A Poem for Dilla – Part Two

They set out early in the morning on Saturday in two black minivans. Each had three rows of seats: Dilla was in the middle row with Alexander, in the back, seats her make-up artist, the hairdresser and another assistant.

In the other minivan was the Vogue crew, with the photographers and the dress workers.

Dilla was wearing a light gray tracksuit and black zippers, the usual dark glasses, and had taken off the sneakers, the inevitable earphones in her ears. Alexander in black clothes was glued to his smartphone, chatting and giggling to himself sometimes.

Garut was 200 km from Jakarta, it took about three hours. The sky was clear and it was already hot.

They reached Garut around 12 pm, in a villa rented for the day as a base.

While the group of collaborators unloaded the suitcases with the clothes and photographic equipment, Dilla entered the well-appointed residence with cream columns and walked towards the outside terrace after putting on the shoes.

She took off her dark glasses and stood looking out over the emerald green esplanade of rice paddies.

That shade of green, once seen, unforgettable for a lifetime.

Santi, one of her assistants, joined her. “Dilla, we need to fix your hair and makeup, so let's get started.”

She stopped playing with the zipper of her sweatshirt, removed the hair off her face, and nodded, following her inside.

In the large room, there was a swarm of people preparing their cameras, while a man pushed a coat rack with clothes of different colors hanging on it.

Meanwhile, Dilla was sitting in front of the mirror with the white light bulbs on either side of it, letting her makeup, Alexander standing beside, looking at her reflected in the mirror.

“So, darling, we will start from the rice fields, then change of clothes, in a location not too far from kampung, and finally at the market. They want to recreate a scene of everyday life, with the locals. I can't imagine their faces when they see you coming!”

He exclaimed smiling and slapping his hand on the chest that could be seen from the black shirt unbuttoned at the top.

Dilla listened without batting an eye, motionless, while her white skin began to color with crystalline powder of delicate shades.

Another girl carefully combed her long hair.

When she was ready, they brought the first white dress and a red one.

 

They finished the first two sessions as quickly as it was lunchtime.

While the others ate with appetite the rice and fried chicken they had ordered, sitting on the floor among cameras, reflectors, dresses, boxes, and catalogs, she ate only fruit, careful not to damage the makeup base too much.

It was time to go to the market.

Dilla wore a white and peach dress; she looked out the window as the two minivans approached the market. Even though the windows were darkened, people on the side of the road tried to see who was inside.

By the time she got out of the vehicle a fair crowd of people had already gathered, especially the voices of the enthusiastic children were heard.

It was like being on a movie set.

It was almost surreal to see Dilla, in all her beauty, like a goddess, moving among the fruit and vegetable stalls, posing with the women of the market in clothes worn by work and the sun. All around the square on the ground, used as a location, a gut of crowd had formed, pressed together, who admired the model with the enthusiasm of a day of celebration.

After an hour the photographers signaled that it was enough.

Suddenly everyone clapped their hands and screamed for joy.

Dilla heaved a sigh to release her fatigue as she came back to herself after the trance of professional rigor.

She began to look at all those people crowded for her who greeted and smiled enthusiastically.

She was the usual detached mask.

The two assistants hurried to bring her dark glasses and white sneakers.

She walked escorted by them and by Alexander who joyfully greeted people, indeed, occasionally stopped and let himself take a selfie with them as if he were the celebrity.

 

Walking close to the crowd, Dilla noticed a man looking at her with a calm smile. She stopped short, looked at him. It was Arif, her brother.

“Hi, Dilla.”

The model felt a shiver run down her spine. She turned away from the two girls and walked towards him.

“Arif ...? You are here, too?”

“Well, the whole kampung was talking about it. How could I not come to see you? You are beautiful.”

She glanced aside.

“Listen, I know you're very busy. However, we haven't seen each other for many years, you know my house is nearby. If you want, we can go for a moment. Just a greeting,” he said without much conviction.

Alexander walked over to her, put his hand on her shoulder. “Any problem, Dilla?” he asked in a serious voice as he looked at the man's face.

She winced and turned to her agent, “No, no. This is Arif, my brother. He lives here with his family. He invited me to his house for a moment...”

Alexander looked into her eyes in a fatherly way, “Do you want to go?”

Arif was already about to apologize for the proposal when Dilla looked at him. “Okay, just a moment. But I have to change first.”

Arif was surprised.

“All right, you go, I'll take the car and follow you. I'll wait for you there.”

Dilla got into the minivan and they set off again towards the villa.

“Are you sure? We can't stay long; we have to be in Jakarta before the evening. Do you know the traffic gila* that we will find on our return !?” Alexander told her without the usual high-pitched tone, his hand stroking her arm.

