead, I and my friends talked about the kurung dresses of the twins whose family recently moved. We also yapped about the Bollywood films we watched. Even sang their songs. We started dancing to them when, suddenly, the shouts came.

To this day I don’t know how to describe what I heard. The emotions can’t even decide what form to take. Plea. Anger. Fear. Desperation. They stacked on top of each other. Not tumbling over just swaying drunkenly, threatening to topple down. The wails were coated in all four at once but nastier, more sinister.

We all ran towards the voice. I knew we all got scared when we heard it. The voice was very familiar. The name he called and told to stop, we knew who it was. It wasn’t a long run, but I could have stumbled all the same, except I froze. Then, I looked down. There, on the floor, the boy thrashed. He kept trying to pull himself up. But on top of him was kuya—laughing, grinning, goofy kuya. They were both clothed. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I knew it was bad. Dirty. Pungent. Nauseating.

The boy looked at us. His eyes circled, frantically searching for help. Except he didn’t ask. He kept telling kuya to stop even as his eyes roamed around our faces. Those teary, blurry pair landed on mine. They lingered. They paused a few seconds too long for me to accept his emotions, to feel them doubling up—thickening—dissolving to a sticky, bubble-gum texture that seeped through my pores. My heart clenched as his emotions violated me until there was nothing of me to pour into. Was this how my parents felt when I gave them my fear? Did they also recoil from these gooey sensations?

Fortunately, my feet, where all the melted years took shelter, were unscathed. They were light, no stickiness. So, I ran. A few seconds later, I heard the others joining me. Some shrieked, while others thought it was yet another game.

I ran even when I knew I should have helped. Even as the wooden bridge wobbled threateningly. Or as the guilt became more palatable than all the other emotions weighing me down.

I ran and ran and ran.

The kids talked to other kids and parents. I envy them. How did they tell other people? What did they say? I can’t even describe the heftiness that sat and settled over my heart. So, I delegated the telling to my friends.

Mama was mad I was there when it happened, but she was angry for my safety. She wasn’t angry for the boy, or at the neighborhood kuya. Maybe Mama didn’t understand her emotions either. Was it also bigger than her? I don’t know. Sometimes I think Mama doesn’t care much about other people. But maybe because she also encountered an equally nasty tar-like experience, Mama ignored all of them. I imagine it’s easier to not see the whole story, and just see me.

Mama warned me though, not to go near or close to kuya just as every parent told their children.

What was odd, though, was how the incident closed fast. It wasn’t abrupt. There was no rigidity around the neighborhood. It was more like the people heard it and then mentioned other things in passing, ones that distracted them—the water breaks and typhoon that just passed. When everyone did circle back, the spotlight was on the playhouse.

They expressed how they’ve always known playing there was not a good idea. Some confirmed they’ve always been uncomfortable seeing kids merrily jumping and laughing about, disturbing the jinns residing in it. To me—nine-year-old, still petite but tall—I was scared of the playhouse more than whatever was inside it.

“Hangkan na subay kamu dih da magkadtu-kadtu pa bay yaun mga anak.” That’s why you shouldn’t frequently go to that house, children.

“Hoon.” Yes. “Asal na hadja san mataud kaginisan in mahinang duun bat dugaing pa in tagdapu nakawah bakas, dugaing pa in mga jinn nagbabay duun.” Such things will always happen there because there was the death of its owner, and there’re also the jinns living in it.

From then on, fewer kids played in the playhouse. There would be rare occasions, though. When the sea was ten feet high, wet footprints would loiter around. These were misplaced against the faded, varnished floor; the spots of green or blue paint that remained; and the wobbly kitchen space. These were the times when we would use its bridge as a diving ramp we jump from. Even parents would join in on the fun. During those times we forgot all the incidents. The playhouse became loud again.

Everyone participated, except the house. It remained glued in place by the poised gun, cocked but not fired. It stayed someplace where space and time do not evolve, locked in a temporal pocket. Suspended. There, at a once-upon-a-time capsule, the playhouse stands still.

