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Poem / Identities

At the Intersection of Sarinah Plaza, Thamrin Street

A poet-anthropologist in Indonesia criticizes extremist militants who use religion to commit violence.
A crowd of people, with several taking pictures on cellphones, surround a damaged structure in a public square. The small building, with its tiling cracked and wooden seating splintered, has a large arrangement of white flowers in front of it.

Flowers lean against a police box damaged by a suicide bomber at Sarinah Plaza, Central Jakarta, Indonesia, in January 2016.

Gunawan Kartapranata/Wikimedia Commons

“At the Intersection of Sarinah Plaza, Thamrin Street” is part of the collection Poems of Witness and Possibility: Inside Zones of Conflict. Read the introduction to the collection here.

At the street intersection we often pass through,
 on that sunny day, suddenly grief falls heavier
 than laughter. 

Steps become more anxious and hurried. 

In the usual chairs
 where we sipped coffee,
 you heard a deafening sound echoing into the distance, 

and objects fell,
 your body bounced
 on the pavement,
 scattered along the path of sorrow. 

In the distance, a pair of bullets approached someone’s chest
  who cried out God’s name
  as a grenade tore into their body. 

In the row of cars,
 someone crawled underneath, firing shots,
 delivering grief
 to someone else
 who shouted God’s name. 

Their body went limp, their face bruised, 
  they died—lying still. 

And death
 is the path back home to heaven—or hell, isn’t it? 

While we have hidden,
 imprisoned within religion’s embrace. 

Moh. Faiz Maulana is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Indonesia. He is also a lecturer in sociology at the University Nahdlatul Ulama of Indonesia, Jakarta. His book on gender anthropology is Konco Wingking dari Waktu ke Waktu (The Friend Who Follows Behind From Time to Time). He has also published several books of poetry: Black Umbrella, Learn to Bike, Today, You May Not Love Me Today, and At the Intersection of Sarinah Plaza, Thamrin Street. Follow him on Instagram @bahasatentangkita. 

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