A malady of memory
It was August, the month when the scorching heat was never absent. We shared a table in a small coffee shop where one of its four walls was jampacked with books from the first and second decades of the twenty-first century. Amidst the noise from the motorized vehicles that passed by the nearby street, the clatter of our keyboards raced at seventy words per minute and was followed by the pings from the communication channels that our respective managers assigned us. How was your adventure going on, I asked. My departure is only one month away.
Two years will not be that long, I mumbled. I had been enduring for a dream to come true for a decade, so doing one per fifth of it would be a piece of cake. As a firstborn daughter, waiting was a habit rather than a forced act. When I was a toddler, my parents sent me for a week-long sleepover at my grandparents’ house. We will come back with your brother, they said. How long would it take? Four days, approximately. With one hand I counted one, two, three, and four. Oh, so one finger is left. But how long would that be? Three more nights of sleep and we will reunite, said my mother. And just like that, maybe, the day of our reunion would come in a blink of an eye.
I recalled the day we exchanged a conversation on a final projection for a mandatory course. What should we write for the last chapter? The module was a bit confusing. You assured me not to worry. It’s just a normative one — was your reply after I asked about the pointers of the final section. Your prediction turned out to be wrong because they decided to revise the marking system. Impermanence, apparently, no longer had a space in our school. Yet, it was also impermanence that fit with the description of us. You are no longer nineteen, and I am no longer eighteen. From afar, I witnessed how you check your dreams one by one. A new city. A football match. A long-overdue trip across the continent. A happy life.
Four Decembers later, we had chicken skewer for a late lunch at an infamous kiosk that has been standing still since the early years after the declaration of independence. Its menu placard gradually becomes darker, accumulating the dust and smoke from hundred thousand portions that have been served since the 1950s. A contactless payment system is adopted, signaling that change is inevitable. It took less than five minutes for us to scan the list of menus that had not been changed for decades. Chicken or beef, just choose. You offered me the infamous bottled tea with the red plastic sleeve, which I can’t sip because I am allergic to it. Sorry, I can’t drink the tea. Oh does your body react to it? Yes, it would become itchy. How about beef, you don’t eat it, right? No, I don’t. I haven’t had it for such a long time. Are you allergic to it? No, I’m allergic to seafood, actually, but it’s my favorite. Lucky you, I can’t even have a bite of shrimp.
Sometimes I recalled that we bonded through our silly conversations about food — an item that resembled how close and far we are. I once told you that I could not stand the aroma of grilled lamb while you grew up in a district that is known for its lamb-based cuisine. Try it, you said. I could not imagine the rich aroma of herbs that was never introduced to my palate. I hate to admit that the blandness of Western cuisine has been dominating my dictionary of food since an early age. Little did I know that it was also the beginning of our shared memories over mundane things — a lunch that I made when you visited me, a Japanese-style dinner nearby the river, a bag of convenience store snacks during a night stroll, and your fondness over Indonesian cuisine that you managed to cook in a land that is thousands of miles away from your home.
It was raining cats and dogs. As we continued sitting there for a while, thirty minutes passed by. But we have to go, you said. You had a pile of work that needs to be sent before midnight. There was only one umbrella. I did not remember packing one because never had I expected that rain would trap us here. No worry, the parking lot isn’t far from here — while I was thinking about my shoes that could be possibly soaked, sooner or later. Should we go? Sure. Strolling two hundred meters under the downpour was close to walking seven hundred meters under the midday sun. Hey, it’s a lucky day. Why? I grinned my forehead but then I noticed your smile behind your foggy glasses. A day like this is rare, so let’s enjoy it.
My mind told me that we had fifty meters left before we parted ways. Inside my head, I would still have a long list that I never dared to ask. How does it feel to be here again? You told me that your arrival was a moment that you had been prepared for. And I nodded. In a world full of doubt, your idea of returning home is a reminder of embracing the imperfection in life. When we were young, we had a dozen dream scenarios playing inside our heads. But now the infatuation of bending any single norm just doesn’t align.
So, is it another goodbye? I peeked through the beige cap that covered a part of my face. Never did I think that a farewell could feel like breathing through thin air.
