Psalm for Angelo

Are we speaking as one? Are we standing as one to save his life?

Here is a puny man, a truck driver crouching on an immense world stage, awaiting his fate, his hands tied, knowing next to nothing about what is going on, his heart crying out, why am I here, what is my sin, what is my sin?

They don’t shoot their hostages over there, they prefer to sever the head from the torso. I don’t know how many more hours or days it will take before Angelo de la Cruz is either set free and allowed to go home to the Philippines or beheaded by his Iraqi captors.

I don’t know how many more hours or days it will take before the Philippine government accedes to Angelo’s captors’ demand that Philippine troops be withdrawn from Iraq. (While I was writing this, news came that troops will be withdrawn soon. The US government wasn’t pleased. FU!) I don’t know how many thousand candles have to be lighted, how many more prayer rallies and protest marches have to be staged in order that those who hold Angelo’s life in their hands would make the move to pave the way for his freedom.

Here at home, so many brutal words have been said, so much blame has been hurled. Name-calling, labeling, finger-pointing. The softening ingredients have all but been forgotten. One can’t help thinking—sure, everybody’s really trying to save Angelo’s life but... Are we speaking as one, standing as one, uh, doing prayer rallies as one?

Angelo waits while groups from a broad-spectrum of Angelo savers fall over each other. In the meantime, Angelo’s captors are getting more emboldened.



I will not believe anything about the final outcome of all these until I see Angelo walking free on Philippine soil.

This man with the angelic name and who carries the collective family name (de la Cruz, of the cross) that is appended to the Every Filipino Juan, is waiting for mercy, mercy and mercy. It’s either mercy or no mercy. There is no justice in all of this. Not from any side, whatever is the outcome. Not when a totally innocent man, whose family is living in near penury, has to be made a sacrificial lamb, so deliberately, so brutally. What did this poor man from Pampanga do to deserve this?

Long after he is released, if he is released alive, Angelo will have to live with the terror he has undergone. Terror will stalk his days and nights, for terror was the defining color of his slaving away in a foreign land so that his family back home could survive.

I hope Angelo comes home not only physically whole but psychologically intact as well. Only shaky and shaken, I hope. Not severely shattered.

Imagine Angelo imagining the sharpness of a blade brushing against his neck, hearing the sound of deadly weapons being fondled behind him. Death anytime, death anytime.

The line between despair and hope is so fine, it is sometimes much easier to go on a free-fall and be swallowed up in despair. If you have not looked despair and desolation in the eye, if you have not experienced what it is like to lose and lose badly because you are either poor or powerless against some overwhelming force, then you have not lived fully yet. Compassion is still just a word.

I think of Angelo and his helplessness, I think about what he must be doing now. Does he talk to his captors, does he talk to himself? What is he allowed to do? What does he want to do while in captivity? Does he want to sing the songs of his childhood, does he want to pray aloud, does he ask to sit in the sunshine and have pleasant thoughts of home? Does he regret anything?

Does he think his ordeal will be over soon? Does he think about the afterlife? Does he imagine a sharp blade suddenly cutting his neck so cleanly, it is painless after all?

I think of a stark Salvador Dali painting with the edges of things melting. I think of Angelo alone in that empty Dali vastness, pleading for mercy. I think of Psalm 137 and that weeping scene by the rivers of Babylon (which, I suppose, is the biblical Babylon not far from Baghdad). The psalm is about sorrow and hope in exile. I read it just now and I thought, ah, the psalmist of long ago wrote this for the Angelos of now. Somehow, I was comforted by it especially when I imagined it sung in a plaintive way by people I loved so well long ago and far aways.

I took the liberty of tampering with it, to recklessly lend contemporary distress to it. Anyway you could look up the original, or listen to the pop Gregorian version (Master of Chants II) sang by faux monks in velvet robes.

By the rivers of Babylon I sat mourning and weeping when I remembered my village home,
On the poplars of this strange land I hung up my instruments,
Here my captors asked for the words of a song,
My tormentors demanded a joyful hymn:
``Sing for us a song about the place where you were born!’’
But how could I sing a song about God and country in hostile territory?

If I forget you, my village, may my right hand wither,
May my tongue stick to my palate if I do not remember you and speak about you to the men who plan to slice off my head,
May my heart explode if I do not exalt in the thought that I love you beyond all my delights.

Remember now, Lord, the battles that have been fought,
The occupiers said, ``Level it, level it down to its foundations!’’
The occupied shouted, ``You destroyers, happy those who pay you back the evil you have done us!
Happy those who seize your children and smash them against a rock.’’
Here I am Lord, by the rivers of Babylon, by the rivers of Babylon.