Asia Literary Review No. 36, Spring 2019: Era Reformasi - Indonesian Stories

SPRING 2019

Era Reformasi – Indonesian Stories

17,000 Islands of Imagination British Council presents the Indonesia Market Focus Cultural Programme with over 30 author events at The London Book Fair and across the UK: Aberystwyth, Glasgow, London, Norwich, Southend-on-Sea.

Agustinus Wibowo | Clara Ng | Dee Lestari Faisal Oddang | Intan Paramaditha Laksmi Pamuntjak | Leila S Chudori Nirwan Dewanto | Norman Erikson Pasaribu Reda Gaudiamo | Seno Gumira Ajidarma Sheila Rooswitha Putri

Read more about the British Council’s Market Focus partnership literature.britishcouncil.org

No. 36, Spring 2019: Era Reformasi – Indonesian Stories

No. 36, Spring 2019: Era Reformasi – Indonesian Stories

Publisher Greater Talent Limited Managing Editor Phillip Kim Editor in Chief Martin Alexander Senior Editors Kavita A. Jindal, Anurima Roy, Michael Vatikiotis, Zheng Danyi Special Acknowledgement Ilyas Khan, co-founder of the Asia Literary Review Production Alan Sargent Front cover image ‘Gunungan’ by Tommy Chandra © 2016 (www.tommychandra.com) The Asia Literary Review is published by Greater Talent Limited asialiteraryreview.com Editor@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Submissions@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Subscriptions and Advertising: Admin@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro ISBN: 978-988-12154-3-7 (print) ISBN: 978-988-12154-4-4 (e-book) ISSN: 1999-8511

Individual contents © 2019 the contributors/Greater Talent Limited This compilation © 2019 Greater Talent Limited Cover image printed with kind permission of Tommy Chandra. The illustration was made for Crossing Boundaries: New Voices from Indonesia, and is a modern reinterpretation of Gunungan, a traditional theme originating from Javanese shadow puppetry ‘Road to Heaven’ and ‘Womb’ first published in Words Without Borders (2009) and reprinted with kind permission ‘Laluba’ and ‘Loving Flower’ first published in I-Lit: Not Chick Lit! (Vol. 1, 2011) and reprinted with kind permission Other stories first published in various Lontar-sponsored anthologies and reprinted with kind permission

Contents Editorial

7

Introduction

8

Zen Hae translated by John H. McGlynn

Road to Heaven

10

Abidah El Khalieqy translated by John H. McGlynn

Lake

16

Lily Yulianti Farid translated by John H. McGlynn

Hamzah from Fansur

24

Azhari Aiyub translated by George A. Fowler

The Vulture and the Bane of the Ninth Victim

30

Ben Sohib translated by George A. Fowler

Womb

36

Cok Sawitri translated by John H. McGlynn

Pot Na Enga Tako

44

Gus tf Sakai translated by Toni Pollard

One Day, There Was Mother and Radian

49

Avianti Arman translated by Joan Suyenaga

Laluba Nukila Amal translated by Kadek Krishna Adidharma

55

The Song of the Kuwok Bird

63

Sunlie Thomas Alexander translated by Suzan Piper

Loving Flower

71

Yetti A. KA translated by Pamela Allen

The Death of Anwar Sadat in Cempaka Putih

76

Yusi Avianto Pareanom translated by Pamela Allen

The Crow

83

Zen Hae translated by Marjie Suanda

Contributors

91

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Programme Highlights

Tuesday, 12 March

Thursday, 14 March

The Many Identities of Indonesia Writers Agustinus Wibowo and Faisal Oddang consider the changing identities of modern Indonesia, and how their own personal histories have affected their sense of self. Agustinus Wibowo is a travel writer whose work has taken him to China, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Papua New Guinea, and Suriname. Faisal Oddang is an award-winning writer who has recently been awarded residencies in Germany, the US, and the Netherlands.

Speakers are Agustinus Wibowo, Faisal Oddang, Will Harris and chaired by Elizabeth Pisani

Crossing Boundaries: Women Writers in Indonesia Indonesia’s new wave of women writers has produced a number of bestselling books, with more prominent women writers in the country than ever before, who are unafraid to tackle previously-unexplored subject matter and to write across genres. Dewi Lestari is a singersongwriter, novelist and short story writer whose recent publication Rectoverso is a hybrid of music album and short story collection. Laksmi Pamuntjak has published collections of poetry, short stories, and novels, and is also known for her food writing. These two authors will discuss their successes, the challenges that different genres and disciplines bring, and what it is like to be a woman in an industry traditionally dominated by men.

13.00-14.00 Cross Cultural Hub

Wednesday, 13 March Feminist Fairy Tales As children, stories are told to us—about others, about ourselves, the people we might turn out to be and the opportunities that are open to us. But what happens when the stories donĆ…t Ćźt# Can Ćźction offer us another route out - into imagining ourselves differently, and make us believe that another life is possible# Speakers are Intan Paramaditha, Clara Ng, and Fiona Benson 10.00-11.00 Cross Cultural Hub Seno Gumira Ajidarma in Conversation with Sian Cain Indonesian ‘Author of the Day’, Seno Gumira Ajidarma, is a critically acclaimed author of non-Ćźction, short stories and essays. Through Much of Seno’s work, both the factual and the Ćźctional, focuses on everyday life and criticizes contemporary social, cultural and political conditions—but he has a great sense of humor as well, and has published satirical essays, playful poetry, a cartoon novel, and historical fantasies. He is well known in Indonesia as a consistent advocate of free speech and freedom of publication. He will be appearing in conversation with Sian Cain, The Guardian’s books site editor.

14.00-14.30 PEN Literary Salon

10.00-11.00 Cross Cultural Hub Market Focus and Beyond: What’s Next for Indonesian Literature?

Book fair market focuses can play an important role in shining a spotlight on languages and counties underrepresented in the English-language publishing.

But what comes next# How do these literary markets, and literature itself, react to a new global readership# This discussion will examine Indonesia, London Book Fair’s 2019 Market Focus and the Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015. With readers globally reading Indonesian literature, how does that impact what writers, translators, and publishers are doing now# And what is the future of Indonesian literature# Speakers are Dewi Lestari, John H. McGlynn, Laksmi Pamuntjak, Tiffany Tsao and chaired by Liza Danton 14.30-15.30 Club Room

#ImagineNation #LBFIndonesia

Explore the languages, literatures, cinemas & cultures of South East Asia.

For full details of BA, MA, and MPhil/PhD degree programmes, including: • • • •

BA South East Asian Studies BA South East Asian Studies and a discipline MA South East Asian Studies MA Comparative Literature

E: study@soas.ac.uk

www.soas.ac.uk/cseas Photo © Clay Gilliland, Flickr

Editorial Editorial

Editorial

T

he Asia Literary Review is delighted to present this supplementary issue focused exclusively on Indonesian stories, produced with the assistance of the Lontar Foundation, an independent, non-profit organisation based in Jakarta whose primary aim since 1987 has been to promote Indonesian literature and culture through the translation of Indonesian literary works.

This volume is being published to coincide with the 2019 London Book Fair (held on 12–14 March) and the selection of Indonesia as the fair’s Market Focus.

The twelve stories presented in this volume were selected from a compilation of stories that John McGlynn of the Lontar Foundation together with local writer Zen Hae curated to highlight works completed in the democratic and liberating era which opened in Indonesia after the fall of President Soeharto in 1998. As a collection, they present a fascinating glimpse into a mind-bendingly complex nation comprised of 17,000 islands and even more numerous perspectives on society and nationhood. The subjects covered in these stories invariably focus on struggle – between tradition and modernity, feminism and patriarchy, religion and secularity, everyday reality and the supernatural. Many of the stories differ from the style of writing that the Asia Literary Review has tended to publish over the years, but their sincerity and uniqueness are true to our mission of uncovering hidden voices from across Asia. As such, these tales provide illuminating and compelling reading about upended lives and a world in flux.

The ALR Editorial Staff

7

Introduction I ntroduction Zen H ae

Zen Hae translated by John H. McGlynn

T

he literary works by Indonesian authors featured in this edition of the Asia Literary Review are not bound by a particular theme, though if there is one that is dominant in the volume, it is violence – either direct or implied. Violence plays an important role in modern Indonesian history, both in the years around independence in 1945, and in the periods around the repressive regimes that have ruled this country. The birth of the Soeharto government’s ‘New Order’ regime, for instance (1965–1998), was marked by the widespread slaughter of Communist Party members as well as alleged leftist sympathisers. Meanwhile, the end of the regime, which was hastened by the Asian economic crisis, ignited widespread mayhem that peaked with the ‘unrest’ of May 1998.

After President Soeharto resigned, Indonesia entered a transitional phase which was more democratic in nature, a period that came to be known as reformasi. The writers whose work appears in this edition are among those who emerged in this period or since.

Unlike the previous generation of Indonesian writers, for whom statesponsored violence was a common theme, and who often seemed to stress their role more as social commentators than literary craftspeople, these younger authors write about a different sort of violence: the kind often seen in patriarchal societies, in male-controlled households, and in social and religious groups. At the same time, their stories contain humour as well as parody and a richness of local colour.

Since the beginnings of modern Malay literature in the early twentieth century – which in the Dutch East Indies evolved into ‘Indonesian’ literature as the national movement for independence grew – much of the literary

8

Zen Hae

output of this region has been both a direct and an indirect product of the nation’s social conditions of the time. Writers have emphasised realism, nurturing the close link between literary content and its source of inspiration.

This is the reason that, in the early days of modern Indonesian literature, and especially prior to independence in 1945 when Malay was the dominant language of the Minangkabau people from West Sumatra and urban people of Chinese descent, literary content frequently dealt with forced marriage, assimilation, ancestor worship, cultural orientation and politics.

After independence, however, as the dominance of the Indonesian language grew around the country, and as people from more and more ethnic groups began to write in Indonesian, themes grew much more varied and greater emphasis put on literary craftsmanship. In fact, the amount of local colour in Indonesian literature expanded exponentially. Writers from differing regions were now writing in the same language but, as products of different cultures and with different mother tongues, their concerns and thus the themes of their work varied each from the others.

In the 1950s and 1960s, even as a sense of internationalism gained ground among Indonesian authors, many writers continued to draw on their own local cultures as the basis for their work. Many also advocated a synthesis between locally-inspired content and Western-based notions of modern literature.

But that was then, and this is now – the twenty-first century – and for the writers in this volume, the question of local versus global is not a primary focus. They write about what they experience and what they see, whether it be in their home town or in a foreign country. They draw on what they are close to, what attracts them, and what they most know: whether it be ‘local’ or ‘global’. They may be writing in Indonesian, but they put little stock in the creation of a national literature, since they are writing not only for their own people but for the world.

They tirelessly adopt literary forms and styles that have emerged in world literature to rewrite local content – something that would be impossible for them to abandon entirely anyway, and it is this evolution that stands as their most valuable contribution to contemporary Indonesian literature.

9

Road to Heaven Road t o Heaven Abidah E l Khalieqy

Abidah El Khalieqy translated by John H. McGlynn

W

hen my mother died, her face changed. I was the first to notice. When other family members and friends came to pay their respects, what I saw in their eyes was doubt; none could believe that the deceased was my mother. Even my brother, who hadn’t seen my mother alive for three years, as soon as he saw the corpse, straightaway announced that the deceased was our aunt, the youngest girl in my mother’s family. The doctors and nurses who had cared for Mother when she was in the hospital were also surprised; no one could believe their eyes.

Standing by myself in the farthest corner of the room, I noted the look on the faces of all who came to view Mother’s body. Their spontaneous expressions made it easy for me to guess who loved her and who did not. I smiled, I’m sure, when I realised that only one person had curled his lips at the sight – none other than my father.

A telephone rang in my heart. ‘He’s jealous, extremely jealous,’ a disconnected voice said. With the smile of an angel on her lips, my mother looked very young, as if she had returned in time to the day she got married twenty years ago.

‘This is my true face,’ Mother whispered softly, ‘that of a new bride on her wedding night . . .’ she spoke firmly and with determination, ‘a night that began with a dazzling party at our new home that faced the silent mosque, yet ended with body blows and painful memories.’

She continued without hesitation, recalling the time when pain became part of her life: ‘Is it this look on my face that made him kick me, that stirred undying jealousy in him, that caused him to curse me and to take me by

10

Abidah El Khalieqy

force on our wedding night – just because I performed tahajud, the midnight prayer, at the mosque in front of the house?’

As if experiencing stage fright, I found my body beginning to shake, a condition I always experience when my emotions are running high. I felt a rush of heat, a gush of pain, a pounding inside my chest, as I shed my first tears for Mother.

Of the five children in my family, I was the only girl. For that reason, perhaps, I shared with my mother a certain similarity of feeling – though all five of us had been born from the same womb, that of the fourth wife of the immensely wealthy Hajji Kamil.

People called my father a man of property and we, his children, drowned in his wealth; we were submerged in a social milieu that did not distinguish between a man, his wife, and his children. We were viewed by all merely as part and parcel of my powerful, handsome and famous father’s possessions.

I approached him. ‘Did you see something, Father? Why did you furrow your brow?’

‘Oh, yes, I saw something, something strange about your mother’s body.

It must have been her illness that changed her appearance.’

‘The doctor said that Mother suffered a brain haemorrhage. Wasn’t that made clear? Many people die from haemorrhages, but I’ve never heard of one altering the features of the victim.’

‘Who knows! Your mother was strange. . . . And now smiling like that, even in death!’

‘I don’t understand. To me, Mother’s death seems fitting and her condition far from sad. One might even say that it brought happiness for her. Look at her smile. Did you ever see such a beautiful smile? Not even on the movie screen.’

‘What are you talking about? And what do you know anyway? You’re just a snot-nosed kid!’

‘I am sure Mother died a good death – husnul khatimah, as they say.’

‘Hush! Go and do something useful; give your aunt a hand! Go on!’

‘But I want to stay here with Mother. This is my last chance to be close to her. I want to pray for her, Father.’

We were still tense when the ambulance arrived, but I was not going to allow anyone, even my father, to separate me from Mother.

‘You’re a woman; you won’t be strong enough. I’ll ride in the ambulance,’ my older brother told me.

11

Road to Heaven

‘I’m strong enough,’ I insisted. ‘All the time Mother was in the hospital, I waited there, at her side. You don’t have to worry. I’m just happy to be close to her.’

‘I don’t want to hear you bawl.’

‘But men also cry about things for which there is no reason to cry. I will not cry for Mother’s death. Just look! I will smile along with her until she is in His place.’

‘Whose place?’ my brother asked, dumbfounded.

‘Well, obviously, not the same place that you’re thinking of!’

‘You and your nonsense!’ he muttered as he walked away.

‘And you are more foolish than all my nonsense combined,’ I swore, sniggering to myself.

In the end it was my aunt and I who rode along in the ambulance with my mother’s body. As it was night-time, the traffic was fairly light, and it only took five hours from Yogyakarta to Jombang. During the journey, my aunt slept in her seat. I, between dozing and trying to stay awake, prayed.

At one point I glanced at my wristwatch and saw that it was twelve thirty in the morning.

‘Yes! It was exactly twelve thirty in the morning twenty-one years ago that I stepped out of the house,’ Mother said. ‘That night I felt an almost desperate longing to open the door to the mosque. My heart was full of roses, my face shining with innocence. I tried to make haste, as if He were already waiting for me in the mihrab, where I would face Mecca and pray. Embarrassed by my tardiness, I went up the stairs to the mosque. In prayer, I prostrated myself, time and again; one time after another, I touched my forehead to the floor before His gaze. How long I was there in supplication, I could not say, but one does not count the time one spends with Him. But afterwards, when I returned to my new home, no sooner had I set one foot inside the door than a mighty kick knocked the wind from me – the first blow of the many that would follow, springing from a hatefulness that grew in intensity.’

My mouth hung agape. I thought I had been able to divine almost everything in my mother’s book of destiny, but it seems my eyes were clouded and not keen enough to decipher in its entirety the secret code of my mother’s fate. Mother, a person at once so intimate yet so distant. . . . How very well she had concealed her secret hurt, hiding it with unstinting kindness and her famous patience.

12

Abidah El Khalieqy

‘While correcting the aim of his foot, your father said, ‘You think you’re the only Muslim! You think you’re the only faithful one! Well, listen! Starting today, I am your husband. I have more rights over you than anyone. And as for you, you will obey my orders above anyone else’s. Your loyalty must be unconditional and reserved for me alone. Do you understand?’

‘But when I went to the mosque you were playing cards. . . .’

‘Shut up! I will not argue with you, woman!’

‘And so I shut up,’ Mother said simply, ‘and kept my mouth shut for the next twenty years. Only your father had the right to speak. I was the mute, wordlessly watching life’s dreams pass, living in a world of silence that was as frightening and cold as the tip of death’s dagger. I was your father’s prey.

Every moment of every hour meant memorising his instructions on how to be a model victim – and smiling amiably while going to slaughter. And now I have fulfilled his dream. I am your father’s sacrificial victim, perceived by all as if I had died for him.

‘It was only when he suddenly saw me smiling like this that he realised that my smile was the same one I had on my face when returning from the mosque twenty years ago – before he began to beat me. For the next two decades he searched for the smile I am now wearing on my lips; he longed for it and dreamed of possessing it each night and day. But all he found was his idle fantasy because my lips had been sealed with dried blood, blood that had oozed from my mouth when he clamped his coarse fingers over it.’

Mother took a deep breath before speaking to me again: ‘You know what time it is now, don’t you? Yes, it’s twelve thirty in the morning. On the nights that followed during my first month as a bride, I felt that same desperate longing, one that could not be checked by any amount of force, to be in His presence and to pray before Him. My longing assailed all limits and bounds: it was only His smile at my prostrations and prayers that was able to make it abate. In a corner of our newlyweds’ room, I bowed my head to the floor repeatedly and counted the beads of my rosary with a rhythm that testified to my intense communion with our Maker.

‘Perhaps I sighed out loud and didn’t realise it but, apparently, other ears pricked at the sound and my own were then burnt badly by the fire of jealousy whose flames roared and overpowered your father’s nerves, heart, and mind. . . . And how could I have forgotten about his crocodile-skin belt hanging there in the room, so stiff and heavy and cruel! He grabbed the belt, raised it, and then lashed my back tens, maybe hundreds, of times. My silence

13

Road to Heaven

caused the fires of jealousy in him to rage ever more wildly. I fainted and did not gain consciousness until the call for morning prayer struck my ears.’

For a time, Mother said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on the distant sky and a smile, befitting an angel of paradise, floated on her lips.

‘I’m sure you’d like to know what happened then,’ my mother said. ‘Maybe your father really did think I was crazy. And why not? After the unending suffering and pain he caused me, the strange thing was, my longing for Him only intensified. It was almost too difficult for me to bear. Every breath, every heartbeat brought His face closer to mine. I was often jumpy and easily startled. When cooking in the kitchen, I’d look down to see that all the fish I was frying were charred in the pan. Or at night, as if hearing a knock, I’d open the front door to the house but find nothing there. My behaviour and actions convinced your father that I was cursed. He often thought that spirits had possessed me.’

I wanted to stroke Mother’s arm, but drowsiness had overcome me.

‘It was on a day when your father left the house for some kind of business or another. It was morning, around nine o’clock, and I performed the ritual ablutions and then fulfilled my desire to commune with Him. My prayers were so intense that I, stooped deeply in supplication, did not hear your father’s car when he came home. Apparently, that was my final prostration before I truly went to meet Him. The blow to my head, the crush of my brittle skull against the shiny, hard porcelain tiles, was so hard, it was like a burst of lightning suddenly exploding, mirroring the wild look in your father’s eyes as he pulled me up by the throat with his hands and did not release me until I fell, near lifeless, to the floor.’

‘And then what happened, Mother?’

‘Suddenly everything was dark. Black and inky. The entire world fell silent.

But then, in the distance, there appeared an incredible light, one so brilliant and steadily focused. It was a chariot of light, enveloped in the luminescence of seven moons, coming to greet me – just like in a child’s imagination. And I smiled, enchanted by the miracle of a conjurer that not even a million poets would be able to describe. The distance the chariot traversed seemed almost infinitesimal, no greater than the measure of space between my wedding room and the mosque in front of the house – the space which I had crossed twenty years previously, as it carried me to His throne. And that is where I found the most perfect love, now revealed in the smile you see on my lips.

‘Was your father right to be jealous of Him?’ Mother mused.

14

Abidah El Khalieqy

The ambulance sped onward, powered by a hundred angels. Beneath an overcast, water-filled sky, I tried to wash away my tears. But then roses of love bloomed and filled my heart with pride. My mother, my ocean of love, how very near heaven is – found just beneath the sole of your foot. Good-bye, Mother. Dear God! Greet her with your loving hand. Amen.

15

Lake L ake

L ily Yulianti Farid

Lily Yulianti Farid translated by John H. McGlynn The immense basin entices bees, grasshoppers and birds, and causes the wind to hasten the union of pollen with the pistils of wild plants that circle the lake’s edge. The light reflecting off the surface of its calm waters and the effusive freshness of the surrounding air attract people too. They bring along sturdy old planks and make simple benches on the shore.

