The Bronze Dove

1. Benigno Aquino Jr. International Airport The adobe-brown terminal looms like a sleeping carabao caked with mud— you come up with fifty words to describe the different shades of green you saw rushing up from the ground, you scratch your neck, feel the grime and sweat from San Francisco or L.A. on your nape, you look out your window seat search for a plaque or a stain of blood— this is the tarmac where he was shot. (For a better view, go to Ayala Avenue in Makati. In front of the Bank of the Philippine Islands and the Insular Life Building is the statue with the stairs and the dove on his shoulder. While you're there, look for the statues of Lapu Lapu and Tandang Sora among the Ipil-ipil trees on Makati Avenue.) You pass through a fluorescent-white curtain of warm air as you descend into the unloading tube— a smile from an airline attendant, the long walk to the Immigration booth, Balikbayan sir?Welcome home. a stamp for six months on your U.S. passport, another ten dollar bill between its pages for the Customs people up ahead, Balikbayan? Do you have anything to declare, pasalubong, expensive gifts for the relatives? Thank you sir! a porter in a red shirt takes your luggage to the street level, asks for five dollars, the faces of a hundred people pressed behind a bamboo fence stare as you board a Golden or Metro taxi cab. You inhale the humid air, sweat is now running down your face. 2. E. de los Santos Avenue The Jeepnies are engorged with eight or ten passengers, each jeepney speeding and stopping with their fiesta of sounds, of colors, the bodies inside breathing carbon monoxide. You take the overpass into Makati— to the right is the long tan wall topped with barbed-wire hiding the luxury homes of Dasmarinas Village, to the left is San Lorenzo Village where you'll find the San Lorenzo Pre-school. Go to the house in Zulueta Circle, this is where the poet of Like The Molave once lived. His widow's name is Cora. On the corner of Edsa and Buendia, among the street vendors selling copies of Woman's Day, Manila Bulletin, or Marlboro and Winston cigarettes, you might see a girl without a left arm tapping on windows of stopped cars pointing to her mouth, asking for money. Every other year, before the monsoon rains, it's the same arm that's cut off just above the elbow, a different young face running up to cars in the same intersection. 3. Camp Crame and Camp Aguinaldo You pass Camp Crame where Ninoy Aquino, Jose Maria Sison, the poet Mila D. Aguilar, and countless others were "detained" under Marcos. The positive wire attached to the penis, the negative to the scrotum. This is also the place where more than a million people said "no" to the Dictator. You may still hear stories about the tear gas, the armored personnel vehicles, the ordinary people who would not move out of the way. They say that for three days the electricity to the whole city was turned off but the people still fought for freedom, sang songs to each other around bonfires, made love by candle light.