Like the rest of us in the barkada, he used to idolize John Lennon and the Beatles. During breaks between classes, we would hang out in the empty classrooms of the Bunzel Building in the University of San Carlos Talamban campus to jam. Dave (not his real name) and our other classmate Harry would bring their guitars. Those of us who were not good with any instrument, would just sing our favorite Beatles songs, leafing through pages of Jingle magazine’s special collection of the band’s songs.
Cool and talented in both guitar and drawing, Dave had the potential to become a rock star or an artist. We were still college freshmen and Dave was already in his second or third year in college. We enjoyed hanging out with him, listening to him play the guitar, and often singing along.
Then, he spent less and less time with us as he started to slack off in school. After perhaps a year of not seeing Dave in school, he finally showed up. He had quit playing the guitar, he said, and just smiled when I asked him if he still listened to the Beatles.
We walked from the campus to his boarding house and there, in his room, he told me what had happened to him and why he was not attending classes. He confessed that he had converted to Islam and wanted to move to Sulu.
He described what he was doing as “balik Islam” or a return to Islam. This means that we all originally belonged to the faith but just somehow strayed off the path. So to become a Muslim was to return to Allah.
Dave adopted a new Arabic name, which I forgot. He was learning to speak and write in Arabic. He did not just became a Muslim, he became a radical and militant one. I was a leftwing student activist at that time so he found an ally in my own hatred of American imperialism and what we both perceived as a puppet Philippine government.
We talked about John Lennon’s song “Imagine” which envisions a classless, God-less future that Dave now criticized. The enemy, he said, was America and Israel who were out, he said, to destroy Islam. The proof, he said, was the Gulf War, which was still ongoing at that time.
I was shocked when I first entered Dave’s room. It was full of pictures of the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Iranian Revolution, the Palestinian Intifada, the Afghan mujahideens fighting the Soviets, and other images of Islamic radicalism cut out from Time and Newsweek magazines. He said those images were his sources of inspiration.
Dave was reading the Koran and many other Islamic books. He was serious about learning about his new faith. He said that he planned to drop out of school to become a pirate in Jolo.
Piracy, he said, is only a term used to describe what was actually a traditional form of barter. The Philippine government, he said, has been trying to rob from those who engage in this exchange through taxation. Thus, the Coast Guard or the Navy are tasked to patrol the waters between the Philippines and Malaysia or Indonesia.
Dave said that he found no sense in staying in Cebu anymore. He wanted to go to Mindanao. He dreamed of becoming a pirate, an imam, or a jihad fighter like those people brandishing AK-47s on his wall.
That was the last time I saw Dave. He dropped out of school. Our other guitarist, Harry, moved to another university. So, with no guitarists, our mock Beatles band broke up and we all went on with our normal lives, away from the mess of religious wars and global terrorism.
Dave detested this pursuit of secular comfort zones. The only comfort zone for him was heaven. He wanted to serve God and was willing to wage war in His name against infidels. He wanted to give up his own life for Allah.
I have not heard from Dave since our last conversation in his room. Sometimes, when news of war or terrorism in Southern Mindanao would come up, I’d scan the faces of the Moro fighters in the news images to see if anyone looked familiar.
I’m afraid that one day I may find in those faces, our former barkada, that guy who used to sing with us the anthem of utopia: “Imagine there’s no heaven/ It’s easy if you try/ Nothing to kill or die for/ Above us only sky.”