Remembering Mila Aguilar by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

 

Remembering Mila Aguilar

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

         SHORTLY AFTER MY BROTHER DIED in 1994, my mother made arrangements to transfer a house and property in Makati to my name. Seeing my siblings bickering over money, Mama decided—while she was alive—to hand over the property to me, free and clear. That way, I would have a nice piece of property from her should the family end up in all-out fighting over inheritance. Which it did. But this story is not about the decades-long family litigation, rather it’s about an incident that had to do with my house on Mercury Street, Bel Air, Makati—a lovely, airy four-bedroom bungalow.

          When my mother was a child, a fortune teller told her she would be wealthy and that her “sun would never set”, meaning she would always be at her zenith. This was a story she liked to tell when the properties she had bought in Makati soared in price. The fortune teller was correct. Even though she had trained as a classical pianist, she had a knack for making money, and properties she held all turned out to be prime land. But regarding my mother’s sun never setting when she became really old, in her last years, Mama ended up isolated from the rest of us, except for a sibling who orchestrated events. My Mother's last years were not bright at all.

My mother came from a well-heeled political family in Cebu, and Mama had money and properties of her own. Her assets and my father’s allowed our family to be comfortable. When my father had a fatal heart attack in 1957, my mother’s life turned upside down. She was only forty-seven years old, with four children. She grieved, she floundered, but when she realized that the government owed my father a million pesos for a highway construction (he was a Civil Engineer/Contractor), she regained her equilibrium.

Perhaps inspired by her widowed grandmother Remedios who had supported her family via rentals, my mother decided to do the same. My mother went to the fledgling land development called Ayala, talked to a Mr. Fitz, and bought three lots in San Lorenzo, and five in Bel Air. She later explained that my father had pointed out this swampy land and predicted this would be prime property one day.

Mama took out bank loans, had houses built, and rented them out. This is simplifying something that took years to happen, and which involved many complications and a lot of sacrifice. I was in high school at this time; my siblings were out of the country and in Cebu. It was just my mother and me dealing with the tight financial situation because bank loans had to be paid, and sometimes, the houses were vacant and not earning. My mother (and I) went through difficult times, but in time, the bank loans were paid off— and the property value and rentals rose.

          Thirty-five later, in 1995, I owned a valuable rental property to take care off, which posed a difficulty to me because I lived in California with my husband and sons. The sibling fighting in my family was rising to a pitch and I did not have a relative willing to help manage the place.

          That February, as I looked at my siblings fighting to control Mama and her assets, I decided to ask for Mila Aguilar’s help.

Mila Aguilar was a poet and revolutionary, who had been imprisoned during the Marcos Sr. Martial Law days from 1984-1986. She was released in 1986 when Cory Aquino government was in power. I met her in 1991 in Los Angeles when she received the Freedom to Write Award from PEN USA West. I was a PEN executive director and member of the Freedom to Write Committee. Along with Amnesty International and other groups, PEN’s Freedom to Write Committee had worked for Mila’s protection and release from prison.

Born in 1949, Mila was part of the Philippine movement protesting Ferdinand Marcos’ growing autocracy in the late 1960s. In 1971, when the Marcos regime became more ruthless, Mila went underground. During her years of hiding, she married one of her comrades, Magtanggol Sayas Roque. They had a son whom they had to entrust to Mila’s mother to raise because of their dangerous life. Mila’s husband was killed by the military in the mid-1970s.

        On August 6, 1984, Mila and two companions were in a jeepney near St. Joseph’s College when plainclothes police arrested them. They were blindfolded, taken at gunpoint to Camp Crame, and forced into isolation in windowless rooms. The three joined thousands who were jailed by the Marcos government; Amnesty International estimated 70,000 incarcerations.

It was thrilling for me and members of the Committee to see Mila on the podium, free at last. She was soft-spoken with gentle feminine ways. She credited her writing with sustaining her during difficult times. While in jail, she wrote a book of poems, Why Cage Pigeons? She also published: A Comrade Is as Precious as a Rice Seedling; Pall Hanging Over Manila; Journey: An Autobiography in Verse; Chronicle of a Life Foretold: 101 Poems; The Nine Deaths among other books. Some of her books were under the nom de guerre “Clarita Roja,” which she used when she was in the underground movement.

