MEDIUM RARE

Believe it or not, I know what they mean when they talk about the Middle East.

I strolled the royal gardens in Tehran of the Empress Farah Diba in the company of a few couples of peacocks and peahens. While my traveling companions shopped for jewelry and souvenirs, I bought myself a stained-glass panel depicting the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

A few years later, in Dubai, I visited a luxurious mall to have my “branded” watch cleaned and found that here I could save ₱25,000 – the price quoted in Manila – except that I didn’t have the time to leave it with the jeweler until the next day. The mall, incidentally, was secured and protected by security guards, most of them Filipinas, in uniform.

On another trip, where I found myself in Beirut, I lived in the penthouse apartment of my French-speaking dormmate who was pursuing a degree in medicine while I was on a scholarship grant in journalism courtesy of the English Council and Lord Thomson. The city was beautiful but it had to be placed under the protection of United Nations peacekeepers, whose sky-blue berets made them look like handsome knights from some fairy tale. They were stationed at practically every street corner, reminding one and all that peace was a fragile treasure to be guarded at all costs.

It is tragic that the Middle East is again in the middle of a period of conflict, with bombs falling, missiles being launched, and innocents getting killed – in a Middle East where the three great religions of the world were born. In his Easter message, Pope Leo XIV lamented, “We constantly make the call for peace, but unfortunately many people want to promote hatred, violence, war.”

For the scores of Filipinos returning from that part of the world from which we buy our oil, where will they find the jobs that will pay them the salaries that they were used to receiving? If they are not overqualified, they would be underpaid.

This is a job for the Department of Migrant Workers but not for them only. In times like these, it is comforting to remember what our elders have been teaching us: Work makes you but only you can make it work.