JOEL PABLO SALUD

By Joel Pablo Salud

It strikes me as odd that I am unable to remember a single day prior to my turning nine years old. Stranger still is the realization that I can only now recall certain episodes, never the entire picture. It’s as if whole images in my brain had been erased. And where the first eight years of my life hummed vaguely like a puff of smoke, only echoes of old roads and houses remain. Long-term memory loss or just plain it’s-too-ancient-to-recall kind of thing? It’s probably because of all the places I had come to love as a child, the streets of Pasay held the most intimate memories for me.

Cities are civilization’s crown jewels. They lure the enraptured soul into its sprinkle of glitters the way a full moon woos the sea. It is man’s greatest invention, the one weapon in all of humanity’s years that had protected him from others as well as himself. More than anything, it provided humanity that one excuse to live together peaceably even while he exists for himself—with accompanying civil rights, appreciation for the arts, culture and individual as well as collective achievements, or even just semblances of these. Cities are civilization’s attempt to make individuality work for a collective whole.

Along remote and forgotten alleyways lie streets made of cobblestone, lit faintly by dark sky peppered with stars or an old lamppost aglow with candle fire. People often confuse these lovely sites as places for romantic, if not salacious interludes. It is nearly impossible not to remember such cherubic scenes without leaving a whit more inspired.

Not all places, though, were as strewn with magic like the ancient cities of Paris or the Greek metropolises. Some are earthy in a philistine kind of way, even menacing, casting an ever suspicious eye on its inhabitants. Pasay’s rough and tumble streets had a macabre sweetness to them the way I remember each one. Although they can hardly stand toe to toe with the cobblestoned walkways of Intramuros or old Binondo at the turn of the twentieth century, they were nevertheless lovely in a dark kind of way. Dominga Street, where I spent my growing up years, speaks of what cities have become through the decades: perennially damp, dingy, almost fugitive in the manner by which it treated its residents. The hollow darkness that seemed to hover over houses was reminiscent of the time when nightfall possessed some measure of ghastly allure, like eerie London of the Ripper’s day.

However, one can not exactly call it a chamber of horrors regardless of the brawls one scuttles from if only to live to fight another day. As a teenager learning the ropes, it was the thing to get into—infatuations notwithstanding. The bruises, black eyes, the expected limp, the bloody lip, the busted jawbone—all these served as medals for what, on the other hand, could be quite a lacklustre existence.

Yet, Dominga’s cast of characters and quiet symphonies made life in Pasay’s streets worth its weight in memories. The street was flanked by upper middle class and lower middle class homes, with the occasional mansion owned by foreigners standing tall among the rest. I was born in a modest compound of about twelve apartment units my grandfather owned. Our ancestral home stood near the huge metal gate, which opened to an eskenita wide enough for two cars to drive in. In the middle of a fairly small construction yard built for my grandfather’s workers, a huge mango tree towered endlessly into the clouds, or at least that was how I saw it as a child.

Mornings came in slow quiet beams of light and familiar voices along this patch of concrete heaven. Here, children smaller than bear cubs dared play tug of war with rampaging jeepneys. I recall the majestic kalesa—the Filipino version of the horse-drawn carriage—plying the streets of Pasay as the first king of Manila’s roads. How small the horses were—no taller than a few inches compared to a Mexican mule. I doubt if they were thoroughbreds. The rapping sound of metal horseshoe on asphalt was probably the thing I remember most about this old road, on top of that reek of horse dung that had all but freed my nostrils from its nightmarish grip. Everyday a lone street sweeper whizzed away the dung with his broom, wishing probably for his life to take a turn for the better. I can barely recall how he looked, but it was the sound of his footsteps—hard and seemingly angry—that had remained with me.

