Bau

Ayu Utami

Pada tahun 2000, ketegangan antar etnis yang terjadi di Kalimantan memuncak dengan penduduk asli Dayak menyembelih pendatang Madura secara massal. Konon, dalam perburuan demikian suku asli ini memperoleh kekuatan gaib nenek-moyang, yang hanya digunakan di masa perang, yaitu yang memungkinkan mereka mengendus bau musuh. Dengan cara begini mereka membedakan suku lawan dari pendatang yang lain. Pastor Janoko, yang ditugaskan Gereja untuk meneliti perkara itu,

Smell

Ayu Utami

In the year 2000, ethnic tension in Borneo reached its peak when the native Dayak people slaughtered Madurese outsiders. It is said that during this hunt, the natives regained their ancestral supernatural power, used only at wartime, which enabled them to sniff out the enemy. In this manner, they were able to distinguish the rival tribe from other outsider tribes. Father Janoko, who was assigned by the Church to examine the case, returned home with accounts

TERRA: A Bilingual Anthology from WordStorm, the NT Writers’ Festival
(article reproduced in Write Turn May 2007, the newsletter of the NT Writers’ Centre)

Following is NT Writers’ Centre Executive Officer Sandra Thibodeaux’s insightful Introduction for the anthology Terra, a terrain she knows all too well.
“I have read TERRA many times. In the early stages of compiling this collection, I read TERRA in the slaughter of the Madurese retold by Ayu Utami, in the

Harapan

Ze’sopol Caminha

Ketika aku mengharapkan bantuanmu
kau diam seribu bahasa, tapi … mendukung musuhku

Tempatku hangus terbakar
Kawan-kawanku mati terkapar

Pemusnahan dan penghancuran
tiada harapan

Bagai nyamuk, kau mulai menghisap darahku
di sekujur tubuhku

Tubuhku mulai pucat
kau datang sebagai dewa penyelamat

Menyiramku bagai bunga
tuk’ penuhi dahaga

Hidup kembali dari kematiannya
berbunga dengan mekarnya

kau mengklaim menjadi tuannya
Memetiknya

walau

Hope

Ze’sopol Caminha

When I expected your help you were silent
in one thousand tongues, but … supported my enemies

My home is burnt to ashes
My friends lie dead

Destruction and chaos
there is no hope

Like a mosquito you suck blood
from every part of my body

When my body is pale
then you come like a saviour

scattering me like flowers
to complete your subordination

When I rise from the dead
covered with blossoms

you claim to own them
You pick