SHARMOTA

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Thursday night, I was expecting a call from an Arab man I met at the coffee shop. It was already 10:00 PM and still no word from him despite our agreement to meet at 8. So I dialed his number on the calling card. Three rings  and someone picked up. 

 

“Marhaba, habibi,” I greeted.

 

“Hello?” A woman’s voice said from the other line.

 

I listened for a little while.

 

“Hello? Filipini?” 

 

I wasn’t mistaken. It wasn’t a voice of a man. I merely listened. I didn’t answer.

 

“Sharmota! Filipini! Sharmota!” furious scream of the woman.

 

I dropped the call. When it rang again, I turned off the phone. I changed my number the following day. 

 

The next week, I hung out in the same coffee shop. Another Arab man approached me. He handed me his calling card.

 

I hope he isn’t married so that I don’t get cussed at and called a whore again. 

But, “The whore shouts: We’re all the same whores!”*

 

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*translation of the excerpt (“Sigaw ng puta: Pare-pareho naman tayong puta!”) from the poem “Lahat ng Hindi Ko Kailangang Malaman, Natutunan Ko sa Pelikulang For Adults Only” [All I Need Not Know I Learned From Adult Movies] by Jose F. Lacaba from his poetry collection Edad Medya: Mga Tula Sa Katanghaliang Gulang (Pasay City, Philippines: Anvil Publishing, 2000)

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CORNICHE

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There are beautiful parks here in Jubail especially along the stretch of the Fanateer corniche. I always pass through it whenever I go to Jarir Bookstore, my favorite hangout place at the Al-Huwaylat Mall. That park is near the beach. Very clean. Very orderly. 

 

Once, I went there with an Arab friend I invited, Yasser. He was curious if it was as beautiful as the parks in the Philippines.

 

“Philippines is beautiful,” I answered. 

 

“Like you…,” he whispered.

 

That made me smile a bit.

 

“But if Philippines is beautiful, why am I here?” I disputed. 

 

Yasser’s face turned solemn. Seemed bemused with what I said. I recalled a time when my brother and I ran away because I had a fight with my stepfather. Where do we fit in? Even my biological father left and abandoned us.

 

“Let’s go home,” my brother said.

 

I was silent.

 

Whose house do we come home to? I asked myself.

 

“Where are we going?” he asked.

 

“Here, for now.”

 

He quietly sat next to me. We were on a bench along a street that we thought was the world. Very filthy. Very confusing.

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COLLISION

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“No. I don’t want to go,” I told him.

 

“What’s your problem?”

 

“If police or mutawah will see us,” I explained.

 

“You go back to the Philippines, then mafi mushqilah!” he said with rage.

 

Ahmad and I are having a fight because he was forcing me to come with him. He is our company’s training specialist and my boss’s nephew. I don’t want to go to his place because a whole football team will surely gang-bang me again. 

 

“So?” he asked again.

 

I refused to answer. 

 

 “We will pay you. How much you need? You’re here because of money, right? You need money,” he said as if I was the one who’s testing his patience.

 

I still didn’t answer. I was just looking out through the windshield.

 

He parked at a convenience store and stepped out to buy a cigarette. I sat quietly in the passenger seat, thinking of the possible scenarios if I don’t yield to what he wants. 

 

In the distance, the collision of two cars. I got out. I saw the aftermath of the vehicle accident at the intersection. The traffic light is red.

 

A furious Arab man was calling the police. And a few minutes later, the siren of the patrol closing in on the scene. 

 

“This is your fault!” shouted the Arab. “Go out!” He angrily dared the driver of the car he collided with. A Filipino. “If you’re not here in Saudi Arabia, then this will not happen!”

 

I got back inside the car. I decided to go with Ahmad.

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JENIFER

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“How about you?” asked my Arab boyfriend when we talked about Jenifer Bedoya, a migrant Filipino worker who was sentenced to death in the murder case of a Saudi national.

 

He will not kill without a reason. Everything has a reason, was my thought.

 

I came near Yasser, I looked him in the eye, seemingly giving him a glimpse of what had happened back in Al-Khobar. The police impeded our entry at the checkpoint. And then, the unforeseen happened. I was gang-raped. I grudgingly tried to want what was happening. Sometimes, survival is not choosing to put up a fight or to take a risk. Sometimes, it means having self-restraint and letting things happen.

 

Yasser confessed that he was too helpless during that time to defend me. But that doesn’t matter anymore. What’s important is that he never left me.

 

He beamed at me. “What?” he said, like a whisper. 

 

“What do you think?” I returned the question. 

 

He stroked my cheeks. “I still believe, Filipini are gentle and very kind.”

 

“Aiwa, habibi. And so are you …, ” I said with a smile.

 

“Even Jenifer.”

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Note: 

In 2008, overseas Filipino worker Jenifer Bedoya was tried and convicted of murder in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Despite appeals by the Philippine Consulate General in Jeddah, Bedoya was sentenced to death. Bedoya believed he was to be released until the final moments before his execution.