Less and Less Words

    Yesterday I just finished re-reading this anthology entitled 'Wajah Terakhir' by Mona Sylviana. I'm the type of people who read their books more than once. Maybe because I always have a newly found fascinating fact that I wasn't aware of on my first time reading them. Or maybe I'm just that nerd..?

Anyway, back to Wajah Terakhir. This is maybe the only book that I like but never had the courage to re-reading it. Because there was always something that held me back every time I'm about to pick this book. You guys must be wondering why one had to have a courage to just simply read a book. But it's true. It's not just an ordinary fiction I tell you. It filled with realities with made up names and characters. But it clearly is a collection of stories about our decaying typical urban issues and irony.

It's about women.

    Many faces of women with dark facts on their fingertips. Honestly, I can't stand how the stories were written. They are written in descriptive nasty details which I'm hard not to visualize them in my head. But they were such an awakening ride for me to realize how sad someone life could be. And it's not a love life sad or bad grades sad but it's living poorly without dignity sad. It's a level of suicide sad. What makes me finally read it again yesterday was because of this TV news and a chat over a dinner with my brother.

    My brother and I just lightly talked about a few of known political figures in our country. About our current president, how he was different from his predecessors who all are political elite. (either military veteran or political elite families). His innovation and humble figure as a leader and so on. Until my brother told me that, but even him can't re-examine nation old scars of 1998 May tragedy. Because it's like a huge scandalous case entangles many known names and it could intrigue a bigger scene for this country. My brother also told me that until this day, the parents of the victim still come to president resident to ask about the justice of their deceased children. That night after finished dishes, I surfed the internet to read some of the histories about 1998 May or Dark May some people might be called it. I take a looked at Wikipedia pages and old articles all over the internet. It was really a sad and horrible catastrophe I could ever imagine. I was six at that time and vaguely remember when my Dad told my mother there was a very big scene of looting in central Jakarta. But I remember exactly what my Dad says:

"People went freakishly crazy, one man even has a strength to pick one big refrigerator all by himself. They're all like in a trance or something"

    Not only looting, but there were also murder and viciously ugly sexual assault cases. I had my eyes glistened with tears imagined hundred of rape cases happened to Chinese-Indonesian women at that time... Sorry about the detour, so in the middle of reading all these articles, I remembered this one story in Mona Sylviana's anthology which I mentioned earlier. So I picked up the book.

It's the last stories and also chosen as the title of the book. 'Wajah Terakhir'. This story was about a woman with a dark past. The main character was a survival victim of the gang-rape back in May 1998 when she lived in Jakarta. Now she is living abroad and fated to encounter once again one of her rapist which have completely no idea who she was. Because he is now a very old chronic illness patient. She worked at the hospital and asked for a favor by the rapist's son to be an interpreter for his father. Because the son knows he can't always accompany his father and got works to do back in Indonesia. So he asks for help from the woman. He really glad to encounter Indonesian people and could really use the help. All of the old tragedy come rushed back to this woman mind like a television picture. Some flashback incident that startled me for a second. The story ended with the woman agreeing to be the interpreter and vaguely decided will find a way to kill this son's, old man...

    I'm not a misandrist or anything but to read many cases or dark stories like this, makes me really wanted to be a guy in my next life and maybe experienced the stupidity of them being brainless and thinking only with their groins.