Over time, the house seemingly became exhausted. It flaunted a kind of numbness from accepting all the stories told about it. Like that one gossip about a woman’s voice crying and calling for help one night. There were many versions of that story too, but one definite plot stayed—a woman and multiple men. “They were probably drunkards,” Mama announced, “for who could have done such monstrosities?” This story didn’t close fast. It spread like a disease. Everyone was eager to diagnose and offer their expertise.

Nobody knows how this new story started or ended. But everyone was sure the wailings were the same fireworks as that December—Tgg. Tgg. Tgg. Tgg. Tgg.

Their sentiments fell on the woman, of course. But perhaps because nobody knew the true identity of the people involved, the blame was on the playhouse. What could they have expected from a house whose owners were criminals? It wasn’t jinxed, no. It was more cunning for that. The playhouse was alive. Its walls—sun-showered, sea-weathered—a convincing actor, hid all the ugliness very well.

In the following years, stories about it would sprout, more violent, more disgusting. But the playhouse remained silent, almost stubborn. It welcomed both tragedies from humans and nature. While it bravely persisted on the first, it succumbed to the latter.

Typhoons. It seems too much of a cliché that such a present consciousness should surrender to a natural disaster. As though even in its demise it must insist on being proud and petty. It cannot allow itself to fall under the weight of our feet. It wobbled and shook, but it never gave in. It accepted villainy, but it cannot stoop to the role of a victim. So, it accepted the fate of an antagonist. A graceful fall from the force of nature. A fitting end.

The playhouse and all its ghosts are memories I don’t like to dwell on. Not because they still haunt me, but because I have lost the meanings they exuded. I imagine these meanings as grains that kept getting moved from the door, to the kitchen, to the walls as Papa continued to fix where the typhoons claimed. Until each grain fell to the wriggling sea.

The emotions I hold for them now are just crumbs. They’re leftovers from people’s words and sentiments that somehow landed on me, infecting my consciousness and tainting its innocence.

Today this memory lives inside me, tucked to one corner but thriving in its own little capsule. It’s caged with all the unmediated meanings my young mind cannot comprehend. The memory only comes alive once in a while when tales of the nostalgic days of Barangay Simandagit are told. It always disturbs the peace and gentleness of our mundanity, because once upon a time—

There, is that once-upon-a-time.

Meizan Badrudin 

For the child who taught me that courage can live inside the smallest bodies.

There were 1,781 graduates that day.

I remember the figure vividly, my eyes locked on the number as our vehicle sat paralyzed in the gridlock outside the convention center. Two hours after the ceremony concluded, the streets remained hopelessly congested. Cars inched forward. Families leaned wearily against glass windows, while graduates adjusted the metallic weight of medals around their necks.

Somewhere in that sprawling standstill, someone was probably uploading a polished graduation portrait, pairing it with a caption like “Gradu-ATEd,” “1° hotter,” or “Spotify Student subscription just ended” before writing a few heartfelt lines about dreams finally manifesting into reality. Meanwhile, as names were being called one by one across the stage earlier that day, some people were probably scrolling through their phones already muting group chats, unfollowing old classmates, or deciding which relationships were worth carrying beyond graduation.

Blocked. Unfriended. Removed.

Graduations have always intrigued me in this paradoxical way: we stand on illuminated stages to celebrate beginnings, while in the shadows, we silently bring entire volumes of our lives to a close. Then again, some chapters have a habit of lingering long after we believe we’ve finished them.

I opened the small box of cake my family had bought for me and took a bite. Caramel Cheesecake. The kind Dadi always loved. For a brief moment, it felt as though she had somehow found her way into the moment. “Murag for dadi lagi ani?” I murmured to my mother. She offered a gentle smile. “Taday kan. Paborito inan ni dadi nengka.”

Allahu yarham. If my grandmother, my Dadi, had been there that afternoon, I think she would have been very, very proud. Nakwa den su kahanda. Nandito na tayo, Dadi.