“Yes, I know. Just a moment. I haven't seen him for years,” Dilla answered looking at the row of houses at the side of the road.

Nobody knew her past, her family, her childhood. She never told anything, even in interviews. 

She lived in an eternal present and the future was her work commitments that piled up like pages on a diary. 

Morning closed forever the day that had ended behind her. This had happened every time in her life for years.

 

She changed quickly, she asked Santi to remove her make-up in a rush and went out in her gray tracksuit.

Arif was waiting in the car in front of the entrance to the villa.

They didn't talk much as they walked towards the house.

“How are you?” He tried to ask.

“Everything is fine, thank you,” she replied in a detached way, beginning to regret ever accepting his invitation.

They parked in front of a small house, squeezed between the same ones but each with a different color of the walls.

She pulled up the hood of her sweatshirt, getting out, so as not to be recognized.

“Sorry, the house is small,” said the brother with embarrassment.

“It's okay...,” she said, treading on her hood even more and walking quickly alongside him towards the door.

They entered the house in the dim light, with the TV on the floor with two children sitting on the carpet watching cartoons. On one shelf were sewing machines and a rice cooker.

“Assalamualaykum, Teteh,” said the brother's wife, smiling but obviously embarrassed, as she held out her fingertips with the hands clasped in the greeting.

“Wa’alaykumsalam,” replied Dilla as she looked around: it was enough to rotate the head 180° to contemplate the whole room.

Esti, his wife, shook her hands nervously and looked down. 

“Sorry about the house, I didn't know you were coming, I would have at least given a fix,” she said as she tried to conceal with the feet, in a convulsive way, some of the children's clothes and underwear on the carpet.

“Say hello to Aunt!” she scolded her children, trying to divert her attention from what she was doing.

Dilla reassured her sister-in-law, “Don't worry, I'll stay a few minutes.”

“Huh? Eat something, sit down, please, can I bring you some rice? Some fruit?” she became more and more agitated and she moved from one side of the small room to the other, like a moth in a glass jar, trying to see what was out of place and embarrassing.

Arif calmed her down, “Sayang, take it easy, get some fruit. Go...”

Esti nodded firmly and ran into the kitchen.

Arif motioned for his sister to sit down. He did the same, on a plastic chair.

“It's been a while...,” he said in his quiet tone.

Dilla nodded as Esti returned from the kitchen with a large plate with sliced mango and papaya on top; then she went to sit on the carpet next to the children, with the agitation that had now given way to the pleasure of seeing the brother with her, after such a long time.

Dilla saw them in the half-light illuminated by the television screen and by the blade of dusty light that entered through the window above, as in a Vermeer painting.

Esti looked at her from below. “Teteh, do you have children?”

Dilla shook her head, “No...”

Esti felt guilty and looked down as she stroked the hair of her son sitting next.

“They are beautiful...,” the model added, in a deep voice.

Esti smiled embarrassedly. “Thanks, Teh.”

Dilla winced as she felt the brother's hand stroking her knee.

“Do you want to go to the cemetery? It's nearby, then I'll take you to the villa.”

She stared at him with her lips parted, pale, unable to say a single word.

“It takes a moment, believe me. While you're here...,” Arif said standing up, smiling and calm as a lake.

Esti stared at the television screen as if she didn't want to disturb this moment between them.

Dilla sighed, “Okay, just a minute...,” as she stood up.

“Wait up. I'll come right away,” he said as he entered a small wooden door on the side.

Esti was also standing, but still looking down.

“Come back when you want, we like it...,” she said rubbing her hands.

“Okay,” Dilla replied without conviction.

Then she saw her brother come back with a small, shoulder strap batik bag.

“Ayo, say hello to your aunt!” Esti exclaimed to her children, smiling.

The two children ran up and one after the other took her right hand and touched it with their forehead, to sit down again in front of the cartoons.

Dilla cracked a smile then hugged Esti and followed her brother into the car.

 

As he drove, she looked at the batik bag.

They went out a little from the city, where the ground was red. They stopped beside the little cemetery that rested on a small hill slope, then walked among the stone tombs, in the barren land.

Arif stopped at a tomb with the white stone and grass growing on it. He squatted beside it as his hand tried to dodge the shrubs to find the name.

“Mom...,” he said, then pointed to the grave beside, “Dad.”

Dilla crouched like him, on the opposite side, between the two graves, looking at the stone. With her hand’s slender, white fingers, she stroked the rough stone, stripping away some dry shrub.

“I don't come often,” he said with a smile.

