WE should be happy today. This week we should be celebrating an unlikely anniversary—the declaration of a lockdown, the onset of a pandemic.
I was writing this on the 15th of March, 2023, as a survivor of a dreadful virus that stopped the world. You are reading this, a three-year veteran of that war that closed down countries like factories that had gone bankrupt.
Some personal notes: I was in Manila attending a meeting when I found out on the second day of that event that two of our committee members had left for the airport in haste before the airports were, according to them, to be shut down. I do not recall anymore what we did that day in the hotel; I remember going home to my apartment at four in the afternoon and standing in front of the mess in the living room. My mind was not working and the notion of airports shuttered did not make sense. The idea also that a big metropolis would go on a lockdown was unthinkable. They were new ideas, the right bed of anxieties.
That afternoon, I went out and rumors were flying fast. An area around a huge hospital had been closed to traffic. Infections had begun. Infections of something that was yet undefined. It would remain undefined, contested in fact, till the present. Loida, the neighbor who cooked the best barbecue stand around the Morato area, called me up. Prof! What will happen during lockdown? And this was my response: I don’t know. To myself: how do we lock a city down?
The 13th of March saw me in the night bus that always took me to the metropolis from our old city of Naga in southern Luzon. Would we be stopped at the boundary between ah, what is the last city of Metro Manila? Laguna? Cavite? Alabang? Would there be checkpoints along the way? What if you have a fever? Would they be able to check it?
The bus left the terminal at 9 in the evening. It would be our last bus ride for three years. The buses would never be allowed to return to Manila. The drivers would lose their jobs. The businesses along the South Road (and the North Road and all the roads) would cease.
Near the boundary between Quezon province and Bicol, in Tagkawayan, I received an SMS from a former student. Sir, should I go home? Are there still tickets to Albay? I remembered again my answer: Are you ready to leave your place? Go to the nearest terminal of buses for Bicol and take any of the buses. Aircon or non-aircon. Or else, you would be stuck in Manila.
In Naga, there were already messages on our phone: If you are coming from Manila, go to the nearest hospital or quarantine yourself in a hotel or in your room. I opted to go to a hotel. In the hotel were a few women with their foreigner husbands stuck because many flights had already been canceled. Day in and day out, they were contacting some tourism guys giving them information on how they could leave the city, and then the country. Members of a band playing retro disco music in the only bistro in the city were always together at the table, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The chairs and tables near the lobby were all spaced far from each other. This was no time for socializing.
In my room, the only connection I had to the world was CNN. But I soon stopped watching the updates showing men and women having breathing difficulties because I found myself one night, holding my throat and finding myself unable to breathe.
One evening, when the moon was full, I stepped out of the hotel (do not go far, the security guard advised) and stood in the middle of the road. There were no vehicles running. The city was empty of cars and people. It was eight in the evening.
The next months would see a world changed. The people were kinder. Food delivery men became our new angels. They earned our gratitude and our newly minted sweetness. In the meantime, the disease was just about to peak. We talked about vaccines. I waited for an assurance that the scientific world had reached a modicum of sophistication that they could develop antidotes for the affliction. I wanted them to make pronouncements that would be reassuring but they were blunt. Not in a year. Maybe in two years. What to do in the meantime?
Then people started dying. It felt like easy to die. When we woke up, we would place our palm against our neck. Do I have a fever? Then more deaths came closer to our neighborhood, and family. An uncle passed on. The cause: Covid-19. This uncle’s son followed. We sent prayers and condolences. We could not travel. No one could travel then.
I began to convince friends to document what was happening to us, our surroundings. Photograph the red and white tarps announcing a house had occupants who were infected by the virus. In my street alone I woke up one day to see the scarlet letters on the gate of a house to my left and right. Take pictures of city streets leading out to highways barricaded and guarded. It was an era of discovery: towns and cities had borders to control. Also, consider the interest in plants that surged overnight. People were advised not to speak loudly if you happened to be outside your home. This meant a solution had been finally reached to address our vociferous communities. This meant the videoke was to be killed! This meant also that from now on, we would be known by our eyes, the mask covering our faces. This meant we were not the rulers of the universe.
Happy Third Anniversary Fragile Humans!
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com
Image credits: Jimbo Albano