by Jose Enrique Soriano

I ONCE watched a play from the theater of the absurd. In the play, the characters spoke gibberish and did silly things that were out of the context of the situation. The story went on and on with no apparent point, and after it was finished, I was left dazed and confused. It was only after I had gone home and thought some more about it that I was able to figure the whole thing out. Or at least what I thought it was all about.

I was reminded of that play as I was trying to recall what had happened to me in Jolo, where the so-called "rebel group" Abu Sayyaf had taken the 21 hostages it had rounded up from a resort in nearby Sipadan island, Malaysia. The theater of Jolo also left me dazed and confused. But I don't think I will ever be able to sort out what I went through and witnessed there. I even slept between two Abu Sayyaf commanders. In the jungle, with armed men milling in the background, I had discussions about labrador retrievers with two of the hostages.

I'm a Filipino photojournalist based in Singapore. I had read about the Abu Sayyaf and its hostage-taking in Basilan, but when I visited the Philippines last Holy Week, I was supposed to do just a piece on the Bilibid prison. I was about to check in for my flight back to Singapore when it was confirmed that the Abu Sayyaf had snatched mostly foreign victims from Sipadan. Instead of boarding my flight to Singapore, I found myself on a plane headed for Zamboanga. From there I made my way down to Jolo, where things soon turned surrealistic.

First, nothing was ever said on the record, and whatever was said could not be confirmed. So we in media swapped the stories we couldn't file over bottles of beer in a carinderia at the Peacekeepers Inn, in Camp Asturias. Sulu Police Director Candido Casimiro would sometimes join us for drinks and tell us stories, also off the record. That's where all these tales ended up, sloshed over tables in a carinderia run by the local police cooperative.

And so no one wrote about how there was a rift between local officials and Nur Misuari, the governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. When Manila announced that Misuari was going to be in charge of the negotiations with the Abu Sayyaf, Jolo officials were disappointed - and that's putting it mildly. But even among themselves, the local leaders had their own little rifts, and because each had their own small armies, there were often small-scale armed clashes. No one reported on that either.

And remember when freelance journalist Arlene de la Cruz came down from Talipao, Sulu with the first pictures and interview with the Sipadan hostages? Her work made a splash in newspapers and on TV, but what she had to go through to get her material and herself out of harm's way has largely been left untold.

See, de la Cruz was going to break the news that the Abu Sayyaf was rejecting Misuari as the negotiator. Misuari's people had put tails on her so they knew what the Abu Sayyaf had told her. We didn't. But after she got back from the Abu Sayyaf camp, one of Misuari's intelligence officers herded us journalists into a room where he questioned us and made threats. Off the record, of course. De la Cruz herself was being badgered to show her tapes to Misuari first. I wish we had a record of the Academy Award performances by everyone - including a local official - so that de la Cruz could leave safely with her video tapes.

Before she made her escape, though, de la Cruz managed to say that the kidnappers wanted a medical team over to check on the hostages. There had been unconfirmed reports that one of the foreign hostages had collapsed and needed immediate medical attention. One morning after de la Cruz left, Casimiro suddenly said that a medical team was going to be dispatched to the Abu Sayyaf hideout and one photographer could come along. We drew lots and agreed whoever went would share his pictures with the rest. I won. Casimiro then said I would have to pretend to be a medical officer. I retorted, no way, and everyone else agreed that it was a dangerous and stupid idea.

Then Misuari's people who were also acting as "facilitators" said the kidnappers had requested that a reporter, a video cameraman and a photographer visit them, too. The Abu Sayyaf also stipulated that all three should be representing foreign news agencies. We drew lots a second time, and I was again among those who would get to go. All three of us were Filipinos. But while the reporter was also from a foreign (German) news agency, the cameraman was actually from a local TV station.