wodeXistenze!..the sequel

Endlich, I decide to post this very first project of my short stories publication, heu heu… I believe that there’s a A LOT MORE to repair, but these are simply (quite) the best of what I can think to scribble down for the time being. For this one, the inspiration came all of a sudden in quite a rush circumstance, for  I was chased by the deadline of submitting it for an AIDS essay competition.

This story is about the life of an AIDS sufferer from my perspectives, of how they struggle through life facing the stigma from their community and all those stuff… however, I find it quite becoming a puzzle of its own path, and I’m considering of making its sequels. Because this is a short story, I find it quite difficult to describe the complexity of the conflicts happening inside, therefore maybe you’ll be puzzled, too, while reading it… Anyway, hope you enjoy it!

“And those men who are sholeh are for those women who are sholihah, and those men who fornicate are for those women who fornicate¹⁾.”

Is it probable to create an analogy derived from the statement above? Ah, let’s take a look at it in a brief, fun example below:

“… and those men who suffer from AIDS are … for those women who suffer from AIDS (or, at least, positively HIV).”

Eter smiled, staring straight toward the mirror. She observed her face, her body, her hair reflected until half of her abdomen upon the mirror located above the vanity.

Let us be the AIDS sufferers, and we still have to brush our teeth regularly and take care of our vaginal hygiene, thought Eter. In fact, we indeed have to demonstrate a quality of healthier lifestyle those who aren’t AIDS sufferers don’t do in the same level of urgency. We have to maintain our vitality. Once we get sick, that is the time for the victory of the retrovirus in our blood over the leukocytes, since our leukocytes²⁾ no longer have the ability to protect our body from the diseases caused by germs and bacteria.

To be honest, she didn’t intend to be narcisstic, moreover hyperbolic. Eter, according to what common people (would might) sense, was just attempting to be objective: she thought she was far from ugly looking. And she always felt grateful for that. Her hair was black, she let them to grow long that they reached her shoulders. They were gleaming as black as the color of opal, her birthstone;and miraculously, they could naturally appear as though she always combed it in precisely concise sleekness [Eter grinned slightly, posing her best smile--well, although she suffered from AIDS, but deep inside her mind, she still secreted the dream of becoming a model someday... wonder whether such pop magazine as prestigious as Femina³⁾ would, wholeheartedly choose her, as one of their model of the year finalist?]. But, it was also acceptable to assume that perhaps her hair’s ‘miraculous tidiness’ could transpire due to the fact that she had that obvious ‘love’ structure forming her frontal skull face [is that the real scientific name for the skeleton part??], which she considered to be appeared as ‘quite proportional, and filled with a mixture of well placement of cheek, nasal, and chin bones’. She had a pair of big, broad eyes, that whenever they were bulging when she felt blissful or astonished, would turn her face into an immensely earnest look, resemblancing the face of a baby angel in a portrait displayed during the Christmas period in a small souvenir shop two blocks away from her house. Eter was also fortunately, gifted with this particular exceptional inclination (which she imagined the Chinese matchmakers in the old times would have categorized as ‘graceful’) in smiling, or laughing. When she smiled, Eter would spontaneously pull upward the tips of her lips in poise, essentially casual manner, exhibiting once again a row of naturally well-emailed teeth (those lips were neither thick nor thin, somewhat shaping the impression of always be in a fresh, shimmering pink condition all the time [Ahmad, one of her neighbor who became her childhood playmate until she was five, said that she would be a good kisser-lol]). As a Malay girl, she felt as much blessed as she found out, then later on, scrutinized more closely, before finally came to a succinct conclusion that such thing rarely occur to Malayans; usually the shiny, bright white email layers of the teeth are naturally gifted to the black race. While the tone of her skin, despite not perfectly white in color, always required her very effort to  maintain its moisture adequacy and smoothness by greasing some lotion onto it if considered necessary, and she also got herself used to regularly drink at least two liters of mineral water everyday [once more…thanks again for this AIDS disease that induced her to enact an organized, healthy lifestyle where she had to drink mineral water in huge amount instead of those carbonated beverages].

