Farewell and salute, Conrado de Quiros

It was a small work area – enough to fit the writer and his desk and chair but it was in this room in their family’s quaint and humble abode in Quezon City where Conrado de Quiros or CdQ wielded his sharp sword and penned some of the bravest columns in the history of Philippine opinion writing.

The house was usually quiet especially when he was writing – to borrow a line from Hamlet, not a mouse was stirring. You could hear a pin drop or perhaps the clicking of keyboards.

It was a tiny home office, indeed, but it was in that space where he churned out words that would leave huge, huge marks not just on our society’s political landscape but more so in the hearts and minds of his readers.

I’ve seen him in that home office, perhaps more than I’ve seen him anywhere else – glued to his chair, stepping out only to say hi, at least during those times when I visited their family home.

Whenever he took a break from writing, I imagined, he probably hung out in the living room filled with books and curio items and stuff related to music. This part I remember vaguely. Perhaps he would listen to the sound of a vinyl playing or strum on his guitar.  It was clearly an artist’s home, one who loved words and the gift of music.

These images are all hazy now and I’m desperately scraping memories from decades past. You see, I was only a grade schooler when I first met him. His daughter Miranda and I were schoolmates from preschool all the way to college. To us kids, he was one of the parents you would see at school events. No big deal.

When Miranda and I and several other friends were old enough to hang out, we sometimes went to the De Quiros home or to the nearby mall. JASMS being a small and tightly-knit school, everyone knew each other like family. We all went to each other’s homes and knew each other’s parents. It was during those visits to the De Quiros home where I spied CdQ in front of his computer in his home office.

I thought then it was such a lonely and boring job – all alone, writing all day – but Miranda was always proud of her columnist dad. To us, he was Tito Conrad, Miranda’s cool, cool dad – groovy with slick long hair and not at all strict or intimidating. We had no idea then he was this legend of a writer they call CdQ.

There’s the Rub

The years passed and adult life happened. CdQ moved his There’s the Rub column to the Philippine Daily Inquirer from the Philippine Daily Globe; Miranda and family moved to another home, too. We all moved along in this thing called life but I was always happy to bump into him, mostly in artists’ haunts in Quezon City. In person, he was a man of few words but always warm.

I became one of his cult followers and not just because he was our cool Tito Conrad but as a journalist, I admired his wit and intellect but most of all, his courage. His words pierced like a king’s saber and hit like the cavalry attacking enemy lines.

The best tributes have been said.

My friend and former editor Carlos Conde, now Human Rights Watch senior researcher, summed it well:

“The best Filipino opinion writer since the Marcos dictatorship bar none. His masterfully written columns, often laden with a fierce moral outrage the times required, helped shape Philippine politics in ways no other columnist did.”

CdQ wrote thousands and thousands of columns. Writer ka lang pala, published in 2009, is one of my favorites. It is about being a writer of his time which, he said, was not unlike Rizal’s time.

Below is an excerpt:

“It is a time when the people tasked to safeguard the morals of the indios are as besotted and venal and hypocritical as the friars and oidores, making right wrong and wrong right, and proclaiming God to have ordained this order of things. It is a time when the masa are prostrate and broken and abject, unable to lift the yoke off their backs, reposing their deliverance in false prophets and clowns and sellers of snake oil.

“It is a time when you realize that there is no action without articulation, there is no flesh without word, and look for ways to capture the agony of oppression and the ecstasy of liberation. It is a time when you realize that there is no direction without interrogation, there is no life without examination, and look for ways to release the power of a subjected race and the glory of a people longing to be free.

“It is a time when you realize that to do all this, you have to grope and grasp and clasp with your mind the truth of your plight, to impale with words the thoughts and feelings that flit around you, the fears and aspirations that well up within you, to make reality real so that you can face it, so that you can confront it, so that you can live it.”

Masterfully written and jaw-dropping. And always a reminder to move, to act, to love.

Rest in power, CdQ. From your small workplace emerged a legacy that is larger than life. It was an honor to have met the legend of a man that you were and always will be.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen (Iris Gonzales) on Facebook.