Amour and Armageddon

At a time of uncertainty, when mankind finds itself confronted with the demonic forces of terrorism, we need to take stock of ourselves, assess our situation, and decide on our stand. The wanton destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and the loss of thousands of innocent lives, including those of children, have sent shock waves around the civilized world.

Who could have perpetrated such a senseless slaughter of the innocents? The accusing finger points at the man who bears the name Osama Bin Laden, a Muslim arch-terrorist, whose devilish plots are carried on by his minions on an international scale. In the course of history, monsters of his ilk have been spawned to inflict havoc on humankind: Nero, Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler. If Bin Laden had only bombed and demolished the Statue of Liberty or the Washington Monument, it would have sufficed as a political statement and as an assertion of his power.

How is America expected to react to this act of terrorism? Does one accept the word of Christ and "turn the other cheek"?

President George Bush chooses the ancient Mosaic law: "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." He has sounded a call to arms. His declaration of war is not against the people of Afghanistan but against the terrorists themselves and those who would coddle them, like the Taliban. The European countries, Russia and the former satellites of the USSR, China, the Middle Eastern countries, India, Pakistan and the Philippines, among others, have rallied to the call of President Bush.

The voices of the Christian churches advise caution and restraint and plead for peace. The so-called cause-oriented groups, which are in reality closet communists, march in the streets with red placards and flags denouncing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for committing the country to America’s call for assistance. They also march to Congress with flowers urging the lawmakers to desist from sending our troops to the war front, a comic parody of EDSA One. You’d think they love the military which they would crush with their hammer and sickle, if given the chance. They would appeal to the Pinoy penchant for fence sitting – the uzi syndrome. The trouble with this stand is that when the bullets start flying, the fence sitters are the first to be caught in the crossfire.

The warning of President Bush is unequivocal: "If you’re not for us, you’re against us!"

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse loom over the horizon. The angels weep and Satan roars with laughter as Bin Laden and his cohorts gird their loins for an unholy war. The Taliban calls for a Jihad. Will the Muslim countries heed his call?

Doomsday soothsayers have crawled from under their rocks and have their day in the sun. Their presence is rife on television, radio and in the dailies. They recall the predictions of Nostradamus. They invoke the eschatological prediction of St. John in the last book of the New Testament, Revelations. They cite the warnings of the Marian apparitions.

A Third World War will not apply conventional weapons, so the seers forewarn – and scientists for once, agree with fortune tellers. Preparations need to be made to protect the free world from germ warfare, poison gas, anthrax, mnemonic plague, bubonic plague, the neutron bomb and other devilish weapons that can wipe out an entire population before you can say Osama Bin Laden.

In the meanwhile there is an uneasy peace in the air, a sort of calm before the storm. In the megapolis of Metro Manila, life flows on as placidly as the river Pasig even when there is a threat of a coming typhoon. The Australians are leading a cleaning up of the banks of the river. Armed with shovels, they are clearing the banks of tons upon tons of garbage.

Over at the GSIS Theater, Fore Stage in cooperation with San Beda College is staging Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Directed by Babes Aquino-Cabbab, the production stars Paolo Fabregas as the ill-fated King of Thebes, Tanya Karina Cabbab as the wife-mother of Oedipus, Jocasta, Dave Cruz as Creon, Cesar Xeres Burgos as the blind prophet Tiresias, and Ryan Rey Lastra as the Chorus Leader.

Fabregas delivers a creditable and credible account of the man doomed by inexorable Fate to kill his father and wed his mother. Irony is piled upon irony as Oedipus driven, by pride, hubris, struggles to thwart a prophesy only to realize that his will cannot prevail against the power of Fate.

Across the city at the Pius XII Theater, Dramatis Personae, in cooperation with the Alliance Française de Manille, is presenting Marguerite Duras’ Hiroshima Mon Amour. This anti-war drama is drawn from the highly acclaimed French motion picture directed by Alain Resnais.

The drama focuses on two characters simply identified as Woman (Liza Dino) and Man (Lito Casaje; alternate: Mario Magallona). The time is August 1957; the place, Hiroshima. Tensions are built around a juxtaposition of opposing forces: between the complexity of Woman and the simplicity of Man, between the physical reality of this pair of lovers and the surreal presence of the ghosts of the Hiroshima bombing, between the temporal and the eternal.

Under Casaje’s insightful direction, Liza Diño, Mutya ng Pilipinas Tourism International 2001, delivers a sterling performance in her maiden appearance with Dramatis Personae.

Hiroshima Mon Amour is a powerful affirmation of love and life. It makes us feel more keenly in these uncertain days the certainty that despite the threat of total annihilation from the unhappy few, like Bin Laden and his cohorts, life becomes more precious, that it is beautiful, that no terrors on earth can prevail against it under God’s heaven.