Eter started her regular morning daily routines after brushing her teeth: made her face up with cosmetics. Yeah, Eter chose to live up her life, a step she put into practice in each passing day, which perhaps even she herself might unaware of doing so. Straight after washing her face® putting on her make-ups® and she would be ready to go to work! She began to put on foundation as usual, before she greased the baby powder (which she preferred better to the one which was suggested for ‘adult women’) upon her face. Eter felt that the baby powder satisfied her ‘personal aware preference’ for a sense of gentle fragrance ¾the scent usually consisted of lavender fragrant; she assumed that every infants would be even cuter when they are scented like that¾ she thought that ‘adult women’ style often alerted a sign saying ’a way of too much stinging fragrance’ inside her lobos of olfactory⁴⁾. She felt that there are no scientific methods were necessary enough to be taken in order to decide that baby-scent was just perfectly matched her calm, peaceful attitude and personality. She felt proud by the way her simple, modest preference way of clothing she chose for her daily physical appearance [which she silently declared in mind as her own fashion-way-of-style: natural chic look, oh yeah!]. Additionally, she also felt very comfortable due to the fact that she was more often stroking her lips with pink-colored lip-glosses rather than the red pure lipstick. Well, the outcome appeared to be as much as satisfying for me, she told herself once. Her lips were always looked glossier with merely one stroke of the lip-gloss, and she favored the displayed outcome (it made her face emerging a sense of younger, fresher mood). Well, well… so through the way she was having her lipsticks, lip-glosses, powders, foundation, mascaras… she felt that her privacy [ho ho ho, privacy!!… Isn’t it that rare thing all the jet set and high-class celebrities are dying for??],was automatically being well preserved (at least in this case) in unique ways, since she found out that she was happened to be an AIDS sufferer. She had to separate and establish the territory of her own make up kits, and didn’t share them with anybody else(Anyway, she decided to follow the suggestion she got from a website which said that AIDS sufferers wouldn’t have to separate their own dishes as well [which she considered quite beneficial, that it reduce part of her responsibility to participate in taking care of her surrounding environment sterility from the virus she had inside her body]).

Well, so that was it… AIDS sufferers are also human beings, just like the rest of ordinary people are. Eter was now riding inside the public transportation that delivered her as usual to her office at Ganesha Street 10, Bandung. She was now 22 years old. Hmm… yet she vaguely noticed it… It had almost been three years for her to serve as an administrator in that one ‘education corporations’ (her own way to replace the word ‘universities’) in Bandung.

Three years of constant, sustaining mysterious waiting process which had been taking control over her heart: the ultimate feeling of having a crush on him.

Eter, despite of her interests in having fun, relaxing, lolling around her make up kits since she was nine years old, still had the tendency to hold a firm grip upon her destined affiliation borne, as a muslimah⁵⁾. Although she hadn’t put on her jilbab yet (soon, once she would have been married, she sure will! She must! …She had to put on her jilbab, there she went, again and again, promised herself firmly). Although she didn’t officially join any certain halaqah⁶⁾ (let alone a harokah!⁷⁾), but she¾ with all her desire, might, and effort¾ tried to live through her life following Islamic guides as maximum as possible.