I was still draped in my academic gown. Crumbs cascaded onto my lap, but nobody noticed, and nobody cared. Which was unusual. Under ordinary circumstances, even a single grain of rice falling onto the car floor would trigger an argument. But, that afternoon, nobody said a word. For once, there were no expectations left to discuss. It was an entirely mundane moment tucked inside what the world insists is one of the most monumental days of a person’s life.

When the traffic finally relented, we pulled over at Acacia.

“Magcelebrate diay ta?” I asked. The detour was completely impromptu. The original itinerary had been simple: attend the ceremony, return home, and sleep. But my parents insisted on a celebration. “Sige lang ka,” they told me. My father looked at me and said, “Mahal ka namin.”

There was no lavish banquet, no rented hall, and no extensive guest list. It was just the very people who had anchored me through a tempest of years that had nearly shattered me. “Mubarak, Kaka! Allahumma barik laha. You did well. Alhamdulillah, nakagraduate ka na.” These were the exact words they offered. Not a moment of wondering why my name was not called when the distinctions were announced.

Years ago, people might have asked. But somewhere in the grueling space between hospital admissions, insomniac nights, panic attacks, psychiatric evaluations, and desperate prayers whispered in the pre-dawn dark, our collective definition of success had quietly mutated.

I remember one of my hospital admissions particularly well. Even while lying in a hospital bed, my mind remained stubbornly occupied by examinations and the ever-present specter of Latin honors. My mother found the situation ridiculous. “Andito ka na nga sa hospital, ang isipin mo pa yung exam mo? Yung Latin honors mo?” she laughed. As though Latin honors were somehow connected to my IV line.

Na para bang mas importante pa ang grado kaysa sa buhay ko?

My parents had long ceased praying for medals. In truth, I suspect they secretly hoped those crushing expectations would vanish entirely. They no longer cared if I stood at the apex of my cohort; their only desire was that I remained alive long enough to walk across that stage. That afternoon, while I sat mourning everything I had lost, they sat celebrating everything I had survived. That is why my relationship with achievement has irrevocably shifted. I will not lie, I still harbor an admiration for accolades.

I mean, who doesn’t?

We applaud medals, distinctions, scholarships, and titles because they are the physical manifestations of sacrifice. Of hard work. Of sleepless nights. There is absolutely no shame in desiring them, just as there is no shame in grieving when they slip through our fingers. For some of us, the loss cuts even deeper. We spend so many years building an identity around achievement that success ceases to be something we do and quietly becomes who we are. We learn to introduce ourselves through grades and accomplishments. We become attached not only to the reward, but to the version of ourselves we believe those rewards confirm. And so when that identity fractures, the wound is rarely confined to a transcript. It feels personal. Almost physical. Like an injury to the self.

But the older I get, the more I find my mind wrestling with a different caliber of questions that no graduation program could ever hope to answer.

How many people breathed easier because you occupied this space? How many heavy burdens did your hands help lift?

As a Bangsamoro, I am frequently haunted by the question of what I have given back to my own people. In this region where poverty continues to affect a substantial portion of families, it is difficult to ignore how a person’s future can be shaped by the circumstances of their birth. As a daughter, I constantly interrogate whether I have adequately honored the sacrifices woven into my parents’ lives. As a future healthcare professional, I ask myself if I have genuinely learned to see the pulsing, fragile humanity behind the sterile diagnoses.

How many lives were made marginally better simply because Allah allowed your path to intersect with theirs?

This is the root of why I offer sadaqah whenever it is within my power. Sustenance for a wandering stray. A warm meal for someone who has forgotten what a full stomach feels like. A few pesos pressed into the hand of a sikad driver. It is maybe because every time I see these people, I remember my father.

My father was once a driver. At sa maraming paraan, siya ang naghatid sa akin sa kung saan ako ngayon.

Perhaps this is also why I spent years building things on my own. Sugar Cafe. Laba Boss laundry shops. MV Apartments. To others, they may look like ordinary businesses. To me, I see a possibility of handing them a life that is a little softer than the one they broke their backs to build for me. In many ways, they emerged from the same impulse that drives me to give back to lighten a burden that I once watched others carry.

