Hands of the Chosen: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 

Introduction

This brief autobiography is just the tip of the iceberg; I possess knowledge that will forever change the world for better or worse. Yesterday, (June 12, 2025), I turned 73, meaning whatever mission I was destined by the crescent and the "M," I have accomplished. It is available on the internet, ready for the taking. I have documented everything in my blog; the gems are in the 764 short pieces I have written over the last 11 years, and in the seven (7) books you can read for free on the Amazon Kindle Bookstore. 

THE CHOSEN ONES

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

 

LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL

 

I will try my best to be as brief as possible as I journey back to a place in time while I lie dead in my mother’s arms and beyond.

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH 1

I was born on the 6th of Ramadan 1952 to a middle-class family at a time when birth control was never heard of and the simple ability to read and write was considered a good education. My father, of whom I have no recollection, must have been a great guy. We had a large house, a lumberyard, and a share in a primary rice mill. I am the 12th in a family of 13, but more than half of my siblings died in infancy and early childhood. I grew up with four of my surviving brothers and our dearest mother. My father died when I was barely a year old, our youngest being just a week old. I was sickly as an infant (so my mother told me), keeping everyone awake at night, especially my father. I must have died or almost died at the age of about 3 months, so my mother said. My father went to the market and bought a white cloth for my burial shroud, but I wriggled back to life before they could bundle me in it. It was my first close call.

On the day my father died, my mother dreamed or had a vision of two men who entered our house. She was conscious, trying to take a nap on a mat (bed) spread on the floor, but she couldn’t move, immobile, whenever she tried. She probably had sleep paralysis. Each stood at one side of the bed where my father was lying sick. They spoke in a very low voice, which my mother couldn’t understand. My mother stirred as soon as they walked out. She got on her feet and found my father serene and dead. My mother...I presume must have seen the angels of death.

Lanao del Sur, my beloved province in the southern Philippines, is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. Lake Lanao is the second-highest lake in Asia and the second-largest in the Philippines. Its virgin forests, temperate climate, afternoon drizzles, fogs, and misty dawns are wonders to behold and cherish.

My mother did not know how to run the business my father left. She was unable to read and write in either English or Arabic. My father excelled in both. One of the things he left behind was a journal written in his hand, which contained a dictionary in Arabic, English, and Maranao. My brothers and I enjoyed going over it when we were very young; unfortunately, it was lost due to our frequent change of address. Another was a book on medicine. He told my mother that one of his sons would be a doctor of medicine; a dream of fantasy it must have been at the time.

The only surviving female in the family died while giving birth to her second child. Both mother and child died barely 3 months after my father passed away, leaving a very young son. My mother was devastated. She was very close to losing her mind, she later admitted. Left with two infants (my youngest brother and I) and three spoiled brats, she had a reason to go on living. She sold everything —the house and the businesses —and purchased farmlands close to her well-to-do brothers in the countryside.

She fought fiercely not to live with her brothers. She was an extremely independent, stubborn woman. Suitors came and went. Her brothers pleaded with her to remarry for the sake of the children. They reasoned with her, but she was adamant. My uncles built a bamboo hut for us in the middle of the farm because it was what my mother wanted. My mother later revealed that she cried for hours by the small window of our hut as she watched my elder brothers struggle with the plow and the carabao (a type of water buffalo) as they plowed the field. My two elder brothers were never meant to be farmers, but they farmed nonetheless so that we could survive.

My fascination with school began when my elder brother, Masturah, came home from school with ribbons pinned on his report card. He was the best in his class. I was too young then to enter school, but my cousins tugged me along. I still remember vividly how I was beating my cousins in the arithmetic class, a bit of mathematical genius I never thought I had until I was past the age of 40.

Before I could reach school age, we moved back to the city. My eldest brother got married, and most of our farmlands were given away as dowry. One of the significant events that has been ingrained in my memory is the 1955 earthquake, which I later learned in college was one of the most devastating in recorded history. Towns and villages around the lake were submerged, never to reappear. Even at this moment, I can vividly see the trees swaying in the sunshine. I can still clearly remember how I used to wake up in the middle of the night, clinging to the arms of my elder brothers as we rushed for the door when the earth started to shake. The aftershocks lasted for months. There were those times when I would wake up in the middle of the night, wondering what the stars were doing on our roofs, and in the morning, I would wake up with the sun on my face. We had been sleeping in the open fields and had ignored the frequent aftershocks. I also remember how my cousins and I sat in the field for hours, watching a mountain spew black smoke in the distance. Mount Magaturing, a volcano in the province of Lanao, had a minor explosion at the time.

                        CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH 2

 

I hopped on the rocks. It was an isolated part of the lake, not far from the marketplace. The morning sunshine was bright. I was looking for a place to come close to the water and wash. I slipped and fell into the water as I tried to climb down a rock. I was too small; I didn’t know how to swim. I struggled for air. I kicked; it was too deep. I swung my arms wildly, trying to stay afloat, but the harder I tried, the further I got away from the rocks. I popped out of the water up and down, and then suddenly, I was in the air. Two bancas (canoe-like boats) materialized from nowhere, with each rower pulling me out of the water simultaneously on each of my hands. I must have looked like a frog hanging in the air. It was my second very close call.

A few years later, my friends and I returned to the same spot and conquered my fear by learning to swim, where I almost drowned. My friends at the Medical College called me a fish because they said I swim like a fish. Fear of the deep, however, is something I have never gotten over to this day. (In the Red Sea, I never venture into the deep. I stick to the shallow corrals.) I was selling paper bags in the market at that time. I was all wet when I came to my brother's Mama sa Guera, who was selling betel nuts at a small stall in the market. His name means ‘Man in the War’ because he was born in the forest while my family was fleeing the invading Japanese Imperial army. According to my mother, monkeys tried to snatch him on more than one occasion, a story my mother loved to tell us to make us laugh. He changed his name to ‘Abdul Raman’ during his first pilgrimage to Mecca. He became well known as an honest, generous, and trustworthy businessman. For that reason, he was awarded several times by business and civic organizations in the city as the most outstanding businessman of the year.

My youngest brother and I would often stay away from the other children in the neighborhood when we played.  We could not afford a water gun, but a bright idea dawned on me one day. I walked to a nearby garbage dump and found what I was looking for: plastic medicine bottles. Mounted on a wooden gun and filled with water, the other children soon ran away from us. Squeezed harder; our water guns had a more extended reach. When other children came with plastic swords, I devised another idea. I found a broken umbrella and soon had a steel sword with a beautiful handle that sparkled in the sun like a real sword. It became the envy of other children.

I entered first grade a year after we moved back to the city. The year was 1958. I was so thrilled with school that I felt bad on Saturdays and Sundays. I enjoyed the competition, the fun, and the beauty of knowledge. I was never the first in my class, but I was always in the top 5, and I used to be the only boy in the top. Other children hang around me. We competed with different groups in and out of school. I never backed away from fistfights, but I never got into trouble on my own. I could not stand any of the boys and girls in my peer group being mocked, slandered, or bullied in any way.  We had designated places where we met for fistfights: a field of tall cogon grass with a clearing in the middle. We fought with our bare hands, and sometimes we boxed with gloves. It was fun and childish, and I don’t remember anyone getting hurt.

I could not wait to get home every time I received my fresh supplies of books. I would stay late into the night browsing over them. I stopped selling paper bags, but during weekends, I vended peanuts, chewing gum, and ice drops. I pushed carts and sold vegetables, fruits, and cigarettes. I sold balloons, whatever the current fad was at the moment. I shined shoes until I finished high school. I can’t forget my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Alvares. She used to give me free tickets and money as capital to vend chewing gum and peanuts during the city's annual provincial athletic meets and other school fairs. Her husband was our school principal. I must have been what we refer to as a ‘teacher’s pet.’

