Time flies. Time moves forward. Time rotates on its axis inside a wrist watch, my dad’s wrist watch.
Two nights ago, that wrist watch witnessed how I spend time with my dad. As the flow of time is irreversible, what can you do to enjoy each moments of its flow?
One of my answer is to listen to folktale. Two nights ago, I spent time with my dad and his folktales. He had some folktales he got from the ancestors.
There are few that I remember most; a tale of Cockatoo princess, a tale of two brothers, a tale of a dead brother and the tale of Matebian mountains. I haven’t been able to record or rewrite them. But I remember how the tales go on.
I love to hear those tales over and over again but dad said folktales are meant to be told at particular occasions only such as during harvesting time or during traditional cultural gathering. So, I have to wait for another occasion to hear another tale. It can be an old tale or a new one.
My dad left and time flies away but those tales remain in my mind.
#noteoflife
Tag: family
Gentlemen’s Hangout in Maubisse.
‘My Brother’
‘Yes’
‘What a beautiful morning, is it not?’
‘Yeah. It is indeed.’
‘The sun rays are nicely warm.
‘Yeah. It is.’
‘Let’s do sunbathing with these lovely babies of ours.’
‘Sure, my brother. They will love it.’
—
‘My dear brother…’
‘Yes.’
‘Something is bothering me.’
What is it? Do tell me.
‘I received a news that a relative from my wife’s family has just passed away.’
‘Oh poor you… Sorry to hear that. So why it bothers you?’
‘I do not have enough money to submit for my family clan’s contribution. May I ask you to lend me some? Please do help me’
‘Oh man… No worry. I’ll see what I can do for you later. But now, let us enjoy this beautiful sunbathing first.’
Maubisse (Timor-Leste), September, 2017.
Nina’s Death
Monday night, at around 8 pm
Nina just passed away
After hospitalized for seven hours
For drinking certain milliliters of poison
From a bottle of battery water.
The medicals tried their best
But ended up unsucces.
‘Nina passed away?’ The father asked.
‘My Nina passed away?’ The mother asked.
‘No, this is impossible!’
‘This cannot be!’
‘Ninaa, our beloved Ninaa…No…’
‘You cannot do this to us, your parents.
You cannot leave us like this, oh my dear, my only beloved daughter.
How can you do this to us, my dear?’
‘Lord, have mercy on us.’
***
Nina, an adolescent girl. She was the only girl among her two brothers sibling. She was on her last semester of bachelor at a local university in Dili.
On the night of her death, the whole family and relatives were shocked. They said on her last day she did not appear to act odd at all.
In the morning she still went to the nearby shop to buy electricity credit cards for pre-paid electricity at their house. Everything seemed normal.
She did not say anything strange or harsh to anyone either. She went on quiet and serene. They said she had been a quiet girl since she was a little girl and the most quiet girl in the family.
Now, the family are all shocked and confuse on why she ended up her life that way. They said, they have no idea why Nina did so. She did not say anything at all during the day before she was hospitalized.
Now, they said they do not know why at all.
But I do not believe them.
Nina has a secret she kept or the family has a secret to keep.
Nina…
May her soul rest in peace.
Dili, 2 July 2018.
A Mother and Her Foreign Worker Son
It has been five years since they parted.
His mother lives with her four small kids in a firm gray brick house with two floors built by his son’s hard work result.
Her son lives in a room of a flat together with his friends as foreign workers in that city with the Big Ben. Every night, he works up all of his sweat as a factory worker for a bunch of pounds sterling for him and for his family who lives in the far eastern edge of the world. When he comes home, he stares at the sky of the night from the window while painting the face of his beloved old woman with prayers.
Meanwhile, at that the old grey brick house, every night his mother continues to set aside the dinner on his son’s favorite plate. If her other children ask her ‘why do you have to always set aside a plate of food on the table mom? Our brother is not here.’
Her mother would reply ‘kids, this is for your brother. Hopefully, in that overseas land, he is also enjoying dinner like us’.
After finish, the dinner, each of her kids begin to fall asleep in the bed. Before she washes all the dishes, she looks again at that one plate of food with a smile and tears in her eyes. She misses her faraway son badly. She does not know when can she hugs him again, just as when her son was two years old, started learning to walk and run to her embrace with a cheerful laughter.
Next day her son called ‘mom, perhaps we have to go back home.’
‘Why? Did you cause some trouble there, son?’ her mother asked in worriment.
‘No mom. This is just a possibility. The native people here may require us to go home’.