Her sister couldn't smile; indeed, her blood began to throb in her temples. “I've never been here...,” she replied.

“But now you're here,” he said trying to look into her eyes, right in front, but Dilla was only staring at the stone, almost touching the engraved letters of the name with her eyes. Naning.

Then she turned to his father's, stroked the stone trying to remove the dirt from the surface – her fingers were now dirty.

Then she pushed herself on the knees and stood up. “Okay, let's go, it's late,” she stated in a controlled voice.

Arif leaped to his feet, nodded, and started walking towards the exit. As they were going, Dilla stopped to see a young mother with two children pour water on a grave. Her eyes were starting to burn.

She turned and walked more quickly to the car.

 

As soon as she closed the door Dilla deflated in a long sigh.

The brother held the batik bag in the hands on his legs.

“You know, it took us a few days to find the bodies of mom and dad...,” he started talking but Dilla stopped him immediately.

“Please!” As if to beg him not to continue.

“... the mud had destroyed everything, just the walls of the house remained standing. After finding the bodies downstream, I started looking around the house, to recover as much as possible. But nothing, the mud had devoured everything. Only this I managed to take,” he said as he stroked the batik fabric.

Dilla looked more at the bag than at her brother.

Then he pulled out a musty and worn-out book with mud and water.

He handed it to her. Her fingers were already browned from the earth, she looked it intently, while with a fingernail she peeled off the dried mud from the title. It was a book of poetry by Wiji Thukul, “The Grassroot Songs”.

“Remember, it was Mom's favorite. She was unable to finish school, she started working in the fields early, but she loved reading these poems. How many times has she read them to us?” he affirmed smiling.

Dilla had her eyes fixed on the book; she tried to open the pages, many had been torn off, others could not read a line, some had been pardoned by the humidity but only in some verses.

She looked back at her brother. “Why are you giving it to me? You keep it,” she said as she handed the book back to him. He pinned her with his hand, pushing the book towards her.

“No, this book is for you. Mom would have liked you to keep it.”

“Really! It's not true!” Dilla exclaimed in a hard voice, her eyes red. “If I haven't even come to the funeral! Never a phone call! Nothing at all! You were with them until the end!” She screamed in anger.

Arif looked at her as he stroked her hair.

“You have always been our mother's pride. You don't know. When you left Garut to start your modeling career in Jakarta, Mom kept telling everyone that you were going to be Indonesia's number one. It's true, you never called and you didn't even go back to the Eid celebration, but mom always defended you. 'She is busy! She's not walking around like so many girls here!' She used to tell dad that he frowned when he stared at your empty chair during Eid. Then dad got sick, you were still studying at the fashion academy, he knew Jakarta was expensive, you had to pay the academy rent and tuition. Our father was desperate. ‘How are we going to do it now? I can no longer work in the fields. Dilla has to go home and help us.’ But our mother scolded him, she said he was a grumpy old man and she would never stop you from realizing your dreams; so, she, therefore, went to work at the market in the morning and sewed in the afternoon for the neighbors. She gave one of the sewing machines you saw at our house to my wife.”

Dilla held the book tighter and tighter as she listened to him.

“Then came your first successes. Whenever your face was in a magazine mom would come to the market and go from counter to counter to show it. And if she couldn't find the magazines here, she would ask those who went to Jakarta to buy them for her. At home, she had a stack of fashion magazines and newspapers where they talked about you. 

For this, it is right that you have the book. It was the thing mom loved most, a father's memory of her. She was ignorant but she always said that the true spirit of the Indonesian people was in these verses. And that reading these lines made the roughness of life sweeter.

Then you know which was her favorite,” he said as he pointed to the book.

She flipped through the dry, rough pages again and saw one with a mark in the corner of the page. It was the only one whose text could still be read among the damp and muddy spots.

Dilla suddenly felt like an incandescent magma rise from her abyss, until her eyes that burned had not even pushed into her some burning embers. She burst into tears that shook her chest. Torn apart.

Arif took her head from behind her and pressed her face to his chest.

“Cry ...,” he said while his other hand stroked her back.

Dilla couldn't stop crying for nearly twenty minutes, sobbing and shaking. Her entire body was shattered by a flood that carried away all the debris accumulated over the years. Now she saw – finally – those fragments of her heart floating among the rapids of the water, which overflowed from the depths of the eyes.

She brushed aside her face as she tried to wipe the cheeks with one hand. Then she saw her brother's shirt completely soaked with tears and they both burst into laughter.

He pulled a packet of red Sampoerna out of his pants and opened it towards her.

It was 4.30pm, but she took one.