After a few months, when the soil that had slid down from surrounding slopes begins to harden, an ever-growing number of visitors recollect the massive landslide and try to calculate how many people had died or were lost; how large an area of land had been displaced; and how many kilometres of asphalt road had been torn up, isolating the area completely. The basin, like an immense earthenware bowl created by nature in just one night, was now filled with water on which lotus flowers would grow, in which fish would come to live, and whose bottom would be covered with algae.

The hills and mountains stand guard around it. Born from the horrific aftermath of an earthquake, the lake would, many years later, become a haven where people would wipe their tears as they remembered the many misfortunes the disaster had brought.

T

hat was approximately the start of the story Zara intended to write for Fayza, one that might take the form of a novel – or perhaps even a trilogy – requiring many years for her to complete.

She had come up with the plan a long time ago: to set aside enough time to compose a story about a lake that had formed after an earthquake or a landslide. The story, as she sees it in her mind, is that of a lone researcher who meets a strong woman – a woman like Fayza. Zara also imagines the

16

Lily Yulianti Farid

final, lonely days of an elderly man, a former dictator, who spends his time reflecting on the results of his oppression and who, one day, when he is at the shore in his wheelchair musing about the past, is pushed into the lake by his faithful nurse.

At the wooden dining table, littered with bread crumbs and grains of sugar fallen from hasty spoons, Zara confides her plan. This isn’t the first time she has spoken of her intent to write a lengthy story.

The restaurant in the small hotel on the outskirts of Amsterdam is theirs, or at least it seems that way to them, this group of researchers who have just ended a long journey. And all their attention is focused on Zara’s plan, which seems so out of place amid the snippets of conversation about changes in the ecosystem, particularly ones resulting from the reclamation, sedimentation, and evaporation of lakes.

It’s still early in the morning, and other guests at the hotel have yet to appear for breakfast. The waitress arranging the breakfast buffet, who yawns from time to time, wears a smile as tart as yoghurt.

One of the group stops stirring his coffee to focus on what Zara is saying.

Others continue spreading peanut butter on warm pieces of toast, as Zara begins a conversation about their pending departure with the question, ‘Do any of you have an interesting story about love or life? I want to write a novel in memory of my sister. . . .’

The long journey they’ve made together has made them very close. One after another revealed to her what was in their minds and hearts. After the research journal was closed each evening, and as sleeping bags were opened in the field at the base of the dark and looming mountain, the buzzing of night bugs became the background sound for the stories they told before falling asleep. Zara listened to her friends talk about husbands, wives, loves, children, and the homes they missed. One talked about his failure to get into military service. Meanwhile, as she thought about Fayza with a deep-seated anxiety, Zara also began to imagine the outlines of the lengthy tale that she wanted to write.

‘After this expedition is over, I am going to write,’ Zara whispered to her friend who was already asleep. She heard in the distance an owl whose call seemed to echo the news of her plan.

And this morning, in the middle of a hastily eaten breakfast, she repeated her wish.

17

Lake

One of the group gave Zara a look of concern, thinking that she might be depressed after all those days she had spent noting in her journal fluctuations in temperature and soil acidity, along with changes in vegetation. Maybe she was under the influence of the miserably cold and persistent northern air that had penetrated their tents and sleeping bags. Or perhaps the many days she had spent traversing the lakelands and plains of Finland, before going to the Netherlands to visit areas where lakes once had been before they disappeared, had instilled in Zara the inspiration to convey a noble message – like a holy man after a long term of meditation.

Members of the research group had risen at dawn to pack. Some of them now formed smaller groups, preparing to head off on vacation. A couple of members had chosen to return directly to their own countries – the usual kind of thing that happens at the end of an expedition.

As a cup of Earl Grey tea steeped, Zara gulped down a bowl of cereal at this breakfast-departure meeting.

‘Where are you off to, Zara?’

‘Jakarta.’

Zara said her goodbyes. Her friends waved and wished her farewell in various ways and languages before continuing their own breakfasts and conversation.

‘See you at the conference in Montana, Zara! Don’t forget to bring your novel with you!’

This was the farewell call that stuck in Zara’s mind as the taxi took her to the airport. To her ears, the comment had sounded more like ridicule than serious feeling.

‘Oh, but just you wait! Didn’t Galileo write poetry even in the midst of calculating how rivers flow and building telescopes to study the universe?’

On the lake bed are a church and the houses that had mysteriously vanished seventy years before. And now the lake had disappeared, in just a single night – like a huge bathtub whose stopper had been pulled and its waters sucked out by a mysterious force. The news that morning had its source in a drowsy-eyed fisherman who had called the police to inform them of the disappearance of the lake in the Russian village of Bolotnikovo.

The inhabitants of the village gathered. Many cancelled the activities they had planned for the day, choosing to pray instead. This was not a good sign. It would be best not to go far. Two young people, who could barely

18

Lily Yulianti Farid

stand on their own two feet after a drunken night at a bar in the neighbouring town, were muttering, ‘That ghost in the lake is at it again – and this time he’s stolen all the water!’

Journalists and researchers, arriving at the location at almost the same time, find nothing but a mud-filled lake bottom. A Russian official informs the press that the area is located above a series of underground caves, that seismic activity had caused the walls between the caves to crumble, thereby creating an immense underground cavern that swallowed all the water that had filled the lake’s basin. But what had happened to the fish, the moss, the algae and tadpoles? Where will we go fishing and swimming now, the little children whine as they pull on their mothers’ dresses. An elderly woman says, apathetically, ‘This is all America’s doing!’

Zara wanted to tell the story about Lake Beloye whose waters had suddenly disappeared and to expound on the superstitions she had recorded in the village of Bolotnikovo: the frightening tale about a church and a row of houses at the edge of the lake which suddenly disappeared tens of years ago but still gave people the shivers.

Would Fayza like her stories of the mysterious beings that lived in the lake and who were said to appear only to abduct human beings?

‘And just what kind of being was it that abducted you, Fayza?’

Schiphol Airport In the quiet airport lounge, Zara put together a number of stories in her mind. Around her were three dark-blue sofas with soft cushions; two plasma televisions broadcasting sightseeing ads non-stop; a woman in a flashycoloured dress, sitting with her head down and trying to stay awake; a man in a wrinkled shirt with sleeves hiked up to his elbows, who had stretched out his legs on a small grey Samsonite suitcase, was reading a book on whose cover were the words ‘The World is Flat’. Beside him was a young woman with a huge North Face knapsack. Zara could picture the girl almost falling over backwards as she entered the plane’s cabin shouldering the knapsack that seemed to hold within it half the contents of the world.

Look at all those people, all dressed differently, yet headed for the same destination and waiting together for the first morning flight.

Zara had never before opened her eyes so wide to observe a group of individuals. For all the countless airports, harbours, and public places she

19

Lake

had passed through, this was the first time she had taken the time to focus her attention entirely on the movements of the people around her.

She thought of the two lakes in two different places: one created almost instantly, following an earthquake and massive landslide; the other ingested in an instant by a secret cavern in the Earth’s belly, which had taken into its maw everything that had once been above it, leaving behind on the surface only a concave bowl as wrinkled as an old orange peel.

What kind of stories and people must she create to accompany Fayza’s own horrific tale?

A small house stuffed with memories: that is where the two of them had spent their childhood. In Zara’s young eyes, the sky had always seemed to be so close, as if it had somehow been pulled downward to serve as a backdrop for the small lake visible in the distance from the window in their home. At that lake, Fayza had taken her boating, swimming, fishing, and to pick lotus blooms. But it was not until many years later, after Zara had explored lakes in the northern hemisphere which were frozen in winter and rippled with a brilliant shimmer in summer, that she became truly aware of how close the sky felt; so close, in fact, that it hovered directly above the lake’s surface as if to see its clear reflection better. The sky seemed to be gazing at itself, checking its appearance. One time, that astonishing sight convinced Zara that the lake, with its crystalline surface, was making the lotus blooms and white lilies grow in a reflection of the passing clouds overhead.

Fayza and a thousand related memories passed through her mind, constantly swapping places.

‘And what new theory have you come up with today, Miss Lady of the Lakes?’

With great verve and zest, Zara told Fayza about the lakes in the north – about the rate of evaporation in closed lakes, about sedimentation, pollution, and strangely shaped artificial lakes.

‘What I like about a lake, Zara, is that it is nothing more than a cavity in the middle of a wide space. A lake is not a river that flows to the sea; it’s not the ocean either, which makes one afraid when thinking about where the closest shore might be. A lake is an expanse of water that we can enjoy without being worried about a strong wind that might suddenly come up, or about tides or storms. Because the far edge of a lake is usually visible, even if only faintly, we are less likely to get lost and have to search for a way home. . . .’

20

Lily Yulianti Farid

It was Fayza too who had instilled in Zara her love for lakes; it was she who was behind Zara’s early aspiration to become a limnologist. (Such an unfriendly term for something she had been so close to her since childhood!)

She studied lakes, ponds, reservoirs – any kind of land-based recess in which fresh water pooled. Fayza, on the other hand, chose to live a life behind resistance banners, leaving behind a life that had been as calm as a lake and a childhood that had been filled with pleasant memories, choosing to forget the feel of the wind as it pushed the boat away from shore and the pleasure to be found plucking lotus blooms.

‘Well, theoretically speaking, Fayza, that body of water where we used to play when we were kids is not, in fact, a lake but a large pond. . . .’

‘Lake, pond, what’s the difference? Don’t be so serious about everything!

Relax in your use of terminology. . . .’

While Fayza went to the street to clench her fists and unfurl banners, Zara flew to Montana in the USA to join an expedition team. For years, she immersed herself in research, travelling thousands of miles to visit lakes in the northern hemisphere that froze in the winter and sparkled in the summer.

‘Be careful, Fayza. . . .’

‘You’re the one who should be careful, Zara, living in a foreign country.’

Schiphol Airport was quiet, with a smattering of drowsy-looking employees on this still dark morning. The terminal shops were still closed. The only busy spot seemed to be a small café from which the smell of coffee emanated.

Images of Fayza kept flashing in Zara’s mind, like a string of multi-coloured lights. One memory after another lit up. Oh! The time had come again, the memorial service that always brought her back to Jakarta to meet people who shared the same fate.

In the past, Fayza, the site of Schiphol Airport was a lake. People called it ‘Haarlemmermeer’. It was not a calm and refreshing lake like the one we remember. It was once a fierce and raging battlefield for Dutch and Spanish forces. Who could have imagined that hundreds of years later it would be filled in to become an expanse of shining ceramic floors and glass walls, alive with the din of people coming and going? You once said, Fayza, that a lake – unlike the ocean – is not a place for the start of an exotic adventure. You said that even from the far side of a lake, you could always see your home shore. You were sure that people boating on the lake were there to go around

21

Lake

it just for pleasure, not planning a distant journey. That’s the reason you gave me for insisting on going out alone in the boat and telling me to stay behind and to wave at you from the shore.’ (‘I’ll come back for sure!’ you’d say. ‘Don’t worry, Zara. Even if I reach the other side, I’ll still be able to see you waving at me from over there. . . .’)

‘Since time immemorial, Fayza, people have been eliminating the lakes of this planet in order to fulfil their ever more evil and greedy plans. In this country, lakes are filled in to become farmland. Swamps are transformed into industrial zones and toll roads. But when a lake disappears, the landscape’s brilliance also vanishes, bringing tears to the eyes of the hunters of light in these lowlands area. In past centuries, European painters knew that the luminescence around a lake was one of nature’s precious gifts.

Stretched out along the horizon and shrouded with a fine spray of water, a lake was something of both incredible and subtle beauty.

Jakarta Dozens of lowered faces. Tears shining in candlelight. An arrangement of flowers with a ribbon of condolences. And prayers rising into the night sky.

A large banner with nine faces unfurled together with memories expressed in quivering voices. For eight years now, the people here had remained trapped in a mysterious tunnel so long that there was no sign of light at its end. Every year, on the day they gather to remember that one tragic day, the ceiling of the tunnel is brilliantly illumined with recollections, but for a moment only. After that, it is dark once more. The walls of the tunnel are etched with heartbreak, despair and revenge. The air that fills their lungs is infused simultaneously with anger, acceptance and hopelessness. It is difficult to breathe.

‘Nothing unusual happened that day. Nobody at home had a premonition or felt that something bad might happen that day. As she always did, Fayza said goodbye when leaving the house, asking only that her room be cleaned before she came home. . . .’

It was then Zara’s turn to talk about Fayza. The words she spoke, she quoted from Fayza’s diary, a depressing daily record now opened but once a year to be read in public. Year after year, she talked about Fayza saying goodbye, waving as she went out the door. At the gate, she had stopped momentarily to check the protest banners she carried in a cloth bag that was

22

Lily Yulianti Farid

slung over her right shoulder. After that, she disappeared from sight at the end of the street.

Beside Zara, her father and mother held in their arms a photograph of their daughter, a sweetly smiling protestor. The glass frame covering the photograph shimmered with fallen tears, like glistening leaves after a rain.

Zara stepped aside to make room for other people who wished to recount their own memories.

And when the prayers and reflections were complete, when the candles had melted and petals of sorrow been sown on the ground, one of the members of the organising committee of the event shouted out in anger, ‘Tomorrow we will press our demand. It’s been eight years now! And still they’re not willing to express even a token apology! They are heartless! We must put pressure on them! We cannot rest; we must go on. The disappearances must be resolved, once and for all!’

A man dressed completely in black approached Zara and firmly shook her hand. ‘Fayza was an incredibly brave activist. She was an inspiration. We will never forget her!’

Zara said nothing. She recalled the lake in Bolotnikovo, which had vanished in the night. The same that had happened to Fayza.

I want to write a story for you, Fayza, one about a lake that disappeared. . . .

‘It’s late. Time to go home,’ Zara’s mother said.

The gently spoken request jolted Zara to attention. The flower basket in her mother’s hand was empty. The mass of petals for Fayza had been scattered on the ground. The black asphalt on which they lay was spotted purple and white.

For eight years now, they had been making the pilgrimage to this spot.

There was no tombstone for Fayza because they were sure that the brave young woman had disappeared only for a while. No, she was not dead, even if reality offered nothing but obfuscation and a scar tissue of memory which grew exponentially against the dwindling of hope.

The flowers scattered at that site, in the corner of the city thought to be the final witness to Fayza and other demonstrators, would be gone tomorrow – possibly blown away by the wind or swept up by street cleaners.

‘Be careful, Fayza. . . .’

‘You’re the one who should be careful, Zara, living in a foreign country.’

Zara wanted so much to return to the time that conversation took place.

She regretted never having really expressed her fear.

‘Fayza, you are the one who should be more careful in our own homeland. . . .’

23

Hamzah from Fansur H amz ah fr omAzhari Fans urAiyub

Azhari Aiyub translated by George A. Fowler

A

t the harbour of Indian Malabar, I was taken aback by a very dirty fellow who was willing to give himself over in slavery if anyone succeeded in guessing what was inside the cloth-covered birdcage before him.

At that time, the ship that brought me from Lamuri had just docked. From the Malabar harbour I was to continue my journey to Istanbul by land. My father, the harbourmaster of Lamuri, doubted his sixteen-year-old child could proceed with the journey alone. A colleague of his, Hamzah by name, would be waiting for me at the harbour and would guide me until I was ensured a safe arrival at the gate of the School of Navigation in Istanbul. For two days I waited, but the man described by my father never came. I thought that perhaps something had happened that prevented him from keeping the appointment.

The performance of guessing the contents of that cage drew me into the midst of a throng of onlookers. I made my way to the front and heard the grimy man say that within the cage was imprisoned the most wretched creature on the face of this earth. I tried to guess, for who knows whether, if I guessed right, this filthy person would accompany me on my journey. I said that what was in the cage was a devil from from the bottom of the sea. ‘No,’ said he, ‘This creature is more miserable than an accursed devil!’ The people laughed to hear his reply, forgetting that they, too, had failed to guess what that creature was.

By the third day, despair and boredom had caused all the spectators to leave, one by one. They felt they had been tricked. But they couldn’t be angry, because he had not robbed them of their money for simply guessing.

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Azhari Aiyub

I regretted how quickly the performance had ended and began to wonder what I would do if Hamzah didn’t come after a few more days. I asked around the port if something had happened on the road to prevent travellers from getting in or out. Of course, there had been a big storm, but that had occurred seven weeks before. In the meantime, the gang of highwaymen who normally pounced on groups of traders from the interior of Arabia had not been a frightening threat ever since their leader, Samoothirihad, had been poisoned by a prostitute.

‘The dangers always come from the sea, from the Portuguese,’ said Azedine Balansi, one of the people I asked, after meeting him in a little coffee shop.

He was a trader from Tunisia who owned several warehouses for storing spices at the Malabar harbour. The moment he found out I was the son of the harbourmaster of Lamuri, Azedine generously offered me tea and makla, a kind of African snuff. ‘About a hundred years ago,’ he went on, ‘someone from Tunisia who for many years had supplied spices from Malabar to the ports of the Mahgrib lands, was startled, not because the harbourmaster of Malabar had come to his house, but because he brought several Portuguese along with him.’

According to the Malabar harbourmaster, Azedine continued, these Portuguese were lost and, unable to speak Arabic, had been brought to the home of our trader, who was renowned for his command of many languages. They were the first Portuguese to come to this port. But the trader didn’t believe they were lost. At Al Gharb, the southern land of the Portuguese, our trader had long heard that the Portuguese authorities were endlessly sending out convicts who were of no use in their own country to explore the lands of China and Malaya. When these convicts returned safely, they would become the ‘eyes of the sails’ for the Feringghi armadas being prepared for those destinations.

Sensing that his footsteps were being followed by the Portuguese, the trader asked one of them, ‘What Satan has brought you here?’ And the Portuguese replied, ‘The smell of spices.’

In the middle of our conversation – and before I had the opportunity to answer Azedine’s question as to what the Portuguese were now doing on the Malayan peninsula – the unwashed fellow, who since that morning had been deserted by his spectators (and how sad he looked, wrapping up his birdcage that no correct guess had ever penetrated!) suddenly approached our table.

25

Hamzah from Fansur

‘Where are you going, Si Ujud? I have been looking all over for you. Take your things and we will leave right now!’ the dirty man said to me in Malay.

For a moment I stood there, flabbergasted. Azedine didn’t understand Malay, but quickly realised what had happened and guffawed loudly. The Hamzah that I had awaited for three days was this filthy man!

‘And so? Did anyone succeed in guessing what is inside the cage, Hamzah?’ asked Azedine after his laughter had subsided.

‘Perfect, Azedine the Generous,’ replied Hamzah. ‘For years no one has known what is hidden in this birdcage. I have to depart now and take this child as instructed by his father. You and I will meet again someday.’

Azedine smiled, stood, embraced first me and then Hamzah, and then bade us farewell.

In my heart I cursed Hamzah for making me wait. And by the third day of our journey I still hadn’t spoken a single word to him. I was going to stay silent until he apologised. But what could I expect from someone who didn’t feel the need to ask about a person he had just met, the son of his respected colleague?

Throughout the journey, Hamzah frequently lagged several dozen metres behind me, merely asking people whom he met on the road if they knew or recognised what was inside the birdcage he was holding. He was very satisfied when no one could guess, and that showed when, his eyes sparkling, he kept repeating, ‘Perfect!’.

‘Is there really something in that magic cage?’ I, no longer able to bear my silence, finally asked this on the fifth day.

Hamzah put the cage down and stared at it with unfeigned sadness, and then, looking all around to ensure there was no one else about who could hear his secret, replied.

‘Hamzah from Fansur.’

I couldn’t help bursting out laughing.

‘Then who is holding Hamzah up with his hand?’

‘Hamzah’s God.’ I let out another laugh and cursed everything I had seen at that time.

As my father had requested, Hamzah delivered me right to the gate of the Istanbul School of Shipping. He gave no explanation at all as to where I had to stay while I was in Istanbul, how I would begin my days as a student, and

26

Azhari Aiyub

who I should meet. He was busier with his other self inside the birdcage than with whatever captured my imagination in the magnificent city of Istanbul.

And on that very same day, he vanished from sight – perhaps because he felt he had fulfilled his promise to my father – without telling me where he would be going.

After that, according to the news from the dervish lodges scattered throughout Istanbul, I heard rumours that there was indeed someone from my country who lived in Tabriz and was learning how to love God from one who loved Him. And in the coffee houses and raki taverns, places where passersby and travellers stopped to shed their weariness, I often heard from them that, on the road they had just travelled, they had met a man carrying a birdcage who asked them to guess what it held. Whenever I heard these tales, I could only burst out laughing as I recalled the man who had played a trick on me at the Malabar harbour.

Five years later, one midnight near the beginning of spring during my final year at school, someone pounded very loudly on the door to my room, as if all of Istanbul had caught fire.

I opened the door and there was Hamzah. His face was more doleful than the first time I had met him. He was shaking all over, and the cage he held shook too.

‘Do you have a little bit of raki?’ he said.

I gave him a blanket.

‘Not a blanket, Si Ujud! Only lion’s milk can calm down the creature in this cage,’ he said, raising his birdcage up high.

I gave half an earthenware pot of raki to this pesky midnight caller. He did not drink first for himself, but poured a large part of the liquor on to the top of the cage, so that the black cloth that veiled it became soaked through.