Her mother is actually so happy to hear the words ‘go home’ which she has been waiting for so long.
‘Son, if you have to come home. Then let it be. Your homeland and our family have always welcomed you. We can start all over again like before’. Her mom suggested.
‘No mom. I cannot return just like that. There are still a lot of things that I have to do here, mom’. Her son replied.
Later after that, the conversation on the phone was over between them. However, that one concern of the mother and her son is indeed not yet due.
Dili, Timor-Leste
June 28th, 2016
There are lots of Timorese work as foreign worker in UK factories. When Brexit issue was happening, there was a concern that foreign worker might be required to go home.
Message from the Earth
Geraldo a young 25 years old angel was looking at the Earth-Time-Counter screen when Chiquito another 24 years old angel came to him.
‘Counting time again heh?… Why do you love to spend your time with that stuff? Come with me. Let’s go explore some other place in this Universe of Heaven.’ Chiquito said looked at Geraldo impatiently.
‘Today is 31st October in Earth Siquito…’ Geraldo replied.
‘Yes… and tomorrow will be 1 of November. I know how that Earth-Time-Counter works. So… what?’ Siquito asked.
‘You know what. We both always receive the message from the Earth on 1 November Siquito.’
‘Yeah…we always do. And what should we do with that?’
‘Do you remember what our Great Teacher said in our Life-on-Earth class?’
‘Which one?’
‘That the message we receive from earth is prayers from everyone who lives there as the human being.’
‘Ah… that one. yes..I remember now. What is the matter with that?’
‘I am wondering with the family who sent the message to both of us. I often heard the woman called my name, your name and then she will cry alone. Usually, it is in the early morning or midnight of their earth time. Sometimes I can hear her husband speak a lot of things with me in his loneliness as if I am there with him. Don’t you want to know why they become so?’
‘Hmmmm… perhaps in the past we also took part in their life?’
‘That can be possible. The Great Teacher said the prayers from the earth are the message that reconnects people on earth and angels in heaven. All angels are once sent to earth to live as the human being before return to this Heaven as an angel again.’
‘Maybe we can go the Library to find out our life as human being in the ‘Book of Earth People’?’
‘Yeah… that’s good thing to do. Come on.’
Geraldo and Siquito then went to the Library to find out the Book of Earth People. It took them quite long to find out their names as the human on earth as there are millions of similar names. Siquito almost gives up with the searching but then Geraldo came up with the idea to find out about the family who sent the prayer message. It is easy for them to find out about every human being on Earth as they have access to see it like accessing a worldwide platform of atlas of the world.
Meanwhile, in Earth, a woman was crying silently inside her zinc house. Tomorrow will be 1 November. The day she believes to be The Day of All Angels as what she had learned from the Sunday mass preach. She believes that tomorrow, her late two sons will be visiting her in the form of angel. She wonders how would they look like now if they are still alive. They may have became a well built and handsome young boy. They would be tall, had black hair and sharp eyes and thick eyebrow like the Bollywood stars she usually watches from TV series. She can imagine if they are with her now, she would cook their favorite food, asking them to help her in her kiosk and their father’s kiosk at the market. She would ask them to fix every broken thing in the house. She would ask them to advise their little brother on how to be a well-mannered man. She would see them studying in the university in Dili or one of them may have got a scholarship and study abroad or just studying in Indonesia and the school fee would be paid by their elder sister who is now residing in Dili. Oh… how she miss hearing their manly chatters in the house.
The imagination of them made her think about the past years where they were born as little babies. Things were difficult as food is scarce and money is a luxurious thing during the difficult years of the 80s. She and her family were just returned from their village located near Matebian mountain and surrendered to the Indonesian government. Her husband had to leave her to find a job in another city leaving her with the little daughter and her family to sustain themselves with little money he left. Days kept going and the money left is about to go. She had to find a job to sustain her household. She works in rice-field and got a little share of rice for her family and to sustain her second pregnancy. She had a baby boy, her first baby boy and he is adorably cute. She felt happy though life was still difficult for her. She continues to work in the rice-field and had her relatives looked after the baby. But on the eight-month, the baby passed away after had a high fever. She felt a deep sadness for the lost. Her husband returned from the other city and he too felt sorry for the lost. He wished he could be always there with her wife.