Let’s take a brief look, for example, at one choice she decided to choose as one of her lifestyle: she wouldn’t risk herself to be trapped within any kind of ‘lovers relationship’ without marriage. Eter, without any tone of snob, told herself that she had to really maintain her self control and be prepared for the worst thing, such as no guy would intentionally be her ‘dream eternal spouse’ [the royal title she would regard her husband one day]. Why oh why?? Of course, once more, thanks to her beloved eternal company, His Royal Highness Prince AIDS of HIV. Furthermore, Eter felt uncomfortable if she was about to have to be involved in any kind of physical contact, no mater whether it would merely be in the shape of ‘ordinary holding hands or cuddling to each other activities’ in the subsequent dates [well, to be sterile from outside marriage intimacy, that was quite the idealist way she imagined herself to be once, nevertheless… hee hee hee, she admitted, she did ever involved in NSR (No Status Relationship) three times during her last three years in high school¾ luckily, there were none of those ex-boyfriends managed to find out that she actually had AIDS]. Well, thus let that be my other unique-finally-revealed talent, whispered her mind in silence, this time in a quite bitter tone. Let’s memorize it, well yea… there had been just about one, oh, all right¾ two, of all the people who once got along with me since in kindergarten, who literally found out that I’m actually having this disease. It’s generally me who choose who would be my friends. It’s me who decide which person would have the chance to know who I am. As neat as an intelligent agent, Eter chicly mingled with her surrounding community. In order to sharpen her intellectual knowledge, she joined a book reviewer club in the town, and for her physical activity, she regularly did the bio-energy exercise for half an hour everyday (this is an individual exercise, but that didn’t mean that she was trying to be solitary or being attacked by xenophobia. She used to join the basketball team in her high school, and really enjoyed it. But later on, after she graduated, she began to feel guilty (again) to her environment; she hadn’t sure that she could trust the statement she read in the Internet several years ago which said the sweat of AIDS sufferers are free from the risk of spreading the virus outward).

Still, no matter how neat she had been in deceiving the world and other living things around her, somehow she could not afford… to fake her heart. Her soul, indeed, also needed to be satisfied. She laughed silently in her mind, climbed out from the public transportation and walked toward her booth, starting that day activities. Sorting out the data she got, as she always did at the first place, then typing it down, before storing it inside her pink personal computer. Once she became tired, or when her eyes muscles started to be felt too tense, thus she would casually open her left drawer (deliberately emptied to be a place to store this special 4R-sized photograph. The photograph displayed an image of a black, military-styled haircut guy, who was appeared to be laughing along with several of his friends. Those five guys were depicted sitting around a round-shape table, waiting for their reserved lunch). Eter [in total deliberate awareness], took the picture herself 2 years 6 months ago, with a back-up reason she precisely arranged before: ‘oh, this picture is tend to be one of my research information evidence’ (she was, indeed that time, happening to work on one of her college papers when she had to observe the lifestyle of common Bandung working youths’). She defended half the truth of that back-up reason; she never submitted the picture along with the finished paper to the lecturer. She enjoyed looking at the picture for five minutes everyday, before continued working again.

So it had been so far… now that she finally reached the third year of her acquaintance with him. Their first meeting occurred three years ago, when she was barely new entering this office (that time she was placed in the treasury department). This guy was as well barely new entering the university as a freshman (but later on, she found out that he was also working part time as a high school private teacher besides studying).

His name was Ernest Rutherford. Eter always found herself smiling silently in her mind every time she recalled her first meeting with the 180 cm-tall guy.

As a treasury administrator, her job was ’to remind the clumsy, forgetful students who were needed to be reminded because of:1) their lack of awareness/2)their natural forgetful attitude/[3)[err,, this is very exceptional, but most likely much more often to be happening]their inability to afford] to pay the tuition’.

‘And your name is?’ was Eter’s first greet to him, without even bother to look up to his face when saying it (her neck was already in its contented position, causing her face to bow to face the old, ancient-looking student index book¾even though Ernest was the third, and was later being found out to be, the last student she served that day). Her eyes swiftly swept pass the row of names, looking for the blank spot next to them (the spots were only marked when she had received the tuition cash/check from the concerned students). Her eyes bulged a little in astonishment when she read his name. Well¾ despite the admittance of her unfamiliarity with chemistry, but as a (practical) science lover, she just felt a little bit unique jolt of sensation, imagining the name’s owner in front of her, lived, and was registered as one of students in the town of Bandung, Indonesia. What’s in a name?

One thing is clear: Ernest Rutherford is not a name often owned by common people in Indonesia. The name was, as far as Eter remembered, once ever owned by a legendary guy who existed more than five decades ago, who was (in Eter’s perspective), (attempting) to discover new things from a humble radiating light radioactive substance; later on led to the miraculous following discoveries on further nuclear development research [hee hee hee… just an intermezzo information… not everybody knows it, right??]¾ one of the branch of science Eter was extremely falling in love with.

