Bagai Ikan Pulang Ke Lubuk

by xXKazaneXx

There's a storm brewing and the gaps in her memory are waiting to be filled. Because nothing is as sad as a country who has lived under someone's rule for so long that they forget their own history. Warning: Written in 2nd person. Inspired by the history of Southeast Asia and Maaf's latest chapters.

All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.
Toni Morrison
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It feels a lot like standing at the edge of an abyss, waiting for the fall or the moment of flight. The moment presses itself on your back, heavy with the weight of an upcoming storm and for a second you are frozen, like a bird caught in motion, like a bug in amber.

You don't know the circumstances of your birth nor can you remember the history of your combined pasts. Once, perhaps, you had known but the records are hidden, the knowledge illusive, the memories flitting at the edges of your consciousness. And no matter how hard you search the labyrinthine caverns of your mind, the gaping holes in its walls continue to stare accusingly at you. You close your eyes to it all.

Perhaps this is your burden as a federation of states, a mishmash of peoples, a hodgepodge of kingdoms. Your body wars with itself; arms out of sync with your legs, mouth conflicting with your heart, division scarring your skin like deep trenches. And when you comb through the annals of your states, your eyes will blind you to that which you seek. You turn then to apathy, not concerning yourself with that forgotten past, living your present one day at a time. Denial is something as familiar as your own face. You couldn't live with yourself otherwise.

But a person without a past is like a floundering kite, a tree without roots, vulnerable to time and tide. So you take pen to paper and in your elegant cursive, you reconstruct the bases of reality. Pale exotic hands grasp yours, guides you to cast the first magic of illusion. Your hands weave a reality of dull colours and you drape it around yourself, safety net and veil. The world becomes blindfolded; in time so are you.

So here you are now, staring into the deep. The waves of change are churning and roaring. You lift brown hands to the sky; see the scars that crisscross in jagged lines. For a moment you think you see them start to fade a little. Your headscarf threatens to fly away if not for the brooch anchoring it in place just as your feet are anchored to the ground. Perhaps the incoming storm will finally bring the answers you crave, perhaps it will finally put to rest the discomfort you feel about your history. No longer do you want to read the past written by foreign hands and then twisted by your own mind. So you wait, hoping for a future without barriers.