Spain, January 2017
I took a long walk along the Nervion river, down to Lehendakari Agirre avenue, and across the Arangoia park. I strangely feel at home here, more so than in Gothenburg. The weather is warmer, the people are more lively and less isolated.
Walking alone in the dark, across this park, I somehow remember the nights I took those long trips with an inter-province bus. Once every three months when I was doing my undergrad, I’d go home. On these trips, I would look out the window whenever the bus passed my grandfather’s city, a geographical alarm to tell me that I was only two hours away from my hometown.
I used to stare out into field after field of sugar canes. I’d close my eyes and imagine what it would feel like if I could fly, toes touching the tips of sugar cane rows as I go. Cold night breeze on my pale face, white as the full moon above. And the rustling sound the leaves made as my feet sift through them. Was this just a fantasy, or a memory from a dream so vivid? Or was I a ghost in a previous life? Hovering above sugar cane plantations, staring out to the world of the living with a deep longing and grief of life?
Then, awoke from my imaginings, I would try to guess which plots are my grandpa’s.
Strange how I still can’t believe he is gone. He wasn’t just a grandpa. He was THE grand-father in a literal sense. Marrying into a wealthy family, possessing shamanic skills from when he was younger, and making it as one of the first trained doctors in the district. My grandpa, grandma, two aunts (and their husbands) and five of my cousins live in Trowulan, what used to be the capital of Majapahit kingdom. There are numerous historical sites scattered around town. Once when I was eight, visiting him during my semester break, my cousins and I wanted to enter the forbidden area of the tomb of Princess Daravati, the Buddhist wife of Brawijaya V (seventh ruler of Majapahit, popularly known in local area as Princess Champa - because she was from the Cham region), we only needed to say that we, were the grandchildren of Soemantri, the village doctor, and the caretakers opened every doors for us.
He was also a spiritual doctor, a shaman. He lived near a large intersection of two inter-province routes. Occasionally accidents happened, and sometimes they happened a few times in a row. Usually - or more like notoriously, after someone had built a house near the intersection and they had to chop down an old tree or two. Javanese believe that trees are where the spirits live. He would be summoned to perform an exorcism, bless the new house, give offerings to the intersection (seven different colors of flowers, water from three different wells, rice, coins, and incense!).
About fifteen years ago, a famous little incident happened at a mosque near grandpa’s house, while people were doing their dawn prayer. As they were prostrating to the ground, the men felt a small nudged on the back of their heads that made them dip their foreheads further onto the floor, one man after another. Shocked, the men gathered and concluded that a belligerent jinn (genie) was on the loose. Grandpa was called and famously had a conversation with this spirit. He wouldn’t tell me what the conversation was about, but my cousins told me that he’d found them a new house, separated from humans. There were also endless stories of ancient daggers, or swords, appearing in his back yard or front yard. Almost always, under a tree. And then there were people every now and then, asking his permission to do a semadhi or meditation at the yard of my deceased great-grandmother. They said they wanted to receive a wahyu, some sort of divine revelation. My great-grandmother, whom I had the fortune of knowing in her late age, was also quite a woman. She was told to be the earlier Matriarch in the family, the one that passed down the shakti or supranatural gifts to my grandpa. She died around 100 years old, twice. That’s right. She died one morning, and her funeral rite was going on, as she started choking breath again during her own wake, absolutely shocking everyone else. And then two days later she died, again, and this time for good. I was told, “that’s what happens when you possess shamanic powers, your ‘little helpers’ won’t let you go to the netherworld if you haven’t found them a new master yet.”
So this ‘stubborn invisible helpers problem’ was quite a talk when I was around 10. Because that time my grandpa became quite religious after he performed his second hajj in Mecca. There were talks behind his back, what will happen to all the shamanic rituals, the powers, the helpers - will he relinquish them or will they be passed down to us, intentionally or not, permanently or not? Then around a few years after, strange things happened to many of us. Uncle HO, had suddenly fallen ill from an infection to the liver. He got so ill so quickly, throwing up blood and going into a coma in one night. He flatlined for a few seconds but miraculously came back alive. Another time, Uncle HN was showing a gift of being able to see and feel people’s ‘aura’, some feel cold and blue, some feel warm and orange, and some that apparently had malicious intent, he’d feel them hot hot hot.