I was very religious, even as a child. I asked our neighbor to teach me short verses from the Qur’an, which are typically recited during prayers. I used to slip quietly away from my peers in the middle of a game whenever I heard the “Athan,” the Muslim call to prayer. If we happened to be swimming in the lake or the river, I would climb the most enormous rock I could find with a flattened summit and perform my prayer.

There were those times when we had only one boiled egg for lunch or dinner with the rice meal. My mother would hold one strand of her long hair and slice the peeled, hard-boiled egg like a razor. Salted water was served as a soup, and we were happy. At other times, there was not enough money to buy rice, so my mother would ask me to buy half rice and half corn and mix them in the pot. 

Children are not supposed to fast during Ramadan, but I always did. I would go to school and stay there the whole day. I used to sleep my hunger away during lunch breaks. I would sleep under the tree or hide inside the classroom while everyone was away for lunch. My mother would feed me during breakfast after sunset, and then she would scold me. She was forced to wake me up at 4:00 am for the last meal before the beginning of the day’s fast because I would not give up my fasting. Sometimes, a single tea bag in Ramadan would leap from one cup to another. My mother would hang the same teabag to dry in the kitchen under the fire when she was cooking. The same teabag could be reused a few times more.

I spent one summer vacation with my eldest brother, who had remained in the barrio after getting married. I was in the fourth grade at the time. His and my uncles’ business was to buy and sell domesticated water buffalos and cows from Balo-i, a large Muslim town in the province of Lanao del Norte. My cousins and I would ride the beasts to our barrio, fatten them up for a week or two, and ride them to Marawi City to be sold for a profit. We were real cowboys except that we mounted water buffalo, not horses. If no water buffalo was traded and none of the cows were tamed to be mounted, I walked with the beasts for the 3-hour trek.

We used to leave our barrio at 2:00 a.m. on market days, and by 5:00 a.m., we would be at the outskirts of the city, grazing the beasts so they would be full and look healthy for the bidding.

One day, I overslept. The other children thought that we had no animals to sell that day. I wasn’t waiting when they passed my brother’s house on the path. When my brother woke me up, the other children were long gone. I was about ten years old at the time. I mounted the water buffalo and left. The night was dark and cool, and the sky was full of stars. A falling star (not a shooting star) fell right before me. It was beautiful with a single streak of light tail that seemed to have fallen directly from heaven.

There was a section along the path where I had to ride through a thicket of cogon grass and a patch of sunflowers on one side, and towering rows of Marang trees on the other. Before I could ride into the pitch of darkness, I heard a strange, terrifying noise coming from the top of the Marang trees. The closest sound I can compare it to is the donkey's braying, which I first heard when I arrived in Saudi Arabia. I pulled the rope to a stop, and the beast obeyed. The sound came twice more. I nudged the rope, signaling the beast to move on, but the water buffalo refused to budge. I beat it hard to no avail. The beast refused to walk into the pitch of darkness. There was no other way except through the newly budding cornfield. I nudged the rope to my left, and the beast followed, riding through the field of newly sprouting corn plants, knowing very well that the owner of the farm would be cursing once he discovered the tracks. An hour or so later, I came upon another hurdle to overcome. I had to climb through a forested cliff with thick shrubs of wild plants, towering acacia trees, tall cogon grass, and giant wild sunflowers. There was no other way. I rode into the forest of total darkness. The thick foliage of the forest shielded the Starlight. Only the fireflies hovering here and there provided some relief that my beast and I were not alone in the dark, although, of course, it is the prying eyes in the cover of darkness that are terrifyingly scary. Minutes into the forest, something extraordinary began to happen. Every time my buffalo made a sound, ‘ngwee’, another would answer, ‘ngwee’. The sound came from different directions, sometimes from my left and at other times from my right, and it was very close. It was the animal’s means of communication. I was terrified, but there was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. I was waiting for a monster in the dark to grab me. One misstep and my beast and I would tumble down the ravine. I must have held my breath because I remembered taking a sigh of relief only when I reached the road over the gorge. Whatever ‘thing’ was there must have guided my beast through the forest. The silvery streak of Daylight was breaking on the eastern horizon when I rode into the field to graze my animal. The other children listened silently as I told them the ordeal I had just been through.

I followed my animal as it wandered in the field grazing, and when it was time to ride into the city, I picked up the rope. It was soft and wriggling in my grip. I shrieked, dropped it from the grip, and ran. I mistook a snake for my animal’s rope. It was the dawning of my maturity because from that time on...I was never afraid of the dark again, ever.

We lived in my uncle's old garage, which he owned, the Ramain Valley Transit. When his bus company expanded, he built a new and larger garage. He told my mother to live in the old one, so we didn’t have to rent. It was close to our school, so my mother agreed. He used to give my mother some money at the end of each month to help us get by.

Next to our garage, another house was where an elderly man lived with his two wives. The second and younger wife (the memory always breaks my heart) was treated like a servant by the first, elderly wife. On one fateful day, she carried a heavy can of water over her head. She was nearing the end of her pregnancy. While she climbed the stairs, she fell and bled to death. Her ghost haunted the family at night. She banged empty cans and bottles until the wee hours of the morning. She knocked on the doors and windows. The house was very close to ours, with only one body able to pass between our walls. We heard everything and listened at first in terror, until we grew accustomed to it. The terrified family finally abandoned the house, leaving the ghost alone. We had grown accustomed to its noise and ignored it until my mother and younger brother visited some relatives one day. I was alone. It was getting dark; they had not come home. I heard the ghostly creaking sounds of the windows as darkness fell, followed by intermittent loud banging. I lit the kerosene lamp and listened to a fistful of dust hit our wall facing the haunted house. I froze. It was something the ghost had never done before. We ignored her, so she left us alone until that early evening. Frightened was an understatement. I was terrified, but I was willing to stand my ground if she didn’t go any further. Suddenly, the lamplight flickered off with neither air current nor wind blowing from anywhere. I jumped towards the door and ran down the stairs (using the garage ladder), hitting the steps only a few times. When my mother and younger brother arrived, I was waiting in the middle of the road.

My mother complained to her younger brother about the troublesome ghost. My uncle tore down the house, which was also his, and with it, the ghost was gone.

I used to travel to Iligan City, the capital of Lanao del Norte, to buy peanuts and locally known fruits, such as sineguelas (Spanish plum), a tropical fruit larger than marbles in size with sweet and juicy flesh. I used to vend it on the sidewalks of Marawi City. I used to hide with other children in the cargo compartment at the back of the bus bound for Iligan City. Some conductors with a heart used to ignore us. Others beat us down, so we had to try the next bus.

One day, I got lost in Iligan City. I could not find the bus terminal. With a carton full of fruits on my head, I roamed the city blocks, but it was in vain. I was bathed in my sweat. Suddenly, I bumped into a cousin, Kasan Yusop. His father is my mother’s cousin. He was my age, and I knew him from school, where he also went, but we belonged to different sections. He took me to their house, where they have a restaurant on the ground floor. His mother gave me a good lunch, and before he walked me to the bus terminal to catch the last bus, we fished at the back of their house. The back of the house I remembered was built at the very edge of the sea, where I could excitedly see fish scramble for the bait. The fact that I remember it to this day must have been a pleasant experience. We lived in the same apartment when we went to college in Manila and crossed paths again in Saudi Arabia. He was a consultant engineer for a company building roads near my hospital.

At another time, I hid behind a bus bound for Marawi City. It was about 3:00 pm. I did not eat lunch. I felt nauseated and threw up. One guy seated at the back saw me and shouted at the driver to stop. Some of the passengers helped me down to give me some air.

“I know this boy,” said someone in the crowd. “He is a nephew of Dimal.”

