Feelings

Images to remember
By Emmanuelle
 

 It was not a crowd out there; it was a mob. The twelve security personnel (of the total force of 104), left to man the Lower Ringside Passage could not have stopped the sudden deluge of bodies surging forward with tremendous speed and force. A guard tried to hold back the tide; his tie and nightstick got whipped off. So the guards stood helplessly aside. The mob brought down the steel barriers and the gate, pushed their way inside, and then tumbled down the 30-degreed slope. As more people rushed in, they stepped on, and walked atop the bodies of those who had fallen down during the initial rush. The cries of the injured were ignored or were not heard through the loud music blasting. The fallen had no other safe space to crawl to; they were trapped in a human pileup, four-bodies thick.

The spot, where seventy-four people had died and about five hundred were injured, bore no bloodstains. The victims either died of suffocation or from massive internal injuries due to being pinned down by other bodies or being trampled on unceasingly by hundreds, nay, thousands of uncaring, thumping feet. Those who were trapped at the edges of the pileup might have even glimpsed the tail of the mob as it trickled out. They could have even been saved, if ambulances were there at first call. They died with not even a last glimpse of the dawning of a blue sky, but with the sight of a lot of running, retreating backsides. 

Six hours after the stampede, the injured were still being admitted into hospitals. At the scene of the early morning mayhem – orphaned shoes, deserted slippers, torn pieces of clothing, half-eaten food, the unenviable litter of plastic and paper wrappers – traces of civilization somehow gone haywire. 

Two days later, I skimmed through the list of fatalities. I was down to the sixties and I felt I just had to stop. My blurring eyes caught only two names as probable males; majority of those who lost their lives were women – grandmothers, mothers, aunts, daughters, and sisters.  They, who were mightily strong in spirit in pursuit of their dreams but whose frail bodies were so weakened by hours or even days of waiting. A slight push and they fall, never to rise again. And that morning, the push was how many thousands strong?

I prefer not to join the others who point their fingers to this or that entity as the cause of it all. Too many had been written; too much had been said. Let me just replay the images that stuck fast and firm to my mind, to my heart.

Pictures had been taken of the crowd who had opted to stake out the Phisports Arena days before the Saturday edition of Wowowee. Some of these were taken of the people right there, against the steel barriers, the first line of defense set up by the security personnel. A grandmother sits on a child’s blue plastic chair, one side of her body against the steel barrier. A white towel is wrapped round her head; her arms are draped atop her bag. She grins toothlessly at the camera. Lola must have been one of the very first ones to fall down the slope. A young, pretty, fair-skinned mother shyly holds up a plate to hide her smile; her pregnant belly leans protectively over her two kids, maybe four and two-year old, slurping on ice cream cones. She stands right by the steel barrier because she had nowhere to sit; the crowd behind is too thick, too close. This mother and her kids, could they have escaped the push from behind? Still at the steel barriers, a group of boisterous men, hands waving, mouths widely grinning, some open to shout some unheard greetings to the camera. Their arms are muscled, chests big and brawny. Their combined strength must have helped bring down the steel barriers, the gate.

A son sits beside the sprawled body of his mother. He clasps tight her one hand but he turns his body and grieving face around, away from the sight of her stretched-out body, a beaded bracelet around her bruised, purpled other arm. She doesn’t appear to be one of the “impoverished,” she looks matronly and healthy enough. Beside and beyond her, other women lay just as still. Most have neat short hair, others have long hair splayed out, and a number of them have their heads in turbans, scarves. A woman in a red U2 shirt stands out; there is also the ubiquitous duster. All of them have purple bruises on their faces, along their arms. They seem to be just sleeping their exhaustion off.  These women are all very dead though.

Woe to the families they left behind. Woe to us all.  
CNN and BBC were too polite. Guess who got the highest network ratings the last few days – ABS-CBN or GMA?