feminism Archives - The Cracked Door

Covering for a Flight (Short Story)

Covering for a Flight (Short Story)

Putri quickly uncovered her face. The security officer needed to see her to compare with her Indonesian ID card. She rushed to cover herself back up with her niqab before anyone else could see her, but she struggled to tuck the fabric back in place. She had never really worn a niqab before and couldn’t figure out how to get it just right. Ok, done. She did a doubletake around to see whether anyone had seen her.

“That’s all,” the officer said. “Have a safe flight.”

She walked over to her gate, worried that she’d be spotted. Her family didn’t know she was taking this trip, and she wanted to keep it that way. The airport was small. Only a couple gates were necessary for the small town she lived in.

While walking to her gate, her stomach started to growl. She still had an hour before her flight, plenty of time to grab lunch. She walked up to a nearby counter to order some food and stood in line. After she told the lady what she wanted, she turned around to find a table. That’s when he spotted her.

“Hello Putri, is that you?” a voice called to her from behind her in the line.

She turned around, and there was Ismail in a casual yet professional suit jacket and button down shirt. What was he doing here?

“What are you doing here?” he asked first. “Or, I guess, I didn’t know you were going on a trip.”

“Yes sir,” she replied.

She got a better look at him when she turned around to find a seat. He looked like he was wearing nice clothes that he hadn’t tidied up yet, almost as if he was flying to a business meeting and would button his collar and apply his tie once he arrived. He smiled at her as she walked by.

He approached her table a few minutes later after he had gotten his food, “Funny thing seeing you here,” not asking if he could join her.

She said nothing. “You look nervous,” he said to keep the conversation going. “Have you never flown before?”

She nodded.

“I see. I was nervous the first time as well,” he tried to reassure, but she got the sense that he had been too young the first time he had flown for him to really remember. Being from a wealthier family in the town, he was now a business man. He was always going somewhere on some trip.

“Yes, my flight heads out soon,” she replied, hoping to use this as an excuse to leave the conversation.

“Where are you going?” he responded.

She had been so anxious she had completely forgotten where she was flying to. She got her ticket from her pocket, which read that she was flying to Bali. Too frazzled to say its name, she showed him the ticket.

“Oh, that’s a fun place,” he replied. “Today, I’m going to Manila, but I wish I was going there instead. It’s much more fun,” chuckling.

“Are you traveling alone?” he filled the resulting silence with.

What an unfair question. She had never been able to lie, so she simply nodded her head yes. He looked at her like someone eyeing a nice cake at the bakery.

“And are you meeting anyone there?”

She nodded no.

“Wow, have you traveled alone before?”

Again, she simply nodded no.

“That’s very brave of you.”

“Thank you,” she murmured politely.

Never mind that he traveled alone all the time. She leaned back in her chair as if to get away from him as much as possible. He now saw her as available.

“You know, it’s very nice to get out of this town every once in a while. It puts things into perspective. To see new possibilities.”

She eyed the clock and checked the time of her flight. She was about to say that she had to go catch her flight, but he came in too fast.

“When is your flight?”

She read him the time.

“That’s not for another hour. You don’t have to worry about it now. Being your first time, you must be a little nervous, but trust me, it’s fine. You have plenty of time.”

Ugh, why won’t he let me leave?

She looked down the terminal hallway to think about her options. How could she get away from him? She saw a sign for the toilet. That would work.

“I have to go to…” she began, but before she could mention the toilet, he came in again.

“I was talking with your mother the other day.”

She paused and sunk a little into her seat. This wouldn’t be good. She couldn’t leave whatever he was about to say unsettled. She would have to stay.

“She said you have an exciting interview coming up. That’s amazing!”

He paused, clearly anticipating something from her other than the blank stare she gave him.

“I didn’t know it was in Bali, though. I thought it was somewhere closer.”

That was the lie she told her mom about this trip: that she was heading to a nearby town for a few days for an exciting job interview. Her mom even drove her to the bus station to see her off. Instead of catching a bus, though, she took a taxi to the airport to head to Bali. When she got back, she was going to say the interview didn’t go well and that she didn’t think she’d hear back from the company. This was the only way she could think of to get away from it all. Her family would never have approved of her taking a trip alone so far away.

“Yes,” she finally spoke. “It’s in Bali.”

“I kind of wish it was somewhere closer to here. Maybe then we’d be able to see each other more…”

“I know,” she said. She couldn’t have him go blather to anyone that he saw her at the airport, but how could he convince him of that without explaining that this was all a lie?

“Are you considering moving to Bali?” he asked.

“We’ll see,” she answered. She was just going on a trip to get away from this town, but she didn’t need to tell him that. Part of her would love to move to Bali. She’s seen all the pictures, but deep down, she knows that would never happen. She’s just taking a trip. He didn’t need to know that.

“Don’t you have a nice life for yourself here?”

