2018 was difficult. In May 13th, a mother and her two young daughters walked into our church and detonated bombs strapped around their body. We were celebrating Mother’s Day. Later that day we found out that the husband and sons of the family have split to two other churches and did the same evil. Surabaya is known as one of the most tolerant & diverse cities in Indonesia, so the incident was extremely hard & to be frank, confusing, to process. It took months of therapies, a public panic attack in front on of my church friends, & lots of outpouring love & support from the community for the congregation to slowly recover.
On October, I took a two weeks leave to volunteer for Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, the biggest literary festival across South East Asia. The bombing really took a toll on me, especially at that time I was assigned as Youth Leader and the Head of Semester Committee, an assembly of church volunteers from various ages, being in charge of every events happening during the first year quarter. So much guilt and trauma that I had to unpack and heal, I felt like I need to unwind from such intensity. My declining sanity was so visible that when I asked my boss for a whole two weeks off of work, he said yes without second thought.
So I was in Ubud with heavy heart, the organizers put me in Art & Culture division where I was in responsible for various events around the town, one of them was poetry slam. It was my first time ever witnessing spoken word and I was absolutely enchanted. Sitting in the side of purple-lit stage of Betelnut, my chest was bursting with all magical emotions. I cried, I laughed, but the most importantly I discovered such power & comfort in getting on stage and have your story heard.
I went home and wrote my first poem: Shalom — a poem that I brought back the next year & recited on the same stage. Won second runner up that night & made a bunch of new poet friends.
Stage appearance at 56:44
Shalom. Peace.
Shalom Aleichem. Peace be with you.
My mother recite it over and over again like a spell. Telling me that the first thing to do when you come into someone’s house is to take off your shoes (because that’s what Asian moms do) and let your eyes travel around the living room, seek for any evidence.
Sometimes it’s a bible on coffee table, the other times it’s a pastel painting of
Jesus carrying a lamb on his shoulders
Jesus praying in Gethsemane
Jesus surrounded by little children
Jesus walking on the water — but most of the days its just a cross, hanging proudly on the wall above the TV.
And that would be my cue to announce a shalom.
At twelve years old,
I was fluent in shalom.
So when another twelve years old walked into our church with her little sister on her right and mother holding her hands, I watched if she, too, was looking for any evidence.
If her eyes were roaming around, searching for cue.
If that’s what her mother taught her too.
Wondering if our shalom sounds different because we were.
(1)
It was loud.
So loud I mistook it for her first cry the day she departed from her mother’s womb. Her father caught her in his big palms, held the tiny body and rocking it back and forth. Whispered life into her right ear in the sound of Adhaan, in translation: my dear child, this is peace. or in my tongue: shalom.
(2)
It was foreign
But not too foreign. Heard it once on TV, read it once on the headlines, but always too far away. My trembled hands tried to put the pieces together, but it was something fear cannot decipher.
They said when you experience a surge of strong emotions, you either fight, flight, or freeze.
But these bodies were fleeting, vessels breaking apart, built their own tomb underneath the stained glass window of Jesus walking to his own death,
turning salvation to a crime scene.
(3)
So I froze.
Thinking about everything she would’ve become, anything but a mistake.
Anything but just a number. Statistics.
Anything but a study case, or a lesson, or a warning.
Anything but telling about her for the hundredth time in front of the cameras and recorders only for them to fold her flesh and bones and slipped her somewhere between the fifth line on the newspaper, hidden behind an alias.
Anything but this poem.
There are nights when I dream about the day of her arrival.
But this time it would be different.
I would always standing by the doors, mouth full with shaloms.
She would walk in, holding hands with her nine year old sister. Anxiously tucking a strand of hair behind her hijab. Cold hands meet mine. Sweaty palms. We would lock eyes, and constellation in her eyes would’ve told me what she could’ve become.
I would glance for the last time into the room, concrete cross standing strong and tall at the centre, my cue.
My mother’s voice would ring in my ears.
Only this time i will swallow my shalom and declare it how her mother taught her so she knew this is home too:
Assalamualaikum.