In the Presence of My Enemies (27 page)

Just then another group of guys came into the camp. They had leftovers from the night before. But they weren’t allowed to eat them during the day—so they gave them to us! I believe God answered prayer to relieve our hunger that day.

Finally, we got to the last day of Ramadan, which calls for a huge feast. We had walked for three days straight, from early morning to late at night, to get to a certain farm that would have plenty of fruit and vegetables, they said. At last we came to the top of a hill, and there it was.

This farm even had a well, which made it possible for us to have our first bath in four weeks. Ediborah shared some of her soap with us. Everybody was in a much better mood.

We began preparing a feast. One of the guys brought a kind of large, light green squash to me, with a
bolo
knife. “Peel this and cut it up,” he said.

I looked at the huge
bolo
and thought to myself,
How is this supposed to work on this squash?
Obviously, I had no cutting board, and I could just see myself cutting off my finger trying to wield this big blade.

Someone had given us a spoon with a fairly sharp edge on it. Retrieving the spoon from my pack, I was able to skin the squash. It wasn’t a pretty sight by the time I finished, but at least the job got done.

And once the sun set that Friday, we enjoyed a wonderful meal for a change. The only thing was, it was cloudy that night, obscuring the moon, so Ramadan was not officially finished after all. We got to do it all again Saturday night.

Martin and I were sharing a toothbrush, which didn’t make for the best dental hygiene. When one of us got sores in our mouth, soon the other got them, too. My tongue always seemed to be sore. I don’t know if it was caused by stress, lack of nutrition, or getting burned by the hot coffee because I was too hungry to let it cool down.

We finally learned to skip brushing if we thought we were just going to make the other person miserable.

I knew we needed to be flossing, too—but with what? We realized we could accomplish this by unraveling the rice sacks, which were made from a woven plastic fiber.

Water purity was not exactly a refined science. More than once we noticed that our rice tasted like soap, because one of the cooks had grabbed a pail of water from the same area of the river where people were bathing.

A popular shampoo brand in the Philippines is Sunsilk. We’d say to each other, “Hmmm—this is very good rice, with just a hint of Sunsilk!” Or, “This
viand
[anything that goes on top of rice, like a sauce] is really good, with just a sprinkle of Tide.”

In fact, Martin’s humor released my tension more than once. One day as we were walking along a river, I could hear Martin humming to himself. When we got to the next stop, I asked, “What song were you singing back there?” expecting to hear some great anthem of the faith.

“Theme song from
The Beverly Hillbillies
!” he replied. We both broke up laughing.

On another day, we were climbing a hill, and when we reached the summit, I was totally exhausted. I flopped down on the grass to cry. Martin looked at me, and instead of trying once again to comfort me with profound sentiments, he pulled a line out of a comedy routine by the Christian comedian and singer Mark Lowry in which he mimics a talk-show announcer: “What happens when two women love the same man, and that man is reaaally ugly? Stay tuned—we’ll be right back!”

With tears still wet on my face, I absolutely split up. We just howled there on the hilltop and started telling each other more Mark Lowry jokes. I’m sure the Abu Sayyaf were wondering what on earth had happened to the American woman—she normally sits and weeps because her heart is broken and she’s dead tired, but this time she’s cackling!

Another time Martin entertained me by retelling a movie he had seen on his most recent long, trans-Pacific flight—only after all the big setup, he wouldn’t tell me the ending. I was going crazy—“Come on, Martin! Finish the story!”

He never would.

16

Silent Nights

(Mid-December 2001–Mid-January 2002)

Christmas was now only ten days away, although we had no outward reason to look forward to its coming. Our kids at home were no doubt busy with school concerts and parties and shopping—we could only imagine. We expected the twenty-fifth of December to be just another day of rugged mobiling through the steamy jungle.

About this time, Ediborah and I had several serious talks about Musab’s pressuring her to get married. She always said, “Is it sinning for me to do this? I already have a husband [although she was estranged from him]. How can anyone have two? Of course, sooner or later, he’s going to force me anyway.”