Absolutely not. She hated this small town, trapped in the same set of relationships with the same people, far away from any semblance of a good economy, but instead she just sat there and said nothing as he continued. He knew he had his life set here with his family business, so of course, he’d prefer if she stayed as well.

“What are your plans?”

“I don’t know yet. I am just going for a single interview. I don’t know if it will even work out.”

“I wish I had known you were going to Bali. I had friends there who you could have stayed with. What are your plans after your interview? You still could hang out with them if you’d like. They could show you around.”

“Thanks, but I won’t have time. I have a tight schedule.” She wished she could stay with someone she knew. It would have saved her a lot of money, but they would tell others. And she would definitely never stay with any of his people.

“It’s not a problem. I can text them right now…”

“No!” she shot back. He looked almost taken aback by the assertiveness in her voice that he had never seen before. “Don’t tell them!”

“Why? It’s not like your visit is a secret? Do you…”

He stopped when he saw her look of horror at this statement.

“You haven’t told anyone in town that you are going to Bali. Have you?”

She didn’t say anything but just looked at him dejected. Her secret has been found out.

“I just don’t want anyone back home to think of me differently, like someone with such an opportunity. Unless I actually do get the job.”

“That’s fair. You may have to tell them eventually, though, but I’ll keep your secret.”

He agreed to keep it under wraps. She no longer had a reason to stay in conversation with this man.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “Now if you would excuse me, I really have to use the toilet.”

She left too quickly to look at him give an excuse for her to stay. All she heard was him faintly calling back that she hoped she had a good time. She didn’t care. She was free.

Would he actually spill the beans? That was a problem for another day. She could sit in the stall until it was time to board her flight. There he could not follow.

Left for a Younger Wife – Story of a Middle-Aged Indonesian Woman Getting Divorced

(This is part of Life Snippets Series, where as I travel the world, I compile glimpses into people’s lives around the world, what kinds of issues they face given their cultural context, and how they navigate the challenges of life. You can find more of these snippets here.

Traveling through Indonesia, I have spoken with a surprisingly high number of middle-aged women somewhere in the process of getting divorced. Compared with the United States, many Indonesians marry younger, with significant cultural pressure placed on women to find a husband by their mid-twenties. At the same time, once married many women choose to stay home as housewives. This can lead to a dynamic where as they get older, they mature apart from their husbands and by their early forties end up in a position where the marriage falls apart.

Such a divorce often forces them to rebuild their lives from the ground up. In addition to starting from scratch materially, financially, and/or professionally, they also go through a kind of renaissance where they rediscover their passions in life that they had put on hold when they became stay-at-home wives. It feels partially similar to retired, empty-nesters in the US rediscovering their old hobbies and passions after their children become adults and start to move out.

This story is a specific example of a woman in her early forties I spoke with who was in the thick of this such a divorce. Her husband fell in-love with someone else and decided to divorce her. Different individuals have different journeys, but her story illustrates some of the tensions and opportunities Indonesian women in such a scenario might face and how they might navigate it. I will refer to her by the pseudonym Putri.

—

Putri had been married to a man for about twenty years, but her husband had been having an affair with another, younger woman for about five years. When Putri and I spoke, he recently decided he wanted to get a divorce so that he could marry this woman. This has left her in a precarious position. She is now in her early 40s and has spent most of her time living as a housewife.

While they were in the process of finalizing their divorce, the husband tried to get married to his new wife. Having two wives at the same time is not allowed in Indonesian law, but he tried to specifically get a Muslim marriage, and the practice of the local religious community seemed to allow it. In Indonesian law, a man cannot marry multiple women, but in Muslim law in Indonesia, that is allowed. The process to submit a divorce for the Indonesian government typically takes about two months. Then a few days after the divorce was legal in Indonesian law, he and his new wife signed the paperwork to marry under Indonesian law. This was in itself very difficult for Putri, seeing her husband so quickly remarry and be with someone else.

They have three kids. In Indonesian law, the kids basically get to decide which parent they move in with after a divorce, and she strongly thinks that they will choose her because she’s the parent they have always been closest to. She said that her husband was an absent father. She is worried about them, though, about how they will process the divorce. Neither she nor her husband told them that they are getting divorced until right the weeks before it happened, and they probably haven’t told them about the affair with their new stepmother.

Putri has a remote gig job online and invested in a local shop her friend started. Both of which she said will give her enough money to get by. She has been a housewife for many years but started her work about 2-3 years ago (around the time she learned about the affair). She said if the divorce had happened back then, she wouldn’t be able to get by since she didn’t have any income independent apart from her husband, but now, she will be financially okay on her own.

Over the last several weeks, she has been a conflicting stew of emotions. She spent several weeks crying. Then, she will have times when she feels really angry and times when she feels compelled to move on and do something fun. Other times, she feels paralyzed and can’t motivate herself to do anything. Sometimes, she even feels like she wished she could sit down with him and see if there’s a way to make it work between them.

