Snatched!

By Rolo B. Cena
Arabian Diaries
Dumaguete Star Informer
12 July 2009

Darkness had enveloped the kingdom with only the faint street lights waking up the still of the night. After my team mates dropped me at the nearby Mall to buy “empanada” for my breakfast the following day, I hurried down the streets to take a brisk walk on the way to our accommodation house. I was then coming from my badminton game that night.

Recalling previous commitments with our employees, I called our electrical engineer who was then under some medical examinations for his kidney. This man secured my permission to sleep in my flat because their accommodation house is in the other City. Since it was past ten in the evening, I decided to call him using the mobile phone issued by the company while walking the partly-lit A Street of the famed Al-Khobar City.

And why would I accommodate him? I am the head of Human Resources Management Unit and I was monitoring his condition in relation to our Medical Insurance.

While talking to him, I suddenly felt a rude, strong, Black Hand reaching mine while holding the mobile phone. Shocked, I yelled lightly. After regaining my composure, I managed to withdraw my hand towards my chest, closed my mobile phone, put it in my waist-pouch and ran back to the mall.

I would have been snatched!

I declared to the Filipinos at the Mall. They stopped a taxi cab and asked me to take a ride for safety. Inside the cab, I called again our engineer and narrated to him the story. He was so sorry; I was very scared.

Yes, I would have been snatched if I was too lousy in responding to the danger; others said I was lucky enough I survived the ordeal. Recalling the event, I had doubt of my life had I remained static at the street when they came back after failing in the attempt with their motorcycle.

Yes, they are Saudis. They were blacks. They were the natives of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Surprisingly, it happened in the most conservative of all Islamic Kingdoms in the Gulf Region.; it happened in Saudi Arabia. And I would have been the victim.

Last week, it was confirmed that a young Filipino wife was raped for the whole day in their communal flat and was killed. The story circulating in the downtown Khobar is that she went down to buy for something and few minutes after returning to her flat, she was followed up and by force, they assailants entered their room.

Her husband was working for Saudi Aramco’s major contractor and was assigned on field work outside of Khobar. He went home weekly.

To make the story bitter, the husband is in jail now for being a major suspect. Technically, this is how absurd and awkward is the law of the Kingdom. Not because I want to believe that the husband is clean, but because I assumed the husband is innocent. Notwithstanding several stories of Filipinos having extra-marital affairs in this part f the world, I never have heard from the grapevine any negative report about the husband.

Snatched! Yes, the couple was snatched. She was snatched of her young life shared with her husband and he was snatched with principles and dignity and the promise of a young, beautiful family.

Three persons experienced the ordeal: I would have been snatched; they were snatched. For the couple, it was darkness before dawn; for me, it would have been.

The thing is: every one of us is snatched. Former President Aquino was snatched of the truth regarding the assignation plot against her husband; her husband was snatched of life by no less than the team of the former dictator Marcos. Philippine Actor turned President snatched us of the truth about the envelopes in the Senate and eventually President Arroyo snatched the presidential seat from him through the popular EDSA 2 revolt.

We Filipinos have been snatched of every basic truth while we keep our eyes wide open: The Amari Land Scam Deal, the Envelope, the Hello Garci, the ZTE, the Fertilizer – all these truths were snatched from the eighty-five-million peace loving Filipinos.

Who else is safe this time? None, by firm resolves!

Not even a young fetus in the womb of the mother; he can be in danger of mishap at any time. Nope, not a young high school band majorette who was raped by a neighbor. Not even the City Treasurer who was killed at gunpoint while trying to open their house gate after leaving her work place. And nope, not even an OFW who is in riskier state now more than ever.

No one is safe; this is a universal truth. While risk can be addressed, safety, in my opinion is relative.

Yes, you are snatched! I was snatched! Everyone is snatched daily. And at any time, we still can be snatched physically, psychologically, politically, socially, economically, and personally. What we can do now is to study how to snatch safety from risks.

Our government does promise us our safety through police and military measures, however, in practice, the same place us in danger zone.

Do you agree?