“What?” another exclaimed. “The owner of this bus?”

“Yes.”

The driver came down and recognized me. “How do you feel?”

“I feel dizzy and nauseated,” I mumbled weakly. “I am hungry.”

“Let’s bring him to his relatives,” the driver said to the others, and they helped me back to the bus.

Zapacan is between the two cities, part of Lanao del Norte province, where many of my relatives live (even today)—my uncles, cousins, aunts, and grandmother. There was a big commotion when the bus stopped there. I was adequately fed, and the bus waited until I was well enough to travel. My grandmother was furious and threatened to tell her son, who owns the bus company, to fire the driver, even though it was not his fault.

Many years later, while I was in college (1974), the largest house in the cluster of homes burned down. It was one of the worst fire accidents in Philippine history. Twenty-two of my relatives, most of them children, died in the accident, including my uncle.

 

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH 3

 

I was shining shoes in the marketplace. It was a weekend, and I was in the fourth grade. My best friend, Solaiman Alip, came to me before noon and asked me to go to their house because he wanted to walk with me home and play after lunch. It was something he had never done before. He would show up whenever he wanted. My mother always expected me to be home before noon so I could sit in our small store while she cooked for lunch. Half of the garage had a mezzanine where we lived, and my mother built the small store on the other high-roofed half.

I was late, so my mother closed the store and went to the kitchen to cook lunch. My friend and I walked unhurriedly, exchanging jokes — the usual kid stuff. About fifty yards from our garage home, we heard the horrifying screams of people followed by a thunderous shattering noise. Then we saw a 6x6 army truck emerge from our garage home, an unsightly sight I’ll never forget. I dropped the shine-shoebox and ran screaming for my mother. She was shaken but unhurt. She was in the kitchen at the other end of the building. My youngest brother was with my elder brother in the barrio. The small store was completely shattered, and half of the building was a total wreck. The building leaned to one side, as if it were about to fall.

The army truck was loaded with picnickers from the Moncado Colony Park. They were preparing to leave when the driver lost control. The car accelerated backward at lightning speed, hit the side of the road, and veered toward our house, crushing right through it.

If I hadn't come to my friend’s house, which delayed me for at least half an hour, I would have been sitting in the store, and I would have been a sure goner. It was my third very close call.

I graduated with honors from elementary school. The Mindanao State University was newly opened. The campus was about 15 km west of the city, but the university had rented a building to house its preparatory high school. We attended the month-long orientation classes, and when the entrance examination result was released, I was number 8. Most of the top 10 came from my school. I knew then that it would be a lot of fun. We moved after two years to the outskirts of the main university campus, where the university had built a wooden building to house the MSU Preparatory High School.

I stayed up all night for the examination. It was my second year in high school. Our code word was 6 to 6. This means that once the code is out, we will sit at our study tables from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. We were engaged in a very constructive competition. Once the code was out, you could expect everyone to burn their eyebrows in the lamplight.

I stretched my back in bed at daylight. It was 6:00 am. I slept. My mother knew I didn’t sleep the whole night. She didn’t wake me up, not even for lunch. She tried, according to her, but I continued snoring. When I woke up, it was 4:00 pm. I rushed to school, and when I arrived, everyone was already leaving. Not only was the examination finished, but the school day was also over —an incident that most of my classmates remember to this day.

High school was the best years of our youth. I was elected class president during all my 4 years in high school, student government president during my senior year, co-editor of the “Sarimanok”, the only one-year book of the MSU Preparatory High School, and chief editor of the “Prepian.” Several years later, the MSU Prep High was closed. It relocated and renamed Marawi City High School. It was also closed when the university finally opened the MSU Science High School located inside the university campus.

Our high school days would not have been as memorable without the guidance of our American Peace Corps volunteers, such as Miss Nancy Crawford, Mr. Patrick Boland, and Mr. Luis Webb, among others. Nancy volunteered for a total of four years so she could be with us. She later worked with Dansalan Colleges, a protestant school, for a few more years. They showed us many good things in our very young lives. It is from Nancy that we learned to have free and adventurous spirits. We slept on dirty floors, hiked the mountains, and crossed rivers and lakes. We walked in the moonlight. We learned to enjoy knowledge. She wrote us poems, knitted sweaters, cooked Japanese foods and cookies, and encouraged us to pursue our dreams.

At one time, Nancy organized an excursion to a waterfall she knew for our school. We chartered two launches, crossed the lake to Watu, a town located on the other side of the lake, and walked part of the way to the edge of the forest, where beautiful waterfalls cascaded down from the forested hills. As I undressed under a tree to plunge into the pool, I paused momentarily, and a smile crossed my lips. I saw that scene (the waterfall, the forest, the happy kids in the pool, and the beam of light streaming through the trees) in a dream a year or so earlier, in 6th grade.

The New MSU Prep High building was several miles west of the city, so my friends and I rented a room in a house across the road, right in front of our school. We came home only on weekends and prepared our meals.

We were awake all night (6 to 6) preparing for an examination. It was 4:00 in the morning. The moon was blazing brightly. One of my friends and I decided to pray in a nearby mosque for the dawn prayer. Our school was at the foot of the hills with scattered houses nearby. We walked, enjoying the moonlight and the cool morning breeze from the lake.

I had almost finished my Sunna prayer when my friend called me to the mosque window. There was a ghost walking in the moonlight. It was walking in our direction. We held our breath. It was a gray mass of smoke like a human figure. It had no recognizable face, and it floated on the road, moving at a normal human pace. Fear never crossed our minds; it was just the excitement of finally seeing the real one. The greyish, fog-like ghost passed right in front of us. We tiptoed out of the mosque as quietly as possible and followed the ghost on the road. It turned left onto a clearing alongside the road. We followed it through a thicket of banana plants, wild grasses, and towering Marang trees. We stopped before we could walk any further, turned to each other, about-faced, and ran. We had followed the ghost into a graveyard that we didn’t know was in the area.

Two months before graduation, I went to Manila and Baguio City. I was the Lanao del Sur provincial delegate to the 1968 International Red Cross Institute. I was on the same team as Amina Rasul of Sulu. Her mom was our team adviser. (Mrs. Santanina Rasul later became a two-term senator during President Corazon Aquino's term.)

I was away for a month, and upon my return, I had to catch up on all the lessons I missed. Graduation day was fast approaching. I stayed awake all night; it was from 6 to 6. I was ready for the exam, but the school was not prepared for me. I was called to the principal’s office when the bell rang to begin the exam. I was told to leave unless I could pay my unpaid tuition fee of sixty (60) pesos. I panicked. My best friend, Solaiman Alip, took off his Rolex watch as collateral, but the principal, Mr. Flores, had decided. It was a set-up (I suspect) they planned from the start. There was a conspiracy not to give me the Roxas Medallion for leadership. I deserved it more than anyone else. I was to leave the school premises, pronto. I left feeling downhearted. I attended the graduation rehearsals, and when graduation day arrived, my seat was empty. I was in Iligan City watching Dr. No, a James Bond movie, which was being shown for the second time because the first time it was shown, few people watched it. I told my mother not to go because I was not attending. My cousins came, but I was nowhere to be found. They thought that I was sick or something.

I applied for a government scholarship. My elder brother, who was in Manila, assured me that all I had to do was get to Manila. How? I had no idea. I had an uncle at the Bureau of Highways. He offered me a job clearing the streets of the city (a janitorial job). I took it. I earned barely enough for a pair of pants and a new shirt. Then I received an errand call from Aunt Thompson, an American at the Dansalan colleges. Nancy had written her a letter to give me the money I needed to reach Manila.

“How much do you need?” she asked.

“Forty pesos,” I replied.

“Only that much?” she asked again.

“It is all I need for a third-class boat fare to Manila.”

