Feeling strange and distrusted at Marawi

I have stayed and lived with my Maranao friends for more than eight years.
In my very recent visit there, I felt like a stranger when i overheard some Maranao males who uttered 'who are these women? are they spies?"
I smiled to myself and felt how much distrust is sown in our lives because of this Mindanao conflict.
Well, it wasn't the first time I heard of that. I remembered three or four of my Moro close friends who'd jest me that I'm a spy. They were those persons whom I trusted all my life while I stayed at Marawi.
I laughed it off and shrugged it out because it made me also reflect how much trust I need to invest to be understood as a journalist, a reporter, or a blogger.
In an interest to investigate an issue, Merlyn and I visited a military camp in Marawi city.
The visit also made me refresh memories how I walked up to the apex side of the camp just to see General Ernesto Boac then, at a time when he was still the brigade commander of 401st IB under 4rth ID.
I tried calling his number, but he did not answer. Merlyn and I could have asked him how's he been?
It also reminded me of a intelligence cum operation officer under Gen. Prejido, who pretended as "Antonio Antonio" in our first meeting and whom I hated much at an election period for being so hawkish and too shadowy. Nope, it was not a battle of perception and beliefs. It was more of a personal struggle on military dominance in a journalist's life. That soldier truly made me teary eyed as I walked out. I was told he is now working at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA).
But of course I also remembered the ever friendly Pasco and those faces I reckoned but whose names slipped my memory.
I also remembered Lt. Chris Morales, whose parents I called Nanay and Tatay.
There has been numerous infrastructural changes inside the brigade now; making it quite different the last time I was here (uhuh, years and years ago).
I met a foreign soldier in the camp which Merlyn introduced.
Funny, this foreign soldier made me think I am the stranger inside the camp and he is the native resident of Marawi.
Nonetheless, I made it certain that such strange feeling is registered in his memory.
"Because I do not know you..." he quipped.
"No, you don't know me," I said in a tune of Ray Charles song "You don't know me."
"But you know, I like the way how you distrusted me," I said straightforwardly.
Merlyn laughed.
It made him all the more uncomfortable.