That is why I have never been able to view achievement as something purely personal. Every accomplishment I celebrate is tethered to sacrifices that were never mine alone. Medals belong to dunya. My achievements are not mine to claim. They are provisions from Allah SWT. The Qur’an tells us, “Indeed, Allah is the Bestower of provision” (Qur’an 51:58). Whatever good I achieved was by His permission. Whatever I lost was by His wisdom.

I knew this. I believed this.

Yet belief does not always spare us from disappointment. Sometimes faith and grief occupy the same heart at the same time. I saw the hollow space where honors should have been. They saw the daughter they had been terrified of losing.

I remember sitting there in the silence of my own mind, acutely aware that everyone around me seemed vastly happier than I was. My family was overflowing with joy. And I would be lying if I said I was.

I was not.

Somewhere deep within my chest, a small, persistent voice kept hissing a single word. Such a quintessentially Filipino word. Such a profoundly dangerous word.

Sayang. Sayang.

I had started with such momentum. Twice a valedictorian. The child onto whom people projected grand expectations. The student who elicited approving nods from adults; the one whose trajectory felt securely mapped. And then, college happened.

There is a pervasive assumption that high-achieving students are fueled by a hunger for recognition. And maybe for some, that is true. It was not true for me. Or, at least, not entirely. The reality is that I did not claw my way to valedictorian for the applause. I did it because I desperately wanted options. I wanted scholarships. I wanted impenetrable doors to swing open. I wanted to alleviate the financial gravity bearing down on my parents. Above all else, I wanted the elusive comfort of security.

I am aware of my own limitations. I was never the type of student who could waltz into an exam hall and effortlessly secure the highest mark. I shared classrooms with peers who possessed a natural brilliance for test-taking.

I was not one of them.

What I had instead was discipline. While other people could rely on pure talent, I had to rely on showing up every single day. I forced myself to study harder, stayed in the library until it closed, and started prepping weeks before an exam. I did this not out of a belief in my own exceptionalism, but out of the knowledge that I simply could not afford to fail.

When I was named valedictorian in Junior and Senior High School, the overriding emotion was never triumph. It was a relief. The relief that I had done enough, that another pathway had cleared, that my parents would have one less anxiety to shoulder. That is precisely why missing out on Latin honors in college left such a unique, jagged wound.

It is painful. More painful than I expected.

My immediate thought was never, “What will society think?” It was, “What happens to me now?” What becomes of my meticulously laid plans? What becomes of medical school? What becomes of the vital opportunities I was so certain I needed? For a long stretch of time, terror drowned out all logic. But Allah has a way of reminding us that our provisions are not dispensed through a single door. Often, when one corridor goes dark, another illuminates in the very place we forgot to look.

I’m not going to list every single detail of how things fell apart in college. Some memories are better left buried, and reopening old wounds for an audience only guarantees they will bleed again. What I will confess is this: there were years when I was jolted awake at three in the morning, rushing to vomit due to anxiety. I was becoming such a frequent visitor at SPH and MDMRC that I half expected them to start offering a loyalty card.

Years when my parents commuted endlessly between Cotabato and Davao because their daughter could not stop shaking. Years when I sat shivering in psychiatric clinics. Years when I was tethered to diagnoses with names lengthy enough to dominate medical charts.

There were days when surrendering to death felt infinitely simpler than enduring life. I do not construct that sentence for theatrical effect. I state it because it is the truth. Some people survive the wrath of typhoons. Others survive the devastation of wars. Some of us must survive ourselves.

For four years, survival was my full-time occupation.

But nobody mints medals for surviving. Nobody broadcasts it over a PA system during commencement exercises. Nobody hands bouquets to the student whose sole triumph was managing to inhale and exhale for another day. But, there are thousands of us.

