1

by the same author

Short Stories

Spots on Their Wings and Other Stories

Dance a White Horse to Sleep and Other Stories
The Night I Cry and Other Stories
The Voice from Sumisip and Four Short Stories (soft cover; ebook, They Made
Footprints Without Toe-Marks and These Four Olden Tales)
The Unseen War and Other Tales from Mindanao

Novels

Surveyors of the Liguasan Marsh

(new title, Green Sanctuary)
The Living and the Dead
The Subanon Massacre at Karpok (ebook; soft cover, Subanons)
Samboangan: the Cult of War

A. R. ENRIQUEZ

_____________

THE VOICE FROM SUMISIP & THESE FOUR OLDEN TALES

 2

Novella

Short Stories

The Turtle-Egg Hunter

Gatherer of the People
Iba the Christian
Jainal the Pirate

Extracts

Novella
 2

THE VOICE FROM SUMISIP & THESE FOUR OLDEN TALES

PART I

1.

Now there was this terrible fratricidal war in Mindanao, deep south, at the tip of the
Philippine archipelago. It was between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and
the Philippine Government Forces. A very bad war, Filipinos against Filipinos, brother
against brother, though one was an infidel Moro and the other a Christian. They were two
poles apart in faith and culture. The Moros were prohibited by their faith to eat pork,
being Islam believers, while the Christians, believers of Jesus Christ as the Son of God,
were voracious pork-eaters, just like the pagan Yakans and the Subanons. The latter were
the aborigines of the Zamboanga peninsula, its capital in Zamboanga City, which was the
oldest Christian city of Mindanao. And the fratricidal war was worse in Jolo, Tawi-Tawi,
and Basilan, and save for Tawi-Tawi, which was a string of islets, the two others were
hump-like, forested islands, deep south of Mindanao. However, in Zamboanga peninsula,
it wasn’t so bad, although before this no one had experienced a worse war. Not even in
the wars against the Spaniards in 1888 and the yellow-skinned Japanese in 1941.
But here was this fratricidal war, which was not given the dignity of being called a
‘war’ by the Tyrant Ferdinand Marcos. After imposing martial law in 1972, he ruled the
Philippine Islands with an iron fist from its capital in the north, Manila, over 800
kilometers from the island of Mindanao. Instead, the wily dictator hid from the Filipino
people the reality and truth of the war and its devastation in euphemism. So they would
believe there prevailed peace and order in his Mystical Paradise—where he was the Más
Macho and his wife, Imelda, the Más Hermosa, he dubbed the fratricidal war a mere
‘pocket disturbance.’
However, almost every day, the Moro rebels and the Christian Forces were killing
each other by the hundreds and putting each other’s village to the torch. Incredibly, either
 2

force was doing it very well and with great passion. Before it was over, not less than
150,000 islanders would be dead, countless wounded, and over 800,000 Moros and
Christians would flee their homes. They’d live in evacuation camps all over Mindanao.
Some fled to the distant capital city of Manila in the north. In poverty and destitution, the
evacuees lived with relatives, friends, or in government welfare shelters, which had no
electricity or water.
By early 1975, the war here turned in favor of the Tyrant Marcos, who called
himself the Enlightened Dictator, and the Christians.
Ironically, it was the Moros who had won the fratricidal war. Marcos at Malacañang
Palace made this possible. Three factors, which he conceived likely after a séance, folk
said, assured this would be so. One, and foremost, was the April 1976 Peace Talk
between the Government and the MNLF secessionists. The talks were held at the
historical Normal School, built by the American occupation forces in the old city of
Zamboanga, in the first decade of the 20th century. Out of the peace talk, the Dictator
Marcos created vaudeville show to entertain the Moslem countries’ threat to plug oil
supply to the Philippines, if local Moslems were not given preferential treatment. The
show then produced two minor scenes: the ‘‘policy of attraction’’ and the ‘‘policy of
assimilation.’’

____________

FOUR OLDEN TALES

Story One

The Turtle-Egg Hunter

 1

The hour was almost noon, the sun blazing from a clear sky down on the beach of an
island in Mindanao, one of the three major islands (Visayas and Luzon are the other two)
of Las Islas Felipenas, in the South China Sea.
On his fours in the sand, the turtle-egg hunter of his village was thinking: My brain
in the shell of my head is cooking like an egg in mother’s pot; I must find soon a turtle-
egg cache soon …. Under his bare feet, the sandy floor of the beach was hot; he wriggled
his toes to relieve them. He went on digging though, thrusting his bare hands deep into a
spot on the beach for turtle-eggs he knew were there. Up on the banks fresh water
streamed down in rivulets to the shore, not too far from where he was digging, spreading
in myriad of water arteries all over the white beach.
By instinct, the boy knew he was close to a cache of turtle eggs. Feverishly he dug
deeper, and from the bottom of the hole water sprung, filling it instantly: cold water
rushed up his hands and arms to his elbows, just a little before his armpits. He felt
coldness tingling his wet arms, and something else: soft and round and giving in to his
touch. He knew what they were: a bountiful cache of turtle eggs.
The boy was the best turtle-egg hunter from the village of the river people tribe,
called Subanons, the natives of the island. His village was some distance away, in the
lowland before the rolling hills, beyond the woods and marshes. He came to the beach to
hunt for turtle eggs; for indeed, he was the best turtle-egg hunter of his village, and dug
up turtle eggs where no one, young or old, thought, could find them. His folks were very
proud of him, and thankful to their god Gulay for the boy’s rare talent. Besides
augmenting their food at table, the turtle eggs provided them with a delicacy, which was
the envy of their neighbors.
__________________________________

 The year was 1976. Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippine dictator, had declared
martial law four years earlier and himself as the strong man.
To mollify the MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front) rebels, Marcos laid down
two policies: the policies of “attraction’ and “assimilation.”
A researcher of the state university in Zamboanga City, Professor Jose,
gives up his dignity by accepting funds from Southern Command chief, a wily
military general of the Dictator Marcos, for his research project on the culture
and tradition of the Yakans of Basilan, a war-torn island, southwest of
Zamboanga. As he digs into the Yakan way of life, he, at the start a mere
 2

observer, gradually becomes a participant and a conduit to tragedy upon an

isolated group of Yakan, as well as his own ....

Thrillingly plotted, intriguing, and utterly moving, They Made Footprints Without Toe-
Marks and These Four Olden Tales is A. R. Enriquez’s semi-biography account of his
research on the Yakan tribe, under a government program on cultural revival. In this
project, and as chief of an information office during martial law in the ‘70’s, he witnessed
the suffering and horror that plagued the different ethnic tribes during the fratricidal war
between the Christian forces and the Moros rebels.

What they say...

With [They Made Footsteps Without Toe-Marks and These Four Olden
Tales], Enriquez leads us further on, deeper into the forest. The
experience would invariably remind the reader of a well-known and
well-read journey into the wilderness, written by a world-famous writer
[Joseph Conrad] to whom (as it is to Enriquez) English was not a first
language.
—Francis Macansantos, critic and poet.

Americans with an interest in anthropology will doubtless find the

content rewarding: from the point of view of storytelling, there is a
certain monotony in the presence of violent death and sordid sexual
encounters. The writer is a master strong situation and language, both
of which impress the reader's mind indelibly.
—E .C. Knowlton, World Literature Today, University of
Oklahoma, U.S. A.

A. R. Enriquez lives with his wife Joy, a son, and four grandchildren in
Cagayan de Oro City, Mindanao Island. He has written several books of
short stories and novels, and spends summer fishing in the island of
Camiguin with his wife, young son, Julien Patrick, and grandson Anton
Vladimir.