‘Something’s happened in Lamuri,’ Hamzah said. ‘Something that will make Hamzah leap out of the cage in rage.’

This time I couldn’t laugh, and was taken aback by the behaviour of Hamzah the Odd. He had mentioned Lamuri, the home I had not seen for six years. Vague reports had reached me that Sultan Maliksyah was being threatened by his son, Nurruddin.

‘All the powers-that-be in Lamuri were replaced three months ago.’

It was now my turn to shiver and shake.

27

Hamzah from Fansur

‘Nurruddin has not only destroyed the people closest to the sultan, but also has wiped out the birds and flowers they were raising and cultivating,’ added Hamzah, as if he could tell what I was imagining.

I was awash in tears, thinking of the fate of my mother and father at Lamuri, especially because of my father’s closeness to Sultan Maliksyah. By now Hamzah, perhaps due to the influence of the raki, or from something else that had replaced his anger, became calm again, as he’d been when I first met him at the Malabar harbour.

Hamzah was still standing at my door. We were rendered mute by the sadness that enveloped us. The alleyways of Istanbul rang with the howls of starving dogs.

‘If something has happened to my father and mother. . . .’ That idea suddenly sparked a light in my mind, in the midst of my anger and uncertainty. ‘I will kill the new sultan, whoever he is.’

‘For that you’ll need to kill a lot of people,’ replied Hamzah, as if able to guess my innermost thoughts. ‘If that happens, I will warn you with bread and raisins.’

I said nothing. After that, there was no more talk between Hamzah and me. I cursed the birdcage Hamzah carried because it had finished off the raki that I was sure would have calmed me at least until the next evening.

Meanwhile, Hamzah was busy cursing his other self for being shut up in a cage and who, according to him, had kept trying to leap out ever since hearing that bad news. Sometimes he persuaded himself in the cage not to destroy the bars that imprisoned him, because that would be very dangerous. This went on for almost half the night. Just before the call to the dawn prayer from the Istanbul mosques, Hamzah left my room without explaining where he was going.

I have never run into Hamzah again.

Many years later, when I became the watchman of the Tower of Fog at Lamuri Port, I heard from the traders who came down to the port the news that Hamzah was in Gujarat and was still carrying around that empty birdcage.

He no longer asked people to guess what creature was in the cage, but claimed that he was subduing a kind of creature that was soiled by rage in the cage that imprisoned him. According to Hamzah, the creature that had been with him for years had stopped being attracted to women and wine, but still could not control the lust for murder that kept blazing up within him.

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Azhari Aiyub

One or two years later, according to the news brought by the traders, Hamzah had been seen around Goa. He was begging for bread and raisins from anyone who cared about the creature suffering in that cage. Bread and raisins were a transitory opiate that subdued the creature’s rage and sadness.

Because, according to what Hamzah told the people from whom he begged raisins and wine, the creature believed that freedom consisted of two tastes, the bland and the sweet, two kinds of flavour that always released the creature from the bitterness of this world.

When I was readying my plan to utterly exterminate the secret brotherhood of the Bearded Turtle, I heard that Hamzah, who previously had been begging for bread and raisins for the creature in his cage, had now been seen in Koromandel, where he had burnt the creature’s cage. There were even stories that swore of seeing Hamzah drinking wine which he’d mixed with the ashes from the burning of the cage, much like the Portuguese, who added gunpowder to their wine.

And, added the travellers, Hamzah was ready and waiting for the right time to cross to the Lands Below the Wind. Approximately a year later, when the brotherhood of the Bearded Turtle was under my control and I was preparing the murder of Sultan Nurruddin, there was little further news of Hamzah. People supposed he was in a new place to love God in a new way.

Or perhaps, as the poets tell us, he had been swallowed up by the frequent rages of the wide ocean, unimaginably deep, like the mind of the Hamzah the Odd. And then, one morning, a white crow flew into my room. The bird looked at me sadly. Surely some person must have trained the bird to radiate so perfectly that sadness from its eyes. It dropped bread and raisins on my bed.

Perhaps Hamzah was sending me his warning because I had wiped out too many of that secret brotherhood as one of the roads I had to take to kill Sultan Nurruddin.

29

The Vulture and the Bane of the Ninth Victim The Vultur e and B enthe Sohib B ane of the Ninth Vict im

Ben Sohib translated by George A. Fowler

U

ntil the day his wife Mina joyfully told him that their son Ubaid was going steady with and intended to marry Fahira, the daughter of Mail Basuri, fifty-seven-year-old Hisam Tasir was enjoying a pleasant life with his wife and their only son. Their three daughters had all married and gone off with their husbands. Hisam had been blessed with grandchildren from all three of them. Almost every Sunday, all the children, in-laws and grandchildren would gather at his home. On other days, Hisam spent his time taking care of the plants in the front yard, occasionally dunning payments from the six tenants of the terraced houses next to his own home, joining the congregation for the evening prayer at the Nurul Huda mosque together with several other residents of Kampong Kebon Nanas and, once a month, right after the Friday prayer, hosting four or five of his cronies in a boisterous midday meal.

It was all thanks to Ubaid. With capital borrowed from an older brotherin-law, ten years after finishing high school, Ubaid had opened a building-materials shop near Prumpung Market, and from this enterprise much good fortune flowed. Within six years, Ubaid was able to demolish his father’s old house and build a new, two-storey one with a flower garden in the front yard. This son, the pride of Hisam and Mina, also bought an old house from a next-door neighbour, and similarly demolished it and built on the lot a six-residence terrace of houses as a source of income for his parents.

Now Ubaid wanted to marry. It occurred to Hisam that all this time he had never paid much attention to the boy. He never even knew that the lad had a steady girlfriend. Ubaid had never introduced the girl to him. And

30

Ben Sohib

now, all of a sudden, Mina was announcing that Ubaid was going to get married.

‘Aren’t you happy that Ubaid has found his life’s partner?’

Hisam was happy. It was just hard to come to terms with the fact that the girl was the child of Mail Basuri, the man who had made him swear an oath, as was the custom, under the Quran almost twenty years before. Hisam had sworn the oath with his head bowed, and confirmed that Mail’s father had indeed owed him a debt.

This was an event that he could never forget. He had never anticipated that Mail would corner him into such a difficult situation and, more than that, Hisam was completely taken aback. He had run his scam eight times before he tried it on Mail and everything had gone smoothly.

The first of his victims was Toha. At the time, Hisam Tasir had been a sort of jack-of-all-trades. He was a used-car broker, traded in agate at the Rawa Bunga Market, sold sarongs and dates on the eve of the Fasting Month on sidewalks around Meester Cornelis, and was a petty crook in the kampung where he lived. Petty? Hold on just one sec! It might have been small-time stuff in the sense of the money filched, but his ideas and the ways he executed them were something even devils couldn’t have come up with.

At first, of course, there hadn’t been any plan to cheat anyone. That idea came spontaneously. That afternoon, Hisam, along with over a hundred others, had accompanied the remains of Salim Gurame, a villager who had died the previous night, to the Kober cemetery. Hisam had actually not been keen on going along to the cemetery. After paying his respects at the funeral home and saying a prayer over the body at the Nurul Huda Mosque, he had intended to go straight home. He wanted to shut himself away there for the whole day. He craved an extended period of time without human contact.

It was only the uncomfortable thought of the neighbours’ comments that persuaded him to join in the funeral procession.

When he arrived at Kober, Hisam hunkered down under a frangipani tree and followed events lethargically. He stared at the throng of people who were witnessing the burial, but he couldn’t say what he saw. His head felt like it was filled with dust. His thoughts were consumed by the problem of the arrears in Ubaid’s monthly tuition that had to be made good that very week, if he didn’t want his son to lose his place in fifth grade at primary school.

After the customary talkin and other prayers had been read over the grave, one of the people close to the deceased gave a speech to conclude the burial

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The Vulture and the Bane of the Ninth Victim

rituals. The brief words were almost always the same: an expression of thanks, an invitation to gather for a tahlil laudation of God right after the night prayer which would go on for three days, a request for forgiveness if there were anyone among the mourners who had been hurt or offended by the deceased during his life, and also an appeal for anyone to whom the deceased had owed a debt to meet promptly with a representative of the family – always a son, a brother, or uncle of the deceased.

And so Hisam wasn’t really paying much attention to the closing speech on that blazingly hot day. He just let the words flow by half-heard. However, when the speaker came to the part about the prompt settlement of any outstanding debts, it was as if a horse began to gallop, whinnying, through Hisam Tasir’s mind. His stomach immediately cramped up. He coughed lightly a couple of times.

The next night, the thin, dark-skinned Hisam Tasir was the first person to arrive at the laudations gathering at the funeral home, just as the mats were being laid out. He greeted and embraced Toha, the brother of Salim Gurame. Hisam expressed his condolences for the second time to this representative of the family of the deceased. Then he took Toha by the arm and invited him to speak in private on the front porch.

‘There’s something I need to say to you, ’Ha. I didn’t actually want to bring it up, knowing what a hard time you’re having right now. But I’ve got to thinking, it’d be better if I did bring it up now, so that the departed can rest in peace.’ He continued to hold on to Toha’s arm as he spoke.

Then he fell silent for rather a long while. His throat felt dry and he seemed to have trouble getting across what he wanted to say. He had in fact memorised the sentences he was going to say to Toha, and he had been able to get them across very smoothly in practising them. But doing a thing for the first time is always tough. Hisam was just about to change his mind when Toha said, ‘Go on, ’Sam.’ ‘The deceased still owes me money. Last Fasting Month, he took sixty sarongs from me, I don’t know for whom. He only got to pay me back one half, and the other half he promised to clear up at the end of this month, but it looks like Allah decided otherwise,’ said Hisam, his head bowed.

‘So, how much in all?’

Hisam swallowed and mentioned a certain amount. Toha nodded and went into the house. Hisam straightened the velvet songkok on his head and then lit a cigarette. He hadn’t reached his third puff when Toha reappeared

32

Ben Sohib

bringing a white envelope. Two or three seconds later, it was in Hisam’s shirt pocket. That night, the laudation ceremony was the most devout that Hisam had ever been a part of in his whole life. Upon his arrival back home, he slept dreamlessly until morning. The first act had ended perfectly.

From then on, it was fair to say that Hisam Tasir was never absent from the burial procession to the cemetery whenever a resident of Kebon Nanas kampung had died. And he always stood, with hands crossed on his stomach and his ears alert, closest to the grave niche facing Mekkah, where the body was laid. And he would immediately devise a plan of action the moment the name of the deceased’s representative was mentioned.

Of course, not every plan could be successfully carried out. There were times when he failed to find the window of opportunity through which his trickery could be launched. These efforts, even though they might seem simple, still required preparation. Hisam had to be good at reading how things were in the home and skilled in assessing the mental state of his intended victim. He had also to be clever enough to make up stories that explained just how the departed one was indebted to him. A claim based on the purchase of sixty sarongs couldn’t work with everyone.

Thus, for almost two years, Hisam Tasir became a champion storyteller.

Among others, there was the story of the sale of precious stones and the story of the sale of second-hand cars. And he always finished his fictitious accounts by adding, head bowed, ‘and the other half he promised to pay back at the end of this month, but Allah decided otherwise.’

And Hisam learnt to choose the best time to tell these tales. He knew most people couldn’t think critically on the first day after the death of someone they loved. If someone came on that day and said that the deceased still owed money, they would tend to settle the matter without asking too many questions. At least, that was the way it was with Toha, his first victim, and with the seven victims after him.

But it wasn’t like that with Mail Basuri. This time Hisam got it wrong.

Mail, who was the same age as Hisam, had indeed lost his father the previous day, but he asked a whole lot of questions. Actually only a few, but it seemed a lot to Hisam.

‘Really that much, ’Sam?’ ‘Really, Mail. I’m not exaggerating nor am I understating it.’

‘It’s OK, ’Sam. The thing is, even if the debt’s just a little underpaid, that’d make the deceased’s grave niche tight, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?’

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The Vulture and the Bane of the Ninth Victim

‘Yeah, that’s right, Mail.’

‘It’s odd that my father hadn’t remembered that he had some business with you,’ said Mail. ‘Last month, just when he started to get sickly, he told me to get in touch with his pals, one in Cilacap and the other in Bekasi, and asked me to clear up his debts with those people. It was like he had a premonition that his time was near.’

‘He was a good man, Mail.’

‘How much did you say just now, ’Sam?’ Hisam Tasir repeated the amount of the debt – this time it was quite a big sum. He began to sense that Mail Basuri didn’t believe his story. Why had Mail told him about that business of his father with the friends in Cilacap and Bekasi, if not to get in a dig at him? Mail was clearly implying that he was lying: Mail’s father had remembered that business about people in far-off places, so how could he forget something involving a neighbour in his own kampung?

‘OK, Mail, why don’t we just forget about your father’s debt. I’m happy to do that,’ he said. ‘He was a good man.’

‘That’s no good,’ Sam. It’s got to be cleared up.’

With that, Mail hurried off to another room, emerging a few moments later with a white envelope and the Holy Quran.

‘You don’t believe me, Mail? You want me to swear under the Quran?’

‘It’s just so that we can both feel good about this. To put our minds at rest.

Anyway, what you said about what my father owed was of course true.’

He couldn’t see any way out of it, so Hisam swore the oath, his body trembling and his voice wavering. He really just wanted to admit to Mail that he had been lying, but that wouldn’t have been possible. Once he had confessed, Mail might immediately bombard him with questions about how many times he had lied like this, who else had fallen victim to him, and so on and so forth. Hisam’s oath went all over the place and wasn’t clear at all.

Mail asked him to repeat it. ‘I couldn’t hear you, ’Sam,’ he said.

Like an obedient primary school child, Hisam straightened up and repeated his oath in a voice at first clearer, then becoming slower, and finally rambling at the end.

Hisam Tasir just wanted to flee Mail’s house. His host saw him to the front door. Hisam breathed rather more easily once he was outside, but suddenly terror hit him. In his mind, he saw Mail telling everyone about the depraved

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Ben Sohib

thing he had done. Everyone would curse him and the eight people before Mail would, one after the other, relate how they too had been his victims.

‘You know what, ’Sam? In my eyes, you’re no better than a vulture, a bird that’s just crazy about eating corpses!’

Hisam seemed to hear that voice assailing his ears. Quite clearly. Followed by the sound of laughter. He wanted to look back to check that it was indeed Mail who was speaking and laughing at him, but he was too afraid.

Before he fell asleep that night, he could hear the voice resounding in his ears. Hisam groaned. For the next several days, the next several months, Hisam could frequently be heard moaning before he fell asleep. If he sensed that Mina, lying beside him, had heard his moans and was becoming curious about them, Hisam would cut her off before she could ask anything by clearing his throat, as if he had all along been clearing an irritation.

For years afterward, the voice continued to disturb the soul of the vulture Hisam. He tried to drive it away by every means he could think of. He prayed for forgiveness. He made donations when his finances improved. He also always tried to please his friends. But even though it did not return as often as before, the voice would from time to time bother Hisam, particularly when he was alone or when he happened to run into Mail Basuri.

‘Ubaid wants us to go to Fahira’s home, Bang, to tell her parents about these exciting plans,’ his wife said. They were sitting on the front veranda.

With a trembling hand, Hisam Tasir took a match from his shirt pocket and lit the cigarette between his lips – filter-end first.

35

Womb Womb

Cok Sawit ri

Cok Sawitri translated by John H. McGlynn

M

y name is Nagari. Thirty years of age. No need to explain; I already understand. That evening, after my bath, my hair still wet, I heard a pounding on the door of my rented room. Three men with a polite look in their eye had come to pick me up. From the sight of the jeep waiting out front; from the low hum of its engine; and from the tone of their voices, at once soft but firm, as light as the evening air, I knew, with no need for explanation, what was happening.

The three of them, the three men, took me to a house. One with cold and slippery floors. Floors that formed a long corridor, separating tens of doors that faced each other. The ceiling was so high that when walking down the hallway or even whispering to myself, the walls threw back the sound along with a strange buzzing assonance. The house resembled an old hotel no longer in use. The air inside moved feebly.

I came to a room. Without speaking, the three men motioned with their hands for me to enter. As I passed through the doorway, while trying to guess what kind of room I was in, I instinctively sensed something odd about it.

A table made from ironwood – not too large but not too small either. Two chairs on either side, facing each other. A wall clock broadcasting the sound of passing moments, causing my heart to shrink. Not to mention the mote-filled air which, when entering my nostrils, immediately caused a stinging sensation in my throat.

The door behind me closed automatically. The rush of wind as it closed made me feel as if I were being pushed toward a pool of quicksand. My neck stiffened; my head felt heavy. The constant ticking of the wall clock caused my pores to dilate, forming cold holes.

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Cok Sawitri

At that moment, I needed no explanation; instinctively I understood why they, the three men, had brought me to this room.

Whether by coincidence or not, just one week earlier a friend had warned me that this kind of thing might happen. But I had dismissed my friend’s warning: it was too hard to believe. Certainly, I’d often heard about strange things happening to others – like, for instance, when a friend had been blindfolded and taken away in the middle of night by a group of men.

Where they had taken her, she didn’t know. All she knew was that they had kept driving around, never stopping at all. And during that whole period of time, not one of the men had said a single word to her. The only thing my friend heard was the sound of heavy shoes or boots tapping in time with the cock and release of an empty pistol, creating a rhythm that chilled the depths of her heart. What kind of thing was that? Terror? Intimidation? A bad trip?

I didn’t know.

In the end, my friend reported, she was taken back to her house and dropped off as if nothing had happened. Since that time, she has been living normally, with no outward sign to mark that strange occurrence. The only telling sign is a look in her eyes which, when we exchange glances, makes me feel as if I am being drawn into a whirlwind. Or, in my conceited fashion, I might say that I could grow inside her pupils a large tree with extremely strong roots of fear.

There is indeed a vast difference between hearing about something happening and experiencing the same thing yourself; between what happened that night to my friend, which before had been little more than a story to digest with a cup of coffee, and having it transformed into reality – something that might have happened to anyone else but would never happen to me, or so I firmly believed.

As it turned out, however, I did undergo the experience. That said, I felt more fortunate than she. At the very least, I understood that something had been planned for me and I was ready to experience it. That is why I needed no explanation. This room gave me more information than a sheet full of explanations might provide.

My name is Nagari. Job? Sometimes I write, sometimes I sing – if what I’ve been doing all this time can be called work. Yeah, that is what I do. In short, I entertain people!

‘Address?’

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Womb

‘You already know that, don’t you?’ I tried to calm myself, tried to look into the eyes of the man before me who never blinked. (Like a snake’s eyes.

They say a snake never blinks throughout its lifetime!)

‘Just procedure,’ he said, calmly. ‘Your address?’ he asked again.

‘Boarding house number 2212.’

The man pressed his lips together. He was wearing a white shirt and a leather jacket, the cuffs of which were scuffed and dirty. His lips were black from too much nicotine; his fingers, chunky and coarse. But his face, in the light of what I guessed to be a twenty-five-watt bulb, gleamed with determination.

‘I am hoping for your cooperation so that you can go home soon. I am tired. You’re tired, too. So let’s work together on this. . . .’

For some reason, the sound of the man’s voice, the statements he made, were to my ears like jokes slipped by friends into desultory conversation at a café. His tone seemed intentionally polite – the light-hearted sound of a bureaucrat’s voice while being interviewed by a television reporter.

‘You do understand what I mean?’ the man asked suddenly.

‘No, I don’t!’ Reflex had prompted my answer and my spontaneous reply made his eyebrows rise. Then, suddenly, a smile – a nice enough smile – bloomed on his face and, as if in an automatic response, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Do you smoke?’

‘On occasion. . . .’

‘Modern women usually do. . . .’ he muttered, his nostrils flaring. ‘I’m sure you understand. I’m being honest here. I realise that you are an educated woman. Many people admire your writings. And to hear you sing. . . .’ His voice now resembled that of a television presenter. ‘Well, I, too, am one of the millions of people who feel lost if, in the morning, I don’t see your byline in the paper!’

The man then exhaled, blowing cigarette smoke toward the light, giving it a chance to form abstract shapes, resembling clouds, animals, sometimes abstract signs.

‘As a friend . . . I’m sorry, as a fan, I would very much like to know whether there was anything behind the hysterectomy you underwent on December 22?’

Huh? I tried to get my mind around the man’s question. Then, when I finally did understand it, I was amazed. So this was the reason. Well, damn it to hell, I spontaneously swore to myself. Frankly, at first I thought I had

38

Cok Sawitri

been shown the honour of being invited to this place because of an article I’d written for a newspaper the week before. Now, as it turns out, I was completely wrong. I don’t know why but, suddenly, I felt disappointed: it hadn’t been for my thoughts, my ideas, or my criticisms at all that I was here, but because of what had happened on December 22!

Disappointed by my own confusion, I asked, ‘What do you mean?

Hysterectomy? Are you asking about the operation I had last year?’

‘Yes, the one you underwent on December 22 at 11.30 Western Indonesian Time, at a private hospital. . . .’ The weight in the man’s voice made me feel nervous.

‘I don’t understand, sir. . . .’

‘And I understand that you might not understand. You probably aren’t aware or, let us say, that at one time you might have thought that what you did was perfectly normal. A basic right. And I understand that, too. Very much understand it!’