Legions of students sitting mutely in lecture halls carrying battles nobody else can see. Sons and daughters masquerading in normalcy. Young people dragging the dead weight of grief, panic, heartbreak, destitution, illness, and disappointment, all while submitting academic requirements a minute before midnight. Perhaps that is why graduation felt so utterly surreal. While the masses were busy celebrating the visible, I was paralyzed by the thought of the invisible.

I thought of the people confined to the last row.

The students who were forced to retake subjects. The students who wept silently in public restroom stalls. The students who watched their scholarships evaporate. The students who quietly dug graves for dreams they had never spoken aloud. Sometimes I wonder if society squanders too much breath exalting those at the pinnacle of the pyramid, leaving no air to listen to the gasping of those struggling at its base.

The top is easy to idolize. But the bottom is where humanity actually resides.

At the bottom are the fathers navigating tricycles in the freezing pre-dawn dark. The mothers who ignore their own hunger so their children can be full. The students enduring one or two-hour daily commutes. The patients lined up like ghosts in hospital corridors. The janitors scrubbing rooms they will never receive gratitude for cleaning. The security guards holding open doors for people who will never bother to learn their names. The vast majority of the world lives exactly there.

Not at the summit.

At the bottom.

Of course, the metaphor is imperfect. The last row is not always poor. The front row is not always privileged. Life is rarely that simple. Yet it would be dishonest to pretend that opportunity is distributed equally. In the Philippines, where a child’s future can still be influenced by their surname, address, school, family income, or access to healthcare, privilege remains one of the most powerful yet least acknowledged forces shaping success. Some students begin the race several meters ahead. Others begin it already exhausted. To recognize this is not to diminish hard work. Hard work matters. But so do stable homes, quality education, financial security, good health, supportive families, and the luxury of worrying about examinations instead of survival.

Privileges are not merely personal. They are political. A student with a private tutor and a student commuting four hours a day may sit in the same classroom, attend the same lecture, and take the same examination. Yet they are not taking the same journey. And perhaps that is why I keep returning to the last row because the people in the last row are often expected to work twice as hard just to be seen. And somewhere at the very bottom of that pyramid, I encountered a little girl named Zenara.

Zenara.

My first patient at CRMC.

Long before my name was called on stage, I was already thinking about her. I am not supposed to admit this as a healthcare professional, but I developed a soft spot for the child almost immediately. Some patients stay in your memory because of the diagnoses written on their charts. Others stay because of the people they are. Zenara belonged to the latter.

She had a smile that arrived before her words did. The kind that made hospital rooms feel less frightening than they actually were. I found myself looking forward to seeing her during rounds. And somehow, over time, she seemed to look forward to seeing me too.

“Bakit po Zenara ang pangalan niya, Ma’am? Ang ganda po ng pangalan niya.” I asked while preparing Zenara for a blood extraction. Before I could even reassure her, she had already calmly extended her arm as though it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Most children are frightened of needles. Zenara was not. That broke my heart. No child should ever become that familiar with pain.

“It means intelligent. Pinangalan siya ng lolo niya kasi nakakabasa na siya at the age of three.” Her mom said.

I remember smiling at that.

Zenara.

The name stayed with me long after the conversation ended. In fact, I once caught myself thinking that if Allah were ever to bless me with a daughter of my own one day, I would want to name her Zenara.

She was the other reason my graduation felt so heavy. For months, my mind had been tethered to a singular promise. It was not a vow made to my parents, nor to my professors, nor even to myself. It was a promise made to a child. She was one of the many fragile children occupying the pediatric ward carrying a diagnosis infinitely heavier than her tiny frame should have ever been forced to bear.

Leukemia.

It was a term I had dissected countless times in dense textbooks and clinical case presentations. But no volume of medical literature could have ever equipped me for the jarring reality of meeting a child who bore that word with a smile.

Children possess an uncanny ability to shrink illnesses down to size. Perhaps it is because they have not yet grasped the sheer cruelty of the world. Or perhaps it is because they retain a wisdom that adults have forfeited: the absolute mastery of living fiercely in the present tense.

I remember watching her beam. I remember absorbing her animated stories. I remember walking out of those swinging ward doors, crushed by the arbitrary unfairness of existence. But most vividly, I remember making a vow. I told her I would return after my graduation.