As before with the other girls, there was no simple answer I could give.

Then late one night, somebody brought us some hot coffee and an
apam,
one of the little Muslim pancakes. How nice—a midnight snack! Sure enough, a day or so later, while Ediborah and I were making supper, she said, “Do you remember when they brought you the snack?”

“Yes.”

“That was part of our marriage feast,” she said with quiet resignation. “We’re married now. Musab really wants to have a son.”

“Well, Ediborah, you’ve done what you felt you needed to do.”

The Abu Sayyaf had told her that this made her first marriage null and void, because her first husband had been a “Christian” (their term for any Filipino who wasn’t Muslim).

It was hard to tell how sincere Ediborah’s conversion to Islam really was. She told me she hadn’t truly meant it in her heart. But then out came some phrase like “I do believe in the holiness of jihad”—whatever that meant. I looked back at her with big eyes and mainly kept quiet.

* * *

Sabaya, meanwhile, announced that he would be leaving us for a few days to get the negotiations “wrapped up.” He was clearly unhappy that so many others had let him down: Solaiman, Doctora Rose, and even Arlyn de la Cruz, from whom nothing had been heard. Now he would go get a boat and take care of things himself.

As much as we tried not to think about it, Sabaya’s trip did raise our hopes. Maybe President Arroyo’s prediction that we would be out by Christmas was going to come true after all.

Several times he sent runners back to the camp with instructions for Martin to write a letter of complaint against Arlyn. The one dated December 21 read:

Martin,

There is a good news you just wait for my announcement through Radyo Agong about your release.

And regarding the letter of complain against Arlyn & Iglesia ni Cristo just do it.

After your release just do something to help Alvin Siglos because Arlyn betrayed him after all the efforts he has done about your release, and you must also thanks to Sen. Sairin Karno because he is the real key of your release.

A. Sabaya

Martin composed a letter regarding the Arlyn de la Cruz matter as instructed, even though we didn’t understand the deal and didn’t see how it would help. It was carried out of the camp. Like so many other letters, we never saw any fruit from the effort.

* * *

At every new place, it was necessary to clear out underbrush in order to string up our hammocks and have space to cook. In fact, the Abu Sayyaf were notorious for whacking down all kinds of trees, whether it was necessary or not.

December 19–21

Paul and Oreta Burnham and Mary Jones go back to Washington, again with New Tribes colleagues. Two of them, Kathy Ryff and Margie Clark, deliver a petition to the White House with more than twenty thousand signatures calling for the Burnhams’ release.

In one particular place, there was a tiny bamboo tree growing right beside our hammock space. Martin was ready to chop it down. I said, “Oh, wait, wait! Maybe that can be our Christmas tree.” Not that we had anything with which to decorate it, but still it would have been a nice symbol.

Unfortunately, we ended up having to mobile out of that place before Christmas anyway.

On December 23, two of the group went out again—and returned with a packet of letters for us from the mission! Bob Meisel and Jody Crain from the NTM office in Manila had put together a wonderful assortment in a box, complete with an inventory list that showed everything from peanut butter to chocolate-chip cookies to cheese to soup mixes to magazines. But none of the items made it to us; apparently, Sabaya’s group was enjoying them while out “negotiating” for us.

We read the list to Ediborah and talked about how different Christmas would have been had we gotten the box. But we didn’t mourn as before. We turned our attention to the letters, which were such a lift to our spirits—funny at times, poignant at others. Oreta Burnham had played stenographer for each of our kids, taking down their dictation so that we had a full single-spaced page from each of them. We found out the kids had gotten to go to my parents’ place in Arkansas for Thanksgiving.

Mary, my little sister who lives in Ohio and is the spitfire of the family, hinted at her efforts with government officials to get some action: “I have lots to say. . . . We are working hard on this! Do you follow me? I want you to know that. Stuff is happening. You keep your chin up.”

