Who knows where they are!?
The number 21 feels like a row of useless, empty digits.
Nazma imagines. If only one person sent a kilogram of rice per month, perhaps her father's shoulders would not be this heavy. Where is their heart?
What use is that same crowd of flesh and blood? What is the function of that long list of names in the family registry?
They only exist within worn-out photo frames.
They only exist in old stories about family lineage.
Once again, what is the use of it all?
In the real world, they are strangers busy securing their own plates, letting Ziko struggle alone.
Is her father considered a contagious disease that must be avoided?
Amidst the noise of relatives, where is the consciousness of their care?
Ziko sits on a green plastic chair. The backrest curves slightly. Hard against his back.
His voice sounds hoarse as he begins to tell the story. A murmur that sounds like a complaint. "Earlier, I heard..."
"All of your uncles and aunts gathered at Aunt Nadrah's house."
He stares straight at the glass of tea that has already gone cold.
"They brought many gifts."
"Sycophants," he adds again.
Nazma clenches her fists under the table.
She sees her father left to swallow loneliness in his own home, while his siblings are blind to a reality buried years ago.
They only know Nadrah as the aunt who now appears generous; they do not know that the woman's heart was so cold when their mother (Nazma's grandmother) was still breathing.
"Why don't you remind them again, Dad?" Nazma asks innocently.
Ziko only shakes his head slowly. His eyes narrow, the corners of his eyelids creasing.
His pupils lose their focus.
Nazma's memory drifts. Long ago, when the stomachs of Ziko's siblings twisted with hunger, their mother went to beg for a handful of rice from Nadrah. It wasn't rice she received, but piercing insults. Nadrah shut the door tight, letting her own older sister beg in front of the gate.
"Forget it, that's in the past," Ziko says briefly, his voice annoyed.
Nazma knows, it was Ziko who used to climb from one roof to another. Under the scorching heat, her father defied death atop rows of hot tiles, ensuring there were no leaks in other people's houses while his own life was leaking everywhere.
He squeezed out sweat until his shirt changed color, looking for any leftover roof repair work as long as his siblings could eat and go to school. Ziko buried his own hunger and the pain in his joints—a pain that even now often makes his shoulders stiff and his gait no longer upright.
He did all of that so his siblings could have a future that was more shaded than his own, which was always exposed to the sun.
Now, after they stand tall on their own feet, they instead worship the figure who once wanted to see them die of hunger.
Nadrah does not deserve to be honored like that, Dad.She is just a cruel spectator who is now harvesting from a field she never planted. Nazma looks down. Listening.
Ziko looks at his child, then smiles thinly, "Let it be, Dear. If they were told, they would surely distance themselves from Mother Nadrah immediately."
***
Ziko's gaze is still fixed on his glass of tea, but his mind has jumped back decades. The clinking sound of spoons at the dining table seems to turn into the sound of thunder on a grey afternoon, when he was only twelve years old.
The flashback always begins with the scent of wet earth and a hunger that gnaws at the stomach.
Little Ziko stands behind his mother, whose body is already trembling. They stand in front of the high fence of Nadrah's house.
Ziko remembers clearly the faded color of his mother's kebaya, and how her thin hands gripped the iron bars of that gate tightly.
"Nad... please, just a little. The children haven't eaten since yesterday," his mother's voice is hoarse, almost swallowed by the falling rain.
From behind the sturdy glass windows, Nadrah's face appears. There is no mercy, only a look of disgust as if seeing a pest disturbing her home's view. #
"It's your own fault for having many children but no brains to make money! Go away! Don't make my yard dirty!" Nadrah screams from inside, without even deigning to open the door.
Ziko sees his mother collapse on the wet asphalt as lightning strikes. At that second, little Ziko's pride crumbles along with the rainwater. He does not cry. Instead, he looks up, staring at the rows of magnificent roof tiles on Nadrah's house, then looks at his own small palms.
The next day, Ziko did not go to school. He went to an old construction worker at the edge of the village, asking to be taught how to install ridge tiles, just so he could trade his courage in climbing heights for a pack of rice for his siblings crying at home.
***
There is a proverb that says, "What one sows, one shall reap."
But tonight, Nazma is thinking twice about that.