I saw the faces of many of the 3,000 students of S.I.T. at an event the first evening, when the student body staged an impressive torchlight parade. For me, the parade was the highlight of the entire celebration. Except in movies or in drawings of political rallies in the days before electric lights, I had never seen a torchlight parade. A dark night in Samar and a student body of Filipinos was my first and only experience with a torchlight parade.

We watched from a porch on the campus, close to the dirt road on which the parade passed. Our position was at a curve in the road, which gave us a view of the stream of fire, both as it approached and after it passed. As all students were compelled to march, I expected a dull, perfunctory parade. I asked our host how long the parade would last. He answered with humor, “Maybe endless.” As the marchers approached, I was captivated by the fire leaping in strange shapes from the coconut oil torches, but my attention soon shifted from the fire to the faces that the fire illuminated. The faces moved rapidly by in a continuous flow of men and women marching two or three abreast. The firelight made some faces clearly visible, while others were obscured by the shifting shadows. Some were playful and laughing, while others were somber or passively alert.

They were the faces of Samar, faces of the Philippines, faces of Asia. The dark, dusky tones were as comely as the lighter shades, those blends of Spain and China in the Malay blood of the islands from times past. Once, I thought I saw a “Mica,” a young American-Filipino woman.

The flow of faces was mesmerizing. Now and then, a face would look familiar. There is Doñing, I fantasized, a younger, round-faced version of our cook. Later came reminders of Pio and Guido and Milagros, and even Father Dineros, all images from Bobon. Letty and Terry did not appear, however. Their countenances were perhaps inimitable. A face I imagined to be Aguinaldo’s passed by, and another like Quezon’s, or what I imagined Quezon’s face to be. If reminders of Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda were there, they remained unknown to me, for this was 1962, three years before their full arrival on the national scene.

Since coming to Samar, I had seen many other faces illuminated in the light of candle and kerosene, and had heard interesting secrets and private observations enhanced by the flickering light. A young man told me that when God created Filipinos, He had played a humorous trick on them by making them brown and short, and had played another trick when He later made them Spanish. (He mentioned nothing about the American years). An older man revealed that, unlike Filipinos, Americans could commit no sins. Another woman told me to watch out for the wak-wak, the name of a bird that no one can see but only hear. When it cries out, “wak-wak,” a creature of evil, the aswang, is nearby and approaching, but the aswang can be warded off by special words and actions. She laughed as she completed her story. Doñing told me of a witch doctor who gathers his herbs in the mountains on Good Friday only. We were to hear more of this doctor, and witness him face to face.