“He lived the way he wanted to live – doing good for the poor, defending them”.
By INA ALLECO R. SILVERIO
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — Katherine Realco and Arman Albarillo were barely in their
20s when they met and fell in love. She was a salesperson in one shop,
and he in another – one that made and sold footwear and bags for
mountaineering enthusiasts.
“It was my old friend Jenny who really liked him, not I,” she said.
Her eyes are behind large sunglasses to hide the truth of how swollen
they are from the tears that will not stop flowing. There was, however, a
smile in her voice as she recounted her early days with the man who
would become her partner and the man who would one day be a much-
emulated member of the New People’s Army (NPA) in Southern Tagalog.
It was the year 2000 in Mindoro Oriental. Katherine’s friend Jenny
wanted to see Arman in the shop in Calapan where he worked. Katherine
had no plans that afternoon, so she accompanied Jenny. Her first meeting
with Arman was, to her, nothing to gossip about.
“I wasn’t interested in meeting him. I was there for my friend,” she said.
But it was Katherine who Arman noticed, and unfortunately for the friend, Arman’s attention stayed on Katherine.
“We had a snack, the three of us. He was nice even then, but I
wasn’t interested in him,” she said. The three of them talked, and Jenny
let on that she and Katherine were going out in the following days and
maybe Arman would be interested in joining them. Katherine didn’t
remember what he said.
After two days, she ran into Arman at the tricycle waiting station.
The small, cramped cab in front of them was already full, so she was
forced to sit behind the driver, and next to her was Arman.
“It turned out that he had waited for us the previous day at 6 p.m.,
the time Jenny said we would be leaving work. It was already 9 p.m., so
he asked why I was late. He admitted that he had been there for the last
three hours waiting for me,” she said.
That Arman was interested in Katherine was not lost on Jenny, so the
two girls had a falling out. Katherine said she never intended for Arman
to like her and at first, even made efforts to discourage him, but he
was patient and persevering.
“I even thought he was ugly,” she said, again the smile in her voice.
He paid for her tricycle fare that first night, and on the following
nights. He also paid for her jeepney fare. One time he asked her where
she lived and if it was alright for him to escort her safely home.
“It was impossible not to see how sincere he was, and even impossible
to not like him. He had an openness about him, an honesty and sincerity
that made one trust him. I told him that if he would go to our house
my father would probably go after him with a jungle knife, but he wasn’t
deterred. He met my father, shook hands with him and told him that all
he wanted was to make sure I was safe at home after work,” she said.
Soon after they became good friends, and soon became girlfriend and
boyfriend. It was a simple yet happy life, Katherine said. Arman was
goodhearted, and a hard worker. He took classes some days, and worked on
others. He took her home with him to San Teodoro town still in Mindoro
to meet his parents and siblings. She was warmly accepted, she felt
welcome and she was.
“We had our first child Arckian on March 6, 2002. We lived in
Calapan, the three of us, but when I was pregnant Arman’s mother kindly
offered to help take care of me and the baby until we all got settled. I
took a leave from work, and by the end of March,we made plans to visit
San Teodoro. Arman called his father and asked if he could butcher a
goat so we could all celebrate Arckian’s first baby month. We all looked
forward to that visit,” she said.
But tragedy struck in the form of government-sanctioned violence.....
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Source: Bulatlat.com
URL:
http://bulatlat.com/main/2012/07/06/arman-albarillo-in-the-eyes-of-his-katherine/
Keeping
mum over what was discussed in a supposedly “full” Cabinet meeting
owing to security reasons as the topic of discussion supposed to have
been focused on the decisions that were made by Noynoy on the China
sovereignty moves over the so-called disputed islands to which the
Philippines also claims sovereignty, was a bit too strange.
T
