I was ten when I first learned how to answer a phone call. I can still hear the line’s dial tone, the ‘beep, beep, beep’ whenever I press a number, and the shrill ‘toooot’ every time the other line is busy. I remember how my Tita reprimanded me one time because I had always greeted the caller with a bland and detached “Hello, sino po ito?” and how she told me that I should switch it up because I sounded bored and lazy. To this day, I still cringe in embarrassment whenever I recall how I tried to change the way I greeted the person on the other line by saying “good morning,” only to realize that it was three in the afternoon!
The shame made me decide to ignore phone calls altogether, but only for a moment. Otherwise, my parents would scold me, and that would be worse than my aunt pointing out my failed greeting again. Ten years later, I landed a job that required me to speak with people over the phone, properly, with civility, and using the correct greeting (thankfully). My Tita would be so proud.
Such formative memories are hard to forget, and this perspective is the reason I found Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police intriguing. In her story, seemingly mundane and inconsequential objects disappear on an unnamed island. Hats, ribbons, birds, roses, and many more, unceremoniously gone and erased from people’s memories. There was no pattern of when or why such things ceased to exist, save for the citizens’ inkling that something is going to disappear. It was sad, yes, especially when the people got rid of the objects themselves, as if these items did not hold any meaning for them. But they got used to it eventually, because the objects did lose their sentimental value once the people forgot what they were, including what they’re called.
If I were to live on that island, and telephones are deleted from my memory, then the feeling of embarrassment and pride I’ve associated with phone calls would cease to exist in my mind and, by extension, within my being.
Imagine this now: what if more objects with the same impact as a telephone went away? One would wonder what would be left of the self, indeed. With things disappearing one after the other, a time will come when the individual becomes nothing more than an existence devoid of meaning.
This loss of individuality seemed to be the goal of the regime that the island was unfortunately a part of. The more memories removed from a person’s mind, the more the individual loses context of the life they once lived. With nothing to look back to for reference, the person will eventually become blind to the present and the future.
In the story, this forgetfulness gradually expanded from the individual level to the whole of society, resulting in a sort of collective amnesia and mass complacency. Along with the erosion of individuality came the developing inability to distinguish what was real and acceptable. It will not surprise me if the island gets to the point where the loss of agency becomes the norm.
The regime would have been successful, too, if not for the few citizens who are genetically predisposed to retain memories.
It was the existence of these outliers that gave the book’s protagonist a reason to act. Specifically, when she decided to hide one of these people from the Memory Police. Against all odds, and even when she was gradually forgetting one thing after the other, she found ways to protect this one person, effectively defying those in power even when she couldn’t fight the systemic memory erasure itself.
The protagonist risking getting caught highlighted her humanity. While the fragments — the memories — that make up her individuality gradually faded away, her compassion for her fellow humans remained intact. Perhaps, at the end of it all, being human is reason enough to compel oneself to look out for others, memory loss be damned.
Toward the end of the story, I had to wonder if the few who have retained their memories eventually took a stand against their oppressors or caved into the pressure. I hope that it was the former, and that they have found ways to preserve the knowledge of the past and devise a means to pass it to the next generations. Only then can they really declare that they fought back.
There’s a reason they have their memories intact, and if it is not to pass them to the future, then what is the point?
Just as important as the mundane memories we associate with telephones are pivotal national events, like the September 21 Trillion Peso March in the Philippines. Whether you were there or you have been supportive of the rally, remember the righteous anger, the burning desire to act, and the reignited compassion for the unfortunate, and let these feelings inform how you take the next step.
Because to forget is to lose.
