Leila Chudori - Home

Alam looked at Andini with raised eyebrows then turned his gaze back to the students, who were growing ever more wild in their enthusiasm: clapping loudly and shouting “Reform!” time and again. I felt like tinder had set fire to my heart. My blood rushed to my brain. This was terrible. I wasn’t a teenager whose emotional state is expected to fluctuate with the temperature of love in the relationship she’s in. But the fact was I felt so sad and disappointed whenever Alam kept a distance from me.

“I’m thirsty,” I said to Mita. “I’m going to go get something to drink.”

“Here, I have a bottle…” she started to say, but I shook my head and turned and walked away as quickly as I could, because I didn’t want them to hear the pounding of my heart or see the tears that were welling in my eyes.

Merde! In Jakarta, I had turned into a sniveling adolescent. I swore heartily to myself in three languages — French, English, Indonesian; French, English, Indonesian — expelling all the worst words I could think of and mixing them together while I looked for a spot to be by myself among the students who filled the upper piazza surrounding the building. I had to still my heart and regain my energy.

My work was completed. There was no telling how long the occupation of the parliament building would last. It might be days or even weeks. And I didn’t know what was really happening with Ayah. Nara had sounded so strange when he raised the topic of Ayah’s illness. And Maman only ever gave the briefest of reports on what the doctors had to say.

How was I going to say goodbye to Alam? How could I even look him in the face if he was going to act cold towards me when I said goodbye? What if he acted snidely and give me the same toss-away smile that he had given me minutes before? Shit!

A hand touched my shoulder. I knew that hand. That smell.

“I thought you said you wanted to get something to drink,” Alam said from behind me in a friendly tone of voice.

Now I was angry and turned towards him: “What business is it of yours? And why are you following me anyway?”

Alam looked at me innocently. Merde! Men always play so dumb when they hurt a woman. I left him and found a place to sit down on the stairs. As I guessed he would, Alam followed me.

“How are you doing?” he asked politely.

“Fine. Just fine.”

Then we were silent. A silence ripe with questions and longing.

Finally, I spoke: “Where have you been? Two days and not a peep from you,” I said in a voice that sounded flat and uncaring.

“I’ve been busy. Ever since the fourteenth, a lot of public figures and groups have been meeting with the president, and I want to get this down for the record. I’ve been interviewing the people who have met with the president and documenting what they had to say. … There’s so much I want to tell you.”

I did in fact want to hear what Alam had to say; I’m sure the stories would be interesting. But I was still asking myself whether he realized what I had just said and what that implied.

“Mita said you finished your interviews.”

I nodded, now feeling slightly warmer towards him. At least he had tried to find out what I was doing. But then suddenly, and for no apparent reason, I started to cry.

Alam was startled and put his arm around my shoulder.

“I have to go home,” I sputtered.

“Home, to Paris?”

“Of course. Where else?”

For some time, he said nothing.

“Here, feel this,” he said, taking my hand and pressing my palm to his chest. “What is it you feel every time they shout ‘ Reformasi! ’?”

My heart beat faster and I felt my blood speed through my veins.

“Ever since meeting you, Lintang, I’ve felt that you are part of this place, that you are home here.”

A warm feeling spread through my chest.

“Do you think so?”

“I do. Your roots are here.”

I paused before speaking again.

“Why didn’t you try to call me or contact me?” I snapped at him. My eyes were hot and tears began to fall again. “Why did you just disappear these past two days? I know you were busy, but you could have told me.”

Alam looked at me. The light in his eyes was more subdued. “Listen to me, Lintang… Nara had just called you. He wants to see you. He wants to come here. But he could tell there was something different in you from the sound of your voice.”

I sensed a tone of sadness in what he said. My tears stopped instantly. I looked into Alam’s face. Had he freshly shaved this morning?

“I wanted to give you space, Lintang. I want you to make your life decisions without pressure from anyone.”

I couldn’t say anything in the face of Alam’s explanation. Why did something so simple have to become something difficult?

“I’ve already told you, I don’t want to part from you,” Alam said, “despite my bad reputation which Bimo keeps talking about!” He smiled.

The calls for “ Reformasi! ” had turned into a solid scream that was deafening, even though we were seated quite distant from the free-speech platform. The cry of “reform” pounded my eardrums. Meanwhile, from a different direction came the much fainter sound of students singing a ballad whose lyrics I knew well: “ …I can hear voices / wails of the wounded / people shooting arrows at the moon… ”

I was suddenly moved. My heart beat faster.

Alam knew I recognized the words. “Yes, those are the lyrics of one of Rendra’s poems set to a song by Iwan Fals.”

Alam knew instantly why I was familiar with that poem. The off-key sound of the student voices was beautiful to my ears, even more stirring than a Ravel composition. Now I felt that I knew where my home was. I hugged Alam tightly. I didn’t want to ever let go.

“Alam, don’t ever again act like you want to give me space. I don’t want a space that is empty except for me alone! I don’t want distance from you. Not one centimeter. Not one millimeter.”

Alam held my face in his hands and kissed me even though my face was smeared with snot and tears.

My dearest Lintang,

Listen to these lines: When I die, the cry / that bursts from my heart / will forever be in my poem / that will never die…

Subagio Sastrowardoyo’s intimate relationship with death is suggested in his poem, “The Poem That Will Never Die.” For me this poem evokes something quite normal. And for that reason, I feel that my own death, which is now very close, is something usual as well — something ordinary for which there is no reason to lament. That said, I do ask your forgiveness for my not allowing your mother to reveal the results of my medical tests to you. The name of the disease alone — cirrhosis of the liver — was enough to make me feel uninterested. The disease has no aesthetic attraction and there is nothing interesting about it to discuss.

Doctors and nurses were created to map the state of our bodily organs. Unfortunately, they often get this authoritarian streak when they do it. As a result, they are often able to influence our actions and emotions by what they say. And I for one would thoroughly object if you (or I) were to peg our lives (or deaths) on a doctor’s words.

After a long battle with your mother, who forced me to go

to the doctor to pick up the results from my final examination, I made a demand: that whatever the results of the tests, you were not to be told until your visit to Indonesia had ended. Especially after learning the news of the shootings of those students at Trisakti and then the horrendous anarchy that followed, I knew that it would be impossible to extract you from the midst of the madness the country was going through. This aside from the fact that the airport had been shut down and that many expatriates were fleeing Jakarta, at least temporarily.