The man stopped, suddenly attacked by a coughing spell. His brow furrowed.

When he continued, his cough stopped immediately. ‘The only thing we want to know is the reason behind your actions!’

Silence suddenly surrounded us. I looked at the man’s face. In the light of the twenty-five-watt bulb, his skin seemed bright to my eyes, causing my temples to throb in pain.

While trying to forget the pain, I repeated my question to the man: ‘You’re asking me about my hysterectomy?’

‘Yes. . . .’ His voice was steady, his eyes black dots.

Seeing his resolve, I felt disappointed. Deep in my heart, I had often imagined that one day I would undergo this kind of thing. Papers would be full of the news, a topic of intense discussion. Rumours would fly without cease until it was all over. Yes, in my deepest of hearts, I had often imagined myself being tortured and that the drops of my blood would serve as proof that I had struggled for something and had moved people’s minds.

But now, here I was being questioned about a decayed womb, one whose state deprived me of my pride and even caused me to doubt my own standing as a woman.

I spoke, releasing some of my disappointment. ‘In fact, I’m surprised. . . .’

‘I know you’re surprised . . .’ he said, cutting me off. He looked at me sharply, as if conscious of my anxiety. ‘. . . surprised that it’s only now we’re

39

Womb

asking you about it. and not, for example, after you had checked out of the hospital.’

‘I had an operation because there was a cyst on my womb. It was medical necessity. I find it strange that you would be interested in that.’ I forced myself to speak calmly as I attempted to explain something that should have needed no explanation, something whose elucidation would be certain to make me feel all the more disappointed.

The man smiled broadly. Just as his mouth stretched to its widest point, a house-lizard let out a shrill cry, and its echo bounced around the room.

‘OK then, just as I said before, let’s work together on this! We’re in this thing together. You know what it is we want to know. You can be frank. We’ve been in this business since 1971!’

I tried not to shake but my trembling tongue betrayed me. ‘I don’t understand. In complete truthfulness, to have had a hysterectomy is, for me, something very sad.’

‘Sad? Are you saying that you were forced into an operation?’

I felt hot under the man’s harsh gaze.

‘Of course I was forced. I wouldn’t have done it otherwise,’ I answered slowly. ‘Would a woman ever willingly have her womb removed!’

‘And who was it that forced you?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Please, there’s no need for you to be afraid. We are on your side. We feel guilty for not having been able to save you. . . .’

‘What do you mean?’ My temples were throbbing.

‘Who was it that forced you to undertake the operation?’

‘No one forced me, sir!’

‘But you just said that you had been forced. . . . Just tell us who it was that forced you.’

The man’s brow furrowed again. The light shining off his face seemed to be reflected everywhere. I was nimble-minded; my brain, adroit. But what was this? What did this man want? I was at a dead-end, in utter incomprehension. I had begun to feel feverish. And the ticking of the clock on the wall made me suddenly think of my rented room. I hadn’t latched the window! I thought of the rice that was waiting to be warmed.

My stomach was starting to turn from the reeling of my mind. Why did they want to know about my hysterectomy? Why?

40

Cok Sawitri

‘The indicators that we studied . . . the facts that we gathered . . . have pointed us in the right direction. You know that this hysterectomy movement has become the modus of a new terrorist movement whose goal it is to obstruct reform. It is part of a political movement being engineered by outside forces. That is why we are asking you for your help – to find out who is behind it.’

The man’s voice resounded loudly in my head.

How odd! How very odd indeed to draw links between my routine hysterectomy and things that are, in my opinion, exceedingly extraordinary.

Forced links are possible, of course; something can always be found – a coincidental link, for example. But was a decaying womb reason enough to be suspected of having links with those extraordinary events?

Could the act of saving one’s life – a hysterectomy – which was something normal and ordinary, somehow be seen as a threat to public life, similar to such widely discussed issues as terrorist bombs or the stockpiling of staple goods? Extraordinary! The links created in the imagination of the man in front of me were truly extraordinary.

I coaxed my mind to explore the motives. What was actually going on in the mind of the man? Was this an act of loyalty? Was the safety of the state his only concern? Or was this a case of confusion, caused by a paltry salary?

Or, as my mind played devil’s advocate, could there possibly be any truth in what the man had said? What if there were a movement to stockpile wombs – a movement of women, stockpiling them in a warehouse, instituting an embargo against the millions and millions of male sperm out there, a kind of pregnancy and birth strike. An incredible thought! If such a thing were truly happening, perhaps then I could understand his suspicion about my hysterectomy. But. . . .

‘In our investigation, we have detected a group that wants women to remove their wombs as a means of negating any opportunity for the birth of a new generation! We have been looking into this. For a long time, now. For years, we’ve been collecting information. We have analysed it. We have crunched the numbers. . . . And do you know what their argument is?’

He immediately answered his own question, so enthusiastically that spittle burst from his blackened lips: ‘That rather than giving birth to children who will neither be cared for nor protected by proper regulations, it is better to have one’s womb removed! You must know that, don’t you?’

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Womb

Good God! I was truly thunderstruck. I tried to imagine myself being able to think such a thing. What an incredibly amazing thought – all women removing their wombs. Clack! No more new births. Clack! All the old people dying! Clack! No more need to think about staple foods or about this or that because life would end too. Just imagine someone thinking that a woman having her womb removed was a political act? A public threat. You can see them asking, ‘Who was it behind this idea of yours?’

Strange! They keep talking about politics, about people in power with the ability to influence me. Such incredible imaginations!

However, that clear thought settled firmly in my mind, bringing the bouncing of my thoughts to a halt.

I stared at the man, trying to compose my words in the calmest and clearest manner. ‘To be completely honest, I had the operation because there was a tumour in my womb. It was to save my life, sir. Truly, I don’t understand why you are asking me about it. It’s not something out of the ordinary. In terms of medicine, it’s quite natural, sir!’

The man smiled slightly and inhaled. For the first time, his eyes seemed to blink, catching me by surprise. And at that moment I heard, in the distance, approaching footsteps. Moments later, the door behind me opened and I felt a rush of wind. The three men who had escorted me here had returned. Without a word, with just a gesture, they motioned for me to leave the room. Then to leave the house.

That morning, I looked at the calendar, then at the hands of the clock. From outside came the thunderous sound of cries and applause. I opened the window of my room and looked outside to see banners which bore the words, ‘Save Women’s Wombs for the Future of the World!’

Good God! Suddenly I felt a pain in my stomach. Then, again, I heard a knocking on the door. I didn’t want to open it. I could sense that there were three men coming towards my room.

‘We can see the consequences of your actions. Tell them now that you did not intentionally have your womb removed. Tell them that what you did was not a show of sympathy that could be linked with the high price of food!

And tell them they need not worry, that the future generation will not be born as idiots because of poor prenatal nutrition. Tell them! They do not have to remove their wombs as you have done!’

42

Cok Sawitri

My stomach tensed. I felt an incredible pain. Everything turned to black.

Distantly, I heard the voice of the man in that room giving a speech! The sound of his words and the ticking of the clock pained my heart.

‘Calm down. I ask you to calm down. Nagari will be conscious in a moment. I ask that you give our team the opportunity to carry out its task – for the safety of Nagari. . . .’

I tried with all my will to open my eyes. I knew the light: a twenty-five-watt bulb. I knew the wall clock. I even remembered the lizard. I saw a face, a face I knew well.

I understood. No need for an explanation. Just like what several friends had reported. In this era, no explanation is necessary; no need for elucidation.

Explanations do nothing but reduce clarity.

Then, faintly, I heard a strange voice. . . . My name is Nagari. Thirty years of age. Jack of all writing trades. Gender: female! Room number 2212. Note: criminal victim. Stabbed in the womb by the movement against a new generation.

I was dumbstruck. It felt like it was just yesterday that I had been sitting in my rented room. Nothing extraordinary had happened. Was it true my womb had been ripped out with a dagger? How very strange! Why could they say something like that? All my friends, everyone, knew that I had a hysterectomy because of a tumour inside my womb.

For God’s sake. Who was I to ask why the news about my decayed womb had become such a spectacular story? Television, newspapers, and radio were all giving it coverage. Hundreds of new commentators on politics of the womb had been born in just a week.

From within my room I heard cheers mixed with screams. I shut my eyes while struggling to recall whether I might once have seen that decayed womb.

But I failed to imagine it. Even though it was once a part of own body, perhaps I never will know what that decayed womb looked like. I felt my stomach.

It felt empty. Suddenly I felt an incredible loss.

I turned on the television to see the news of long queues at all the large hospitals in the large cities. My heart shrank as I asked myself, ‘What are they in line for?’ No answer came. They looked weary, as if waiting for their name to be called and take their turn to enter the operating theatre.

Nagari! Thirty years old. . . . On television, I saw my own face! So strange.

So very strange.

43

Pot Na Enga Tako P ot Na Enga Tako Gus tf Sakai

Gus tf Sakai translated by Toni Pollard

T

his is my biggest chance. This is my biggest chance. The words seemed to make every cell in Dani’s brain seize up. Trembling all over, he followed the shopkeeper upstairs. The stairs were of solid boards, old ones which made an odd squeaking sound when stepped on. On the top floor in the gloom he was greeted by the sight of a doorway into an ancient burial cave, the staring eyes of tau-tau effigies looking like they were soaring upwards towards death.

The shopkeeper gestured to Dani, a young man in his thirties, to keep following him and moved carefully so as not to bump into any of the antiques. (Didn’t the sign outside say ‘Souvenir Shop’? Did that mean that these pungent, musty old objects were all souvenirs?) The shopkeeper, a man in his fifties called David Lebang who said he was a Torajan, walked to an object covered with a tarpaulin. For a moment they both stood before it.

Dani held his breath as the shopkeeper carefully lifted the tarpaulin. Death . . . to kasalla . . . . This is my biggest chance.

With the tarpaulin off, before them stood an old coffin complete with its erong, the front end of the coffin in the shape of a buffalo head. Again, Dani held his breath. The shopkeeper gazed at him as he asked, ‘Shall I open it?’

Dani nodded.

With the same slow and careful movements, the shopkeeper opened the coffin’s lid. Once again holding his breath, Dani craned his head and peered inside.

The corpse was medium sized. As the shopkeeper had told him, it was intact except that some of its hair had peeled off along with the scalp. But that was normal. It had long fingernails and its mouth was slightly open,

44

Gus tf Sakai

revealing dull grey teeth. Most of its body was still clothed, wrapped in a type of cloth the shopkeeper said was made of pineapple plant fibres.

‘Four hundred years old?’ muttered Dani.

‘Yes, four hundred years old,’ said the shopkeeper.

Four hundred years old. It was over! The white guy had said that the age must be at least three hundred years. Really, thought Dani, after weeks, months of waiting and searching all around Madandan, Dende, Sanggalangi, Makale and God knows where else for that mummy, he had actually found it in a souvenir shop, one of the many such scattered along the main street of Rantepao, a street which is on every tour guide’s itinerary to Torajaland. Dani himself had passed along it often.

This valuable object, this treasure – it seemed too contrived that it should end up in a souvenir shop. Although it was hidden away on the stuffy upper floor, he felt that it was still too obvious. And hadn’t his fellow guides always said that Torajan grave objects were nonsense, because all mummies were fakes? By a certain chemical process, they could be made from dummies covered in chicken skin turned inside out.

It was as if the shopkeeper could read Dani’s uncertainty. ‘The least likely places are the most secure locations for valuable objects. Except for this mummy, it’s widely known that all the grave goods in David Lebang’s shop are fakes.’

‘You still haven’t convinced me.’

‘So you want to meet the owner of the coffin?’

‘That would be very good.’

‘OK then, tomorrow, six p.m.’

Still trembling all over, Dani descended the stairs. He needed a few moments standing outside the shop to calm himself down. To get to the nearest telephone office – this was the first thought that came to mind. He marched straight towards his old bomb of a jeep.

At the telephone office he dialled the number for a long-distance connection to speak to someone on another continent. Having made the call, his thoughts wandered between joy and fear, relief and guilt, and maybe even to nothingness, to death – to kasalla – to suffering and heaven. Torajans honour their corpses. Death for them is the achievement of eternal life – the burial rites are the process that brings relief from suffering.

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Pot Na Enga Tako

‘To hell with it!’ In a loud whisper Dani brushed aside everything he’d ever been told by his colleagues. Fifteen billion rupiah. When would such an opportunity come again? He was fed up with earning his living as a tour guide. If he carried on as a tour guide, life would forever be the same. He wanted to go home, to fly back to his village on another island. To move on to a new life. Any life he wanted.

Fifteen billion! Nine billion for himself, one for the shopkeeper, and five for ‘him’, the mummy’s owner.

Clearly, the thing was more than convincing. And not at all what Dani had expected. At first, he’d assumed the mummy must be a fake – it was sure to have come from some counterfeit network or mafia-like group. But now he didn’t think so. The source was far more authentic. . . . ‘He’, the mummy’s owner, was clearly a direct descendant of the mummy. Dani was able to stop trembling from the moment he realised this.

On his guard, he deliberately arrived a bit late and turned up at the end of the day at David Lebang’s shop. The shopkeeper stepped forward to meet and berate him, saying ‘I’m afraid you almost blew it. Five minutes and Tanete would have left.’

‘Who’s Tanete?’

‘Didn’t you want to meet him?’

Dani stared at the shopkeeper in shock. David Lebang nodded in confirmation. ‘Yes, him.’ Taking Dani inside, Lebang pushed open a door which he had not noticed before. Behind it, in a cramped room that contained only a table and three chairs, was a man who looked like a typical Torajan, about the same age as Dani, sitting behind the table. Despite what the shopkeeper had said, he didn’t look like a man who had been kept waiting. On the contrary, he appeared very relaxed.

David Lebang introduced him as Tanete Sarungallo, a descendant of the corpse of so many generations. When Dani seemed nervous and unable to speak, the man said very, very calmly, ‘So everything has changed. We are alive now, today, and look to the future, right?’

It did not seem like anything a traditional Torajan would say. But Dani tried to put aside his astonishment with a smile, saying, ‘Yes, yes, I agree.’

He then painstakingly began to investigate, to get a provenance for the mummy.

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Gus tf Sakai

But his efforts were evidently unnecessary. Tanete explained everything very explicitly and in great detail. Calmly, casually even, very casually. But also (was Dani imagining it?) with what appeared to be hatred and resentment.

Dani was completely taken aback by his rancour.

When it all became too much, Dani couldn’t stand it any longer and interrupted him. ‘Excuse me, you’re a descendant. A direct descendant?’

‘Yes, I am. Why?’ ‘You seem unafraid. Not afraid of being cursed.’

‘Cursed?’ Tanete roared with laughter. ‘Cursed for being guilty? Is that what you mean?’ His face suddenly hardened, and he peering into Dani’s eyes.

‘Once we were rich, from the nobility, high caste. But because we belong to the nobility and because all funeral ceremonies involve huge expense, now we’re poor. Who do you think is the guilty party here? Us or these mummies?’

It didn’t take long. Just a few days. The transfer and disbursement of the money, and of course ensuring that the process was transparent. On the sixth day, along with the mummy and the coffin with the animal head, Dani set off for Makassar. Michael Lightman, the white guy, who (he’d been told) was a researcher, was also due to arrive that day. Dani would hand over the mummy and throw in the old jeep as well, and his business would be well and truly done.

The journey to Makassar would take six or seven hours, which now felt much too long for him. If only the day could fold in on itself and he could disappear out of time for a bit. That would be nice. But impossible. All he could do was try to relax, take it easy, let his thoughts drift.

But his thoughts always came back to what he was doing. To what his colleagues used to say. To the first time he’d met Michael when he had been his tour guide, and then to his offer. Then David Lebang. And Tanete – Dani really didn’t believe (had he imagined it?) that Tanete harboured such anger and hatred toward the processions and the ceremonies that were his society’s traditions.

Dani was unaware of how many hours had passed when he heard a voice behind him. A voice from the open coffin? He immediately turned around.

‘Pot na enga tako.’

47

Pot Na Enga Tako

He felt as if he were about to be thrown from his seat. His eyes widened.

The corpse! The mummy! It was sitting upright in the coffin. The coffin lid had been opened.

‘Pot na enga tako.’

The mouth was moving. The jaw, the cracked lips uttering the words ‘pot na enga tako’. What did they mean? It wasn’t Torajan language.

Because he was driving, Dani had no time to think about it. But it seemed he didn’t need to drive the suddenly veering car, because something very strange, something unbelievable, was happening.

He noticed that the hood of the car was gradually transforming. It folded inwards, collapsing in on itself. Then from the sides grew what appeared to be horns. Slowly also, the body of the car changed colour from green to brown, a dark brown with black cracks, wood with mould growing on it. A coffin! Good God, the old jeep was turning into a coffin, complete with an erong in the shape of a buffalo head!

Then the road disappeared. His jeep, now an ancient coffin, seemed to be flying in space, in a void. He had the sensation that everything was moving very slowly, languidly within the vastness. Time! As if time no longer existed – or rather that it was like a pool, stretching out to infinity. It seemed to go on and on. For years. Three hundred years? Four hundred years. The age of the corpse, maybe. ‘Help!’ he screamed, but no sound came out.

Behind him the corpse was still uttering the same words: ‘Pot na enga tako.’

What did it mean? Pot na enga tako.

48

One Day, There Was Mother and Radian One D ay, There Aviant Wasi Arm Mother an and Radian

Avianti Arman translated by Joan Suyenaga

T

he sky is red. A naga swoops down, sweeping the stars and the sun.

Sparks illuminate the tips of its wings. Fire spreads. Wind swirls. Fear shoots into the air like octopus’ ink. Armour-clad warriors lie sprawled on the ground. Screams of desperation fill the air. The creature is incensed.

Houses, trees, distant mountaintops: everything disintegrates into unrecognisable rubble. Razed to the ground. Everything. Except for one child standing upright, motionless. He holds a tautly strung bow in his hand. His face is as dark as stone, but his eyes are as bright as lightning. It is from his bow that a great arrow was shot and has penetrated the naga’s chest.

The naga will surely die, Mother, he whispers. Then he closes his eyes.

Perhaps he is sleeping. Or trying to sleep. He holds the picture, drawn on a big piece of paper, tightly to his chest. The picture, drawn with just three colours – red, black and grey – is covered in scratches and thick broken lines, marks full of emotion.

I am floating. Sleeping perhaps. No dreams. It’s dark – I’m woken by the silence. This is very strange: dawn is usually noisy. But there is no call to prayer. There are no roosters crowing or calls of vegetable vendors or the milkman’s radio. Radian’s place is empty, but still warm. He must have just woken up. I stumble out of the room and meet the child in front of the half-open bathroom door. He stands rigidly, as if frozen in mid-air. A soft light caresses his little face.

A sudden chill creeps up my back. His face is too pale, even for the dark morning. I approach him quickly. And there, behind the partly open door, lies the body of my husband sprawled on the ground. A knife plunged into

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One Day, There Was Mother and Radian

his chest. Blood pours out of the wound. The white floor is stained red. My world instantly blackens.

The creature was alive once. It still appears very much alive, even now, though it’s cold to the touch. The hamster’s death caused an uproar in the class.

Radian killed it. He strangled the creature until it stopped breathing, in front of his friends who were screaming with fear. The child could be trusted now; he refused to sit down. He leaned back against the wall in the corner of the teachers’ room. There were just three of us: Bu Tina – the school principal – Radian and me. Slowly, he approached me, hugged me, then he returned to lean against the wall. He appeared calm – unafraid, but sombre. Bu Tina and I looked at him, then returned to consider the hamster’s carcass on the table.

If our fates had been different that morning, it would have been me sprawled dead on the floor. I could still feel my husband’s hands strangling my throat. Like the hamster, I struggled. I fought. But men are stronger. I could smell anger in his drunken breath. Death crept slowly up my spine.

My neck trembled. My head almost exploded. Just when I had almost lost consciousness, he suddenly cast me aside – tossed me to the floor, gasping desperately for air. Then he left. And when I regained my sight, my heart had shattered. Radian peered from a dark corner, speechless. His face darkened with fear. Tears streamed down his cheeks. I looked at him again. Perhaps he had just wanted to know what would happen if he strangled something with all his strength. That hamster had shown him how close his mother had been to death.

That night, we slept next to each other. We didn’t hug; it was enough just to be close. It was never more than that. The twenty-five-watt bulb was dim, but it was enough light to see the picture that Radian had drawn before he lay down.

A tall tree. A large house. Everything black. A man in black clothes hanging in the tree. A thick rope wound around his neck. His head hangs awkwardly off to one side as if it is broken. There are two large black nails where his eyes should be. When I ask Radian who it is, he says: A bad person. A boy carrying a large bag stands under the man. Popcorn, he says, pointing to the little clumps that look like cotton piled up inside the bag. Under a shower of falling leaves, the child watches the man’s body sway in the wind. His cheeks are puffed; perhaps he is eating his popcorn. Lamplight penetrates the paper that

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Radian holds, forming a circle of light both around the head of the boy in the picture, and around the head of my son. He smiles, but his eyes are dull.

The night feels heavy, but the moon dimly lights the room. Although the woman in the mirror is silent, the years that are incised on her face, on her body, speak. I do not know her. That is not my face. Those are not my eyes.

