I moved to Marawi to pursue my high school studies after spending childhood in General Santos City.

Admittedly, I found it difficult to live in Marawi as a teenager. I had to adjust and understand our culture. But through the years, as I embraced its way of life, Marawi City grew on me.

Although Manila is my home now, I still care about what happens in Marawi. Its present situation has affected me in a profound way.

There is much to love in Marawi. Overlooking Lake Lanao, it is all at once rustic and scenic. And because of its hilly terrain, the climate is cool.

The cityscape is also beautiful, and notable for its distinctive Maranao architecture.

When I remember my youth in Marawi, it’s usually about the people I made friends with, falling in love, and the serene natural landscape of the Mindanao State University golf course.

As I write this nearly all my relatives and friends in Marawi have fled their homes out of fear for their lives, taking refuge in the nearby urban areas of Mindanao. It’s heartbreaking to see TV news footage of families evacuating the city, the fires and the sound of guns firing. The serenity is gone for now.

It also brought back a lot of dark memories, scenes from when I was barely of school age, when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. My family was also forced to leave our town, the bucolic Lumbatan, but not because of fear of violence and terror, but due to political reprisal.

An uncle happened to be a mayor of a nearby town and was a member of a rival political party. It was reported that the political opponents of Marcos were being rounded up and incarcerated.

So if you opted to stay in Lanao, it meant living in constant fear. It entailed walking on streets where there seemed to be military checkpoints on every block.

True heritage

My father took me away from this kind of life and we settled in General Santos City. Although it felt traumatic to be uprooted so suddenly, I eventually learned to like our new home.

I attended elementary in a Catholic school, the Notre Dame of Dadiangas. I did well in academics, especially in religion. The priests, who were my teachers, were so proud of me—had they had their way, they would have converted me and baptized me a Catholic.

But my father put a stop to this and sent me back to Marawi so I could learn more about our true heritage—the Maranao culture and the religion of Islam. It was a mandatory thing because our family is of royal lineage, and it would be awkward if anyone from our clan would end up knowing more about Catholicism and nothing about Islam!

Having grown accustomed to life in General Santos City, I got bored trying to learn about this other culture, which was supposedly truly our own. I also didn’t like the so-called Marawi lifestyle. We walked to school on dirt roads and fetched water from a well that required a 15-minute walk.

At that time, Marawi was still a frightening place. I lived with my first cousin near Mindanao State University (MSU)-Marawi. He had sisters who were nearly my age. Their house was close to a small military camp in Barrio Kabingan. Almost every night, we cowered in our rooms when we heard gunshots from the camp.

Happy phase

It was also a dull place for a teenager. Marawi is a Muslim-Maranao city. Drinking liquor was strictly prohibited.

Nevertheless, in time, life in Marawi began going back to normal. When martial law was over, there was no more fear of soldiers. I entered a happy phase in my life when I began attending college at MSU. I chose to stay in the dorms, where I could live independently and be naughty, and drink beer in the dorm room.

I was a typical ’80s kid. I wore clothes that were in vogue and became a social butterfly. I competed in a campus pageant for boys. I organized disco parties on campus even if disco was prohibited in the city. Being members of the junior Rotary Club gave me and my friends enough influence for the university to waive the rule on discos.

My friends in school were all from wealthy families and I became the resident eventologist. And if no disco parties were being held, we drove to Iligan City and Cagayan de Oro, where the trendy pubs were.

And yes, I met my first love in college. To be young and in a romantic relationship made Marawi City the most beautiful place in the world.

I was happy socializing, but my religious father and conservative relatives weren’t pleased. I wasn’t religious, didn’t pray, and seldom entered a mosque.

I led a life of materialism and decadence, and it affected my academics.

New priorities

But as I grew older, I learned to appreciate Muslim culture—the colorful traditions, the fashion and the architecture of the torogans, all housed in the Ayala Museum within the university. This city made me embrace my Maranao heritage.

Yet, just when I was appreciate all this, the heritage started to die and fade away. Residents were building modern houses and shunning traditional okir-okir architecture.

The local government also took Maranao heritage off its list of priorities. Infrastructure and peace and order were deemed more important. They were, indeed—but why couldn’t we have both tradition and modernity?

Fortunately, when my friend Majul Gandamra was elected mayor of Marawi, his order of the day was to preserve and underscore the city’s Maranao roots and to attract tourists. Everything was coming into place—and then, without warning, he is now faced with a terrorist group that has ruined the peace in the city.

The dream has taken a backseat for now and the young mayor is fighting to end this nightmare.

Again, Marawi has been placed under martial rule. But there is a difference. When I was a child, we feared for our lives because we were considered the enemy. Today, hopefully, martial law will help us crush the enemy of the people of Marawi (and of the entire country). And we fervently pray that we shall soon get our beloved city back. —CONTRIBUTED