They lit their cigarettes and sat in silence, leaning against the seats, enjoying the sweet aroma of the smoke.

When they finished smoking, he started the car, “Here we go.”

She clutched the book to her chest with both hands.

They arrived in front of the villa where others were already loading everything into the minivans.

Alexander went out on the stairs and squeezed himself, making a sign with his watch.

Dilla and Arif looked at each other and laughed.

He kissed her on the cheek and caress her face.

“You are even more beautiful when you laugh. Come back when you want, but let me know first or my wife has a heart attack. She has to fix the castle.”

She smiled again. She looked him straight in the eyes and showed him the batik bag. “Thanks for everything. I'll come one day.”

Dilla said as she got out of the car.

She saw her brother's car disappear behind the houses and ran inside with her face lowered so as not to show the red eyes.

When they were going back, she never took off her dark glasses, with the headphones over her ears and the batik bag tight to her chest and the foot on the edge of the seat.

Alexander peered at her from time to time. “Everything good?”

“Everything is wonderful,” she replied.

 

They left her at the apartment when it was already eight in the evening.

Hamzina had made the usual light dinner of vegetables and fruit.

While the maid cleared the table, Dilla sitting on the sofa asked her, “Bu, how long has your daughter not been to visit you?”

“One month, ibu,” Hamzina replied as she placed the plates and glass on a silver tray to take it to the kitchen.

“Tell her to come next weekend, make her stay even a week if you want, you never see each other, for sure she misses you so much.”

Hamzina looked at her without knowing what to say.

“Boleh, Bu?” she asked her if it really could, amazed.

“Boleh...,” Dilla replied smiling.

“Terima kasih banyak, Ibu! Terima kasih!” She thanked heartily as she kissed her fingertips.

 

Dilla was left alone. For this evening no gymnastics, it was enough a long bath.

She went back into the room and began to search between the CDs. She took an old Nining Meida CD and put it on the stereo. She didn't remember when it was the last time she'd listened to the songs from her region. The voice was different, not deep and warm like her Nina Simone, but the melancholy was the same.

She took the batik bag and pulled out the dirty book. She sat down on the white sofa and opened the marked page. It was amazing how the mud had spared those two pages – some words had vanished from the wetness but she remembered them by heart.

She began to read aloud, but in the head the words seemed to come out of her mother's mouth.

 

“mum's poem”

mum kicked me out of home once
but cried when it got hard for me
she couldn't rest
when my little brother lay awake hungry
she'd be furious
if we grabbed a portion of food
that wasn't ours
mum taught us justice
with love and affection
sheer determination
made cheap vegetables
taste delicious
mum cried when things were hard for me
she cried when i was happy
she cried when my little brother stole a bike
she cried when he got out of jail

mum's is a heart willing to suffer
the continual torments brought by her children
always ready to pardon and forgive
in her love and affection
is the shining light of god's mystery
that stirs the human heart
through her goodness
mum has shown me, god.”

solo, 86

 

Dilla closed the book while Nining Meida sang “Kalangkang” (Shadow). She got up and went to put the muddy book on the white enamel shelf.

She took a cigarette from Sampoerna's packet on the glass table and opened the window and went out onto the terrace and lit with intense aspiration.

She thought of her brother's words and smiled.

Below her, the life trudged between lights, horns, and traffic that was always the same, night after night.

It was Dilla's life that would never be the same again.

*Gila, crazy.

The photographs were taken in Garut on 20 September 2016, the same night the incessant rain produced the flood that killed 16 people and destroyed the same places I had photographed the day before. Of the two models, one returned with us to Jakarta but another stayed the night there and experienced all the drama. I was shocked for a long time. In this fictional story, there is my sincere memory for the pain of those days.

 

"sajak ibu"


ibu pernah mengusirku minggat dari rumah
tetapi menangis ketika aku susah
ibu tak bisa memejamkan mata
bila adikku tak bisa tidur karena lapar
Ibu akan marah besar
bila kami merebut jatah makan
yang bukan hak kami
ibuku memberi pelajaran keadilan
dengan kasih sayang
ketabahan ibuku
mengubah rasa sayur murah
jadi sedap
ibu menangis ketika aku mendapat susah
ibu menangis ketika aku bahagia
ibu menangis ketika adikku mencuri sepeda
ibu menangis ketika adikku keluar penjara
ibu adalah hati yang rela menerima
selalu disakiti oleh anak-anaknya
penuh maaf dan ampun

kasih sayang ibu
adalah kilau sinar kegaiban tuhan
membangkitkan haru insan
dengan kebajikan
ibu mengenalkan aku kepada Tuhan

solo, 86

Italian version