The body is too parched. She is swollen and blue. Exhausted perhaps. Or drained of hope. But clearly, she is angry. Anger appears like a crow’s black wings, flashing and scratching the face, leaving deep creases.

A small hand touches my back. The woman in the mirror tries to smile.

She whispers softly, Are you hungry? The boy nods. They walk to the kitchen holding hands. She opens the refrigerator door, peers inside, then begins to take out the contents one by one: eggs, mushrooms, sausages, meat, onions, cheese, chilies, lettuce, spaghetti, milk. . . . She places everything neatly on the table. Without speaking, she takes a pan, fills it with water, places it on the stove, then lights a big flame. She cracks an egg and drops it, including the shell, into the pan. She breaks the raw spaghetti into short sticks and places them in the pan. She opens the milk carton and pours the contents into the pan. She takes a twenty-five-centimetre knife, dices the onion finely, slices the lettuce into small pieces and chops the sausages into small chunks.

Steam begins to fill the kitchen. She slices the mushrooms, tofu, meat, chilies.

She works increasingly quickly. Drops of sweat form on her forehead. Tears stream from her eyes. It is not long before everything is mixed together. There is nothing left that can be chopped. There is nothing left that can be identified.

The woman stops. Gasping. Heaving. She looks at the knife in her hand.

She looks at the boy standing quietly beside her. The child shifts slightly, then takes a handful of the mixture on the table and eats it slowly. His eyes remain fixed on his mother. His heart-breaking eyes.

The knife falls away from her hand. The woman sinks down to the kitchen floor, her energy expired. Exhausted. Empty of tears. Ended. She is stunned, barren. The boy approaches, then sits next to her. He leans his head on her shoulder. Mother, he whispers.

Where do we go when we die? I shrug my shoulders. I don’t know. Radian looks down at his picture again. Do you love Daddy? I shrug my shoulders

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again. I don’t know. What I do know is that I love you. Radian smiles without raising his head. Do I love him? I don’t remember.

What I do remember is that we were a happy young couple. I was happy.

He was happy. We were happy in each other’s presence. Joyfully, we went to an island where the sky and the ocean competed in blueness. Blissfully, we explored each others’ bodies on the beach. I don’t know why we did it – we made love on the beach; it made us sticky with the smell of the ocean and the scent of sin – that will not easily disappear.

He never said I love you. I never said I love you. But I became pregnant with his seed. We had to get married, no matter what. His parents wanted to save face. My parents wanted to save face. I wanted to run. He wanted to run. Our parents forbade us to separate. God forbade us to separate. But why didn’t God forbid him to hit me whenever he wanted to? I fought back once.

I hit his nose until it bled. But that animal hurt my child. I ran from the house. A heart attack crippled my father and he returned me to my husband.

It appeared that God wanted me to endure. This is my body, this is my blood, eat it and drink it. I am the sacrificial lamb; I do not know what I am to be sacrificed for. Do I love him?

Evening light falls on the table. Radian finishes drawing. He turns the paper over and shows it to me.

A small island in the middle of the ocean and a small boat leaving the island. There are two people on the boat: a woman and a boy. They are smiling. There is a house on the island; it is square with square windows. In the distance, there is a person with arms in the air. Twelve black birds fly over the house. The house is encircled with red flames. It’s burning, Radian says.

The person is surrounded. His screams are caught in a small bubble with many exclamation points: Help!!!! When he dies, the birds will take him away, Radian says. Why was he left behind? I ask. Because he is evil, he replies.

It is as if I live in a soap opera in which a woman sobs because she is continuously tortured. The difference is that this woman is not crying.

It begins simply. A barbecue party. Green sky. Large umbrella butterflies flitting about. Green grass. A big house in the clouds. Girls with wings on their backs and flowers in their hair. Boys with colourful horns, hovering around the grill. One of them holds a plate, one holds a fork; there are glasses of purple lemonade. Everything is normal, except for the barbecue. There are four eyeballs. Two ears and three noses. Feet and hands, complete with

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toes and fingers. A large chunk of red meat with an arrow pointing at it: the heart. Also, the head of the creature with its eyes still wide open and the tongue hanging out. That’s the naga’s head, Radian says.

The woman shows the picture to her husband when they are eating dinner.

The school principal showed this picture to me this morning. Radian drew it. The man does not say a single word. He just pounds the table, grabs a plate and throws it. Directly at her face. Direct hit. Her head almost explodes with pain. She swallows. Anger flares instantly. She swallows. The sound of the plate shattering splits her ears. The boy comes out of his room and stands silently at the door; he is not surprised when his father leaves.

The window reflects grim images. A battered woman and a fragile child.

The boy goes to his room and returns with a towel. Slowly he drags a chair over to his mother. Gently, he wipes the wounds on the woman’s face.

I stand in a dark corner, pouring anger over hate. I can feel the seeds take root. Strong branches search for a way out through every artery. Growing increasingly strong. No, I cannot swallow it.

I’m hungry, Mother. The boy is afraid. But the woman walks to the kitchen.

She does not open the refrigerator door; she does not place the pan on the fire. She just takes the knife and stands at the table. Just that. For a long time.

Her eyes gaze forward. Empty. Then her hand begins to move, chopping something unseen. Something that perhaps exists only in her head. Slowly at first. Then increasingly quickly. Beads of sweat drop from her forehead.

Tears run down from her eyes. The boy is afraid to approach her. He stares at his mother’s heaving back. Something inside has destroyed the woman, little by little. He doesn’t know her anymore. I don’t know her anymore.

That day, we lay next to each other on the floor, in front of the bathroom that was then stained red, blood encircling the body of a man who once had been alive. The yellow sun flooded in. Blinding. Too bright to see the picture Radian drew within minutes – I don’t know how long – I was silent in darkness. I looked into his eyes, but he avoided me. He extended his arm to show me his picture. I blinked.

Rain. A woman and a boy walk hand in hand. Their eyes sparkle. There are smiles on their grey faces. There is no sun. Just dark clouds gathering overhead. One of the largest clouds hovers over the boy. A bird is perched on his shoulder. Its wings stretch out, ready to fly. The woman holds a knife. A

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large one. Something red drips from the tip. They hold hands in the street that originates in a single dot and grows wider as it reaches the opposite edge of the paper. To the left and right, a line of giant trees bows towards the middle, forming a canopy that creates a calming cover over the road. There are black birds perched on the branches. Crows, says Radian. At the bottom of the paper, written in large twisted letters: ONE DAY, THERE IS MOTHER AND RADIAN. Just the two of us, Mother.

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Laluba Laluba

Nukila Amal

Nukila Amal translated by Kadek Krishna Adidharma

L

et’s go out to sea, my child. It is time. I sense them coming closer. I can hear faint echoes of voices drifting in the dawn wind. Listen, this early morn, the wind comes not softly in rustles, but hissing and slashing along the road. It is screeching through the aching joints of the windowpane, whistling through the cracks of the squeaking door, rushing chill, enclosing the house in cold. The candle stirs as if scratched: blazing awhile, blinking awhile. Harsh dark is forcing its way in through every hole.

I’ve been sitting here all night, warming myself by the flame of this candle in the kitchen. The edges of the flame have been dancing yellow, blue, throwing my shadow against the wooden walls – my shadow a swaying phantom, dancing while I sit still. For hours, I’ve been gazing at the wooden slats, my eyes tracing their surface, cracking rivulets of pale veins. But I haven’t spoken to them. I haven’t spoken to you. I haven’t spoken to anyone. I’ve just been sitting here in the corner, waiting.

Let’s step outside now, very slowly. There is no need to rush. I want the soles of my feet to embrace fully what they touch, feeling the wooden floor, the moist soil, wet grass, fallen jambu blossoms. The thin threads of jambu blossoms feel like silk to my feet; many of them have also been caught along the bamboo fence. I will pin a blossom to my hair. Your father planted this jambu tree. Now it’s blooming for the first time – how sweet and fresh the fruits will taste when they ripen. Look at the tree, its surface almost entirely covered by blazing pink, almost electric. When night falls, people can see it from the edge of the village.

Our village: houses and shacks lining up in death rows; shivering walls of concrete. Dark. In the houses, the faint glimmer of kerosene lamps

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illuminates the dreams of restless souls, no longer able to sleep tight. I’m sure you are also not sleeping. How quiet it is. Only the sound of the sighing wind, one or two insects, and breaking waves. In silent times like this, I had hoped to be able to capture the sound of your heartbeat or snoring. There are also voices – the men on night-watch chatting in low tones. We don’t need to go past them. We will pass along the side to the back of the house.

I am not in the mood for being questioned.

At the back of the house there is a ketapang tree. Below it, there is an overturned boat – your father’s boat. My back aches; lately, I tire easily. Let’s sit here on this boat, waiting for sunrise, morning, and other things to come.

From here, we can see our home, village, peninsula, beach, and the sky all at once. Look at our home – a wooden house upon a platform on stilts, a sprig of jambu tree peeking pink beyond its roof. It’s going to be a while before its gifts ripen; how I long to taste just one fruit. Our house – it’s been more than three years that I’ve lived in it. The villagers helped your father build it back then without pay – except for two or three professional builders.

It was enough to pass around a couple of pots of coffee and some kretek cigarettes in cups in the afternoon, with the occasional treat of steamed cassava or fried banana. Many things have been built working together in this village: schools, homes, the church, the mosque, the meeting hall, and boats. I remember steaming yellow rice for giving thanks when the house was done. Later that night, a new kerosene lamp was glowing in the newly built house. Your father and I were so enthralled watching our shadows swaying and jerking along the wooden walls. We weren’t the only ones dancing. The table, chairs and cupboard joined us too.

This boat feels damp. So does the tree trunk I’m leaning on. Are you leaning comfortably on the wall of my womb? My child, my hope. How the situation has changed my hopes to anxieties. What is leaping in your mind right now? Is it like mine? Or do you pass through all of this without memory, burden, hope, hindrance? I can no longer look at the ground beneath my feet, obstructed by you. But I don’t mind taking you everywhere I go, even though you fill up my body – I am swollen like a cow.

I remember a cow on the deck of a motorboat, a long time ago. She lay there with bound hooves, eyes wide open towards the sky, thrashing. The boat felt like it would overturn, shuddering wildly with the struggling of the poor cow, not the waves. I held your father’s arm tight; he smiled to calm me.

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‘Look,’ he said, fingers pointing to the side of the boat. I saw two dolphins, their grey bodies swimming, guiding the boat.

The kids in the boat shrieked with delight, pointing, ‘Oi, laluba, laluba!’

The hunched backs of the dolphins were sinking and surfacing, faces smiling like your father’s.

Your father: teacher, earth-guardian, husband, male, human. And female, too. Yes, at times he could mother you more than I. If my belly was sore, he would sit by my side and calm you by whispering sweet things, singing, or telling you stories. At times he would be silent, caressing the outline of your form on the skin of my belly with profound awe. We could feel your tiny hand on the surface of my skin, your fingers clenching, your foot kicking (maybe you are a boy, or a girl?). He would be silent during those moments, looking at you and me in turn with his full, dark eyes. I suppose that waves of thoughts and feelings were crashing within him, and words couldn’t do them justice. I remember those eyes of his filled with darkness when he left one night. He didn’t say much. No promises. No sentimental goodbyes like in those war movies. I only remember seeing his wet feet disappear into a motorboat that was bobbing up and down among waves crashing on the beach. Then the motor roaring. Your father stood erect, looking straight towards the west, in the direction of the peninsula across the water where the sun disappears. Not once did he turn his face until the rumbling of the boat softened and could only be heard faintly as the boat rounded the peninsula.

Your father, taken by death in a battle he did not wish.

Look at the sea. Over there where the rows of mangroves and rocks go out, that is the peninsula – our place of celebration. Your father and I went there one morning after finding out you had become a foetus in my womb.

At that time, the sky was clear after dawn rain; there was a rainbow arching low in the southwest. In front of me, your father paddled the boat slowly.

Between us there was a thermos filled with coffee, some walnut bread, pound sago, two mugs, and a straw mat. Above us, little birds flew past, chirping.

Below, colourful coral could be seen under a veil of clear, blue-green water.

And fish – brightly coloured little fish swimming amongst the coral. On the beach, we ate and talked and ate and talked until your father fell asleep by a mangrove bush. I lay looking at the sky, feeling myself and everything under the sky so very sweet. I took that joy home, when the sun had moved right above our heads. We were gliding in the boat, heading for home, the water

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splashing from the oars as I told your father that I had found a name for you.

Laluba.

‘If it’s a boy?’ asked your father.

‘Laluba,’ I answered.

‘If it’s a girl?’

Laluba. You will glide through the water, swimming like a dolphin, like the fishermen’s children here, their bodies breathing the fragrance of salty sea; burnt, reddish hair with blond streaks, and bronzed, dark skin like their fathers who work bare-chested under the sun. In the morning, they would run out and spread along the shore squealing excitedly, welcoming their fathers’ boats that had come home from sea. . . . The fathers who later left them. Few returned.

They had run short of men to defend the district. How bizarre, I thought at the time – not enough men in a world that had too many, a world where everything was done their way.

The night of departure for the new recruits – it was late, but our village did not sleep. People were packing. Mothers were standing with worried faces. Children were running here and there. At the beach, supplies were stacked in little mounds like a harvest of cloves and copra. I stood by the beach, observing it all. Not far from me, a group of men were speaking of dismembered bodies, about bodies thrown out to sea, about little children being taken away. . . . Your father drew me aside by the hand, its hairs standing on end, as he took me away from the crowd. We sat on a fallen coconut tree, gazing at the star-studded sky. Your father spoke: ‘Many are injured. . . .’

Injured, wounded, dying. All of us here are dying, my child.

Ah, forgive these recollections, my baby. Memories come flashing through me, and I want to sink them all to the deepest ocean floor, until there is nothing left to swim up to the surface.

What time is it? Look at the sea. Its surface has turned silver grey; only two or three stars lingering, a tinge of amber light promising the sun on the horizon. I always love the morning and afternoon sky – the sun, rising or setting, the sky looking the same, tinted with soft hues. Orange. Russet. Pink.

Blue. Purple. Grey. We never know the beginning or the end of something.

Time left unresolved. . . . You will learn how enchanting mornings can be, my child.

I dreamt of you a few nights ago – you, a drowning baby fish, not swimming to the surface. You were blazing white while the sea slowly changed

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from blue to red to green, showing you crystal clear in its depth. Above you, there was a big fish eating a fish that was eating a small fish. The jaws of the fish opened wide with sharp teeth. I remember telling your father of my dream in the morning. Your father guessed that perhaps because we had stayed too long at the market the previous afternoon, a million forms and colours of fish must have filled my mind and were brought into my sleep.

Sitting on the verandah while drinking coffee, your father spoke about how in the beginning, all life on earth was in the ocean, about animals having denizens of the sea as their ancestors, about fish breastfeeding their young, blind fish, phantoms of the sea in the shape of octopuses with giant eyes, sea cliffs, ocean chasms – the abyss . . . that’s what your father called it; he learnt it in a book. I imagined the abyss keeping for eternity the dreams of prehistoric fish that desired to crawl upon the land. Do you dream, too? Do you dream about reefs and cliffs, about your mother, about human beings?

Maybe your dreams are without images, like the dreams of blind fish in still caves, in the deep abyss, or – . . . they have come. . . . when the light of day has come – light enough to come attacking.

Ah, you keep kicking in there. As if striking, I can feel your clenched little fists on the wall of my belly. What are you anxious about? Sssshh, sssshhh . . . don’t worry. It’s only the sound of a bomb. Or a grenade, maybe. Did you know, they can put together a soundless bomb with coconuts – without an ear-piercing explosion, just a small thump in the coconut shell? Then, the only sounds heard are the screams or the groaning of exploded skulls. . . .

Let’s get up. The mob, those men, have reached the edge of the village. Their shouting is loud and coarse. Don’t you listen to it; don’t take it to heart.

They’ve made a habit of shouting at each other in the deep jungle or amidst the roaring sea. Can you hear voices. . . ? Such uproar, many voices, striking my eardrums, yet I can still hear the sound of waves in the ocean. There is also the cry of a bird; I’m not sure from which tree. Or maybe that was the cry of a human being; I’m no longer sure. There is a strange smell suspended in the air – not the fragrance of salty sea or grass, but like the stench of the district’s slaughterhouse.

Which way are you facing? Your vision is clear, transcending my skin. In front of you, the sand and the sea are glimmering as if scattered by a thousand diamonds. Dewdrops dangle at the tips of blades of grass, refracting light.

The sun has turned into a large crimson ball, silent, far from all this noise.

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How life holds you tightly in its gentle embrace when death looms so close by. I imagine you looking at the world for the first time in that way. Would you be relieved leaving the darkness towards the colours of the world? Or would you be like me right now, seeing colours at their sharpest and finest distinction, seized suddenly by the enchanting beauty. Everything radiates with life. Observe it all with lucid eyes. Be enchanted, be delighted. My baby, are you happy being able to see all this?

Or are you looking behind through my back, to the lumbering crowd over there? They are running, scattering, bumping into each other like crabs in a wooden crate dumped in the market, like fish struggling to flee from the trap of the fisherman’s net, their eyes open wide, bloodshot red like those of fish left unsold for days. Black smoke is billowing into the air (I hear they never spare anything or anyone). Orange flames appear, more arrogant than the sun . . . vengeance more arrogant than the heart. . . .

Neither the good nor the bad, but those pitted against one another.

Forgive them, my child. Those men have simply never felt what it’s like to bear life in their bodies like a woman with child. They bear death in their arms and fingers. Artefacts of murder clink and clash thunderously, while they are the people being pitted and clashed against one another. Maybe they know or only half-know or don’t know or don’t want to know.

But you ought to know, my child. Because simply believing is never enough. You could possibly be deluded and end up being helpless. You, I, they, Galela, Halmahera – we are all helpless.

In the sand by my feet there is an empty shell, as small as my thumb. I will pick it up and play with it in front of my belly so you can see it closer.

This once housed a hermit crab – such a beautiful home with delicate whorls spiralling to its pointed apex. Its soft orange colour has faded in the wash of waves, bleached by the salty water to pale white, now opaque. The inhabitant must have deserted it a long time ago. Why did she leave? Maybe the house had become too stifling, no longer comfortable for her body, no longer safe as shelter, no longer meaningful to inhabit. Why stay? She decided to go, maybe returning to the sea, crawling along the sand, looking for a different home in the depths. Yes, why stay, my child? They do not allow us to grow here at this beautiful shore. This village, like any other place, was never built to last forever. Let us go.

To the sea. Only the sea will liberate. All branches of rivers, all their wanderings and meanderings end here, no longer having origins or history,

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neither trace nor colour. All the same. Blue sea. Immense. Flat. Calm. Here, droplets of water mingle, float, break into waves and rise, rushing to the sky.

Blue sky. . . . What was that? Something just whistled past, entering the water, not far from my arm. One moment, let me look for it. . . .

Ah, an arrow. It missed its target. Maybe it’s this kind of thing that has just pierced my shoulder. It doesn’t feel that painful, like the peck of a cockatoo. I’ll pull it out. . . . There’s blood on the arrowhead. Sharp red.

Mine. Luckily it didn’t hit my waist; you could have been hurt in there.

Child, turn around and take a good look at him. The archer. He stands tall between blades of grass. He can’t bring himself to lift his bow to aim once again. That thing just lies limp in his fingers. Perhaps because I turned to meet his eye, smiling into his face. He looks tired and handsome, in the tartan shirt that most teenagers wear these days. His years of youth are enough to make him feel it’s his right and duty to finish us – that young angel, Izrail.

I’ll just throw this arrow away. Don’t cry, sweet child. You’re already big, almost eight months; you have to be brave. Let’s continue this journey. The ocean’s arms have spread kindly, welcoming us, embracing up to my knees.

I promise this won’t hurt at all. You, I, the young archer, all of them, will die anyway. It’s only a matter of how. One never knows how death will appear.

I simply do not want their ghoulish hands to rip my stomach and tear you away from me – you, my beloved sanctity, a purity that must never be blemished. You must not die that way, too painful for you. I will save you.

Beloved, pretty baby fish in the ocean of my womb, Laluba. With you, I am complete. I am everything that I have ever wanted to be: child, pupil, worker, wife, mother, woman, witness, winner. Early doom, baby; is your mind teeming with questions? Why are your breasts drenched, Mother, why is the jambu blossom in your hair being swept away by a wave, why are you letting go of the seashell, why are you destroying me?

Would you believe my answer, the reason of all reasons on the face of the Earth. Would you have faith in me?

Because I love you. Aeons my soul has lived; never have I wanted to kill this body, end this one chance at life. Allow me to save you, even though I must die for it.

Is that enough, my child? Will that do? Because I truly love you, more than life itself. . . . I have borne witness along the road; I bear witness now in the depths.

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Laluba

To You, to Whom all prayers and questions are addressed from wretched souls on cruel nights, thousands of broken murmurs whispered to the air rise towards the sky. Would one more prayer mean anything? I’m tired of praying; those prayers were never even for me, but for all wretched ones. I prayed also for the hearts of those who love You, but could not love one another with that same heart. And this time, God, I pray for the children who were never born.