She also said she’d been to see our kids in Kansas. “I went to M[indy]’s basketball game this morning. She is also in the choir and has solos because of her great voice. She has good fashion sense and dresses cute. Z[ach] is a nut, and we have decided that we need to trade Z and myself [to the Abu Sayyaf] for you and Martin. We would drive everybody crazy, and be asked to leave!”

She also gave Martin and me an assignment: Think of appropriate boy and girl baby names, since she and her husband, Lance, were planning to start a family.

Martin’s brother Brian and his wife, Arlita, wrote: “We feel guilty having so much when you are poor and hungry. . . . We wish we could send you a truckload of chocolate.”

Our oldest, Jeff, after describing his football season, turned reflective: “I saw your videotape that the reporter took. I was happy to see your faces but VERY sad to see your condition. (Why do they cuff you, Dad?) . . . I want to tell you how proud I am of you. You guys are the best parents I could ask for. I’m looking forward to seeing you again. (By the way, Dad, that beard looks good on you.)”

A two-and-a-half-page, single-spaced letter from my niece, Sarah Tunis, included long quotations from Ephesians 1, James 4, Colossians 1, and Philippians 1, among others. This became our “Bible”—we read it every day.

Christmas Eve came, and I sat in the hammock singing carols, while Martin gathered firewood. Normally, that was my job because he would already be chained. But on this evening, he volunteered for the job.

It had rained hard that afternoon. As rainwater ran off the
tolda,
we gathered it to drink. Then that night, we had
sindol,
which is hot coconut milk that can be mixed with a variety of things: chopped bananas, chopped sweet potatoes, pieces of coconut. We also had marang, a banana, and rice with
viand.

December 24

Two million subscribers to U.S. News & World Report get the Burnham story, with a picture, as part of a three-page feature on Philippine terrorism entitled “Opening Up a Second Front.”

Eating in the dark was always difficult, of course—but we couldn’t start the fires until sundown, the time we knew any soldiers in the area would have stopped searching for us and returned to their tents.

The night was cold. Lying there, I heard a plane go over. I heard some of the guys still up, cooking “personal” food, and it made me very sad.

At midnight on Christmas Eve, the Philippine custom is to have a little feast. Guess what: Ediborah came over at midnight to bring us crackers and cheese! Wherever did she get them? I have no idea. But we were grateful for her generosity.

In previous years I had loved planning ahead for Martin’s Christmas gifts. Whenever I heard him talk about an author he admired, I’d go write down the name lest I forget, so I could buy the book.

He liked cowboy stuff. One day, before our capture, I was walking down the street in Malaybalay and saw a shop called Chico Craft. In the window I saw beautiful carvings. That sparked an idea. I happened to be reading the
Little House on the Prairie
books to the kids at that time, and the front of each chapter had a woodcut of an old Western main-street facade.

I took this in to Chico Craft and asked, “Could you make a shelf to mount on the wall with three pegs underneath for hanging things, and on top a carving of this scene?”

“Oh, yes, we can do that.” It turned out marvelously and took its place in our living room. Martin was so pleased with that gift.

This year in the jungle, however, I had to face the reality that I would have no gift for my husband at all.

When we awoke the next morning, breakfast was plain rice with nothing on top—not even salt. I had begun brushing up on the Christmas story from the Bible, which I had memorized as a kid. So I recited parts of Luke 2 for Martin that morning: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. . . .”

We reread our letters from our family and talked about what they would be doing on this special day. On Radyo Agong our captors heard greetings from both Doug and Brian Burnham and told us, which warmed our spirits. We took a piece of paper and drew a checkerboard on it, turning little twigs and pieces of foil we had saved into the light- and dark-colored pieces, so we could play the game. We spent a lot of time singing and praying and talking together.

Lunch turned out to be a bit of fish soup, hot tea, rice, and roasted bananas. Martin started not to feel well after that and took a nap. We heard artillery even on this day, but not close to us.