Difficulties were fires. If you kept them in check, you could learn from them. You simply had to know how to fan them the right way.

Your mother wasn’t upset. “Scars stay with you so you don’t forget,” she said. She seemed almost satisfied.

My body shakes with a million different fires. Feet that look like yours warp and the corns split so you see craters of infinite variety, some pus-filled Lake Toba. The weakness in my limbs, the thick weight on my head and chest and the slow burning inside me that never reaches the skin, bring me closer to you. My afflictions bring me closer to you.

You know all those bad girls who take off their selendang and put round their neck like fashion-show? One day, when the wind is very strong, the selendang will catch the wind. Then it will swing up and down and then round and round so fast, very fast, until it traps the spirit of the wind. Then it will grow long and thick and wrap itself round and round and round this girl’s neck. And then, when the girl cannot breathe, it will swallow her whole. Be careful, girl, be careful how you wear this.

Anger ignites fires or do fires ignite anger? Did the dispossessed, their rage burning within them for years, finally strike a match to enlighten an oblivious region of their dissatisfaction? Or were the fires the primary cause of the dissatisfaction, inciting through its searing heat, the fury which is colouring the country a bright crimson, as its people imitating the violence of the flames spill the blood of thousands?

So I watch her work and put all her energy, all her force, all herself, all is inside her work. Does she think that this is what life means? She goes to work in the dark and comes home when it’s dark. Does she know what the world looks like when the sun is shining?