So soundless. Warm. Sunshine enters these depths, illuminating the water a clear blue. A shadowed blue, greying. Changing greenish grey. Greening further. Little fish come swirling, surrounding, unsurprised. Behind them float shadows, gliding. Men. Pale white, blue, purple. They look at us unblinking, unspeaking; only their hair, fingers and clothes waving. Poor coral reefs. . . . Ah, I can see your father, my child. He is coming towards us, gliding between the men. Look at his hair, swaying like a horse’s mane, his tattered clothes swaying like anemones. He is looking at you with a luminous face and a smile as wide as clouds – at you, still curled up, so timidly. Take his hand, child, his soft white palm holding a pink jambu fruit for us – a ripe one, juicy with the salt water. Suck it deeply; it tastes so sweet and fresh. . . .

Swallow, swallow it deeper, deeper. . . .

English translation first published in TERRA, an anthology from Wordstorm, the NT Writers’ Festival.

NOTES: Laluba means dolphin in the local language of Galela, on the shores of Halmahera, one of the islands in the Northern Moluccas, where this story is set. During 1999–2000, irrational violence in Ambon rapidly escalated into an ethnic/religious conflict all over the Moluccan archipelago. Many inhabitants were massacred by their own kin and their once-peaceful neighbours.

Jambu (Eugenia aquea) or ‘rose-apple’ is a juicy fruit that grows in tropical climates.

Depending on the variety, the fruit when ripe can be pink, green or blood-red. The taste is tangy to sweet, mostly watery-sweet when fully ripe, like a cross between a tangy apple and a sweet, juicy pear.

Ketapang (Terminalia catappa) is a kind of almond tree, also known as ‘beach-almond’, whose bark is used for tanning leather and whose kernel produces oil.

Izrail is the angel of death who reclaims departed souls in Islamic teachings.

62

The Song of the Kuwok Bird The Song of the Sunlie Kuwok Thomas Bir dAlexander

Sunlie Thomas Alexander translated by Suzan Piper

T

hose birds of misfortune, it is said, always fly upside down under the full moon or in the dark skies of the new moon, cawing loudly as they cross the kampung, bearing misfortune. This of course instils fear in families with babies or young children and incites foul curses to spill from every home.

Oh, long before he understood much at all, Hasan’s grandfather would tell him stories on the terrace late in the afternoon when he had come home from the market garden. Grandfather Atuk said their song sounded like hens squawking after laying eggs, yet terrifying. Whoever heard it could only shiver, the hairs erect on the back of their neck.

Usually the birds would come to perch and sing in large shady trees or on the roofs of homes with infants who were still breastfeeding, or mothers in late pregnancy. When the target baby cried, that was when the birds would snatch the unfortunate child’s aura and fly off with it far away, soaring high into the grey supernatural heavens. The baby would immediately sicken, its body slowly turning blue and eventually dying.

‘But, Atuk, why do they snatch the baby’s aura?’ he asked, wide-eyed, uncomprehending.

‘Because the birds are following their owners’ orders. They are kept by evil people who try to gain advantage from the suffering of others,’ answered Atuk, smiling. ‘That is why if the baby’s parents don’t come quickly and see the owner, or if the owner cannot be found, it’s a bad sign: the baby then has no chance of being saved.’

‘What does the bird look like, Atuk?’ He was becoming more afraid.

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The Song of the Kuwok Bird

‘Who knows?’ said Atuk. ‘People say it looks like a turkey, but when it stands its head is bowed, and when it flies its body is upside down, the head and chest facing skywards’.

As a boy only five years old, he was truly frightened by Atuk’s story. In fact, it proved quite effective in controlling his naughty behaviour towards his mother, whom he called Emak. She had been forced to call out his name repeatedly before he would come home at dusk. But once he heard Atuk’s story, he began to do as he was told. As soon as he heard the call for prayer coming from the prayer house at the edge of the kampung, he was already running home, afraid he would be taken by a Kuwok bird, which is what the village’s inhabitants called these birds of misfortune.

‘They’re also fond of naughty children who won’t listen to their parents!’ said Emak threateningly.

Ah, as he stood at the kitchen door looking at the hill that loomed behind his home, Hasan’s memories – his childhood fears – suddenly came back to him, for no apparent reason.

That’s how it was, though even now he was still uncertain whether his grandfather’s tale was just an old myth told to scare naughty grandchildren into obedience, or whether those birds were indeed very real and – beyond logic and reason – a threat to people.

Certainly, there was one episode in his childhood that never ceased to haunt his thoughts, remaining fresh in his memory. It happened when he was already a growing boy, in year four of primary school. After dusk, as usual, the family was sitting together on the terrace at the front of the house.

His father was chatting to Emak, who was pregnant with Asmi, his only younger sister. And Atuk, as usual, was intently listening to the news broadcast on the old radio. Suddenly they were startled by a blood-curdling sound that made the hair on everyone’s necks stand on end.

Yes, the cawing cry did sound like a hen squawking, but with a long echo at the end. It came from the dense foliage of the rambutan tree beside the house. Emak’s face immediately turned a deathly pale and Father led her quickly into the house. Hasan drew close to Atuk, who appeared to be muttering to himself, chanting vague, inaudible words. But Father snapped at him to come in quickly. After taking Emak to the bedroom, Father re-emerged, pumping the air gun they used for shooting squirrels. His uncle, Mang Soleh, who was still living with them at the time, let loose with a flurry

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of foul curses and immediately seized the catapult. Further armed with a lemongrass stalk from the kitchen, Mang Soleh darted down the side of the house, following Hasan’s father. The cooking herb was reputed to terrify the Kuwok bird. It was one of two items that could kill it, the other being chicken bones placed in its nest. In her room, Hasan found Emak sobbing as she stroked her bulging belly. The next day, Father chopped down the rambutan tree.

Ah, that episode really stuck in his memory. Especially when neighbours added their own stories. This mother’s baby, fine one night and cutely giggling, had been found blue the next morning, just because the Kuwok bird’s song had been heard close to the house. Or that woman’s three-yearold, who had been playing in her yard when an old man went past, giving her sweets and pinching her chubby cheek: she was found dead three days later with no one knowing exactly why. The nurse at the community health clinic could only shake his head, unable to say what had made the child sick.

Then whispers were heard that the unknown man who had pinched Eti’s cheek kept Kuwok birds.

Hmm, the island of his birth indeed held many mysteries and strange events! People said it was because their sacred land was bound by the promise of the Urang Lom, who lived on Mount Pelawan and were the first people to inhabit Bangka Island. It was their covenant with the supernatural world.

Therefore, it was no surprise that the Bubung Tujuh, the first seven houses of the Lom people’s ancestors in the Air Abik settlement, could be seen only by those with mystical knowledge. Or that at the peak of Mount Maras there were seven springs, very clear and fresh to drink, but if you tried to wash your feet or hands there they would blister. Often too, a young child who unthinkingly peed in the jungle or on a rock would then pee blood when they returned home.

But these were stories from decades ago, before many people from Java and other regions had come to try their fate as miners or labourers or to clear land for pepper, and before the jungles began to shrink from illegal mining, and only a few seruk trees remained for making the wooden stakes on which to grow pepper vines.

Now sand hills could be seen stretching everywhere as the topsoil was stripped clean by the tin sprayer machine. There were many pits filled with water that were breeding grounds for malarial mosquitoes – although, when the drought came, they were handy for washing bodies and clothes, and for

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drinking water. Even the reforestation areas, planted with paper trees on the old colonial mining site now owned by the company, were not spared from human onslaught (‘We need to eat!’).

Yes, the wheels of reform had indeed brought many changes, more so once the small island and its neighbours became a new province. People spoke loudly of being local sons of the soil because for too long they had been sidelined by their own country. They were concerned too. Tin had once been seen as haram or forbidden; now anyone could compete to dredge for it.

For a long while Hasan focused on the hillock that rose behind his house, feeling a subtle pull. He recalled how, as a young boy, he and his friends would go looking for rubber nuts there, in what was indeed a rubber plantation area. It felt like he still knew by instinct which places had the best rubber nuts, and they would usually go home with a plastic bag full of them.

Bepangkak buah karet was what the game was called. Two rubber nuts would be pitted against each other to determine which was the toughest: the one that split lost. After school, they would sometimes remain there, playing all day until their hands were swollen and red. Emak would of course get angry, worried that Hasan would not be able to write at school the next day. Or sometimes they would drill holes in the hard-skinned nuts, scooping out the sticky white contents with wire, and then inserting a broom twig or thin bamboo into the hole as a spindle for a length of twine. A small cross-bar made of bamboo would then be attached to the twig’s end. And you had a propeller! Ah. . . .

Not to mention when the fruit season arrived. The hillock would be overrun by fruit-eating wildlife because it was covered with all kinds of fruit trees: durian, duku, mangosteen, rambutan, and rambe. Birds chirruped loudly and melodiously. And people fond of hunting would of course not want to miss such an opportunity, including his father, who often brought home large fruit bats (‘You can eat them,’ said Father, ‘though they’re forbidden food according to Islam’). Even at night the hillock would be lit up by the torches of the impromptu hunters.

But people said the hillock was also the home of the Kuwok bird. An eyewitness once claimed they saw a flock of these birds of misfortune flying upside-down out of the hill’s lush vegetation on the night of the full moon.

‘Moh Thian Liang’ is what the Chinese who lived in their own kampung called that hill. It means ‘Hill Reaching for the Sky’, and the hillock had

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indeed once been filled with Chinese graves. When he was little, the Chinese people always tried to avoid the graves of people with no living heirs; or, if they were forced to pass by, they would bow towards the tombs. If they happened to step on a grave that had been levelled, with just a few brick fragments left, they would quickly draw their hands together to their chests to signal their apology. Indeed, Emak would worry if Hasan played on that hillock, warning him not to pee just anywhere and not to talk dirty because the hill was clearly occupied, and not just by Kuwok birds. So, before they climbed up the hill they would usually first say, ‘Akek-Anek, cucung numpang lewat – Grandfather, Grandmother, please excuse me for passing through,’ just to ask permission, to be polite.

Oh, playing there was too much fun to miss, even if fear or worry would sometimes grip them. There were so many astounding things to drive their adventures. After all, Kuwok birds did not venture out in daytime, and ghosts actually feared the sun.

He didn’t know the fate of those old graves now that the government had decided to build a new road that cut across that hillock, closer to the new markets. The old markets had been demolished because the main road there became congested, with traffic jams each morning due to vehicles and the spread-out pavement traders.

His small sub-district town had already vastly changed. To the east of the hillock, a Cave of the Virgin Mary had been built a few years before, the largest pilgrimage site for Catholics in the Pangkalpinang diocese. The cave, at the back of the school complex, was always busy with pilgrims visiting from the island and beyond. According to Mang Mi’un, his old neighbour, the garden of the late Pak Dakil had also been affected by the new road.

When he was still alive, no one would even dare approach it, let alone pass by because they said he was an expert in guna-guna or black magic. There was one story of a naughty child who had picked some of his snakeskin fruit and had been trapped for two days and two nights unable to get out of the garden, just going round and round and round.

Yes, the hillock was famously haunted. Stories of people seeing flying balls of fire or hearing terrifying howls in the dead of night were common.

‘Lost in thought?’ asked Sekar, his wife, startling Hasan a little. Who knows how long she had been standing beside him, also focusing on the hillock that still poked out through the lush vegetation? He just glanced at his wife, smiling. And Sekar sweetly returned his smile. Sekar, an anthropology

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graduate, had been raised in a Javanese family still steeped in Javanese mysticism. Of course, he did not want to trouble the thoughts of this woman with tales of his strange childhood.

He had chosen to take leave and invite his wife home to the kampung for a short while because in Jakarta there was no one to care for her when she gave birth. Both her parents had passed away, and her brothers and sisters could not be relied upon because they all had families and were busy earning a living. Furthermore, he and his wife could not yet afford to pay for domestic help.

He had thought that they could also spend some time with Emak, who was getting old. Let Emak’s gentle, practised hands be the ones to help take care of Sekar and their baby. Emak would certainly be happy to welcome the birth of her first grandchild.

Suddenly he heard that birdsong again. Startled, Hasan jumped from his bed. He could see Sekar sleeping soundly beside him. Not sure what to believe, he sat down on the edge of the bed and sharpened his hearing. Ah, no mistaking it; he had heard that sound over ten years before. And the hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle uncontrollably. The birdsong sounded so close, as if it came from the roof.

‘San, Hasan, open the door. It’s me, Emak.’ He heard a soft knock on the door of the room. He bolted up from the bed and opened the door. Emak rushed in.

‘Kuwok birds, Mak?’ he asked hesitantly. He watched Emak nod, the face of the old woman looking worried as she glanced at Sekar still sound asleep.

He immediately grabbed a torch from the table drawer, but Emak stopped him.

‘Don’t San. Guard your wife.’ Emak said, her voice distraught. The cawing was getting louder, and more frightening.

For three consecutive nights, the song was constant, always beginning at midnight. Each day it grew louder and more distressing.

‘It’s been more than ten years since you left, and it’s never been heard since,’ Emak sighed softly. Suddenly he felt panicked. All the stories of his childhood that he had neatly stored away rang once more in his ears, those terrifying stories he could never forget. Birds of misfortune! Where did they come from?

And which damned person was keeping them? Emak placed a few small onions at the corners of their bed.

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‘Just to keep you safe. Usually such “things” don’t like onions,’ Emak explained. Naturally, she didn’t forget the lemongrass stalk.

‘What must we do, Mak?’ He heard the tremor in his own voice. Fortunately, Sekar never woke up at night; at most she wriggled a little. Perhaps because of the child she carried, she was easily tired. But every time the birdsong grew louder, he worried his wife would wake up and ask questions.

‘Go see Wak Toha tomorrow, child. Ask for something.’

‘Is he still alive?’ He imagined an old man always wearing a singlet and shorts – guests or no guests – whose gaze was inexplicably always gentle and soothing. He had never been to school and was totally illiterate, but he knew many things unknown to others.

Emak nodded. The birdsong could be heard until four a.m. Then it slowly faded into the distance with the growing sounds of motor vehicles driving through, signalling that the small town was waking up again. When the call to morning prayer came, he hurried to the bathroom for his ablutions.

Pan Tian Tiauw, the bird suspended between the sky and the earth. That’s what was written in the thick book with Chinese letters, explained Ko A Liong, the Chinese shaman famous in the Parit Empat district. Hasan gazed unblinkingly as Ko A Liong showed him the picture of the bird in the Chinese almanac and prognostication book, Thung Su. The bird’s head, bent downwards, terrified him.

‘Because you’ve been given guidance by Wak Toha, I won’t give you anything more,’ the pot-bellied man of forty or so years said politely in Bangka Malay, after Hasan had explained the intent and purpose of his visit.

Hasan recalled Wak Toha’s words: ‘Go to A Liong’s place; he has a book, if you want to see a picture of the bird.’ That had been his suggestion when Hasan expressed his desire to know what the bird looked like. The older man, who lived alone in a cabin in the market garden and had never married, gave him a small plastic bag of pepper over which he had read some incantations.

‘Spread some of it around your house after evening prayers as you read the Al Fatihah chapter of the Koran. Mix the rest into your wife’s food,’ ordered the village shaman who refused to accept gifts from those who came asking for his help. The old man, who still looked youthful even though he was over seventy years old, then spoke a lot about Hasan’s deceased Atuk, who had been his good friend when she was alive; and also of Hasan’s late father, who had wanted to study with him but had not been able to resist forbidden foods

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and practices; and about how his mother had asked his advice about Hasan when he was small because Hasan had been so naughty.

‘Who’d have thought it’s been so long. Young Hasan has become a city man. But you must come home often, yo? Don’t forget your kampung now, just because you’re already a city man,’ said Wak Toha with a broad smile, displaying his toothless mouth. And he laughed.

On the Pangkalpinang-Jakarta return flight, nightmares continued to loom and turned into a black pool in his head. His feelings had been torn to shreds.

Sekar, who still seemed to be in shock, was asleep with her head resting on his shoulder. Her beautiful face was tired and clearly lined with sadness. He could not bear to let his gaze linger on his wife. Sekar’s eyes were still puffy and swollen. For almost three weeks after the event, she had not stopped weeping and barely slept. A full month had passed and yet her sobs were often heard. He had decided to take his wife back to Jakarta, because staying any longer in the kampung would only prolong her torture. One wrong move and her thoughts could become disturbed and her mind anxious. As the youngest in her family, Sekar was not that strong a woman.

They had lost the child that they had been dreaming of since they married two years before. Sekar had slipped beside the well and miscarried after eight months and ten days of pregnancy. Hasan contritely thought he had been careless to allow his wife to wash the clothes, even though it was only two of her nightdresses.

Ah, he could see that small island, his hometown, getting smaller and smaller through the plane window. As it grew further away, so did the shadow of that tragic event. But he knew its terrible memory could not be easily erased.

For no apparent reason, suddenly he imagined that the plane they were flying in was like a Kuwok bird – flying upside-down, spreading the sad news.

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Loving Flower Loving FlowerYett i A. KA

Yetti A. KA translated by Pamela Allen

I

t was a Sunday, towards sunset, when the pretty woman came up to me.

The sky was turning red; the sparrows flocked to the banana plants that extended the length of the village. I stopped suddenly in front of the house.

I was waiting, as usual, for Mother to come home from the rice fields.

The pretty woman smiled briefly as she said, ‘What’s your name, pretty girl?’

I felt embarrassed. Never in my whole life had anyone asked me my name.

People just called me Lus’ Sister. And I would understand that it was me they were referring to, even though I had my own name, which seemed foreign to me because nobody ever called me by it. And so, when the pretty woman asked me my name, well, to be honest, I was a bit shy about telling her.

‘I have another name, but I’m usually called Lus’ Sister,’ I said, bowing my head. My face felt flushed.

The woman smiled. ‘Is Lus your brother?’

I nodded. Just about every girl in the village was called ‘Sister of . . .’ followed by the name of her older brother. It was as if I’d never had a name of my own.

‘I’ll bet you have a beautiful name.’ The pretty woman suddenly challenged me with a sharp look. It made me a bit scared, a bit nervous, because I had never told anyone my name. Even my mother didn’t like to call me by my real name. So how could I say it to a woman I’d barely met? All I knew was that this pretty woman was a new teacher in my school. She had come a long way, from the city. My friends had told me about her arrival the previous evening after our bath in the river. Her name was ‘Ibu Putri’. But until then

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I hadn’t met her. I was shy. Anyway, the pretty woman taught grade five and I was in grade six.

I didn’t know if she was still looking at me. My heart was beating faster than normal. After all, meeting this unknown woman was a new experience for me. We didn’t get many city visitors to our village, probably because it was so far inland.

‘Don’t be so shy,’ she said. ‘Say whatever you want to say. I’ll always be ready to listen to you, any time. But now, it’s getting late, and I must be going home.’ She turned away.

‘Ma’am, my name is Flower,’ I blurted out. The pretty woman turned back around. And I fled, towards home. She called out my name – just once. And it was as if I’d discovered something new because of it. I was alone, and yet I was embarrassed to be called by a name that sounded strange to my ears.

If my mother had known that I wanted to be called something other than Lus’ Sister, no doubt she would have said, ‘Village girls like us should just use our village names. You’re a funny one.’

After our first meeting, Ibu Putri often came to the house. She said it made her happy to find a girl like me, bold enough to tell someone else her name.

Flower, she said, was a very beautiful name – very memorable.

I, of course, still felt embarrassed. Especially when I thought about her saying such things as: ‘You look even prettier today, Flower,’ or, ‘Flower, you must learn to love what is inside you.’ It sounded odd. The fact was, I was more comfortable being called Lus’ Sister – though deep inside I got a thrill from hearing my name: Flower. As if I’d become a different girl. And I encountered a different world too – one that was my very own. One that belonged to me, a girl! In that world I could see that I really was a beautiful flower, one like Ibu Putri. Not like my mother, with her hair that smelled vaguely of overripe fruit. But, in that world, I also encountered millions of eyes that were waiting to swallow me up.

As a woman do you also want to become a flower that the butterflies adore?

Once, I saw in my mother’s eyes, with their fading glow, a kind message whispered softly to me. I could tell from those eyes that what she really wanted was to persuade me to return to the world she had created for the little girl born of her womb.

‘Are you unhappy today?’

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‘I don’t know, Ibu Putri,’ I said. She laughed. These last few days she had seemed even more beautiful to my eyes – especially when she put a rose behind her ear.

‘What is it that you don’t understand?’

‘Mother doesn’t like me dreaming of flowers.’

‘Does that mean that you would prefer to be called Lus’ Sister?’

‘You know what my heart says.’

Ibu Putri laughed. ‘In that case, Flower, you must learn to love yourself.’

I loved my own name. Any woman would prefer to use a name that she liked. But I kept thinking of mother’s eyes, cold and hard. It made me feel as if I’d betrayed her. Ever since I was little, I’d always been called ‘young girl’ – just like all the other young girls in my village. And then, as was custom, handed down from generation to generation, I had started to be called by the name of my brother: Lus’ Sister. Very rarely was a girl in my village allowed to use her own name – until Ibu Putri came to see me.

‘You still don’t believe in yourself?’

