She was missing for some three days. On the second day, I saw online her grandmother asking for prayers that her granddaughter be found. I knew the grandmother. I also knew her aunt. That youthful face began to matter. I remember calling her aunt, asking for details. She would be found. She would come back. Those were not empty assurances. I did believe sincerely in what I said. That was in the morning. Early evening that day, a nephew sent to our group chat a video of policemen at a grassy lot, in the next town of Pili. A disembodied voice was commenting on the scene—a body was discovered on that lonely, dark spot. The nephew said it had been confirmed. I knew what he meant by that and I hastily called the aunt again. Yes, she responded. It is her missing niece. Now found, now dead.
Our small city briskly reacted. Individuals who knew the young girl—all of eighteen—began posting photos of what was once a missing classmate, or friend. They knew her. They were together in Senior High, where everyone was expected to know everyone. They recall her as a happy person as all young people are assured by this universe to be. Give and take some personal crisis, big and small. All part of growing up. But not this way, not in this manner of violence and annihilation.
Social media can be of help, but it can be heavily toxic as well. Photos multiplied online. Assurances and anecdotes proliferated. Sordid details were circulated. The body was covered with a sack. The body was inside a sack. Everybody wanted more. Everyone was eager for details whether because they care or because they are merely curious. Human nature dictates us always to know and investigate, to be ahead of others, to serve in the frontline of facts. The line between inquiry and inquisitiveness has always been blurred in the same way that individuals can profess compassion when there is nothing there in one’s incorrigible intrusion but meddlesomeness.
The police spokesperson talked of how the body was in an early stage of decomposition because of the rains brought about by the inclement weather. One concerned individual did not stop there: he went on to post online a photo of a hand, the wristwatch still one, sticking out of a sack. The language of social media has a way of alerting us when images about to be seen are cruel to the senses but this individual (or individuals) forgot all the decency to the deceased. Once more death has become public and we just had to claw ourselves through layers of covering to get into the news. Something in us has to be satisfied.
Together with the condolences, the blame game began. Solutions came pouring in with the prayers. Add more streetlights. Ah, the capital town is dark in those areas. This is not the first time this has happened. Memories of murder started flashing by. It is the height of irony that when a crime happens, technology is our source of solutions, not morality. Why? Is it because moral codes have grown fuzzy while technology has been more visibly articulated in terms of functions and quick assurances?
People are now praying for the soul of the victim. And more are praying for justice. There is a call for an indignation rally from some quarters. These are all necessary, but not now when the family is grieving. Not now when, I imagine, seeing numerous people in the wake, and the family is burdened to repeat the story. What really happened? Who did it? Do you think she was raped? Each mourner, if they are not conscious of it, will transport Irish’s mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends back to the scene of the crime, by their questions.
Once the body has been identified, I remember what I told the aunt: Let us pray so we survive all this.
I know what I will tell her next: Let us act on our society.
Already, the greater population here is wondering why this crime happened. I find that question not only viciously naive but also dumb. We have always prided on our old touristic claim of our men being gentle, of husbands retaining their uxurious quality, of fathers and other male members of the family being avuncular. And yet, the social media betrays us always with our bigotry and anti-women remarks. The man who is bristling with rage at the death of Irish may be the same man who posts online photos of female athletes who suffer wardrobe malfunctions and inadvertently expose themselves. The group now threatening to march may be the same batchmates exchanging dirty jokes about women in their chatroom. The women—mothers, wives, grandmothers—who now cry over the young girl’s violent death may be the same women who believe men can stay up all night because they are men anyway and women (girls) need to be home early, and no excuse. These are the same women (parents) who warn their daughters of the dangers of the world outside, forgetting that the source of danger are the men who were nurtured by their mothers to be powerful, instrumental, domineering.
We will continue to pray for Irish, but there is a world out there we have to pray over and change. The perpetual light, as the old prayer intones, will not be needed anymore by Irish. Where she is, following our faith, she is free of pain. It is us—and this world—that will need to pray and act more as humans if we want to be assured that light will perpetually shine upon us.
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Jimbo Albano