I arrived home in the best of moods. “What’s up?” my mother asked when she saw the smile I wore on my face.

“I am leaving for Manila,” I replied cheerfully. “I’m going to be a doctor.”

Her face suddenly turned pale. “When,” she managed to say incoherently.

“Tomorrow.” I was surprised by my mother’s reaction.

She sat weakly at the edge of the bed and broke down in tears.

“How could you do this to me?” she sobbed uncontrollably. “All I have left is you and Omar. Your elder brothers are out in the world, only God knows where,” she cried uncontrollably. “One by one, you vanish out of my sight as soon as you think you are old enough to care for yourselves.”

I was heartbroken. “Mother,” I managed to say, “We can’t remain children forever.”

“I wish to God that you remain children forever so I could always keep you all with me. It must be that Nancy who encouraged you to be a doctor. Why can’t you stay at the Mindanao State University?”

I didn’t know what to say, but I left. I received a government scholarship for minorities, which included a monthly living allowance of 80 pesos. I could always count on my brother, Abdul Rahman, and friends like Nancy and Mr. Patrick Boland to help with other expenses. I was admitted to the University of the East, where I pursued a BS in Pre-med, and lived at the Laperal apartments with my cousins. It was very close to the university and at the crossroads of the Mendiola Bridge leading to the presidential palace. The bloody confrontation between the government forces and student activists was a scene that ultimately led to the declaration of Martial Law in 1972. The anti-riot police used to fire tear-gas canisters into our apartments in the process of dispersing demonstrators. We always had wet towels ready. Classes were often suspended to prevent further demonstrations whenever casualties mounted. It was an exciting time to be around.

It was the foundation day of the University of the East (U.E.) History Club. My history professor asked me to attend the program. I was a contestant in an impromptu speech competition. At the end of the contest, I walked away with the second prize. One of the boards of judges followed me as I walked out of the University of the East (UE) auditorium.

“Excuse me, Mr. Khalid,” she called behind my back.

“Yes,” I turned around.

“We all thought that you should have won the first prize, but we didn’t see it fit for a Pre-med student to beat our history majors.” She was very apologetic.

“It’s alright,” I smiled. I didn’t even expect to go away with this.” I raised the package in my hand.

“We are curious. Where did you learn your piece anyway?”

“Honestly, I don’t remember,” I answered with some thought. The piece I drew from the lot was, “In five minutes, deliver a speech on how Japan opened to the outside world.” It is the subject they don’t teach in Pre-med; I chuckled at the thought.

My four years in Pre-med passed very quickly. I was admitted to the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Centre (UERMMMC) College of Medicine. While I was moving my things to a new apartment in Quezon City near the UERMMMC, tanks and armored vehicles were parked at the street corners. It was a prelude to the declaration of martial law in 1972.

I was in my second year of medical school. The night before we left for a class excursion to Taal Lake, I had a dream of attending a funeral. The mourners in the dream were all in white, so I didn’t give it much thought. I was prepared for an accident, just in case, though. I chose my seat on the bus.

We occupied several cottages on the resort beach. We were all having fun when, at about 11:00, one of our female classmates was rescued from near drowning. We all came running, but as soon as she regained her composure, she started screaming and pointing to the lake.

“Oh my God, she is there, she is drowned,” she cried over and over, hysterically choking in her tears. Only then did we realize that she was not alone. The swimmers among us dived into the lake, but she was nowhere to be found. The water in the lake was a yellowish-green color. Taal Volcano, one of the most active among the series of volcanoes along the Pacific Ring of Fire, is in the middle of the lake. The water differs from the deep blue of Lake Lanao, where I grew up. I was one of the five volunteers left behind to find the body. With help from the Lake fishermen, we retrieved the body in the morning. They combed the bottom of the lake with hooks until one of the hooks caught the body. The second-year class attended her funeral in our white college uniforms, precisely as I had seen them in the dream. It was like watching a videotape for the second time when the funeral procession passed through the Pampanga Bridge.

My mother and eldest brother, Khalid, joined me on stage on graduation day in 1977. Soon after graduation, I headed for Cabanatuan City, which was two hours by bus north of Manila. I was accepted for a postgraduate internship at Paulino Garcia Memorial Medical Centre.

 

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH 4

 

I was invited to a party at one of the nursing schools affiliated with our hospital on Saturday. I returned to the Interns' quarters shortly after midnight. The Interns' quarter was empty. The other interns had gone to Manila for the weekend. The residents' and interns' quarters were a two-story building located at one corner of the Hospital compound. The building was made of wood, and between it and the hospital building was a tennis court where I learned to play the sport that would become my passion.

I was exhausted. I virtually dropped dead on my bed, the second in a row of eight beds, but for some reason, I felt very uncomfortable and restless on it. I got on my feet and walked half-consciously to the last bed in the row. The bed belonged to someone else, right below the window. I did something I had never done before. Soon, I was sleeping soundly.

I woke up coughing. The entire large room was filled with smoke. The heat was unbearable. There was no time to think. The jalousie window was opened. The glass pieces were in a horizontal plane. I struck the jalousies with my extended arm and clenched fist. I heard the glasses shatter with one single blow. I climbed over it, fell into the roof's extension shed, and fell to the ground. Those who knew where my bed was located had given me up for dead. Right beneath my bed was the kitchen of the hospital canteen where the fire started. The cleaner, who knew I was inside, kept screaming my name while he pounded on the windows to wake me up. He didn’t think I was in another part of the building in someone else’s bed. I'll never know how I broke the jalousies, including the mesh-wire screen, with only a small scratch. I was Superman in a freakish moment of nature. It was my fourth very close call.

The one-year internship passed very quickly. I married my sweetheart, reviewed, and took the Physician’s Licensure Board examination.

The Ministry of Health required us to render rural health medical practice for six months while waiting for the result of the Board Examination. We were given a list of Hospitals and told to choose three, in which case the MOH would select one. When I received my place of assignment, it was not one of my three choices. The guy at the MOH must have been waiting when I barged into his office.

“If you don’t go to the Lanao Provincial Hospital, who will?” he smiled.

I smiled back. “Okay,” I said. He was right. I was the only one in the province who had gone through the college of medicine that year.

He opened the drawer. “Here is your plane ticket and one month's stipend in advance.”

My wife had to stay with her parents. My family didn’t know that I got married immediately after my internship.

I couldn’t hold back my tears. I was in the air and above the clouds. I let my tears flow freely as I looked out the window of the Fokker plane. I must have come a long way from an orphan who sold paper bags, pushed carts, shined shoes, and vended peanuts. I was coming home with an MD degree. I smiled between tears when I remembered how I walked out of high school because I couldn’t pay my tuition fee of 60 pesos.

My youngest brother and cousins met me at the airport. “God,” I thought, “how I missed the fresh, fragrant smell of home.” It was 1978.

The road to Marawi City was not a beautiful sight. There were military detachments and road barricades at every turn. The Muslim rebellion was in its second decade, and no relief was in sight.

The military surgeon was on leave, so as the one and only doctor in the hospital, I had to look after the military ward as well—just the two of us.

“Just a minute,” one of the nurses shouted back to another, “I’ll finish this one and help you.” She was in the military ward.

“Who are you going to finish?” someone whispered coldly behind her back, with the muzzle of an Armalite poked at the back of her head.

She froze, deathly pale. “I’ll finish my work, that is what I mean,” she mumbled, trying not to sound scared. The soldier retreated to his bed without saying another word.

An old friend, Dr. Maimona Magayoong, offered me a part-time job at her clinic. I accepted. I needed the money to send to my wife.

I was living with my brother, Abdul Rahman, and his family, and my mother was also living there. When I arrived home from work, everyone was in a gloomy mood. A telegram was on the table. I knew what was in it. My daughter was born, and with it, the discovery of my little secret. A few days passed, and everyone was talking to me again. My family realized that I was a father, and it could not be changed.

