under martial rule, saw Malay marching in the streets along with his wife, the late teacher and writer Paula Carolina “Ayi” S. Malay, and other activists, in effect continuing to pelt the strongman with a steady rain of pebbles that ultimately gathered into a tempest. Once in those dog days, having left your desk to cover a women’s march, you saw him in the street preparing to unfurl a streamer that he would hoist with Ayi and other women proclaiming defiance against the dictator. You smiled dif- fidently at your graying professor; he squinted, doubtless sifting through the sands of memory, then boomed a greeting, calling you by your formal first name. You watched him at the frontline, one of a few males bobbing in a female sea. Thus did Malay walk the talk. And as though to ground his involvement in the broad resistance against the dictatorship, he held prominent posts in organizations that gave aid and comfort to family members of political detainees (Kapatid) and to former political detainees themselves (Selda). He was also a member of the Council of Leaders of the National Alliance for Justice, Freedom and Democracy.
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It’s not certain exactly when Malay reached the tipping point. (It’s said that it was between the autumn and winter of 1940 that the existentialists Sartre and De Beauvoir made the decision to get involved in the resistance against fascism.) You surmise that for him, engagement came without much anguish or difficulty, a logical development in the life of a teacher devoted to continuing study, particularly in the Philippine context where “the blood of others” spatters heavily on both
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