Roughly fifty yards from where my family lived was a small intersection flanked by what we would call today as a business center. A sari-sari store owned by an old Chinese businessman was the children’s mainstay recreational center. Before that, a botica stood beside another compound owned by my grandmother’s relatives. Apeng, as the Chinese businessman was fondly called, was a courteous old gentleman of a rather funny bearing and appearance. His nose drooped languidly above his lips, and his hair bore the happy lethargy of pig-tail curls. Soft-spoken and with a ready smile, he would in the mornings greet the children with a treat: small plastic bags filled with champoy, a sweet-sour candy, or some haw flakes. Apeng would be in his usual tattered sleeveless shirt and loose shorts, looking as if he hadn’t had a good bath for weeks. During days when the imp in us wanted nothing more than to make his life miserable, we would steal a piece or two of White Rabbit which he often left unguarded on the glass counter.

Across the street, a beauty parlor flaunted its wares for the women of the community. Alongside it, a huge bakery and pastry shop that sold affordable eats for famished street rats like us. I particularly looked forward to certain mornings when the sweet bouquet of freshly baked pan de sal thickly spilled over from the ovens and into the streets, drawing crowds. A peculiar yet personal favourite was a piece of pastry hard enough to knock you over if it accidentally hit you in the head. It had some unnameable pink coloring in the middle and tasted like strawberry. I never outgrew my zest for strawberries, every so often looking for it in milk shakes and wet cakes at the Café Elysee when I got older.

Even while mornings in Dominga proved exhilarating enough for us children, afternoons proved even more, say, delectable. After lunch with the family, I would rush back outside for a contest of marbles. Sometime in the middle of the third game, like clockwork, our favourite Chinese vendor would holler, “Taho! Taho!” Without thought to either sanitary or health concerns, we would rush for a treat of soybean curd splashed with sugary syrup. Minutes later, the ice cream man would appear and we would show the same spunk and enthusiasm all over again. The Magnolia brand was the thing to look forward to, although the regular sorbetes brought tingles to my palate like no other cool treat. As the clock rushes to children’s curfew around six in the evening, we would have spent a good ten to fifteen pesos for the various treats Dominga street had offered us.

Dominga, to me, was never anything but a safe haven. However, many an elderly in the community had pointed out several “sins” it had fallen into. That is why I can not in the same breath say that it was wrongly accused. Like any other region in the country, we had our share of typhoons, flash floods and our slice of earthquakes. I recall a time when leptospirosis wasn’t a thing to be feared and floods were good enough reasons to play in the open streets. If luck would have it, a child would get to bring home some dalag or gurami during waist-high floods to house in a makeshift aquarium.  

The older folks weren’t referring to that, however. As a teenager I was beginning to be aware of the distribution of illegal drugs in the area. Naïve as any at the time, I hardly thought it would rise to such a disturbing, if not debilitating, extent. Home invasions increased, and brawls among addicts and street gangs came close to making the headlines.

Somehow my family had gone past the hour of patience, forcing my elders to the decision that it was time to go. We left Dominga and our ancestral house in the care of those who stayed behind. Saying goodbye to friends was perhaps the hardest I had ever experienced as a child. Sobbing as I entered the old yellow-orange Mustang, my mother said, “You will get to meet other friends where we are going.” I’m now forty-eight, a writer and journalist and cursed with the social life of a cockroach. The only real friends I have now outside of loved ones and family are my cats. By some odd twist of fate, only memories of childhood friends remained.

Where’s the politics in this essay? Nowhere, except within the isolation that had kept my eye trained to look at people and events from a writer’s point of view. Detachment, little did I know then, was going to be the bedrock of my profession. Observation, a keen eye for details, noticing every sleight of tongue and hand led the way to understanding much of the nuances in daily happenings. Context, more than sheer objectivity, comes into play, thanks to years of watching people—the unnoticeable twitch of the eyes, the quick curve of the lips, tapping of fingers on the wooden table, the uneasy squirm, the unnecessary word or conscious phrasing of words, and of course, knowing the bigger picture—all telling me if the interviewee was either lying or telling the truth. Here, real learning came from watching human nature either makes a fool of itself or braves the ire of observers for the simple love of truth.

There is nothing good or bad in being humanity’s audience because you get to learn more about yourself than anyone else.

2 March 2012

Pasong Tamo

Makati City