In the Presence of My Enemies (29 page)

After she left, Martin and I prayed together and then went to sleep. It certainly wasn’t like any other birthday I’d ever celebrated in my life. No balloons. No cards. No gifts. No bedroom door to close behind us for a romantic ending. But in its own modest way, it had been a nice day.

17

So Close

(Late January–Late March 2002)

One morning while in “Camp Contentment,” Sabaya came up to me and asked, “Do you know someone named Mary Jones?”

My heart leaped. “Yes! That’s my little sister!”

“Well, she’s in Zamboanga, and she’s going to make a statement on Radyo Agong soon. I’ll bring my radio over so you can listen to it.”

What in the world! My sister was just across the strait in Zamboanga City? I had never wanted so badly to fly like Superman in my life.

We huddled around the shortwave there under our
tolda.
Soon the announcer said, “We have today Mary Jones, sister of Gracia Burnham, who has a statement to make.”

And there came the voice I knew so well. I listened intently with a big smile on my face as she spoke very forcefully for four or five minutes, expressing her concern for us. Our children were frightened after seeing the pictures of our deterioration, she said. She appealed to the Philippine government to do something. She also appealed to the Abu Sayyaf: “Please do not harm them. You have nothing to gain by doing so. They are peaceful people.”

Then as she ended, she gave phone numbers for our captors to call.

“Wow!” I exclaimed to Sabaya. “Yep, that was my sister!” I turned to Martin and continued, “She said very nice things about us, didn’t she?” We both laughed at that. We couldn’t believe that she had gone to all this effort and travel for us.

The next morning, Sabaya was back with a frown on his face. “They’re airing part of her statement again—the part about the phone numbers. Why is she doing that?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe she just wants to know how we are. Maybe she brought money with her.” I figured that should get his attention.

He wasn’t eager to respond, however. “Well, we don’t have a sat-phone, so there’s no way to call even if we wanted to. You write her a letter and ask what her real reason for coming was. Ask why she gave those phone numbers. Tell her we don’t have communication, but in the meantime, Janjalani and Solaiman can speak for us; she can trust them.

January 21

CBS airs a 48 Hours feature built around Arlyn de la Cruz’s footage taken back in November. Public concern in the U.S. heightens.

January 24

Six hundred sixty U.S. troops arrive in the southern Philippines.

January 24–30

Mary Jones and her husband travel to the Philippines, meet President Arroyo, and make an appeal on Radyo Agong for Martin and Gracia’s release.

“No one will see this but Mary,” he added. “We will forward it to Alvin Siglos, who will take it to Manila and personally deliver it.”

So I got some paper and began to write what I knew I was supposed to say:

Hello Mary,

It is the day after we heard you on the radio. Abu Sabaya came to us this morning. He is confused about your real purpose here in the Philippines. It is reported that you are being escorted by the FBI. You have given phone numbers to call. Does this mean that someone at these numbers is willing to negotiate with the group for our release?

The group wants you to know that we will never be released without some concession. Their losses have been great and they will never just give us up. They are asking for the return of their homeland, but since that seems impossible just now, they are willing to take a ransom, as they need to arm themselves for this fight.

A couple of paragraphs later, however, I began to write more personally out of my heart:

Could you please send us a pkg. with Alvin? . . . Could you send a couple thousand pesos [$40] for us personally so we can get medicines, etc. I need boots.
Martin gets thinner & thinner
. It is hard to watch, Mary!

This whole situation is so difficult.
Everyone
is being stubborn . . . we are caught in the middle . . . the Abu Sayyaf will not let us go w/out ransom . . . the governments say “no ransom.” This is an endless circle, and to be honest, we do not want to be rescued, as they come in shooting at us. If someone can’t give somewhere, we will die.

Thank you for coming here and reminding the world that we are
people
. . . we are being treated as only political pawns and it is very sad. You are kind and sweet. Tell Mom & Dad I love them . . . and my kids. I love them so much it
hurts
.

When I finished, Martin said, “Hey, I think I’ll write something.”

“You’re going to get us in trouble!” I warned. “Sabaya said to keep it short.”

“No way. I’m not letting this opportunity pass.” So he added a couple of pages. Among other things, he said:

It seems as though something should happen soon . . . but we’ve been saying that for a long time. We remain encouraged in the Lord. Many of you included Scripture in your last letters—they have become our Bible and we read them daily.

Jeff, Mindy, & Zach . . . it’s hard to know what to tell you except I love you so much and am praying I can come home to you soon. Jeff, I wanted to watch the World Series, then the Super Bowl with you (and all the other bowl games), but I don’t even know who played! Isn’t that funny? Happy Birthday to you!

When we finished the letter, we took it to Sabaya. Later we discovered that it did
not
go directly to Alvin Siglos. It ended up at Radyo Agong and was read over the air before it ever got to Mary! I would not have been nearly so blunt had I known that would happen.

Needless to say, the Abu Sayyaf never called the phone numbers. Sabaya was too busy worrying about Mary’s FBI agent. We should have told him that this was standard practice in any kidnapping case involving Americans; the FBI would have been involved from day one. But even that wouldn’t have relieved his fears.

Not long afterward, one of the captors’ wives showed up in camp with a story of having met Mary at a congressman’s home in Isabela, the provincial capital of Basilan. She said Mary was crying, had “boxes of money,” and was pleading for my release. It sounded good—but the truth, I found out in the end from Mary, was that she was never in Isabela at all. Zamboanga City was as close as she got.

* * *

Our food supply at this time was actually quite good for a most unusual reason: The armed forces were feeding us! A group of them met our guys and handed over quantities of rice, dried fish, coffee, and sugar. This happened several times over the course of a few weeks.