I remember, everybody from my father’s side of the family was just so well-mannered, so smart, so successful. Perhaps, a typical Javanese feudal landlord’s family. They had four house maids and numerous plantation workers. My uncles had made themselves to be engineers, school principals, company directors. And then there was my father. Ostracized from home since he was a boy, out of extremely bad behavior. Back in the 70s when he was still 14, he stole my grandpa’s car and raced it, hit a boy and fatally injured the poor kid. He’d intentionally stay out the whole night, coming home at dawn to sleep until noon. My grandpa got so upset, he had once put a gigantic home-made firecracker the size of two grown adults’ thigh, and lit it up so hard, it blew up my dad’s bedroom ceiling. That was grandpa’s wake-up alarm for my father.
My father eventually moved to another city at 17. He said he was going to get a teaching degree, but he just wanted to be drunk every day without my grandpa’s interference. He met my mom, who was so smitten by him the first time she saw him, and she was the one doing half of the university’s work for him. And eventually, my father once again let down his parents by choosing to marry my mother, the daughter of a poor vegetable seller and artist couple, instead of the pre-arranged daughter of the gold shop’s owner.
My mom, always tried hard to win the approval of her in-laws, every year she bought them a piece of silk, or a heavily embroidered long gown, always with a harrowing taste of self-hatred, knowing she was not their choice.
I was told that as a baby, I used to cry incessantly a night before a neighbor passed away, and my grandpa had to come all the way, to pour salt around our house, and to gently, gently rub my head and blow onto it a string of chanted mantras. Maybe that is my share of his shamanic traits. More than five times now, before a relative passed away, I would dream of them bidding me their good byes a night before I hear the news. I once spoke of this to a close confidante, and I was warned not to speak of this openly anymore, for fear of being accused of witchcraft or even murder. Strange how people think and feel.
But yes, my grandpa. He did not talk so much to me whenever we met. In fact, he did not talk much in general. And I always found that soothing. His silence did not feel hostile, nor did it feel like he was distancing himself from me. He was always so near, sitting next to me, smiling. Two times he asked me, why did I feel so ashamed for not wearing a better dress for meeting him, that he was happy seeing me anyway; another time I was reading a book at his house, but my mind wandered to a boyfriend about to break up with me, and he came from behind my seat, saying “You’re holding a book but thinking of a boy, trust me, the book is better than the boy” (these happened without me uttering a single word, and he was also known to be able to read minds, hah!). Awkward conversations, but I felt fully accepted, despite being from that one son who did not behave throughout his lifetime. I also remember the time when I struggled so much in speaking to him with high Javanese (since all my other cousins were fluent in high Javanese, and my mother also used it when talking to him), he told me that it’s okay to speak in Bahasa, he wouldn’t mind. To me that was a deeper sense of being welcomed and accepted, that it’s okay the way I am, I’ve tried and he’s seen that, and that I do not need to feel subservient. Maybe that was why I loved my grandpa deeply.
All these thoughts while I walked on a chilly night, at a park in Bilbao. I rubbed my cold nose. Feeling it, I realized I inherit the same nose, and eyes, as my grandpa. Unfortunately I share the same with those of my father. A reflection that I wish I do not see in the mirror on gloomier days.
If these eyes and this nose are not the things I want to claim to inherit, what is it then? What is my gift of becoming? I feel like a destitute in the world of translucent powers and divine wisdom. I am not religious like what he had become, I had a marriage that spectacularly failed, I will turn 30 in two months and had not come up with a baby like he hinted he wished for me.
Our last meeting, me and my grandpa, on the day of Eid, two weeks before he fell in the bathroom, hit his head, went into a coma and passed… He was so happy and proud when I told him I was leaving for Sweden, on a scholarship. I had brought a map of Europe and showed him where Sweden was. With such a beautiful warm face, he smiled at me and patted my stomach, “You’re so busy studying my child, when are you going to give me more happiness?” I couldn’t muster enough strength to break his heart and tell him that I had actually gotten a divorce. I just smiled and hugged him. I always regretted not telling him that I love him on that day. That I am sorry for the faults of my father. That I tried my best to hold my mother together. That I thank him for saving me from my father so many times. That I thank him for finding me, when I hid all the way at the other side of the hospital while doctors tried hard to pump out all the pills from Mom’s stomach, for the second time in a year. I knew you wanted to be my healer.
As I arrived home and sit down to write this, I ask again. Grandpa, what do I have?
Perhaps, at the end of the day, it is a brain so relentlessly faithful to the details of the past. I can always easily revisit him, in all the fragments of images, colors, sound, smell, that my brain chooses.
My gift, and my curse.