‘I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right for me to be given a choice.’

‘If you so choose, you can see the beauty of your name in the flowers that bloom and grow.’

‘You make too much of a fuss over me.’

‘Maybe it’s because I’m different from your mother.’

My mother was a village girl who had once been called Jun’s Sister. But nobody had called her that for years. I didn’t know what people called her now. She very rarely mixed with others. Like every other married woman in the village, she spent most of her days in the rice fields.

Mother used to be a pretty woman. When she was fifteen, a boy from the neighbouring village proposed to her, with a bride price of two million rupiah, a large sum compared to the five hundred thousand usually paid.

Because the man she was to marry came from a wealthy family, Mother thought her fate would be different from that of other girls.

The wedding was a joyful affair. Wedding celebrations are a big thing in my village. The whole village pays its respects to the bridal couple and their guests.

But always, in the end, the girls who had been seen as princesses when they got married were destined to endure a life that would trap them in a long and frightening tunnel.

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I knew by heart the fruit-like scent of my mother’s hair. In her eyes I could see something that I knew was exhaustion after a full day in the rice field.

Towards nightfall those eyes would often be dull, and father nowhere to be seen.

Did mother ever question the life she was leading? If I thought of her as an unfortunate woman, how did she see herself? Had she ever felt that way?

I felt a sense of shame towards my mother, a shame that would not permit me to run away from a longstanding situation.

Similarly, I felt ashamed when I was being asked to choose: Lus’ Sister or Flower.

Lus’ Sister would no doubt turn out to be like our mother – a woman with hair that smelled of overripe fruit and eyes that had lost their shine.

Flower would take me to a world where I could hope for other things. Would it be possible for Mother to understand?

Ibu Putri told me that many of the villagers had been to see her. They were angry because since she came to our village more and more girls were refusing to be called Little Sister and choosing to use their own names.

I was a bit taken aback.

‘It’s a good thing, Flower. If it’s making people angry, then that’s a good sign. I know it’s not an easy thing for the women here. But we can’t just give in. We have to prevail until women are free to make their own choices about their lives. In the meantime, they haven’t even got the wherewithal to fight for their own name. You, for example: are you really prepared to be called Flower and to cast off the name Lus’ Sister that everyone knows?’ She was persistent. ‘You say nothing. Is that what generation after generation has been taught, to say nothing?’

‘I just feel ashamed, Ibu Putri, ashamed for my mother.’

‘How long will that last?’

‘I don’t know.’

A year later Ibu Putri left without saying goodbye. I was left with memories.

As if she were there, I talked about my love to the roses that were starting to bloom alongside the well. They were beautiful. (Previously I hadn’t known what roses looked like.) The black butterflies too – male, perhaps – had begun to keep watch over the flowers. I noted that mother was right: the flowers were constantly surrounded by butterflies – with or without any expectation

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or hope on the flowers’ part! Regardless, the flowers had no choice. Did I still want to be a flower?

I often passed the government-owned house where Ibu Putri used to live.

There I would look at her rose bed surrounded by bamboo pickets. A small smile would form on my lips. I remembered weeding that little garden with Ibu Putri.

I stood by the flowers thinking about beautiful Ibu Putri. Suddenly, a butterfly flew past. I was startled. There seemed to be butterflies everywhere, alighting on the sepals of the red roses. Whenever a new rose bloomed it reminded me of Ibu Putri’s face, and my face, too. But then, Mother’s face would suddenly appear. The aroma of her hair would send me hurrying home because I had to wait for her in front of the house.

(I held firm to the conviction that I would meet Ibu Putri again, sometime, somewhere. When we met, I would take her to the well-tended flower garden beside her house.)

Dusk fell.

I was twenty years old.

After Ibu Putri left I spent my spare time in the flower garden beside her house. It was much leafier now. I would water the flowers in the evenings.

More and more butterflies were fluttering around the flowers, again reminding me of the way beautiful Ibu Putri would put a rose behind her ear.

The flowers were the only thing that could make me feel close to her. And to her name for me.

On one occasion, I was taken by surprise by the children who greeted me.

‘Good morning, Teacher Flower!’

‘Good morning children.’

The children looked sweet in their red and white uniforms, lined up along the road. No doubt they had their own names, but all I knew was that A was Kosma’s Sister or B was Rudik’s Sister. But I was sure that one day they would want something different.

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The Death of Anwar Sadat in Cempaka Putih The Death ofYus Anwar i Aviant Sadat o in ParCempaka eanom Putih

Yusi Avianto Pareanom translated by Pamela Allen

A

nwar Sadat died on the very day he arrived in Jakarta from Semarang.

He was twenty-eight. Naming his son Anwar, after Egyptian President Muhammad Anwar El Sadat, his father had his reasons for choosing that name and not Gamal Abdul Nasser or Husni Mubarak. A week before the birth of Anwar from Semarang, Sadat the president had been assassinated by one of his own soldiers. According to the news reports, the death could have been avoided if Anwar Sadat had agreed to wear a bulletproof vest, as recommended by his advisors. He refused, saying that bulletproof vests were for pussies.

‘He was a brave man, that’s for sure,’ said Anwar from Semarang’s father admiringly.

And so, when the baby was born, he honoured the Egyptian president by naming his son Anwar Sadat. He decided against the names that he’d been contemplating in the preceding weeks: Franz, Johan, Mario, and Diego Armando. Those names were too posh for a humble villager, anyway.

Despite his father’s hopes, Anwar Sadat from Semarang did not develop into quite the hero that his tragic namesake had been. He was of a delicate disposition, and this incurred the mirth of his friends. He was always on the margins of whatever game they happened to be playing.

When he was ten, his mother and father took Anwar to Surabaya by train.

He was as white as a sheet throughout the journey. His parents assumed it was because he had skipped a meal. In fact, it was because every time they crossed a bridge, Anwar felt as if his soul were leaving his body. When it was time to go home Anwar pleaded with them to take the bus.

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Anwar suffered from a sort of gephyrophobia – the fear of bridges, based on the belief that they would collapse. Ordinary bridges didn’t bother him, but railway bridges scared the bejeezus out of him. Neither Anwar nor his parents knew that there was a name for this condition; all they knew was that Anwar would get into a state whenever he saw a bridge. His suffering was intensified because he was also plagued by a number of other fears, from the common ones such as fear of blood (haemophobia), fear of doctors (iatrophobia) and fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia) to the rarer ones such as fear of raindrops (ombrophobia). At least, although it was a small consolation, Anwar didn’t suffer from optophobia, the fear of opening one’s eyes, a condition that can lead to the sufferer clawing his own eyes out, with his own hands, a nail or a fork.

It was no doubt because of his various phobias that Anwar was happy to ensconce himself at home, and rarely left town. He was perfectly content just looking after his father’s humble grocery shop.

A few weeks before Anwar died, a relative in Jakarta phoned his father to say that he knew of a young woman, aged twenty-four, widowed but childless, who would be a good match for the unattached Anwar Sadat. ‘She’s a good girl, fair-skinned, quiet, thrifty, likes gardening, likes knitting, good cook, knows the Yaasiin chapter of the Koran off by heart,’ reported the relative.

This was a pleasing turn of events for Anwar’s mother and father. They suggested he go to Jakarta. He and the woman could get to know each other first, and if they got on well, perhaps a relationship would follow. If it didn’t, at least they would have established a friendship.

Ever the obedient son, Anwar set off for Jakarta. He was terrified, but he didn’t want them to think he was a coward. And the idea that he might meet his future wife did have its appeal. Overcome by a mixture of anxiety and excitement, he couldn’t sleep the night before he left and, when he boarded the bus very early the next morning, he was so tired he could barely keep his eyes open. But he was afraid to go to sleep for fear of what might happen during the journey.

Anwar arrived at Pulogadung Terminal at two thirty in the afternoon. As he had been instructed to do, he caught a minibus to Senen. His relative’s house was in Kramat. Once he was in the minibus his tiredness got the better of him. He woke with a start to find someone shaking him by the shoulder, saying ‘Come on mate, time to change buses.’ They were in Cempaka Putih.

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Groggily Anwar got off. The shouting of a minibus conductor ten metres away put the wind up him. He’d only gone five metres when his sandal – Lily brand – slipped on some fine sand, and Anwar went flying. If only he’d let gravity do its thing, he would have been OK. But Anwar tried to resist the motion and, as he awkwardly tried to regain his balance, he collided with a woman coming out of the gap between two minibuses.

Anwar’s hand brushed the woman’s breast. Both of them, equally taken aback, screamed. Still groggy, Anwar’s hand slipped onto the woman’s waist.

‘Pickpocket!’ shrieked the woman.

Anwar couldn’t fathom what was happening; he just smiled.

‘You bastard!’ yelled one of the men who were hanging around on the street.

When a group of men approached him, Anwar burst into tears, suddenly overcome with longing for his mother’s chicken soup and beef fritters, for his father’s tall stories, and for the smile of his future wife, whom he had yet to lay eyes on.

Lena Mareta didn’t see the first punch that struck Anwar on the head. She was already in a taxi by that time. Precisely three seconds after Anwar had collided with her, she had spied a taxi and immediately flagged it down.

Understandably, she was still extremely annoyed about the uninvited touch of a man’s hand on her body. But there was something else, something even more troubling, that made her want to get out of there fast.

‘Is it OK if I smoke?’ asked Lena.

‘Actually, it’s not,’ said the driver, watching her in the rear vision mirror.

Lena opened the window and lit a cigarette. It would have been a pleasant evening if only that dumb pimply faced kid hadn’t stuffed it up for her!

Lena had been looking forward to this evening. She’d even taken a day’s leave. She’d had a bath when she got up, and another one after lunch. She never wore much make-up, but she did like to keep her nails painted. So, after the second bath, she opened her box of nail polishes. There were four rows, with ten colours in each row. On the first row: pink, and nine shades of red – the red of a freshly slaughtered cow’s heart, the red of an onion, the red of the Harajuku shopping complex in Tokyo, the red of the Mangga Besar mall, the red of cordial syrup, the red of a girl’s first period, maroon red, the red of betel-nut spittle and the red of the Joker’s lipstick. On the second row: salted egg blue, samurai blue, the blue of an early winter sky, the blue of the

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Chelsea football team, the blue of a bruise on a thief who got nabbed, the blue of sex, greenish blue, the blue of lapis lazuli, the blue of a Pilot classic ballpoint and the blue of Cibaduyut stonewashed jeans. On the third row: sunflower yellow, durian yellow, the yellow of young rice plants, moss green, turmeric orange, citrus orange, coal brown, the brown of strong tea, the white of an egg sunny side up, and ivory white. On the fourth row: nine bottles of black like Joan Jett’s hair and one bottle of clear polish. Lena chose the latter.

The previous evening, Lena’s boyfriend Jamal had returned home from a three-week climbing expedition at Mount Elbrus in Russia. She’d not been able to meet him at the airport and, though she’d been keen to go and see him that morning, she’d held off because Jamal had told her he’d probably still be asleep.

Lena and Jamal had been going out for four months. They had slept together nineteen times. By the second month Lena had become aware that they were incompatible on a number of grounds. It wasn’t because of Jamal’s age – at twenty-one he was six years younger than her – but rather because she found him uninspiring to talk to. Lena was of the view that youth did not give a person licence to prattle on about nothing. But the sex was always good. She wanted that to continue.

Once she was in his room, everything proceeded as Lena had imagined it would. But her happiness was short-lived. As she was about to undo her bra, her hand stopped mid-air when she saw Jamal sitting naked on the bed, waving his hand over his genitals like a conductor in full flourish.

‘Miss Lena, you’ve met these three before, but you’ve never been officially introduced. This is John, these are George and Ringo,’ laughed Jamal, pointing at his penis and both testicles.

‘Where’s Paul?’ asked Lena, grinning.

‘What do you mean?’

‘How come he’s been left out?’

‘I’ve only got two balls, Len.’ ‘Why isn’t Paul the pillar?’

‘Ha, he’s the one that destroyed the band!’

They argued. Lena was angry. For her, there would have been no Beatles without Paul McCartney, no matter how brilliant John was. It was because of Paul that Lena had fallen in love with the Beatles. Her father had died when she was quite young, and the slow Beatles songs – the ones that Paul had composed – were of great comfort to her. It wasn’t that she didn’t like

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The Death of Anwar Sadat in Cempaka Putih

John; in fact, she had a great deal of respect for him. It was just that Paul was her first love, and she wouldn’t countenance any criticism of Paul from Jamal.

When Jamal realised that this was one argument he wasn’t going to win, and tried to make amends by demonstrating how ready his own John was for a wrestle of a different kind, it was too late. Lena stormed out of the room in a big sulk.

It wasn’t until after the second cigarette that Lena allowed herself a smile.

Why should I get so mad about this? Wouldn’t it actually be an insult if that young punk were to name his thing after Paul? She wanted to go back to him, but her pride got in the way.

‘To Ragunan, to the zoo,’ she said finally. At first, she’d just said, ‘Drive,’ to the driver.

‘It’s late Miss.’

Lena didn’t reply and the driver wasn’t game to say any more.

Apart from Paul’s songs, the other thing that had always comforted Lena was watching the animals at the zoo. Her favourite used to be the tapir because it was such a difficult creature to classify. Her mother couldn’t tell her what species of animal it was, and none of her family was any help either.

Another thing that intrigued Lena about the tapir was its torpor. Once she’d grown up it was easy enough for her to find out about the tapir for herself, and it ceased to be of interest to her. These days it was the giraffe that captivated her, for one reason alone: the giraffe had no vocal cords. A neck that long, and condemned to silence!

The driver had not been mistaken in reminding Lena that it was late; the ticket seller at Ragunan told her the same thing. It was only forty minutes until closing time. That didn’t bother Lena; she just wanted to look at the giraffe, and its enclosure wasn’t far from the entrance.

Because of low cloud it was darker than usual. After ten minutes, Lena had had enough. As she was about to move away, a woman – who Lena estimated to be in her seventies – caught her attention. The woman was repeatedly looking up at the sky and then looking at the shrubbery in front of her.

What Lena didn’t know was that the woman was testing herself on meteorological botanomancy, which is the science of predicting weather conditions based on the movement of plants. It’s a difficult science, even for a woman who is practised in fructomancy (divining by the shape, movement

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and response of fruit), dendromancy (interpreting trees), phyllomancy (interpreting leaves) and xylomancy (interpreting the trunks and branches of trees).

Lena kept staring at the woman, trying to recall who she reminded her of, until finally she felt confident enough to approach her.

‘Are you Ibu Reni?’

The old woman smiled. ‘No, I’m Esti. Reni is my twin.’

Lena approached the woman and kissed her hand. This was totally unexpected: meeting the twin of the woman who had been so important to her family. Twenty years ago, after Lena’s mother had suffered a serious stroke, it was Ibu Reni who had cured her, using herbal medicine and massage.

‘There are so many coincidences in your stories, Teach!’

The man they were addressing laughed. I was sitting beside him; I laughed too. There were five or six of his students in front of us. I say ‘five or six’ because the teacher had told me that, of the six students who were learning creative writing from him, one had officially enrolled but only turned up to one of the twelve sessions. Another was not enrolled and came along because her friend had brought her; from the second week of classes she’d then taken advantage of the teacher’s good nature to get herself free tuition.

‘Didn’t I hear you say that coincidences really do happen in real life?’ said the teacher, as the laughter died down.

During the journey to get here, the six of them had been talking at length – or gossiping, to be more precise – about a young guy, a singer in a punk band, with whom one of them had once been in a relationship. Their talk ranged from the songs he’d liked and played to the colour of his skin – clear and pale when he was in a relationship and dark when he was not. They couldn’t remember how they had got on to this topic of conversation. But what happened next came as a complete surprise to them. When they were stopped at the traffic lights, a motorbike pulled up alongside them. One of them casually glanced out the window and yelled out in surprise because the motorcyclist was none other than the guy they’d just been talking about.

The incident had actually been a bit more convoluted than that, but they wanted to use the key points in the stories they were writing. The teacher had smiled and told them that he would make up a story with the odd coincidence here and there, and get them to judge how effective it was. He asked the students to give him a couple of hours. They were happy to comply

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and went off to watch Inception. I went with them. While we were away, he composed the story about Anwar Sadat and Lena Mareta.

They listened as he related the story and then one asked, ‘So what happened next, Teach?’

‘Well I was actually hoping that you would each have a go at telling the rest of the story.’

All six of them grumbled but did as they were told. Three of them were working on laptops; the others were scribbling on paper napkins that were almost as thick as writing paper. After twenty minutes, one of them handed his napkin over to the teacher. I read over his shoulder.

Here’s how his story went.

‘Anwar, come on, get ready!’

Anwar Sadat was trembling. This ditch on the side of the highway was the last place he wanted to be. But his friends were pressuring him. One of them held out a slingshot to him; another was busy making bullets from clay. The village kids loved being part of this new game – firing clay bullets at passing cars from their slingshots. The kids got such a kick out of seeing the startled looks on the faces of the drivers or passengers. And it was even better if the driver actually got out of the car and chased them.

Anwar had joined in because Tamsi, the boy who had suggested he come and hide in the ditch, had promised he would protect Anwar at school. In grades one and two, Anwar had been bullied constantly on account of his obesity, and the promise of the tall slender Tamsi was enough to persuade him to grab the slingshot.

In less than three minutes they were all ready and armed. When an Impala sedan approached from the north, Tamsi tapped Anwar on the shoulder – code for ‘your turn’.

Anwar shut his eyes and fired. The clay bullet struck the right wing of the driver’s glasses. It didn’t injure him, but he got the shock of his life. Two passengers, a woman and a girl, screamed when the driver suddenly swerved and slammed into a tree. They could hear a loud noise, but it wasn’t coming from inside the car. After being rooted to the spot for about ten seconds, the other kids fled. Anwar remained transfixed; Tamsi grabbed his hand.

The driver was covered in blood; his head was smashed in. The woman passed out; the girl looked around and began to cry. Her name was Lena Mareta.

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The Crow The Crow

Zen Hae

Zen Hae translated by Marjie Suanda No one and nothing in this world can protect you from the revenge of a crow. Not even if you hide in your mother’s womb. You will die a day before your birthday. Like the nut of a kenari tree, you will fall and crack on a rock. Kkkkhhaaaaaakk!

J

ust before the hundredth jump, Ihsan Gagak (The Crow) Riman began to see stars. His knee joints were aching and inflamed. His head was heavy.

His body was leaning at a sharp angle. Everything before his eyes changed colour to a reddish-black. All sounds became softer. Death, foretold in a bad dream, seemed to be right in front of his nose.

However, a fraction before he collapsed on the pavement, a man with black wings caught him. With well-practised moves he flew off, carrying Ihsan Gagak Riman away. Meanwhile a number of people who had witnessed the miraculous act could only stand there dumbfounded, saying the names of the Lord, their mothers and their pets. After crossing a man-made lake, cutting through a gap in the trees, leaping over the roof of a gigantic cage and almost running into an egret, the man-bird landed on a bench behind a bougainvillea bush. On the concrete bench, which was covered in moss and beginning to crack, he helped Ihsan Gagak Riman remove the crow’shead mask, take the wings off his back and massage his neck and temples.

Ihsan Gagak Riman could now see the world again with eyes as fresh as a ripe lime.

‘Thanks,’ he said, his voice still shaky. ‘My name is Ihsan Gagak Riman, but people call me Cangkriman. I’m the mascot of this bird park.’

‘I’m Garifin, Muhammad Gagak Arifin, an ordinary visitor.’

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With both amazement and gratitude, Cangkriman closely studied Garifin’s body. What most caught his attention was the man’s wings. These wings did not require the up and down movement of a pair of arms for their owner to fly. These wings were far sturdier and resembled real wings much more than the handmade ones he wore all the time. The base of the two wings was attached to Garifin’s shoulder blades, and covered by a long, reddish-maroon shirt that ran down to his knees. The feathers were arranged neatly and shone when hit by the late afternoon sun, making them look like wings more for flying than for creeping down the street. With such an appearance, wasn’t Garifin much more convincing as a bird or a god or an angel than he, Cangkriman, was?

‘You can really fly?’ asked Cangkriman, his eyes gleaming.

‘Yes, if necessary. But I can also walk like a penguin,’ said Garifin flatly.

‘Are you a descendant of Boreas?’

‘The gods died because they frequently caused too much trouble for humans. All that’s left of their descendants are stories.’

‘Or, maybe you are an angel?’

‘Angels have neither desires nor revenge. I do.’

‘Then why did you help me?’

‘Because no gods or angels would help you.’

‘Did you come here just to help me?’

‘Not really. I came here to verify my dream. Time and again I have dreamed about a bird park. Its trees are glimmering, the sun is shining brightly, but the paths are confusing. And I always end up back at a crossroads with rows of kenari nut trees on both sides. And there’s a black bird, perhaps a black starling, but more likely a crow, that always mocks me. That’s the damned bird that I’m hunting.’

‘Why are you hunting it?’

‘It has hurt my entire family. Their eyes have been blinded because of that damned bird.’

‘You’ve just managed to catch it.’

‘Your humour moves me.’

Cangkriman laughed bitterly, and Garifin followed suit.

‘Kkkkhhaaaaaakk!’

Cangkriman choked.

