NELSON A. Navarro calls his latest book, “There Not There (The Filipino In Exile),” half-fiction and half-memoir.

Written through the winter of 1980-’81 while in exile in New York, he said the task of typing out the story on a secondhand IBM Selectric typewriter was his “daily therapy” while enduring unemployment, uncertainty, and the cold.

The roman à clef tells of a lost generation of Filipino expats who decamped to America in the 1970s at the height of martial rule in the Philippines.

Political baggage

Lead character William Romero, aka Willy, is a First Quarter Storm (FQS) veteran saddled by “political baggage and existential angst.” His first cousin Fred narrates the story from his “well-ordered” point of view.

Willy marries the same woman, Faye Sullivan—an American with a very curious interest in things Filipino—twice.

The two left-leaning idealists meet and marry for the first time in California. Their first union ends in divorce after Willy leaves the US-based, Maoist-oriented Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataang Pilipino (SDKP), where Faye is also involved, after Willy has a run-in with the group’s arbitrary-minded leader Luis
Vergara.

Willy moves to New York, studies business, and meets his soul mate Steve Brown. Steve introduces Willy to a bolder alternative lifestyle, but Steve’s untimely confession that he is in love with Willy puts a distance between them.

Willy and Faye meet again and take a second plunge. Although both pride themselves in being left-leaning intellectuals, they eventually decide to “grow up” and fly to Manila to engage in endeavors that are more bourgeois.

This after Willy’s employer, American Express, plans to expand to the Philippines. Willy envisions a comfortable life supported by a US salary, while Faye dreams of establishing a dance company in Manila.

Then life intervenes.

The book’s title, “There Not There,” describes the “absurdity of exile,” of being “neither in New York nor Manila, lost or suspended between two points, neither coming nor going, trapped and alone in passage to nowhere,” says Navarro.

Coming on the heels of his other book, “The Half-Remembered Past” released two years ago, “There Not There” would have been forgotten had Navarro  not stumbled on the draft, which “disappeared” among his files when he returned to the Philippines after Edsa 1986.

Navarro says he wanted to publish the novel while in New York “but an agent said it had no market. In 1981, it seemed [President Ferdinand] Marcos would last forever and everybody wanted to leave Manila… Even [Marcos nemesis ex-Senator Benigno] Ninoy [Aquino, Jr.] left Manila the year before.

“So I dropped the project draft [and it] disappeared into my files or boxes,” recalls Navarro. “It surfaced in 2013 when I was writing [“The Half-Forgotten Past”]. I reread it and decided to publish [it] as is, as written 32 years before.  Like a time capsule of when I was about 33.”

History and destiny

Navarro weaves his insights on martial law and Philippine history into the narrative. The conversations between Willy and cousin Fred in the book provide a clear glimpse into Navarro’s mind-set, of lessons learned about love for country, history and destiny despite the distance.

For example, Willy stresses that after the succession of colonizers who attempted to write history and define nationhood for the Philippines, it is still the Filipino who must forge his own destiny.

Speaking as Steve at one point, Navarro also points out that the country needs writers more than politicians and businessmen.

Navarro makes it clear in his introduction that characters in the novel are composite of people he was with during exile. He freely admits that he is both Fred and Willy.

“Willy was the activist who took risks and was curious,” he says. “He was fascinated with the world, with America, with culture, but always certain of and obsessed with his Filipino identity. He toyed with the idea of living permanently in America but decided his heart was in the Philippines.”

Fred, on the other hand, “was the cautious and practical one who thought of ideas as self-defeating. He wanted to break away from the futility of being Filipino and be cosmopolitan.”

Eventually, Willy pulls Fred back “to the stubborn patriotic values of their family. [Fred] saw in Willy the same push and pull of giving up or reaffirming his identity. That Willy could resolve it in favor of our country was a sign of hope, that the struggle should not be let go and will ultimately prevail,” Navarro says.

Clearer perspective

Navarro says exile, while bitter and lonely, also provided the distance that allowed him to have a clearer perspective of events in his homeland.

The writer was on a student trip to the United States in 1971 when he was falsely implicated in the Plaza Miranda bombing which happened that August. Marcos blamed the tragedy on the communists, and Navarro at that time was prominently listed in military intelligence sheets as the national spokesperson for the Movement for a Democratic Philippines.

The US government granted Navarro political asylum “after a 10-year battle with US immigration authorities.”

“From a distance I knew the fight [against the dictatorship] was long-term and we had to survive the disappointment and boredom,” he recounts. “That exile was at best a brief respite and could even be self-deluding. The main arena was back home. You had to be there, roll with the punches, be creative in fighting, use whatever democratic space, go on with family and career, and not make the struggle 24/7 and burn out.”

Being 10,000 miles away from Marcos and martial law, “prudence and a long-term view were the better parts of valor,” he adds.

“A writer [in exile] could avail of the slack to rethink ideas,” he notes. “There was a proper time to risk your life, not so impetuously and mindless of consequences. Not being part of organized groups could be a good thing.”

Upon leaving SDKP, Willy flaunts his disdain at other leftists’ “dogmatism and violent anti-capitalism.”

At the same time, he also faces the dilemma of “abandoning his revolutionary ideals” when the situation demanded that he call his father to ask for tuition after deciding to go back to school.

Dogmatism

Navarro says he and his comrades in New York dealt with this kind of dogmatism, as displayed by the character Vergara.

“The left imposed its anti-democratic ideas and wanted everybody to follow,” he points out. “If you did not submit to them, you were for Marcos or not revolutionary enough. We fought this intolerance at the risk of being branded all sorts of names.”

He adds: “Any revolution would have to involve a broad range of people and ideas, not just a few lording over the others. Note that Edsa was won through non-violent methods by common citizens and the Communist Party [of the Philippines-New People’s Army] boycotted it.”

Navarro also observed then that Filipino exiles were pooh-poohed for enjoying the relative freedom in America.

“You don’t stop being Filipino because you are away,” he says. “You respect those who stay home and return. Someday you, too, can make the leap, but on your own terms and timing. For both, it is a matter of personal choice and being respected for it… Revolution and change is about bringing out the best in human beings.”

In the book, Navarro, now 67, describes his work as a “long-lost testament of my passionate youth when all seemed lost but I…. somehow made sense of these characters’ lives and moved them into fair and honorable directions.”

This, while the real persons “caught between Manila and New York… labored in the unpromising vineyards of hope.”

“There Not There” and “The Half-Remembered Life” are available online at www.buqo.com. They are the first titles in the biography category.