Nasser Sharief
(In memory of the late Nasser A. Marohomsalic [1955-2024]
China, they say, has 70% of the world’s engineers; the U.S., 70% of the lawyers. And—Nasser A. Marohomsalic loved to add with a grin—Lanao del Sur may have the densest number of lawyers per capita in the country. He would ask, half in jest and half in worry, whether that was a good thing—he being one of them. It has been a year or two since my namesake left us, and I miss him terribly, even his punchlines. These days my solace is the company of old brods—Willy Villar, Bert Tagayuna, Ben Guerra, and Amanoding Esmail when he flies in from the south.
Last week I found myself on Commonwealth Avenue and—out of
habit—turned into the Burger King parking lot. That joint was our watering
hole. You cannot imagine how many barrels of coffee we drained there over
fifteen years, or how many factory-shifts’ worth of hours we spent arguing over
history, culture and fiction until past midnight.
I went through the motions and walked in. For a moment I thought that if I shut my eyes tight and opened them again, Nasser would be there, grinning and beckoning me to our table under the logo—our “office.” I slid into my usual seat. A crew member recognized me and asked if we had transferred elsewhere. “No,” I said. “My friend’s gone.” She fell silent, then rallied: “Sir, the usual?” I nodded. “For one.”
I met Nasser fifty-two years ago, on a boat from Iligan to
Manila in 1973. We were teenagers who ended up in the same Sampaloc boarding
house—ambitious, and usually broke. He was a straight-A, dean’s-list student at
FEU, two blocks from my school. Early-70s Manila was turning from
black-and-white to Technicolor, and we collected our share of adventures. Once,
I teased him that the first thing you lose in Manila is your virginity. He
laughed and pointed at me: “Not me.” He had been married, by parental consent,
at sixteen. “But do you know the one thing you can’t lose in this city,” he
said, “even if you want to? Your provincial accent.” He told of walking into
Otis Department Store on Avenida, determined to speak softly, Tagalog-style. He
showed the saleslady a pair of socks and asked, “Miss, magkano po ito?” The
lady blinked and replied, “Ba’t po kayo galit?” Why are you angry?
After graduation we parted. He entered UP Law; I passed the
CPA board in 1978 and went abroad. I heard of him as a “street parliamentarian”
in the turbulent 1980s, then as a Commissioner at the Commission on Human
Rights, tangling with powerful officials—among them Mayor Alfredo Lim—over the
notorious spray-painting of homes of suspected drug pushers in 1997. He
championed indigenous participation in governance and closely followed the
southern rebellion. Along the way he wrote what became Aristocrats of the
Malay Race. When I returned in 2000, I helped him bring it out—layout,
pruning, and cover design. He self-published in 2001; it sold out at once.
When we rejoined, the common denominator was writing, though
we came from opposite poles: I from fiction, he from legal pleadings. Soon we
crossed over. He nudged me into archives and history; I pressed novels into his
hands—John D. MacDonald, George R. R. Martin, and others. As I plunged into
fieldwork—genealogies, paleography, and the south’s layered history—Nasser
began writing fiction. I used to scold him, half-joking: he was writing his
pleadings like literature.
After he retired from government, we met more often—first at
the McDonald’s near Caltex Fairview, later at Burger King. His finest work,
still unpublished, is Mujahid: A Novel of the Moro Rebellion. Maratabat—which
I reviewed in this paper—was excellent, but Mujahid is the masterwork.
He wrote Maratabat in about three months, anxious to “release at least
one” because, as he said, “you never know when we go.” His health was failing,
though he denied it.
Nasser was a gentleman. Three hours before he died, my wife
and I kept vigil as he awaited transfer to the Heart Center’s operating room.
Even then he worried about others. “Have coffee at Figaro,” he told me. “The
wait could be long—and you’ll get bored.” I wish I had ignored him and stayed
by his side until he breathed his last.
Months earlier he had outlined minor edits for Mujahid.
I understood his care. But now, after re-reading it in grief and gratitude, I
believe it can be published as is—his swan song, perfect despite the author’s
absence.
Here is a taste from the opening passage: “The noonday sun
blazed in a clear sky, lancing the forest floor with light through the canopy’s
gaps… Inside the dense, a squad of mujahideen walked single file, AK-47s slung,
backpacks humping their shadows.”
Somewhere in Fairview there is still a seat with his imprint
and a cup of coffee that never finished cooling. I go back now and then, order
“the usual,” and keep his place. A novel waits for its first public breath. And
a friend’s voice—warm, wry, indomitable—still keeps me company.
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