“Do you need money?” Abdul Rahman inquired, probably wondering why I haven’t asked.

“No, I earned enough from the Magayoong clinic.”

“Go, and God bless you. Take good care of your family.”

I left for Manila. My six months of rural medicine were over.

“My God...why do you keep my child in a basket?” She appeared very small and fragile. I picked her up, and her heart thumping became almost audible. I kissed her for the first time and held her close to my heart for a long time.

“It is not a basket.” I heard my wife’s voice giggle, almost laugh. “It is a rattan crib.”

“Oh! Whatever, it looks like a basket to me.”

It was early evening. I had Norayda on my lap, feeding her with the bottle. Two weeks had passed since I returned to Manila. I had no work. My wife had attended night classes at Jose Rizal College, located two blocks from my in-laws. She returned thirty minutes later.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, wondering why she had come back.

She was grinning from ear to ear. She bent to where I was sitting with Norayda, threw her arms around my neck, kissed me, said, “Congratulations, you made it,” and dropped the newspaper on my side.

It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen on a piece of paper... my name. All the other names seemed to have blurred out while I was searching for and finding my name. “Let’s go out and celebrate,” I blurted out excitedly while the rest of my wife’s family came cowering over the evening paper to read my name.

The results of the Medical Board Examination were published in all major dailies the following day. Over the next few days, I received social telegrams from friends and relatives congratulating me.

Of the 22 interns at the Paulino Garcia Memorial Medical Center, I must have been one of the very few, if not the only one, that our chief of clinics offered a job to. He spoke with me alone and promised to help me if I pursued residency training in any field I chose. I was ecstatic. I knew how difficult it was to get government residency training. Aside from the good training and experience one can expect, the pay is much higher than in private accredited hospitals.

I packed a few things and headed for Cabanatuan City. Two weeks after the board examination results were released, I began working as a surgical resident. My wife and child continue to live with my in-laws. I came home on weekends to bring home my pay, which I halved to support a nephew in college.

Abdul Rahman returned from one of his pilgrimages to Mecca. I met him at my brother’s house, Masturah. He did not like what he saw with my financial status. He expected that, as a doctor, I should be better off by now, so he encouraged me to go to Saudi Arabia. I was in the second year of my training. My salary could hardly support my family. I talked to my wife, and we decided to try Saudi Arabia. Many of the doctors and nurses in my hospital had already left for Saudi Arabia. One of the nurses who was working on her papers gave me a list of documents I needed. I worked on it every time I was off duty. Two weeks later, I found myself at the Overseas Employment Development Bureau. It was crowded. I handed my papers to the secretary at the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health's recruiting office.

“I'm Sorry,” the secretary said. Recruitment was closed two weeks ago. All available posts are filled.”

“Why did somebody not tell me at the Muslim Affairs?” It is a government agency that issues identity certificates to Muslims. My enthusiasm crumbled.

“Are you a Muslim?” she threw me a glance.

“Yes, I am,” I replied, feeling extremely disappointed.

“Give me your papers.” She disappeared behind the door. My hopes were alive again.

I sat in the corner. The hallway was buzzing with muffled conversations. They were there preparing their documents, including papers for interviews, medical clearances, and other necessary documents to secure employment abroad. Most were bound for the Middle East and Africa. I thought my efforts were all in vain when I saw an Arab Man in Western clothes emerge from his office. He was looking for Dr. Nosca Khalid in the crowd.

“Yes!” I stood up quickly when I heard my name called by the foreigner.

“Follow me.” I did.

“Give me your passport,” he glanced at me while leafing through my papers behind his table.

“I have no passport yet,” I responded nervously, hating myself for not having worked on it beforehand.

“Work on it and give it to me. Please don’t give it to anyone else but me. I will ensure you get your visa before I leave for Saudi Arabia. My work here is done.” He said it with finality.

“Thank you,” I mumbled and walked out of the room. I couldn’t believe my luck. I felt like gliding in the air.

I wired home to the province, and Abdul Rahman sent me the money I needed for my passport and other expenses, plus a round-trip ticket to Marawi. I flew home to Marawi to see my mother and relatives before leaving. Abdul Rahman saw me off until Cebu City (central Philippines) and shopped for whatever I needed for my foreign employment. He knew I had no money, so I didn’t have to ask. A month after I started working on my papers, I departed for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia via AIR FRANCE. I had a one-day stopover in Karachi and had a chance to walk around before our Saudia Airlines connecting flight to Riyadh.

Zahran Al Janoub is a small town in the Assir Mountains, 16 kilometers from the border with North Yemen and 180 kilometers from Abha, the newly emerging summer capital of Saudi Arabia. In the East, 100 kilometers away is Najran, a Judeo-Christian town before the advent of Islam. The air is dry, and the climate is temperate. It’s cool throughout the year. The mountains, valleys, canyons, and rock formations are wonderfully beautiful. It is home to creatures not found in the Philippines, like scorpions, wolves, wild rabbits, and porcupines. The highlands and deep valleys are home to the Tihama tribes, located along the undefined borders of Saudi Arabia and Northern Yemen. This part of the Arabian Peninsula is known in many old books as Arabia Felix. Rainfall comes between January and April. The rainfall of 1982 and 1983 was more of a freak of nature (El Nino) than usual. It lasted for months, twice in a row. Roads and bridges were washed away in the mountains. Our hospital was abandoned when it buckled under the rain. A foot thick of hail covered the streets many times, and as a newcomer, I thought it was a natural phenomenon in this town, but the intensity of the rain and hail was never seen again more than ten years hence (to the writing of this book). Our hospital relocated from one rented house to another, searching for a more comfortable location, until it eventually rented a newly built four-story Hotel and converted it into a hospital.

Most of the houses in this town are made of mud bricks, but everything changed in the years that followed. The oil money was a magic wand that transformed the landscape. Hills were flattened to give way to high-rise buildings, new roads, and business establishments. Cars of all kinds and brands from all over the world slowly but steadily filled the streets year by year.

I bought a second-hand Mazda 808 sports car. My wife and Norayda came the following year.

Nawal was born in 1982, and Naira was born 11 months later. Nader was born in 1988. I watched my family grow with fascination. We went to Mecca several times to perform Umrah, a 12-hour drive each way. We went to the Red Sea to sleep on the beach and catch fish. It was the best day of our lives. I thought the adventure would never end. I enrolled Norayda-Shinab in the province and taught her at home until she was in the fourth grade. Overnight, I realized that my children had grown up. I had to send them to school. The holiday was over. I remember my mother. “I wish,” she had said between tears, “that you remain children forever.”

In 1987, the Neonatologist resigned. The hospital director persuaded me to accept the job. I panicked. I went to the Abha General Hospital for training. I read everything and anything on the subject. I wrote letters to bookstores and publishers in Europe, India, Singapore, and the United States. When I went on my annual leave, I browsed the bookshops in Manila for books on Pediatrics and Neonatology.

The hospital driver came to my apartment in response to an emergency call. In the ER, I found an infant lying on the ER bed, completely blue and without any signs of life. The ER doctors, nurses, and the child's father stood around the bed. One of the Egyptian doctors gave me a short rundown of what happened as I walked towards the group. The infant was well when the father found her in bed, but she was blue and not breathing. They lived in a village 15-20 minutes away. SIDS came into my mind. They have given her up for dead.

“Why did you call me?” I whispered into the ear of the doctor who had sent for me. “I am supposed to see neonates 28 days and below. This infant is more than one month old. You should have called the pediatrician.”