When he got home Cangkriman felt very anxious, not because his rheumatism was flaring up, but because of Garifin. He had gazed into the

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eyes of that man when they laughed together, and he’d felt them suck up all the joy in his heart. They were like the eyes of a killer searching for its prey, as sharp as the eyes of the angel of death. Hadn’t he also used the name ‘Gagak’ (‘The Crow’), imitating the sound of the crow that had once woken him and scared him half to death? But why did he save me? Cangkriman couldn’t stop wondering.

In the bathroom Cangkriman still tried to remember whether he had ever met Garifin or someone who resembled him. The thing was, he felt there was something familiar about the man with the black wings: he was about fifty years old, with a mole on the left side of his upper lip; his mouth was crooked to the right when he laughed; and the fingers of his right hand always moved uncontrollably. It was as if he had suffered an electric shock. But Cangkriman couldn’t remember anyone with these characteristics.

However, when he looked in the bathroom mirror Cangkriman suddenly realised that he bore a number of similarities to Garifin. Both of them had straight thin hair combed to one side. The difference was that Cangkriman’s was to the left and Garifin’s was to the right. Their moles and mouths were also in the same position with the same flaw.

Not to mention the matter of the crow. While Garifin was still hunting for a crow, Cangkriman had already shot one. It had happened at the foot of Mount Galunggung five years before. The unlucky crow became the target of his frustration because he was exhausted from searching the slopes for more than three hours without finding a single pig. In his exhaustion and frustration, he had come upon a crow perched on a branch of a mahogany tree. The crow continued to caw, as if mocking his bad fortune. The mocking only ended when its head was destroyed by Cangkriman’s favourite hunting gun, a .30-06 calibre Mauser.

And this marked the beginning of his misfortunes. That night he had a bad dream. A giant-size version of the crow that he had killed that afternoon appeared and attacked his left eye. After Cangkriman cried out, his eye bleeding, the crow swore a curse of death on him. He woke up with images of death that refused to leave his eyes. From that night on, he had harboured a feeling of guilt towards that crow and all birds. He atoned that guilt by loving all birds, building kinship relations with them, studying all sorts of information about them; yet at the same time he felt that some bird-like thing was always spying on him wherever he went. That was until he moved

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The Crow

to this city, became the mascot for the bird park and worked as a freelance writer.

At this point Cangkriman stopped thinking about Garifin and the crow because he had to write something for the tabloid Coco & Rico. Tonight, he wanted to write an essay about birds and all their incarnations that threatened as well as protected human beings. His knowledge and memory drifted between the crow, Garifin and the griffin, a mythological being with the head and wings of a hawk and the lower half of the body of a lion. It was a being that always shadowed Cangkriman, and it felt more threatening than protecting. He had to email the essay before eleven o’clock that night, which left about four more hours. He filled the first bit with the origins of the griffin, and various versions of its visualisation. But as he started on the first line of the twenty-third paragraph, his right index finger stopped on the ‘G’ key, his eyes closed and, a minute later, two drops of saliva fell onto the table.

Cangkriman found himself in a room in which all the walls were lined with bookshelves. The floor was littered with books, peanut shells, empty cups, cigarette stubs and chicken feathers, but in the middle stood a dressing table with an enormous round mirror facing him. With a child’s eagerness he approached the mirror and found the objects in it suddenly upside down and expanding like bread dough. Only he himself was free from that curious distortion. Initially, he thought the mirror was a strange combination of magnifying glass and concave mirror, but it turned out that it wasn’t, because as soon as he examined the objects surrounding it, they were indeed upside down and expanding many times over, including a gigantic comb on the dressing table. He wanted to use the comb to style his hair like Garifin’s.

Unfortunately, the surface of the mirror suddenly became wavy, and it blasted scalding hot air onto his face. Cangkriman quickly grabbed a dictionary to protect himself. In that very quick movement he could see a creature with half of the body of a hawk and half the body of a lion reflected in the wavy mirror. Its beak was open, as if it were about to swallow him whole.

Cangkriman wanted to scream but his throat felt blocked.

The ringing of a telephone broke the tension. Then a voice without gender spoke, ‘Cangkriman, get out quickly. That monster is going to destroy you.’

Cangkriman woke up with a start and heard his actual cellular telephone ringing loudly. He picked it up. His regular editor reprimanded him and gave him one more hour; otherwise, the space reserved for his essay would be filled by a public service announcement. Though exhausted from his bad

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dream, Cangkriman was able to finish the essay. Soon after he had sent the email, the editor rang again and praised his essay as the best one he had ever written.

Cangkriman didn’t really care about the praise because his thoughts were again filled with the bad dream he had just had and, again, with thoughts of Garifin. The walls of books reminded him of the library in the place where he worked, a huge room with racks of books three metres high. It was only about half a kilometre from his bedroom. The bird park also had a library with quite an extensive collection, thousands of books about all kinds of birds from every corner of the world, from prehistoric times until today, including a number of species that only lived in mythology and modern works of literature.

Now Cangkriman recalled that he had once met someone in that library who looked like Garifin. That was almost six months before, a week after the death of his father, on a Thursday just before dusk. It was cloudy outside and the cold of the air conditioning had made him pull his jacket tightly around himself and focus on reading Bustanu Thair (Bird Park), a tale that had been banned during the time of Sultan Iskandar Muda. It was written in Malay Arabic; the information about the author had been omitted along with several details in the story. It was about King Isra, who flew to heaven with a pair of wings that he had been granted after chanting seven holy verses. But after a few moments in heaven Sang Maharaja Cahaya, the Great King of Light, drove him out because he was unwilling to return to earth to take care of his people. As Cangkriman was about to read the chapter about the eviction, lightning crashed outside the window. A creature with black wings was peering in at him.

‘And then Gabriel Alaihisalam’s wings of light flapped. All the inhabitants of heaven trembled and were shocked by what had happened. Then the body of King Isra floated like a kenari leaf under the sky. And like the nut of a kenari tree, you will fall and slam against a rock,’ said the black-winged creature in a voice that shook the windows.

With trepidation, Cangkriman quickly compared the three first sentences the creature had spoken with the top lines on the following pages of the text that he was reading. They matched. He shifted his gaze to the disturbing creature only to see a mocking look in its eyes before it disappeared.

Cangkriman was convinced that Garifin was a reincarnation of the crow that he had killed. And that crow was the most perfect incarnation of the

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devil from hell that was aiming for his life. In its latest form it was now deliberately appearing in Cangkriman’s dreams and in his real life. Garifin was also deliberately seeking out opportunities to kill him, so that his fear would develop like the objects in his dream and he would die in overwhelming fear.

Suddenly someone knocked on the door to Cangkriman’s room. There was no greeting. He immediately assumed that it was Garifin. He silently walked over to the glass cabinet and took out the .30-06 Mauser that for the last five years had only been an ornament in his living room. The knocking grew harder and more frequent. He calmly loaded the hunting rifle and moved forward ready to shoot. Two steps before reaching the door, he heard the genderless voice, ‘Cangkriman, get out quickly. That rifle will kill you.’

‘Damned devil. You are playing with me again,’ cursed Cangkriman.

Cangkriman opened the door but there was nobody there, just the sound of owls calling to each other from behind a cluster of trees. The night wind beat against his body, spreading cold and the musty smell of bird feathers.

Beneath the sprinkling of light from the full moon he could see a winged figure flying between branches of the angsana and rain trees. He followed after the creature until it reached the main road. Once in a while he had to pause to check where the damned creature had gone. He stopped at the crossing where kenari trees stood on either side. There, he found Garifin, standing directly beneath one of them; it was the very spot where the scoundrel had saved him earlier that afternoon. Garifin crossed his arms with his wings half spread.

Cangkriman stopped a few yards in front of Garifin and aimed his rifle at the hideous creature. As usual, his target just smiled mockingly at him. With the skill of an experienced hunter Cangkriman closed his left eye and held his breath for a few seconds. While continuing to take aim, he felt the cold of the wooden gun stock press into his right cheek. With complete confidence, his index finger pulled the trigger. However, the rifle didn’t fire at all. He pulled the trigger again, with the same result. Cangkriman panicked; Garifin stepped forward. Suddenly Cangkriman began to shake and he slumped to a sitting position on the ground, still holding his rifle. Garifin moved closer. A cold sweat broke out on Cangkriman’s brow and temples.

Garifin’s eyes, now only a couple of feet away, once again sucked all the joy from his heart.

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‘I atoned for my sin by not hunting anymore. I love all kinds of birds, especially crows, with all my life force, leaving me nothing left to share with anyone else. I even took on work that makes my rheumatism flare up and makes children laugh at me. What more do you demand from me?’ Cangkriman asked, almost in tears.

‘Fly and I will finish off my revenge,’ said Garifin.

‘I am not a descendant of Boreas; I’m not an angel or a crow.’

‘Come on, Ihsan Gagak Riman. Follow your greatest dream. Haven’t you always practised so you could be like me?’

‘It was all in vain. I no longer have a dream. I will go forward to meet my fate.’

Cangkriman began to cry.

At the same time Garifin abruptly flapped his wings and clapped his hands.

Cangkriman groaned. Near his shoulder blades a pair of wings slowly began to grow, until they were as strong and beautiful as Garifin’s wings. Cangkriman got up with rejuvenated blood flowing through his veins. Joyfully he began to flap his new wings. He rose into the air. Half a yard, one yard, up and up.

He could fly, really, really fly! He turned, flew up and down, swooping and rising again. He laughed, cawing at the same time. After he had flown enough, he landed softly on a branch of a kenari tree. He looked at Garifin and smiled.

However, the creature was ready with the hunting rifle that Cangkriman had left behind. With the skill of an experienced hunter, Garifin aimed at Cangkriman. Both held their breath. Bang! A few birds woke up and flew off. A bullet penetrated Cangkriman’s forehead. Slowly his body tilted over and plummeted, striking the tree branches as he fell, and he landed with a thud on the asphalt.

Ihsan Gagak Riman bin Yahya Sulaiman died at the age of fifty-one years, eleven months and twenty-nine days. Hundreds of people, most of them visitors to the bird park, joined in his funeral procession to a village cemetery not far from the park. I couldn’t bring myself to join in. From the top of a Javanese tamarind tree I looked at the body slowly being lowered into the grave. It all took place beneath my unblinking gaze, until one of the gravediggers embedded a wooden gravestone at the head of the grave. I felt a strange stinging in my heart.

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That was how I accomplished my revenge on my enemy. I studied his history; I traced every bit of his ruin; I penetrated his dreams; I seized his ambitions; I delved into all that he knew, even his deepest secrets, until I really knew and controlled him. I dissolved into his universe until you could no longer tell the difference between me and him. And so, when I succeeded in killing him, in fact I killed myself.

Kkkkhhaaaaaakk!

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Contributors Cont ributors Cont ributors

KADEK KRISHNA ADIDHARMA, translator of Nukila Amal, is an author, curator, translator and environmental engineer. He is an independent voice from Bali who writes on art and environmental issues through the lenses of culture, ecology and history. Growing up in a multilingual environment, Kadek is fluent in Balinese, English and Indonesian. With his writing, Kadek attempts to make technical solutions more accessible to a wider audience. Through his translations, residencies and festival work, he aims to provide a platform for emerging voices of South East Asia.

SUNLIE THOMAS ALEXANDER was born in Belinyu, Bangka Island and studied at universities in Yogyakarta. His short story collections include Malam Buta Yin (The Dark Night of Yin, Gama Media, 2009), Istri Muda Dewa Dapur (The Second Wife of Kitchen God, Ladang Pustaka, 2012), and Makam Seekor Kuda (Tomb of a Horse, IBC, 2018). His poetry is collected in Sisik Ular Tangga (Snakes and Ladders, Halaman Indonesia, 2014). Youling Chuan (The Ghost Ship, Sifang Wen Chuang, 2016) is a collection of stories and poems published in Chinese.

PAMELA ALLEN, translator of Yetti A. KA and Yusi Avianto Pareanom, is Adjunct Associate Professor of Indonesian at the University of Tasmania, Australia.

Her teaching and research areas are Indonesian language, literature and studies.

In addition to publications on Indonesian literature, her recent research projects include a study of the Javanese diaspora in Suriname and New Caledonia. She publishes in Indonesian as well as English, and as an accredited translator. She also works and publishes in the area of literary translation.

AVIANTI ARMAN has written two collections of short stories, Negeri Para Peri (Land of the Fairies, 2009) and Kereta Tidur (Sleeping Train, 2011). Perempuan yang Dihapus Namanya won the Khatulistiwa Literary Award in 2011, and her short story ‘Pada Suatu Hari Ada Ibu dan Radian’ (‘One Day, There was Mother and Radian’) was selected as the Best Short Story of 2009 by Kompas newspaper. As an architect, her publications include Arsitektur yang Lain: Sebuah Kritik Arsitektur (Other Architectures: A Critique of Architecture, 2011).

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Contributors

AZHARI AIYUB was born in Banda Aceh. His first book of short stories, Perempuan Pala (Nutmeg Woman), was published in 2004. In 2005 Azhari received the Free Word Award from Poets of All Nations in The Netherlands. His new novel, Kura-kura Berjanggut (The Bearded Turtle), won a Kusala Sastra Khatulistiwa literary award, being placed 18th in the prose category.

NUKILA AMAL was born in Ternate in 1971. She published the novel Cala Ibi in 2003 and a collection of short stories titled Laluba in 2005, for which she received the Best Literary Book of the Year Award from Tempo magazine. In 2010 she won a prize from the National Language Centre (Badan Bahasa) for the same work. In 2013, she published a children’s book Mirah Mini: Hidupmu, Keajaibanmu (Mirah Mini: Your Life, Your Miracle). ‘Smokol,’ (‘Brunch’), a short story she published in Kompas, received Best Short Story of the Year Award from the newspaper in 2008. Cala Ibi has been translated into Dutch and Italian.

ABIDAH EL KHALIEQY was born in 1965 in Jombang, East Java. A graduate of Ma’had Modern Putri PERSIS Bangil, Pasuruhan and IAIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta, she began to write in her youth and has been very productive throughout her career. Her published works include: Ibuku Laut Berkobar (a collection of poems, 1997), and a number of novels and short story collections: Menari di Atas Gunting (2001), Perempuan Berkalung Sorban (2001), Atas Singgasana (2002), Geni Jora (2004), Mahabbah Rindu (2007), Nirzona (2008), Mikraj Odyssey (collection of short stories, 2009), Kisah Tuhu dari Melayu (2009), Menebus Impian (2010), Mataraisa (2012), Mimpi Anak Pulau (2013), and Santri Mengintip Takdir (2013).

LILY YULIANTI FARID holds a PhD and MA in gender studies from the University of Melbourne. Her works include Family Room, an anthology published

by Lontar; the Indonesian translation of Anita Roddick’s autobiography, Business as Unusual (2013); and the Indonesian editions of Linking People (2017). She is the founder/director of Makassar International Writers’ Festival and co-founder/codirector of Rumata’ Artspace. She won the Faculty of Arts Alumni Award at the University of Melbourne (2016) and received an Alumni Grant Scheme Australia Award (2017), an International Fellowship grant from Asia Centre Japan Foundation (2018), and Indonesia’s National Cultural Award (2018).

GEORGE A. FOWLER, translator of Azhari Aiyub and Ben Sohib, is a full-time freelance translator of Chinese, Indonesian, Malay and Tagalog. His published literary translations include Old Town by Lin Zhe and Sitti Nurbaya by Marah Rusli. As well as having studied and worked for thirty years in the Asia-Pacific region, he received a BA from the University of Toronto (1975) and an MA from the University of Washington (2002).

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Contributors

ZEN HAE writes poetry, short stories, and literary criticism. He has produced a collection of short stories, Rumah Kawin (The Wedding House, 2004); a book of poems, Paus Merah Jambu (The Pink Whale, 2007); and a trilingual edition of his short stories, The Red Bowl and Other Stories (Lontar, 2015). He is co-editor of the two-volume Lontar Anthology of Indonesian Short Stories: Short Fiction from the Twentieth Century (Lontar, 2017).

YETTI A. KA was born and grew up in Bengkulu Province, Indonesia. She has written many short stories centred on the world of women and on psychology.

These stories have been published in Kompas, Koran Tempo, Media Indonesia, Republika, Jawa Pos, Majalah Femina and elsewhere. She has published eleven books: short stories, anthologies and novels, including Numi, Musim yang Menggugurkan Daun, Kinoli, Penjual Bunga Bersyal Merah, Peri Kopi, and Basirah. She received the Culture Award from Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Indonesia in 2004 for her short story, ‘Musim yang Menggugurkan Daun’.

JOHN H. McGLYNN, translator of Lily Yulianti Farid, Cok Sawitri and Abidah El Khalieqy, is a co-founder and the director of publications of the Lontar Foundation in Jakarta. Through Lontar, McGlynn has ushered into print more than 200 books on Indonesian literature and culture. As the translator of several dozen publications himself, he has garnered much international praise for his work. He is also head of the Literary and Translation Funding Programmes of Indonesia’s National Book Committee.

YUSI AVIANTO PAREANOM was born in 1968 in Semarang, Central Java. After graduating from Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, he worked as journalist/ editor for Tempo Magazine. He founded Banana Publishing in 2005. He writes fiction and nonfiction, and also edits and translates the works of foreign authors into Indonesian. He is also involved in a number of theatre, film and multimedia arts productions. Since 2016, he has served on the Jakarta Arts Council as Head of the Literary Committee.

SUZAN PIPER, translator of Sunlie Thomas Alexander, lives in Sydney and has lived, worked and performed in Indonesia since the 1970s. She has also been an Indonesian–English translator and interpreter in Indonesia and Australia since the 1970s. Her translations of Rendra’s poetry appeared in the Australian literary magazine Meanjin and in Sastrawan Indonesia-Indonesian Writer when Rendra was given the 1996 SEA Write Award. She has translated for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival since 2008.

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Contributors

TONI POLLARD, translator of Gus tf Sakai, became a teacher of Indonesian language in Australia in 1967, and took up literary translation on her retirement from the University of Western Sydney in 2004. Working mostly with Jakartabased Lontar Foundation and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali, Toni’s translations include many novels and short story collections by both emerging Indonesian writers and well-known authors such as N.H. Dini and Hanna Rambe.

GUS TF SAKAI was born in 1965 in Payakumbuh, West Sumatra. He is a prolific writer of prose and poetry, under the name Gus tf. His collection of short stories, Kemilau Cahaya dan Perempuan Buta (The Dazzle of Light and the Blind Woman) was co-recipient of the first Lontar Literary Award in 2001. As part of that prize, in 2002, the collection was translated into English and published by the Lontar Foundation (under the title The Barber and Other Short Stories). He is regarded as one of Indonesia’s leading contemporary writers.

COK SAWITRI has written three novels: Janda dari Jirah (The Widow from Jirah, 2007), Sutasoma (2009) and Tantri, Perempuan yang Bercerita (Tantri, a Woman, Speaks, 2011). Recent publications include a collection of poems, Setahun Kematian, Semilyar Nyanyianku Mati, Kiamat Tiba dalam Jarak 3 Sentimeter (A Year of Death, A Billion of My Songs Die, the End of the World at a Distance of 3 Centimetres) and a collection of short stories Baruni, Jembatan Surga (Baruni: Bridge to Heaven), both of which were published in 2013.

BEN SOHIB was born in Jember, East Java, in 1967. In addition to writing, he is an editor at Ufuk Press. Ben began to be known by Indonesian readers as a result of his two-part novel The Da Peci Code, published in 2006, and Rosid dan Delia (Rosid and Delia, 2008), both of which became best-sellers. They were subsequently adapted for the movie screen under the title Tiga Hati, Dua Dunia, dan Satu Cinta (Three Hearts, Two Worlds, and One Love) and won many awards at the 2010 Indonesian Film Festival, including Best Film.

MARJIE SUANDA, translator of Zen Hae, studied at California Institute of the Arts and the University of Washington. She first came to Indonesia from the US in 1976 to study traditional dance, and now lives in Bandung, West Java. Works she has translated include novels, short stories and poetry, as well as essays on the arts.

JOAN SUYENAGA, translator of Avianti Arman, was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii. She first went to Yogyakarta, Indonesia, to study traditional Javanese music (gamelan) and culture in the 1970s. She settled there, raised a family, and has been translating and editing for over thirty-five years.

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Era Reformasi – Indonesian Stories This supplementary issue presents new voices from Indonesia, each originally written in one of the archipelago’s myriad local languages. All stories have been penned in the past twenty years since the fall of dictatorship under President Soeharto. The result is a collection that openly challenges traditions and seeks answers to questions that the authors – and the nation – will be compelled to address for years to come.

Asia Literary Review | Essential Reading Featuring (in alphabetical order): Abidah El Khalieqy Avianti Arman Azhari Aiyub Ben Sohib Cok Sawitri Gus tf Sakai Lily Yulianti Farid Nukila Amal Sunlie Thomas Alexander Yetti A. KA Yusi Avianto Pareanom Zen Hae ‘For decades, Asia’s modern literature, even to us in Asia, was a dark continent. If all this is now changed or changing, ALR has had a lot to do with it.’ – Arvind Krishna Mehrotra asialiteraryreview.com

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