December 1973

“Don’t stiffen your fingers. Relax them,” the officer instructed me.

I was sitting on a gray metal chair next to a battered desk with him behind it. We were in a dimly lit room, furnished with worn metal office furniture. Workplaces were laid out along its walls. A strong antiseptic smell of cleaning solution pervaded the room. The odor, mixed with stale cigarette smoke, was stifling.

Men wearing khaki military uniforms sat quietly working at their desks. A few were writing by hand; others were typing on well worn typewriters with the familiar clicking sound the machines make as fingers strike the keyboard. The sound was slow and irregular, like that made by beginning typists. A few soldiers wearing camouflage fatigues sauntered into the room. After they dropped their gear onto the floor, they huddled together, talking in whispers.

I clinched my fingers, released them and clinched them again, repeating this action as if in a trance. Cigarettes smoke drifted over. I looked at the men to take my mind off the one pressing my fingertips against the paper. I heard the shrill, grating sound of opening and closing of metal file cabinets. A few men looked busy, while others seemed bored, chatting quietly while smoking away.

The man in front of me was a soldier of a military detachment unit, one of the few details I noticed as I walked into the building where a sign in big, bold black letters, 1^st REGIONAL MILITARY COMMAND, CAMP OLIVAS, SAN FERNANDO, PAMPANGA was emblazoned over its entrance. The main camp, Camp Olivas, was a few miles south from where we were.

The processing area was in a small, squat gray structure that houses the military personnel working there. As the soldier continued fingerprinting me, I observed that he was of average stature for a Filipino man, around five feet five inches. Dressed in camouflaged fatigues, he had a broad face, a flat nose and dark brown Malay eyes.

“Be still,” he commanded as he held my fingers uncomfortably tight. “Do not stiffen your fingers. Let me do it,” he snarled. He guided each of my fingers along the blotter, coating each one with the indigo blue ink and then one by one pressing them firmly to the form in front of him. He took his time with the task.