Starting new page of her life after the loss, one day she found out that she was pregnant again. She was so happy and she tried not work too hard. She had another baby boy, the second baby boy. She believed the baby was the reincarnation of her first baby. This time she dedicated all her time to be with the baby though she had to try to live frugally with little money which sometimes not enough to buy a bag of rice. Her husband then came and brought her to move to the other city where he lives. The baby grew healthily. But one day, at his tenth month, the baby has a high fever and has to stay during a week in the hospital for treatment. She felt a huge fear haunting her again. Deep in her heart, she asked the God to not take away her baby. But life had another response to her request. The hospital tried to refer her baby to a bigger hospital in another city that took two hours trip. On the way, the baby passed away. She lost her baby again.
It’s been a while when she sat at the back of the shelf and crying but then she quickly has to stop when somebody calling said ‘Kiosk’, a code word means to buy something. It’s a customer. She then rubbed her teary eyes with the handkerchief before she met the customer. There, two young boys with age around 25 and 24 years old stand there looked at her silently for a moment.
‘Yes.. .what do you want to buy?’ She asked them.
‘Two coca cola and a pack of biscuit.’ One of them said. The woman picked the mentioned stuff and handed to them. They both sit on the verandah in front of her kiosk* and eat. It was a hot midday. She stands from the window of the kiosk and looked at them. She felt as if her two late sons are still alive, they may age like these two boys. She saw how they eat the biscuit. She could feel that they were hungry. Without knowing why she felt pity for them.
She then went into the house. She came back with two plates of rice with stir-fried vegetables and fried chicken. The two boys still sat there. She called to the two boys, offered the meal and hand over the plates to each of them, asking them to sit there and eat. The two boys felt shy and rejected the offer at first but the woman kept insisting and then they accepted it. She smiled when she saw how they eat the food wholeheartedly. She felt as if her two late sons are there with her at the moment. She then went back to continue baking the bread to sell. After a while, the two boys finished eating and they handed back the plates. They say thank you to the woman. They stand there in the window of her kiosk just to look at her made the dough for the bread. They observed how she made a phone call to somebody from distance that she called with a lovely name. The woman is talking about how she missed her two late baby boys and how they would look like if they still alive.
After the lady finished her phone call, the two boys called to her to excuse themselves and say farewell to the woman. The woman says goodbye to them. But before they left, the boy who is a bit elder tell her:
’Please do not be sad mom…. We both are always watching you from the heaven…’
The woman stood freeze for a while as if the world has Just stopped. She felt blank. She tried to call them back but they had disappeared nowhere to know. She did not know what to do next. She wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. In her euphoria, she took a box of candles and light the candles in the Oratorio and started to pray for her two angel-son’s soul.
Dedicated to Two Brothers in Heaven VZ
*Kiosk = small grocery shop
**Oratorio = a miniature praying house
VZ, Dili, 31 Oct 2017
My Young Brother’s Birthday
My young brother had his birthday today
There was no birthday cake, no candles to blow
Only some words of hope and prayers
‘Happy birthday my young brother.
May the day bring you more joy and happiness
May you grow as great man for your world
May your future be bright as the sunshine
To My little bro Dino VZ, 16 April 2017
Rosary of A Rural Lady
You live in a peaceful village
You grow along with the nature, the green mountains
Learn to follow the rules and wisdom of the ancestors.
In the morning, the cockcrow of the roosters wake you up
While the sunshine has not risen yet.
You enter the kitchen, lighting up the hearth and it smokes out
Later, a hot pitcher of an aromatic smell of coffee is ready to serve
With some freshly boiled cassava roots
‘It’s morning already’ So you said to everyone…
You live in a hut made of palm leaves and trunk
For your children, it is the most beautiful palace ever
As long as you are always there for them, every day and every night
To shelter your children with love.
To the spring fountain, there you go to take the water
Even if it is quite far to walk.
Filling the whole water pot, you carry it on your head
To the farm and rice field you go
To secure the food for your household
With palm leaves, you weave the winnower, mat, and basket
Those items are to contain the goods that belong to your household
You live with all your strength to serve
Sometimes you become weak and powerless
Yet still, you rise soon afterward.
‘The night is coming…’
So you summon everyone to gather
In a table with an ample of food
You fulfill their hunger, thirst, and fatigue
Then, there you sit still
Listening and seeing them talk
Measuring their mind and soul,
Feeling their burden and relieve.
Today has passed away
Yet still you believe that tomorrow is coming
Despite you do know not what it will bring.
You do ask not a lot of things
You do aspire not a high dream
As to you, it is enough
When the future of your children can be bright
Though someday, you might not be there at all to see it….
Dedicated to Timor-Leste rural mothers…
Vitalia Ze, Dili, October 15, 2014
Ahi Lutan 