Desert Diya

By Adèle Ogiér Jones

Hana’s life in a tropical village is predictable and simple until she answers an advertisement. A journey with new friends, to new places, and training for work which she dreams will bring a better life for her family start the story. Work placements which seem so suitable to start with, step by step lead to a murder, judgement and ‘

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Lee
• Release date: Dec 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781760412562

Book preview

Prologue

December 1999

A sharp tapping sound echoes through the early evening air – fingernail against metal repeating through the stillness. The first prayer call wakes her. The microphone is on.

She walks from the window to the door and the door to the window to vary the monotony.

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Time goes slowly here. In the desert, time is slow but the seasons refresh us. It is cool again and the rains have come again. How the birds love to play in the pools lying in the courtyard.

Each dusk I hear my birds, different birds when I walk by the wall. I see the birds in my mind, nestling close to the ground in little bushes which come to life after the early rains. Those trees in the corner are homes for these families who are flying to other countries. If only I could do the same. I want to join them on their paths.

I dreamed last night and in my dream I wept but it was not a sad dream – not until I woke and remembered where I was. Alim came to me – a real lover this time but he was gentle and he called his brother to me. It was Oscar. They both kissed me and I was happy in my dream. Then my child ran towards me and threw her arms around my legs. She was very little. It was Rita. Rita was my child. At that time I felt loved and wise. I seemed to understand many things but I could not remember what it was I knew so well.

The waters licked our feet. Crabs, red and gold, scurried across the black sand, glistening with silver flecks, each grain sparkling in the soft morning light. We did not hurt them.

In the distance, I could hear rumbling from the belly of a volcano. Black clouds rolled across the sky and a little blue bird which perched on a branch near my head sang and sang. When I woke, I could still hear it singing.

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Looking across the courtyard in the early morning light, she remembers the clicking of the looms as women wove red in black and purple in blue. Here there is little colour – sand and grey charcoal shadowed by the dawn rays. There is no light in the yard to brighten her spirits. Even the pigeons which would normally cheer her seem to carry bad news today.

Her dry hands each grasp a bar. She shakes the iron in frustration and leans against the windowsill. She knows people understand, or so they tell her, yet with a look in their eyes seem to blame her.

She shuts the diary, stands, looks through the small window to the courtyard and turns, ready to face them.

The Journey

Chapter One

January 2000

Long ago she had stopped crying except when she saw again her mother and father sitting on the other side of the table, reaching out to her – but this is a long way into our story, a story which could be true. Some would say it is, for many parts they have heard in some guise or other, in other places and over many years.

This story, Hana’s story, was formed over a long period, told piece by piece, threads weaving in and out, a tapestry of light, disbelief and bitterness. This story takes place in a desert region but could just as well be set in cities, the tropics, amidst oil wealth and business riches. More like them have been told in other countries. Names have been changed for the sake of decency, though if we were to explain it at the outset, this is not a story about decency.

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Her friends call her Hana, a compromise between the Hanan of her own community and the Annas, Annies and Anitas in the other part of her town. She had lived fifteen of her years in Cotabatu, a small town by Filipino standards, on the southern island of Mindanao. It is tropical but a paradise no longer and perhaps never was.

Hana’s father, Janjalani, and his father, and his father before him were fishermen. Like many men in their area, he gave up this work when sea pirates and the country’s army made the job so difficult that he could barely earn a wage. They were poor people but proud. They are Muslim, called Moros after the Moors of Spain. They dance a special dance and dress differently from other Filipinos, proud of the distinctive patterned cloth they twist into turbans, cloth woven by their women.

There were other groups in the family who were fighters. Hana knew that well, though they never spoke openly of this, not now as their people became targets of vigilance and violence. Many people in Mindanao had such men in their families. They are called freedom fighters or the Bangsa Moro Army – an arm of the Moro National Liberation Front. These men, for usually they are only men, fought against a government which opposed them, oppressed them and moved them away from their traditional lands along the coast.

There were others too. She knew of peasants from further inland – farming people who for decades, maybe centuries, had worked and survived in the tropical jungle. The army moved them too. ‘Hamletisation’ some called it. It was a nice, cosy word portraying images of peaceful villages where life went on as it had done for generations. This was far from the truth, though. Peasant farmers and their families were moved by force. They left their homes where once they had been one with the land. Some formed groups opposing the army and in return many were herded together so that the military had them where they could be observed. Under surveillance, they were monitored in their hamlets. They were controlled but the struggle went inland and was internalised, becoming more intense as other peasants and workers joined them.

This was development, they were told, as roads ate their way through farming and traditional lands and an older way of life was destroyed. The roads and the army intent on curtailing freedom blocked anything that seemed like a ‘popular’ movement.

These were some of the players in Mindanao – an island with many groups, many disenfranchised. Catholic peasants, Muslim fishermen and farmers on one side, and armies carrying out the dictates of governments long since reviled by Filipinos and international communities alike, on the other. Then there were some, fearing what they called radical elements, intent on taking control in shaky pockets of the country. Add to this rebel groups with tactics attracting media attention, bringing the fight for freedom into the limelight, and you see the environment Hana knew best.