She also wrote essays as a member and head of the Regional United Front Commission of Mindanao, and as head of the National United Front Commission of the Communist Party of the Philippines. She resigned from the party in 1984.

She wept when she received the Award. 

Mila came from an intellectual family. Her father, who was Mila’s model, was an educator and a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee. Mila was considered a precocious child who illustrated her first book while in first grade. She began writing poetry at the age of nine. In high school she wanted to become a great writer. She added that one could not become a great writer “unless one is steeped in one’s culture and history.” Still later she declared, “I finally got it. Without a vision, the people perish!”

She had degrees in English and the Humanities, and had taught at the University of the Philippines and St. Joseph’s College.

Mila and I became friends and I saw her every time I visited Manila. I recommended her to my mother for the Mariano F. Manguerra Award. This was an annual literary cash award that I had talked my mother into giving. My mother who was grieving my brother’s sudden death, and who was the subject of family manipulations, needed a diversion. It made her happy to be a benefactor of writers such as Lina Espina Moore, Marjorie Evasco, Simeon Dumdum, Jr., and Mila Agular—all recipients of the Mariano F. Manguerra Award. 

Mila agreed to help me manage my Bel Air house. We had to find a tenant quickly before I returned to California. We plowed ahead, hung a For Rent sign on the gate of the house, and ran ads in the Manila newspapers.

          Realty agents approached us. Several were looking for rentals for their Middle Eastern clients. There were many Arabs in Manila at that time. P. Burgos Street had a row of Arabic restaurants and cafes. But the truth is that the Arabs in Manila did not have a good reputation. I interviewed a bar girl for an article, and she talked about how she and other woman played tricks on the Arabs, just to get their money. “They’re not nice to women, Ma’am,” she explained. “Some of them look suspicious. Did you read about the terrorists who were caught planning to assassinate the Pope?”

She was referring to Pope John Paul II’s visit to the Philippines from January 10-15, 1995. Just a few days before the Pope’s arrival, on January 6, there had been an explosion and fire in a Manila apartment rented by some Arabs. After the fire was extinguished, police discovered laptops and computer disks indicating there was a plot to kill the Pope. The Pakistani Ramzi Yousef was arrested.

Later, I would piece it together.

Ramzi Yousef was the primary mastermind of the Bojinka plot, an Al-Qaeda terrorist plot that included plans to bomb 11 US airliners, assassinate Pope John Paul II, and crash a plane into CIA headquarters in Virginia. Yousef, working with his uncle, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (the third ranking Al-Qaeda leader) were testing airport security and developing bombs out of contact lens solution. On December 11, 1994, Yousef took a flight from Manila to Tokyo, with a stopover in Cebu. He planted a bomb under a seat and left the aircraft during the layover. The bomb exploded during the next leg of the flight, killing Haruki Ikegame and injuring 10 others. The plane remained intact and made an emergency landing in Japan.

Yousef, who had used a fake identity was not immediately captured, but after the Manila explosion and fire he was apprehended. We would learn that Yousef had been involved with the 1993 World Trade Bombing, and he had also been involved with the assassination attempt of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. 

          Needless to say, I was not enthusiastic when the realtor could only offer us her Arab clients. When she told us that the an Arabic ambassador was interested, Mila and I agreed to meet him. Surely an ambassador could not be a terrorist, I thought.

The ambassador lived in a heavily fortified mansion in Dasmariñas. Armed guards scrutinized Mila and me before allowing us in. We were interrogated once again near the front door, and told to wait. 

There were so many armed men walking about, and I was starting to get frightened at what we were getting ourselves into. “Mila,” I started to say, but then someone appeared to lead us upstairs to a grand living room, huge, garish, with elaborate tile work and gold decorations. The Ambassador shook our hands. He was a tall, handsome man, with salt-and-pepper hair, very elegant. He reminded me of Omar Sharif. My trepidation waned. His children attended universities in New York; he owned a penthouse in New York. It was clear that he was independently wealthy. He was an appointee; he was not a product of bureaucracy.