Why in the world did President Arroyo’s troops provide the Abu Sayyaf with their daily bread? We were told that it was because Sabaya was wheeling and dealing with the AFP general of that area over how to split up any ransom that might be paid. Arlyn de la Cruz had warned us about that. “You know, this is going to be a really big deal,” she said, “and everybody is going to expect their share.”

Sabaya was willing to give the general 20 percent of the action. But the messenger reported back that this wasn’t enough. The general wanted 50 percent—when his own government steadfastly condemned the ransom concept altogether. We weren’t really surprised at this, as over the years we had read newspaper articles about generals’ wives installing floors of smuggled marble in Corinthian Gardens, an elite section of Manila, and about their children attending the best schools abroad. Those things don’t happen on a Filipino general’s salary.

We soon learned via radio that negotiations had broken down. Radyo Agong often uses coded messages in public-service bulletins. For example, if someone’s father dies in the city, the station will let all the relatives and friends in the province know what has happened, since many don’t have telephones.

One day, the announcer used a tip-off name for Sabaya and said, “The bank turned down your offer for the house that you wanted to sell, and they’re going to come now and take the house by force. My advice would be for you to leave the house so you don’t get in any trouble.”

It didn’t take too much sleuthing to figure out what that meant. Negotiations with the general had broken down, and we needed to move along.

Just at that time, another incident gave cause for relocating, too. Assad came running up the hill with the key to Martin’s handcuffs and took them off. He was excited and talking nonstop, although we couldn’t understand much of what he was saying. We figured out that our captors had caught a man who said he was out “looking for an ax” he had lost several years before.

But this fellow had found the Abu Sayyaf once before, and Omar had warned him, “Don’t you come looking for us again, or we’ll kill you.”

Now they sat and talked with him a long time. They finally decided he was a scout for the army. So after moving us over to one end of the camp, they took the prisoner up the hill and beheaded him. We didn’t see or hear the actual event, but we saw Bashir coming back down the hill trying to get the blood off his shirt.

A little while later, Sabaya stopped to tell Martin all that had transpired. “I’m sure this kind of blows your mind,” he added.

“Well, you know my views on it,” Martin replied. “You know I believe it’s wrong, even if you call it ‘holy war.’”

Again came the standard explanation: “This was just this man’s destiny. He should not have come looking for us. But he did, and now we have to find a new camp.” This was what upset Sabaya most—the inconvenience of moving.

We remembered a recent conversation we’d had with Sabaya about a Muhammad Ali interview that had appeared in the December
Reader’s Digest
we had gotten in our pre-Christmas box. The magazine’s writer had been scheduled to talk to the famous American boxer at his Michigan home back on September 11, of all days. They went ahead with the interview that morning and of course the journalist began by asking Ali for his reaction to the attacks.

“Killing like that can never be justified,” he had said. “It’s unbelievable. I could never support hurting innocent men, women and children. Islam is a religion of peace. It does not promote terrorism or killing people.”

The interviewer then asked how Ali felt about the claim being made already on the news that Muslims were responsible for the World Trade Center and Pentagon disasters.

“I am angry that the world sees a certain group of Islam followers who caused this destruction, but they are not real Muslims. They are racist fanatics who call themselves Muslims, permitting this murder of thousands.”
5

We showed the article to Sabaya and asked what he thought about it.

“Well, of course Muhammad Ali would denounce this; he’s living the good life in America! As long as he has plenty of money, he’s not going to say he agrees with us, because that would ruin his prospects.

“But I can assure you that if he’s truly a Muslim, he knows about jihad, he understands jihad—and he appreciates jihad.”

* * *

We walked for hours up the river where we had to be more careful than on a normal trail. We always had to take the hardest route, usually through thick foliage. We would see trails and know to avoid them, for fear of civilians spotting us. From a hilltop, the Abu Sayyaf would point out a village in the distance and say, “We’re going over there. On the trail it would only take a few hours”—but we’d end up taking two days to get there, up and down, up and down.

We walked through water up to our waists, with mud and gunk at the bottom. We’d carry our boots rather than risk having them suctioned off.

We estimated that by this time, Martin was carrying close to fifty pounds of gear: his odds and ends of clothing, our hammock, the chain with which he was bound every night, some budget, plus one or two big mortar rounds, which they called “M90 mortars.” These are canisters at least three feet long that fit into a mortar launcher. He came up with a long strip of cloth somewhere (perhaps from someone’s discarded hammock) and tied it to each end of the “mortar,” so he could sling it over his shoulder and thus have his hands free. A lot of times when scrambling up a hill in a steep place, we really needed our hands to grab onto a branch.

Meanwhile, I was carrying perhaps twenty-five pounds, including a couple of what they called “M60 mortars.” These weighed four or five pounds each and were about the size of a Pringles can. I noticed my arm and calf muscles getting very strong from all the exertion, even while the rest of my body was weakening.

And the crazy part was, these heavy “mortars” never got used! We just lugged them around the jungle week after week. In a firefight, there wasn’t time to set them up and fire them; guys just grabbed their assault rifles and began blazing away.

Given the loads, Martin and I had more than one debate about which personal items were essential. Back in June when the schoolteachers had been so kind to me, they had given me a pair of jeans. But Martin asked me not to wear them, because Muslim men object to seeing a woman’s figure; I was supposed to be in the baggiest thing possible.

So I stuck to
pantos
while still carrying the jeans around. After a couple of months, we discovered that Martin had lost so much weight that
he
could wear the jeans. He decided he wanted to hang on to these for his release day, whenever it came. He also had a nicer, heavier shirt with a collar he had been given at the hospital. Together, these made up his special outfit.