I woke up to a sudden blast of light beamed on my face. A gloved hand then tapped my arm as the man standing before me said: “Wake up. This is a raid.” His flashlight scanning my tiny room, I could barely see him in full combat gear, armed with an automatic pistol and a baby Armalite.
Closing my door behind me as I followed the police officer, I could see my boardmates also coming out of their rooms. We were all led through the narrow hallway and down the stairs so we could sneak out of our dilapidated boarding house rather quickly.
A few meters away across our rather rundown dormitory, a crowd gathered looking at the SWAT team search our house with flashlights attached to their rifles. Some of them waded through the murky water under our house, aiming their rifles at the water lilies.
I saw some of my boardmates in the crowd. It was from them that I learned that the police were looking for two of our colleagues. The cops said that they were actually drug pushers and one of them was an “ex-Army.” They were armed with pistols and a grenade.
And yet, we watched the event just a few meters away, as if it was some action movie. Indeed, a few minutes after, the shooting began. The police fired at the suspects who were trying to flee by diving into the murky pond, using the mud as camouflage.
After the exchange of fire, which lasted only a few minutes, the police emerged from the darkness dragging a wounded man covered in mud. I could recognize him when they got close. A few days ago, we had a short conversation near the shared toilet and bathroom, the only one in a boarding house inhabited by probably a hundred people.
They had known me and my friend, who lived in his own room three doors away from mine, as student activists from a university. Perhaps they thought we were “safe.” After all, we shared common hatred for the police.
He passed us quietly, with head bowed down, as the cops brought him to a waiting police car. The other cops were still continuing the search, firing a few shots occasionally. After more than an hour, they came back to the crowd and said that the “ex-Army” was able to escape. They said he was still armed with a pistol and a hand grenade. They told the crowd to report to them if they see him again for he is still dangerous.
Then they all disappeared through the dark and narrow alleys of the squatter’s area along T. Padilla street, where we lived, to their patrol cars parked in one of the inner roads. The dawn was breaking and we tried to go back to our rooms to forget about the nightmare that had just happened.
I knew that a lot of people in our boarding house and many of those living around us in that slum area were into drugs. There was almost no secret about it. But I was surprised that two of our boardmates were actually big time drug pushers. I did not expect it since a policeman actually had also rented a room there, although not for himself but for his young mistress. Still he frequented the place for their trysts and was a good friend to everyone.
This story took place during the mid-‘90s, when I was just about to graduate from college, having spent my last three years in activism. My fellow activist and I thought it must be a good “exposure” to live with the urban poor. Besides, we were looking for a boarding house that did not impose a curfew or any of those usual house rules. And of course, the price of the rent, perhaps one of the lowest in the city at that time, was also a major draw.
So, in a way, like many of those living in that boarding house, we were looking for a kind of “hideout.” Aside from drug pushers and adulterers, we also had a very young couple who apparently came from middle-class families that tried to live together in a small room after they eloped.
Everyone in that boarding house seemed to be running away from something or someone. We were all cramped there in our tiny rooms in that big wooden house on rickety stilts above dirty water. With every room warmed by a kerosene stove that could explode at anytime, I was always worried that the house will soon turn into an inferno, and those of us, rebels, criminals and outcasts, will just roast in the fire that will become fodder for newspapers that the more morally-upright citizens will read the next day.
I don’t remember reading in the newspapers that morning about the raid that took place in our place the night before. Perhaps, it was one of those nightmares that was forgotten just because it never came out in the news. But I’ll never forget that night when someone just broke into my room and woke me up at gunpoint.
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