The supposedly dead infant took one last effort to gasp for air, which shook me into action. “She is alive,” I screamed. “Pick her up,” I shouted to the nurse behind me and ran to the NICU on the second floor. The nurse followed me with the limp infant dangling from her arms. I did CPR, inserted the endotracheal tube, and did manual ventilation until the tiny infant was breathing by herself. She died or had cardio-respiratory arrest five times more during the night. The last time I was called to the hospital was at 3:00 am. We had no ventilating machine and no ABC machine, meaning we had no respiratory/acid-base profile of her...In other words, we did everything based on a hunch. The resident on duty pronounced the infant dead on the chart, but sent for me just the same, as per hospital protocol. I walked into the NICU unhurriedly.

“Hi, doc,” Helen glanced at me from the gossip magazine she was reading. She sat by the incubator, her left hand performing cardiac massage while her right hand held the magazine she was reading.

 

“Hi,” I shot back. “How is she?”

“She is not breathing, but she has faint cardiac beats, so I continued doing cardiac massage.”

She was completely blue, bluer than when I saw her in the ER. I did CPR again, inserted the endotracheal tube, and suctioned deeper into the trachea through the ET tube. I suctioned some milk, as I suspected. She was breathing again more regularly when I left. There was nothing more I could do.

“How is she?” the father asked at 9:00 a.m. I was in the clinic.

“She is very ill. She may go anytime,” I replied with all the empathy I could muster.

“When can I get the body?” he again asked. He had prepared himself and probably the rest of the family.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why don’t you drop every hour or two, and we’ll see.”

The third time the father came to ask, I said, “I’m not sure, she has not only improved but she is sucking milk and crying weakly.”

The gloom on his face suddenly brightened and gave way to a smile I’ll never forget.

Three days later, Khadra was ready to go home as if nothing had happened except for the black hematoma marks on her chest, remnants of the enthusiastic cardiac massage, which no doubt kept her alive and prevented the side effects of cerebral anoxia.

We gave her a send-off party with the hospital director attending before we let her go. She was our first miracle baby.

A 900-gram neonate was born to a mother who had always had habitual abortion. They went to several obstetricians in the kingdom and Egypt. Everything possible was tried, but she never reached term, and the fetuses always died. The parents did not expect anything different from this one, but two months and two weeks later, I handed the father a lively, healthy infant girl. She remains the only child to this day.

Sultan weighed only 750 grams. He was the smallest to have survived in our nursery. We didn’t do anything special for him. He refused to go, but we had to keep him on oxygen for two months. Unfortunately, I learned several years later that he had retrolental fibroplasia, a retinopathy of prematurity due to prolonged exposure to oxygen. The ophthalmologist who followed up on the case in the nursery didn’t see it coming. He is blind. Surgery was performed on one eye at King Khalid Eye Specialist Hospital in Riyadh, one of the world's best, but it was unsuccessful. He was a very handsome 7-year-old boy the last time I saw him.

I could no longer keep my children from school, so I had to let them go. All of a sudden, I found myself alone again. I engrossed myself with my old vices of reading and writing. I covered the faraway Primary Health Care Centers whenever one of the doctors went on leave. I requested to be permanently assigned to the dispensary, but the hospital director refused.

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH 5

 

I was caught between cars driving no faster than 60 km /h. There were three cars in front and another one behind me, all of them probably from the town or a village nearby, because none of them seemed to be in a hurry.

Since I was still an hour away from my destination, I wanted to drive ahead, so I turned the wheel to the opposite lane. A white car was coming in the opposite direction, so I changed my mind and decided to drive back to my lane. Before I could, however, I heard a shattering noise and saw two cars collide in my side view mirror. There was a car speeding behind me that was driving so fast it wasn’t in my view the last time I looked in the mirror. It was about to hit me with a force that would have killed me, but before he could, the car coming in the opposite direction hit him on the driver’s side and knocked him off the road.

I continued driving, but my hands and legs were shaking the entire time. None of the cars stopped, so I didn’t stop either. We were still in the town, a few blocks from the town’s 150-bed Hospital.

Two days after the accident (Friday, a weekend in KSA), I played tennis with the Filipino X-ray technician at the hospital’s tennis court. I asked him if he had been involved in the accident the other day.

“One of the drivers,” he said, “died on the spot with the wheel crushing against his chest.” I felt sad.

The real mystery was how I found myself at that spot at the exact moment, as if it were clockwork. I should never have been there in the first place, but a series of events that week can only be described as weird, really weird, in a way that if only one of those events had not happened, I would never have been in that exact spot.

An hour and a half before that accident, I was inside my car. I purchased some things from the department/grocery store. I was ready to drive away, but I thought, 'I'll buy a burger, so I won't have to cook dinner when I get home.' I alighted from my car and walked to the “Herfy Burger Restaurant” beside the Department store. I bought a giant burger, drank the Coke, ate the French fries, and had the burger wrapped. I must have been in the restaurant for at least 20 minutes, meaning that if I hadn't considered buying the burger, I wouldn't have been in that spot at the exact moment the accident occurred. With many other players, I was a programmed robot for the week with mind-boggling precision, but the question remains: why would God sacrifice the life of another to preserve mine…?

 

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH 6

 

ASTRAL PROJECTIONS AND OTHER GIFTS

If you have the natural gift of astral projection, look deeper because projection is just a minor manifestation of things bigger than you can imagine. The following stories are based entirely on my personal experience. I don’t like writing lengthy stories set in one location, so I prefer to write a few incidents at a time.

I want to mention the movie “Final Destination” as a reference point because it is unlikely that anyone has not seen at least one of the films in the series. When the movie makers killed the dreamer, they killed the only truth in the movie. That the dreamer was forewarned is no fiction. It happens; it can happen to anyone gifted with the power of premonition. It is astral projection in time. You can time a project in minutes, in years, or decades into the past or future. Some people like to tame the gift and do it consciously, but I don’t. I treat it like a friend that is free to come and go. Again, what if in the movie “Final Destination,” the aircraft pilot, after the altercation, had ordered the rechecking of the engines just for the sake of it and discovered that indeed something was wrong, and then fixed it? In real life, the dreamer would have saved hundreds of lives.

Another movie, “Unbreakable,” which was probably the most unexciting of all Bruce Willis movies, but for some strange reason, I watched it because I thought I was watching the perplexing saga of my existence.

Although I can have a premonition of future events, I dream only of those that directly concern me. Since I am not in a position to influence events of any significance, the gift is of no benefit to others.

I was on a flight from Abha, the capital city of the Asir (Southwest) region of Saudi Arabia, to Jeddah. As soon as we landed at the Jeddah International Airport, the plane, before it lost momentum, took off again. I saw the flight attendant’s face turn deathly pale, and so was I. I can feel my heart rambling inside my chest. As soon as we were airborne again, the flight attendant unfastened her belt and calmly walked to the first-class section of the plane. Her color was better when she returned. She is from my country, so I asked in our vernacular what happened. “There was an airport truck in the middle of the runway,” she replied very calmly.

Thinking about it gave me the creeps to this day. The plane was big, a Tri-Star. All the other passengers seemed to be in a suspended animation. Nobody stirred, nor did anyone speak a single word. The only two who seemed to be alive were the flight stewardess and I. Even the other flight attendants didn’t move. I don’t even remember hearing a single word from the captain over the speaker. He could have at least reassured the passengers for comfort, or why would any jetliner, after landing, take off again unless there is a major engine trouble or hijacking?

I was seated in the front row, directly facing the flight attendant, who belted herself in for takeoffs and landings. The plane circled the airport and made another smooth landing. People deplaned eerily as if they were drugged or were sleepwalking. They were either morbidly shocked or didn’t know that we had landed twice. I kept asking myself one question. Was it possible for the plane to have crashed if I weren’t in it? 

 

CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH DEATH 7

I was driving in the mountains of Saudi Arabia near the border with Yemen. The rough terrain was passable only to four-wheel drive vehicles.