When he learned that Mila and I were writers, he became animated. He was a poet, he announced. He recited an excerpt from his poetry in Arabic. We did not understand a word; he did not translate. Totally relaxed in the company of fellow-writers, his tongue turned lose and he lightly said he had just visited Mindanao and the Northern Philippines. These were not tourist places. This ambassador visited places with separatists and Communists. This ambassador met Filipino revolutionaries. Mila remained composed and talked to him about the difficult roads in those places. By this time, the ambassador was so enchanted with us, he invited us to his New York penthouse. We smiled, told him we’d let him know if we should visit New York.

Then we turned to business.

          My house for rent was not for himself, but for his second-in-command. They would pay one year’s rent in cash, in advance. He explained that for funding purposes to help his second-in-command, they needed a second contract to be submitted to his government. He also requested permission to bring in their own electrician to check the electrical outlets and lines of house. Adding that they had seen the property, he requested that a specific palm tree with a thick trunk on the corner of the property be removed.

 

          Later when Mila, my mother, and I talked about it, both of them seemed to agree that it was all right to rent the place to the Ambassador. My mother told me not to worry about the padded second contract. If anyone had to worry, it would be them, she said. My mother was also fine about cutting down the palm tree. “I’d been thinking of getting rid of that tree,” she said. “It’s right up against the wall.” Both Mila and my mother did not object to having the Arabs bring their own electrician. “It’s to make sure the place isn’t bugged,” Mila said, matter-of-factly.

          “I’m so happy, Ma’am that the ambassador is renting your place,” the realtor gushed. She quickly arranged the signing of the two contracts. The ambassador was not present, but his second-in-command was, a man named Mohamed, slender, small in stature, non-descript unlike the attractive Omar Sharif-Ambassador. Mohamed was accompanied by three burly men; who looked like thugs, although they were polite to Mila and myself. I did not sign the padded contract; the realtor signed it. After the contract signing, I gave Mohamed the house keys, and we all went to their bank to cash their check. Stacks of money appeared and Mila and I had to count them all. We paid the realtor her fee, and we stuffed the rest of the money into a shopping bag. We gave Mohamed our contact information, said our goodbyes to all, and off Mila and I went to my bank to deposit the money.

          A few days later, I had to return to California and had to leave the matter with Mila.

          She gave me reports: Everything was fine. Mohamed had moved in. He lived alone, without any household help. His wife, Fatima, did visit him for several months. Mohamed had many visitors, men, and they would meet in one bedroom with a blackboard.

          I wondered about that blackboard, but I was already in California and was focused on other matters. Aside from Mila’s letters, the only update I received about my house and tenant was a letter from my mother saying the neighbors had complained because the lawn was overgrown. I decided to write Mohamed a letter about this complaint. He never replied and I assumed that problem was solved.

          When Mohamed’s one-year lease expired, Mila and I met him to renew the contract. It was during this time, when Mohamed pleaded with me to please, please stop sending letters from California. I was surprised.

Somewhat exasperated he continued, “Don’t you understand, our countries are at war!”

He was referring to the tension between the US and his country following an airplane bombing that involved two of his countrymen. The US Government called his country a “rogue state” for supporting terrorism and the development of conventional weapons.

It had escaped me totally my US stamped letters would have raised suspicion among his colleagues, and that he would be scrutinized by his office. Perhaps they wondered if he was a double agent. I promised not to write from America.

When Mohamed’s second year stay at my place expired in 1997, Mila showed me the letter from his office giving notice they would not renew their contract.

I was mildly distraught; we would have to find another tenant. But Mila, a Born-Again Christian was calm about the whole thing. There were very few things that fazed her in fact. Her trust in God was total. Early in our friendship, she had confided in me that she and her mother did not get along and after years of fighting, she desperately prayed to God and asked for His help. He did, and she was converted.

“We’ll find another tenant,” she calmly said.

And indeed we would find another renter for the house on Mercury Street, Bel Air, Makati.

Writer's note: Out of courtesy to the people involved, I have not mentioned which Arabic country was involved, and the names in the article are fictional. 

Read also

     The Journey by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

The One-Night Stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

     The Virgin's Last Night by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

 Tags: Filipino authors, Filipino writers, Filipino books, Filipino literature