Amara in Liloan, Cebu, is a silent landscape that watches out to sea. Built more than a hundred years ago with the intent of guiding vessels and fishermen on their journey, the place got its name from a Spanish word that means mooring rope, one used to anchor ships at port. True to its name, the place bears a sense of comfort and domesticity to people (like home), a sense of rememberance almost close to melancholia. I hear that towers like this are home to many legends: ghosts of ancient lovers who have died, stories of men and women who, like India's Donna Paula, bloomed and wilted like roses in stormy sea.
When I went to the place last month, I was reminded of my friend Naj's brother who died in a similar landscape in Leyte a few years back while saving her girlfriend. It was summer night and the pair was drinking with a group of friends like they'd usually do during vacations. The pair decided to venture closer to the sea. Even closer. But the girlfriend didn't know how to swim, a fact they must have forgotten in their drunkenness. They never came back.
Their bodies drifted to neigboring villages and were found two days after. Nobody knew at which time exactly the victims died or whether there had been any way to save them if there was at least a single one in the group who was sober.