 I drove my 13-year-old non-four-wheel-drive Mazda 3-4 hours each way, depending on the condition of the unpaved, rocky trails, to a small dispensary (Primary Health Care Center) in one of the Tehama Villages.

During my weekend drive to town, my car stopped a little after the halfway mark of a steep, dusty road that curved out of the mountainside. The slope was too much for my ageing car. My mistake was shifting the gear to neutral.

It backed downhill at a lightning speed. My brain went numb and confused in an instant. Fortunately, my car (as if someone had taken over the wheel) veered towards my left against the mountain wall. Had it veered to my right, I would have tumbled down the cliff, and I wouldn’t be here to tell the story.  

 

Tihamaland is Saudi Arabia's last frontier, which is little known to the world and unfamiliar even to most of its citizens.

My town of Dhahran Al Janoub (Dhahran South) is located near the other end of the mountain range that runs along the Southwest of the Arabian Peninsula from Taif, looming over Jeddah and Mecca, to the Najran plains. Along this range are breathtaking panoramas of upland towns and cities, the most famous of which is Taif because it is where pagans stoned the Prophet Mohammad (p.b.u.h.) in the early days of ISLAM. Some high-altitude cities, towns, and villages are 3,000 feet above sea level and have dry and temperate climates. It is indicated in some maps of Saudi Arabia as Tihamaland, inhabited by a tribe with customs and traditions unique to the Middle East. They dress very differently as well. Time yonder, adventurers referred to these mountains as Arabia Felix, a term that partly belongs to Yemen.

Pictures are mislabeled in magazines, and similarly, in some books written by foreigners about this region, the names of towns and villages are interchanged. Most of the books written about this region are picturesque, such as “Flowered Men,” which is titled because men of Tihamaland wear crowns of woven ornaments, leaves, flowers, and other items they fancy over their heads. A man once knocked on the door of our village clinic, asking for a cotton roll. His wife allegedly delivered at home, only to find parts of the cotton mounted on his head the following day. Even synthetic flowers mysteriously vanished from our vases, only to be tucked over their heads. “The Undiscovered Assir” is the book I bought and treasure with care because it covered most of “Tihama Qahtan,” where I spent the better half of my existence. Most of the tribal men whose pictures appeared in the book are people I knew, and although the names of villages were mislabeled, some of the images are superb.

I used to drive precariously for four to six hours through one of Earth’s most rugged mountainous terrains to reach the heartland of Tihama Qahtan, named after the first settler of these mountains. One of the first people to embrace Islam during the Prophet's time was Qahtan. The Tihama flatland, which runs along the foothills, is not far from the Red Sea coastal plains and is known as Tihama Assiri, named after the patriarch of its early settlers, Tihama Qahtan.

One hundred kilometers east of Dhahran Janoub is the city of Najran, situated at the lowland end of the mountain range and on the edge of the Rub' al Khali, also known as the Empty Quarter. When it rains in the mountains, rampaging torrents cascade down them, negotiating through valleys and flooding the Najran plains. It is likely one of the oldest settlements in the Arabian Peninsula, having been a Judeo-Christian city before the advent of Islam. It is located along the path and is alleged to be the favorite stopover of Yemen’s Queen of Sheba on her way to Solomon’s kingdom. It is the town where, according to some historians, whole families leaped into deep wells rather than convert to Islam. Other historians, however, claimed that the mass suicide happened long before Islam arrived on the scene. There was a conflict between the Jews and the Christians that, for whatever mysterious reason, prompted the Christians to commit mass suicide. I am more inclined to believe the latter because Muslims are never known to have forced Jews and Christians to convert to Islam, whom the Qur’an referred to with respect as the people of the book.

The year was 1996. I was on a month-long tour of duty at the Primary Health Care Center at Jabal Al Goul. The Bangladesh doctor had gone on emergency leave for a month. The generator was out. The evening was close to midnight. I climbed the stairs leading to the roof deck. I felt like I was sitting on top of the world. The mountain of Gaoul is one of the highest villages in the kingdom. It doesn’t snow in this mountain village, but the water freezes on the ground in winter when it rains. A few minutes’ drive from where I was is a breathtaking panoramic view of rolling hills and valleys. I shivered in the cold October wind. It was midnight. I thought the moon was blazing bright but not quite brightly, and a funny thought crossed my mind.

There is no use trying to fly reflectors into space to light cities at night to save on power. The best place to put it is on the moon’s surface. It is accessible, and placing powerful reflectors on the moon’s surface at calculated locations to merge the reflections is a straightforward process. The simple doubling of the moon’s brightness is enough to switch off street lights and reduce the need for home lighting. Imagine the benefit for those living in remote areas of the world. White paint or shredded reflector paper scattered over the moon’s surface may do the trick. Think of the energy it would save for mankind, and when aliens come to call, they will think that man is not dumb after all. I chuckled at the thought and decided to write this book...” APOCALYPSE COUNTDOWN 666.”

 

THE SAGA CONTINUES

 

I dreamed that I was back in Zahran Janoub. In the dream, I was having a lively conversation with one of my ER nurses, but the environment was unfamiliar. I felt I was outside the hospital's confines, which is impossible. Since it was my first night home, I ignored the dream as a mere extension of my imagination, a memory flashback. I was done with Saudi Arabia for good…

I had the front of my house renovated and turned the garage into an outpatient clinic. Adjusting to private practice was difficult because I had always been an employed Physician. I have always treated patients for free when I was home. I felt uncomfortable asking them to pay, and I didn’t even know how much to charge my patients for the various medical services I rendered. The clinic’s income was insufficient, and some of my patients were unable to pay. They were poor Muslim migrants who escaped the war in Mindanao. There were times I had to dig into my pocket to pay for the taxi for those seriously ill needing hospital care. Some asked if I could bill their children for the hospital stay. Others took medicines from my pharmacy, promising to return the money, but some never returned.

On June 12, 2000, my sister-in-law called me early in the evening. My eldest brother, Khalid (living in Manila), had a heart attack. I rushed to the hospital, but he was dead by the time I got there. When our father passed away at a young age, Khalid assumed the responsibility of being the family's head. He was like our father, adopting even his name when we entered school. His wife told me how, in the morning, he asked her to bring him to their favorite restaurant. While having breakfast, he told his wife that he was having a vision right then and there.

“I think we are going to have an important family gathering,” he told her. “I see all of my relatives, but, strangely, my dead uncles are there too.”

 At 5:00 in the morning on the 13th of June, I flew with his corpse to Cagayan de Oro City Airport, where his sons, my brothers, and immediate relatives were waiting.

With education being so expensive, the money I received from the Ministry of Health was quickly running out.

I tried building a practice in Marawi City, my hometown in the southern Philippines, but I was not earning enough to support my family. Another elder brother financed my education and volunteered to renovate the ground floor of his three-story building that houses his Madrasa School. If my practice succeeded even partly, just enough to keep my children in college, I would have stayed in Marawi City for good.

However, my coming home to Marawi after my unintentional departure from Saudi Arabia may have been destined for my mother

Strangely, a few months before I left Saudi Arabia, I had visions of my mother being sick, and I was there taking care of her. I saw the vision in my moments of solitude, sometimes while driving. I realized my mother was not getting younger, but she had always been a symbol of health. Barely a month after I opened the clinic, she had a stroke. I was in Manila to purchase essential supplies. I have to rush back to Marawi City. She was completely paralyzed, unable to speak, and after two days, she was even unable to move a finger. As if we had built the clinic for her, my elder brother, his wife, and I cared for her around the clock. Close relatives hung around to help, but after 3 weeks, only immediate family members remained.

