We Filipinos are a mystical people of the airport. Just look at us. A niece has married off a Norwegian and now lives in Oslo. A cousin works as an engineer in Nara, Japan. A friend’s aunt is a nanny in Kowloon, while her brother is employed as a factory worker in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Another cousin is about to join his wife and children as immigrants to Vancouver. Together they eagerly anticipate a cross-country visit with their parents who had migrated to San Francisco years ago, holding down odd jobs, mostly blue collar.
One of your immediate relatives had worked as domestic helper in the Emirates. How many of us have a father who has been a contract worker in Jeddah? How many of us has an aunt who has long been in Singapore, as governess perhaps. My parents’ wedding godfather is now a soldier assigned in Saipan together with all his sons.
You and I have met nurses who have flown in yearly batches to the West and are now scattered all over the United States if not shacked up in cold and foggy London.
I had a teacher who had left the class for New Zealand for good, without any tinge of regret, and a former officemate who did the same, now living in Australia. Another past officemate now works in a Bandar Seri Begawan cybercafe. A friend does missionary work in the wilds of Papua New Guinea.
Today’s evening news talks about Pinoys trapped in a civil war in Angola. An earthquake shatters Taiwan and you fret about a friend who might have been trapped in a factory. A tidal wave sweeps through Port Moresby and you wonder whether your former classmate is one of those swept away. A civil war tears down Dili, East Timor, or a genocide divides Rwanda and you worry about the nuns you know. If a major temblor happens to jolt California or a flood rises or a heat wave engulfs it, you end up thinking about an entire clan, about an entire community. The thought of a cousin who might have been trapped in a Tokyo subway during a sarin gas attack disturbs you. You worry about contract workers that might be trapped in Abu Dhabi or Libya or Kuwait in the light of US President Bush’s impending war with Iraq, one of whom might as well be a cousin or uncle. It could be an oil tanker sinking off Malta, or a plane crash on the Andes Mountains, or a terrorist attack in any of the skyscrapers of New York City.
What Filipino has not known the anguish of separation? And the jubilation of homecoming?
Are we the latter-day Jews? How come cultists insist our place is the New Jerusalem?
In any case, who has not gone to the airport to face both pairs of self-negating questions?
10.9.1999
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