In my mind’s eye, I had visualized walking back into that hospital enveloped in my graduation regalia, carrying whatever gleaming medal or distinction I had earned from years of sacrifice. I didn’t want it to keep, to display on a mantle, or to flaunt on the internet. I wanted to drape it around her small neck. Even if only for a fleeting few seconds. Just long enough to capture a photograph. Long enough to hear her infectious laugh. Long enough to make her realize she was a protagonist in someone else’s story.

It was never actually about the recognition, not in the way people assume. That medal was intended to be an offering. A tangible symbol. A thank you.

Then graduation arrived.

There was no medal. No distinction. No special commendation. Just my name, dissolving into a sea of hundreds of other graduates. I would be a liar if I claimed it did not sting.

It did.

It hurt. For a long time, I kept replaying how close I actually was. It’s crazy how a single grade can completely rewrite your path.

Isang grado na lang.

By the devastation that years of unrelenting grit can be erased by a space next to your printed name. But grief is a peculiar, brilliant teacher of perspective. The longer I sat inside that disappointment, the more the realization crystallized: the promise was never actually about a piece of metal.

The promise was about returning. The promise was a silent oath refusing to mutate into the kind of healthcare provider who ceases to see the breathing human beings obscured behind the laboratory requests, the hospital ID numbers, and the clinical charts. But life has a way of reminding us that not every promise gets fulfilled in the way we imagine.

A few days after graduation, I returned to Cotabato. Part of me was excited. I had been thinking about Zenara for months. Through examinations, internships, graduation rehearsals, and the ceremony itself, I carried the thought that I would see her again soon.

I was late.

By the time I came back, Zenara had already passed away. I cried the whole night. Nobody prepares you for a sentence like that. One moment, a person occupies a corner of your future. Next, they exist only in your memory. I do not talk about it often. I still do not know how. For a long time, I thought the defining loss of my graduation would be the Latin honors I never received. I thought that was the wound I would carry into the years ahead. Then I learned that Zenara was gone.

Strange how grief rearranges priorities.

Decades from now, absolutely no one will remember if I graduated with honors. A vanishingly small number of people will recall my GPA. Even fewer will care about the distinctions I did or did not secure.

But I hope to Allah, I remember Zenara.

I hope I remember the children whose youth evaporated within the walls of hospital wards. I hope I remember the mothers contorted in sleep on rigid plastic chairs beside metal beds. I hope I remember the father standing in corners trying to figure out how to pay the next hospital bill. I hope I remember the patients who demonstrated that courage rarely resembles cinematic greatness. More often, courage looks like holding out your arm for yet another blood extraction.

Above everything, I hope I remember the purest reason I sought to enter medicine in the first place. Because somewhere in the wreckage and the healing, I discovered that true success is entirely unconcerned with what dangles around our necks. The world trains us to fixate on the stage. To stare into the blinding spotlight. To revere the individuals standing victoriously at the summit.

Yet, the most transformative lessons I have ever absorbed were taught by those who were never invited to stand on that stage to begin with. The child waiting patiently in the ward. The mother weeping in prayer beside the bed. The father emptying the final, crumpled bills from his wallet. The student who clawed their way out of a semester alive. The graduate whose ultimate achievement was simply surviving long enough to wear the toga.

For the majority of my life, I operated under the delusion that the goal was to reach the front row. To stand exactly where the world could witness you. To forge yourself into a creature worthy of standing ovations.

I know so much better now.

Humanity does not dwell in the spotlight. It dwells in the hospital corridors, the suffocating heat of crowded jeepneys, the cramped confines of small apartments, the agonizing stretches of sleepless nights, of unanswered prayers, and the acts of valor that will never be immortalized on a piece of paper.

It lives among the overlooked. The people waging invisible wars. The people exhausting their souls simply to survive. The people anchoring the absolute bottom of the pyramid. And perhaps, all this time, that was precisely where Allah had been urging me to look.

The last row.