I slept on the floor every night by her side, and although she was in a coma, I am sure she knew I was there. I administered her medicines, fed her through a feeding tube, and every morning, we bathed her and dressed her bed sores. I would sit by her side alone and talk to her in silence. Sometimes, I would say, “Mother, why do you have to get sick at a time when I am poor,” and I would giggle silently. I used to send her money while I was in Saudi Arabia, but she never seemed to need anything in her later years, when she was living with my brothers. She built a house with the money I sent her during my first few years in Saudi Arabia. She rented it out so she could have a monthly allowance. She would sometimes ask what she would do with the money we gave her, and I would say, 'Give it away.' My needy relatives usually approached her in their time of need. With my little earnings from the clinic, I beat my brothers to buy her meds and other supplies she needed. I would hold and caress her hands and say, “Sorry, Mom, you have to be like this when I am broke.” However, holding her hands was probably better than all the money for her and me. I had been away most of the past 32 years. Sleeping on the floor while she lay on the bed was my most significant moment with my mother, except maybe in those early years when I sat by her side well after midnight. I watched her finish the last few square feet (despite the sputtering kerosene lamp) of the floor mat (reeds/jute) she used to weave. During market days, I would walk around vending the mat I carry on my head. Except for rare occasions, I would come home with the price money of the mat I sold. The moment I will never forget of my mom, however, was when she broke down in tears the day I told her I was going to Manila for college. The memory never ceases to bring tears to my eyes, so 32 years passed, and here we are, holding and caressing her cold, unmoving hands.

During one of those calls from my cousins, they offered to try my luck in Kuwait. They often called to inquire about their aunt, my mom. They also sent some money for her. They volunteered to send me a visa and pay for all my expenses, including a round-trip ticket. Three months after my mom slipped into a coma and after my elder brother concurred, we concluded that the clinic was not working. Just when we thought my mother was unaware of what was happening, she stirred and uttered some noise the day I said goodbye again. “I have family to take care of, Mom,” I said and left. It was the worst day of my life. My mother was lying there, more dead than alive. I closed the clinic with a heavy heart, but Kuwait offered a glimmer of hope.

My family was very excited when I arrived in Manila. I told them I had closed the Marawi City clinic and would not be returning. I am going to Kuwait. I immediately worked on my papers. Five days later, I received a call from my brother. Mother passed away. Since the dead are buried immediately in Islam, I saw no need to come home. That would take me at least a day. I have always preferred to keep the last memory of my mother alive, although barely, on the day I said my last goodbye.

I called the Kuwait embassy two weeks later to inquire about my visa. The employee at the embassy was disinterested until I told her that I was a guest of the Philippine ambassador to Kuwait. With the change in her voice, I could almost see her stir into action. I was politely told that my visa needs no stamping at the embassy. The paper I received from Kuwait is my copy of the visa that will be stamped at the Airport. The ambassador was a close friend of my cousins, who I later found out was a member of the Ranao Council Inc., a civic professional organization I co-founded many years back (ranaocouncil.com). He volunteered to facilitate my visa.

Before I left for Kuwait, I wrote a letter to the Minister of Health of Saudi Arabia. Three weeks after I arrived in Kuwait, my wife called me to say that she received the reply. I could return to Saudi Arabia. I flew back to Manila. Three days later, my cousin called. One of the hospitals in Kuwait called me for an interview, but I was already at home in Manila. Although I didn’t find a job in Kuwait, I did have a good time. My cousins brought me (either with the ambassador or the general consul) to the best places in town. They would leave me at the shopping mall along the Gulf Sea and pass the afternoon sitting in the sun on benches along the sea. I would walk along the dock by the “Shark Mall” and watch big and small yachts come and go, maneuvering at the narrow entrance to the yacht port. In the late afternoon, I would walk along the ramp built towards the sea for strollers and watch water jet skiers do acrobatics. It was a breather amid my crisis. Sometimes, I would walk to the fish port and watch as fishing boats came and went at the dock, while vendors bid for their catch. In the early morning on Fridays, we would jog along the seashore. I had plenty of time to reminisce and search for answers. When my wife called and said a letter from the Ministry of Health of Saudi Arabia had arrived, I thought my prayers were answered. I was wrong.

Again, for some strange reason, a last-minute twist at the Saudi Recruiting Office (SRO) denied my return to the Ministry of Health of Saudi Arabia. I was back to zero.

Four years on…I was broke. Most painful of all, I was psychologically losing my sense of dignity. I borrowed money from relatives and friends in the USA to keep two of my children enrolled in college. My wife sold most of her jewelry. I sold my car and other properties as well. I began to accept my fate.

Strangely, every time I give up all hopes of ever returning to Saudi Arabia, I dream of being back in Zahran Janoub and seeing people I know in the dream. In one dream, I crossed a bridge over the ocean to Zahran Janoub, where old friends were waiting for me cheerfully. Stranger still, Zahran Janoub is not on my list of choices, nor am I trying to return to the town. It is entirely out of my mind.

 

I focused my attention on running the clinic when another very peculiar thing happened. After 16 years, my wife got pregnant. Months earlier, my children were teasing their mom and me. They missed having a baby around the house. They said Nader is no longer a baby, but I laughed it off. “Your mom and I are too old for that now,” I replied with a giggle. While I did the pregnancy test, my wife was busy with something else, not expecting that it would turn out the way it did. My children were thrilled; their excitement far surpassed ours. They picked up the phone, fished out their mobiles from their handbags, and started dialing their friends. They even sent text messages to my relatives in Marawi City.

On the day my wife delivered, my sister-in-law texted back, suggesting that we call her “NISHREEN,” meaning a little flower, and we did. She knew that all of our names begin with the letter “N.”  The joy was indescribable, and despite our financial difficulties, we were all thrilled beyond words.  Nishreen is not only our angel of joy; she is our angel of luck.

            I scanned the daily classified ads and visited recruiting agencies. A recruiter for King Khalid Hospital in Najran was very surprised when he learned I had been in Zahran Janoub for 20 years. King Khalid Hospital was one of our referral centers, where I used to bring some of our seriously ill patients. He assured me it would be, but I called the agency after two weeks. They recruited only female staff…another strange twist.

            “Several people called,” my wife said as I walked through the door. “They were asking for your mobile number.”

I just arrived from the mall for an errand.

            “Who are they?” I asked, “Did they tell you why?”

            “Old friends, and they didn’t say why,” she replied. She gave me the names of old acquaintances from Saudi Arabia who had likewise long left the kingdom. I wondered why.

            Less than an hour later, my mobile phone rang. The call was from Sayed Manna, the manager and owner of the only private clinic in Dhahran Janoub. The Manna brothers own the clinic, but Sayed serves as its manager. After an exchange of pleasantries, he asked, “I heard that you want to come back. Is it true?”

            I said, “Yes.”

            I was barely listening as he read the conditions of my contract and the salary he would offer me. I just kept on saying yes and okay, and then he said, “Write this number and call him right now. There is a visa for you.” My wife was stunned when I told her who called and why.

            I called the number. It’s Al Jazira recruiting agency. On the other end of the line was Sayed Qahtani, the Saudi owner of the agency, married to a Filipina. Yes, I have a visa for you. He told me to come on Monday since the following day was a weekend.

              When I left, Nishreen was 9 months old.

            Here I come, Riyadh…I murmured in silence. The overnight stay at the Riyadh Airport was too familiar to be discomforting. I missed it. The flight to Abha had not changed either; it was five in the morning. I had mixed feelings coming back. I don’t know how to respond to people’s queries about where I've been or why I've returned. I tried to sleep during the one-hour and fifteen-minute flight, but apprehensions kept my adrenaline high.

 

            The sun was rising as the jetliner approached the southwest frontiers of Saudi Arabia. From the scattered clouds towards the rising sun, a soft golden glow radiates from its rims.  It’s a new day…

THIS IS NOT THE END

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