As twinkling-shiny as the fireworks explosion in the New Years Eve, a glint of comical simple transitive anecdote appeared inside Eter’s mind:

(*) This guy is one of the students in the university where I work

(*) The university where I work is considered to have the highly competitive selection

(*) The highly competitive selection commonly requires quite the highly maintained intelligence, and the people who can pass it are considered intellect.

Conclusion (with syllogism methods): This guy is intellect.

Ha ha. Eter loved smart, intellect guys.

Slowly but surely, she raised her head, and found herself staring at the face of the name’s owner. Subhanallah⁹⁾… he didn’t look nerd!! [Hua ha ha, this is also one of the obstacles that cause Eter become seldom to create initiatives of having acquaintance with guys from this university… among the top most priorities of her consideration to make such move was, undeniably, mainly because she thought that all guy from this university were geek, tan, and nerdy]

So that was the beginning of their acquaintance, which later on, by Eter, was being developed into a ‘special friendship (she assumed it that way)’ between she and Ernest. She truly hoped, deep inside her heart, that the guy would also consider her as his best friend. [That would be, thought Eter, enough for me… at least for the time being].

Eter had never felt such this kind of sympathy toward any other guys in her life before. According to Eter’s perspective, he seemed to be a nice, humble fellow. He never talked a lot whenever they hung out, either while it was only the two of them presented or when they spent time having fun with other friends together. But Eter observed the way he walked; he walked in high-speed, steady paces (which often made her half running in order to keep up walking beside him)¾ it drove Eter to a conclusion that he had the potent of being a highly-skilled, swift worker, and apart from the character of ‘time-consuming thinking process’ type of guy¾ and Eter’s such assumption grew stronger each time she spent times with him, especially after she found out that one of his college GPA record actually scored 4[perfect score in Indonesia]. Kyaaa… Eter really felt that she finally found her Prince Charming (ha ha ha). She didn’t really care about the comments many people cited, which often were sounded bullying, such as:’oh well, my dear, I appreciate it, but do you know the fact that even if you have such achievement in your academic record, there is no guaranteeing that you surely will have the adequate job to support your life?.” Eter felt quite independent now that she already got her job, and didn’t feel any strong desire upon further achievement on her career; at least she had already had a job (hee hee hee). What she felt herself really need, honestly, was the availability of a true comrade, an adequate spouse, a caring brother… to cooperate together in going through this journey of life, in the name of an institution called a marriage. The sacred process of completing the missing fragments, the half of dien^10).

Eter felt that she discovered all of those three qualities (comrade, spouse, brother) she favored for a husband inside the soul of Ernest.

And dreams were looked and felt so beautiful and adorable when she was being swept away in the commotion of imagining and constructing them. Once she climbed back to reality, Eter, once more, was forced to look straight at the real physical condition she endured: there she was, standing face to face to her reflection every time she looked at a mirror: the existence of an AIDS sufferer.

She questioned a lot, playing with the thought inside her mind: Am I worth enough to be beside him? Is he worth enough to have me as his wife? Can I really experience that completed phase of the secret puzzle of my own?

She never talked about her feeling toward him straight in front of Ernest’s face, although they often hung out together.

“Hereby I officially bound Ernest bin Mahfudz and Eter binti Ledak, in the name of marriage…”

Eter felt as though she was having a very sweet, indescribable dream. The voice of the Judge continued on echoing, reciting the passage of the wedding akad¹¹⁾, fulfilling one the whole chamber in a mosque located in Maluku Street, Bandung.

The guy too, in fact, suffered from AIDS.

Eter, looked definitely gorgeous in a simple white long dress and natural make up, smiling¾ although her face looked supremely serious, and her voice firmly recited the bride’s vow. Her eyes were shining with immense satisfaction and utter delight. Alhamdulillah¹²⁾… she whispered silently in her mind.