To get the dream

Only the usual leftists took to the streets to condemn the acquittal by the Philippine Court of Appeals of American Lance Corporal Daniel Smith of the rape charge filed against him by a Filipino woman code-named Nicole.

And why should the rest of the Filipinos take umbrage at the turn of events (Smith was actually convicted by a lower court but won his freedom on appeal) when the main complainant herself was no longer interested in the outcome of the case.

Nicole, in a recantation that shocked the nation and shamed it before the world, said she was no longer sure if she had been raped at all and promptly left for the United States on an immigrant visa that suddenly dropped on her lap.

But even the leftists, quick as they are to protest anything that smells even remotely American, were not fast enough for Daniel Smith who, on getting acquitted, promptly flew to the US with no little aid from American authorities.

And so it happened, that while the leftists were studiously waving placards condemning Smith despite his acquittal, Smith was no longer there to even care. No air was emptier than the air through which the placards waved messages that have been overtaken by events.

It was a double-whammy that rendered many Filipinos, not just the leftists, silly. The chain of events was so unforthcoming at the time that it actually did that nobody knew exactly what hit them.

But that is just a matter of speaking. The reality is, everybody knew what was coming. Nobody will admit it, but everybody had an uneasy thumb stuck deep into their dark brown anuses that somehow, sooner or later, America was going to pull Daniel Smith free.

What caught Filipinos truly by surprise, what for the flagging life of them they failed to see coming, was that the means to spring Daniel Smith free was going to be none other than Nicole herself.

Of course no judge or justice was willing to say the acquittal was based on anything else but the merits of the case, much less on the recantation by Nicole. But hey, who gives a darn weight on what is said after the fact.

And the fact is, Daniel Smith is free in the same way that Nicole is in America. In that land of many opportunities, they are now free to pursue their dreams, or what is left of them. Let us just hope there is no opportunity for their paths to cross.

Shortly after Nicole recanted, I wrote that it is best for her to be spared the backlash from her action, in cognizance of what she may have been through, and in deference of what she sought out to do, which is to regain her interrupted life.

I still hold on to that conviction, although saying so leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth. For I have daughters who also long to go to America but who I know, and God forbid, are not willing to take the route Nicole, I now suspect, had at least a little willingly taken.

When I was a young boy, I vaguely remember a story in the news about another boy who stowed away inside the wheel well of an airplane. I could not even remember if he was going to America. What just strikes me on recall was the greatness of his determination to go.

Then I remember Dith Pran in the movie Killing Fields, and the efforts to bring him out of the hell that was Cambodia at the time to the heaven that was the United States. I visualize too the boat people from Cuba, braving the elements to get to Florida.

But it is not just America, although America has come to symbolize not just political freedom but freedom from every human bondage. It is everywhere where a dream, any dream, can be lived. And the things people do to get there is just amazing, but none quite like Nicole's.