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‘You write like a journalist. It doesn’t seem like this day to day.’

‘But isn’t it true that your family and many families who live in Mindanao are suffering through dislocation?’

‘Dislocation? That’s what my family’s history was all about. You talk about pirates. Some say smugglers. We had friends who sailed back and forth between Mindanao and Malaysia for as long as I can remember. That was their job. Some families lived in Mindanao. Some believed that this was really part of a Muslim land until one president took our land and gave it away and then moved farmers down here from Luzon. That’s what people say.’

‘So what was it like for you as a child?’

‘We are a happy family. We don’t have much. My father and mother both worked. My mother wanted to join the women’s cooperative. There were Christian women in it too and even some sisters – you know – nuns who work with us. The co-op sold the weaving to tourists when they came to Davao and Zamboanga but they don’t come much any more because it is dangerous and now the sisters send weaving to the cities and sometimes we sell it to merchants who take the cloth up north. It is special cloth. Many of the men wear it on their heads. That’s how people recognise them.

‘Our family is large, I suppose you’d say – eight children living. All of us went to school. I did well in primary school. I wanted to go on studying but it was difficult for us to get jobs in Mindanao and it was strange for us to become students anyway. It is not part of our custom. None of us has spent much time at school. In my family all the children went to the local madrassah because my father wanted us to have some religious training.

‘I know all the families in our area. For several years when I was very young, we lived in a house built over the water. We built it high on posts so small fishing boats could pass easily underneath. We loved running along the planks which made bridges between the houses and it was fun climbing up and down the ladders to our boats. I was good at rowing when I was younger. My brothers taught me. Sometimes they used to take me fishing even though my mother complained. Once I was too old, I helped with the cooking or looked after my little brothers and sisters. I love the smell of dried fish and cooking bilis but I would rather have been out on the sea.’

She stops and gazes into the empty space opposite. ‘But there’s no chance of that now.’

She stops again and pulls her scarf further over her hair, rubbing hands along her arms as if she is cold. The naked bulb overhead highlights the pallor of her face and the deep lines running from her cheeks to the edge of her lips. These are etched from distress.

‘Are you all right, Hana?’

She nods and looks up with eyes which make me feel clumsy for asking questions.

At other times there are things the girl remembers which comfort her – the sound of the water lapping against the poles holding up the wooden house, and the smell of the cigarettes her father smokes as he sits talking with the other men on those many evenings in the warm weather.

‘But I didn’t like the heavy rain which leaked inside our house in the wet season, especially if the wind blew hard. The sea was angry then,’ angry, she knows, like her father could be, lashing out at everyone who gets in his way. Now, however, she mainly remembers the good things about him and the fact that he wants her back in his home no matter what they say.

‘One of the happiest times for me was listening to the men praying. When we were little and living above the water, there was a small mosque there as well. It wasn’t as beautiful or strong as mosques built on the land but it seemed part of us and the men would sit and chat there after dark sometimes. When we moved into stronger houses built on the land, I really missed my old life but I didn’t complain because my mother always seemed sad about moving and I didn’t want to hurt her more.

‘Apart from the chores and homework, there was not a lot to do but life always seemed exciting when we were young. Even curfews didn’t worry me because I always had to be home by nightfall. I wasn’t as free as the Catholic girls and it didn’t matter what time the boys got home, although when the fighting got bad my parents weren’t happy if they were out late or if they were with the young men in town smoking and talking. My family never wanted trouble, not for the young ones anyway.’

‘So how did you come to work here in the Gulf?’

‘Because there’s not much work in Mindanao and our country is poor as well, we have agencies which arrange work for men and women in different countries. Filipinas are hard-workers and we’re honest. You just ask any people here if they want Filipinas working for them and they’ll say yes every time.’

She grits her teeth to fight backs the tears, clenches her right fist, grinding it into her other palm over and over again. She had known of others who went to work overseas. It seemed a privilege for them in Mindanao to work in the Gulf and the new rich states in nearby east Asia. Here they were Muslims too and they ruled their own lands.

‘Men and sometimes women would come around for a few weeks or even a few months every year. People would give them their names and tell them the type of work they would like. I talked to my parents many times about the people who went to work overseas. I didn’t really think about going but we knew that people made a lot of money and sent cheques back to their family. Sometimes they would build a house or buy a shop with this money. Our friends opened a mechanic’s workshop and fixed people’s motorbikes and cars. Jeepneys would come there because the boys in the family did such a good job. They all worked hard but the money from overseas really helped a lot.

‘I remember one girl I met at school who had a brother working in the Gulf. It seemed really mysterious to me but then even Luzon was unknown to some of us down south. The Middle East, America and Europe could have been all the same to me. I had seen foreigners but not often because our island is no longer safe for them. Some tourists were kidnapped from a bus a few years ago. All I knew was that when people went away to work, they became richer and the money helped their families. I also knew that sometimes they didn’t come