She plans to use this time of being divorced to rediscover her passions. She used to write Indonesian pop songs, which is something she wants to go back to. When she was around 19, she was in a band as the lead singer, but all that ended when she married this man. She is good at writing the chorus lines but bad at writing the verses. Her ex-husband (who works in the music industry) would help her make the verses and rest of the song based on her choruses.

She also wants to use this time to travel. She joined a hiking group that hikes once a week while her kids are at school. She also recently went on her first solo trip over the weekend as a way to test the waters for more travel and get her kids used to having her be away for a few days. At the same time, she feels incredibly anxious/scared about doing all this. Some moments, her eagerness to venture out wins, and other moments, her worry takes control. She said many Indonesian women want to go forward yet feel paralyzed by anxiety about doing so at the same time.

She also said that she had a pattern, rooted in her abusive father, of anxious attachment. When she was a kid, she would attach herself to her father, and then when she was around 19, she then attached herself to her boyfriend in the same way who eventually became her ex-husband. She isn’t used to being by herself or focusing on her needs.

At one point, I asked her what she wanted in her life, and she said she wanted her kids to grow into great, well-adjusted adults. I responded saying that wanting your kids to grow up well-adjusted made total sense as a parent. That’s important. But I asked what she wanted for her life, not what she wanted for their lives. She said she has struggled figuring out what she wants in life. Usually, she ends up focusing on how to provide the needs and desires for those around her instead of what she wants for her own life. She tends to lessen her needs in her family and other social environments as a way to ease the tension, not articulating any desires she has but going with what they want to keep the peace and maintain stability. This seems to be something she wants to work on during her time by herself after this divorce. She wants to figure out what she wants for herself. But like one might expect, she also feels incredibly anxious about it.

On top of this, she said Indonesian society stigmatizes divorced women. People tend to view divorce as emblematic of a failed marriage. Even worse, when a couple gets divorced, they usually by default blame the wife instead of the husband for that failure. She sometimes feels really anxious about what others will think of her and how they will treat her as a divorcee. Multiple Indonesians have said that divorced women can be highly stigmatized and outcasted in society, something that both hurts their standing in the community, job prospects, and other important things in life. She has no real choice but to go forward. She thinks getting divorced from him is still worth it to her even if others think ill of her since separating from him will enable her to find happiness in life.

—

Her story illustrates a few patterns among middle-aged women who get divorced. Like her, many marry in their early- or mid-twenties only to drift apart from their husbands into the point of divorce by their forties. When young, the women had many hopes and passions in life that they often put on hold to stay at home as a wife. Now that they are divorced, they must rebuild their lives both emotionally and materially. They also go through a period where they rediscover themselves in the process, reacquainting themselves with the personal passions and professional interests that they loved as their youth. They often say that the experience has taught them the importance of being true to themselves and not sacrificing themselves for anyone, reflecting on how naive it was for them to do so when they first got married when they were young.

The Ghost among the Banana Trees (A Short Story)

Hello, let me tell you my story. I think many don’t understand how and why I live my afterlife in this forest. Many don’t really seem to understand the forest either or the things that live in it at all for that matter.

I am here to respect my community. There is little left of it, so I cherish what remains. My community was once the center of this place, full of families and their homes, animals, and markets. That was over a hundred years ago. Now, all that is left are the trees. I can still hear the whisper of my kin from the banana trees. That’s why I live in these trees.

History has taken much from us, but time can do that. Society around us changes. Now, Thailand is a country, whatever that means, and people in this area have moved around quite a bit, preferring to build their cities where their lines of stone that they call “roads” meet rather than in the networks that existed in my time. Sure, whatever, but I will not forget this village tucked into what is now a forest.

As I tend to my trees, nearby men almost intrude me with their existence. What fantasies do they conjure in their minds when they feel my presence? I notice their desire and energy gives me more power and reality. I prefer the invisibility; what need do I have from you living humans? Nevertheless, I have never felt as eyed as when men hike through my forest.

It reminds me how the attention the King and those court officials would give me when I was alive. When the Thai king brought me to his palace, his newest wife, oh you wouldn’t believe their stares. His many male officials took one look at my beauty and just assumed I was a slut, sleeping my way to the top. Why else would a woman enter their court?

My community, that was why I was there. My community were the ones who sent me. When they noticed that the king had taken an eye to me, I didn’t even want to go, but they said I could be the community’s ambassador, their hope. They said I could advocate on the community’s behalf at the court. The Thai Kingdom had spent too long trying to ravish our area. Standing on the edge of its borders, his army came after us whenever he wanted to prove his glory through war. The buffer between him and the enemy kingdom, he would slowly absorb us all, one village at a time, squares to capture in his diplomatic chessboard. They convinced me that it would be best for our community for me to go, the marriage might convince him to think twice before sacking us again.

But, the court officials practically came after me from day one. I had some allies, but many took one look at me and seemed to become my sworn enemies. Some opposed my community and wanted to keep it down; I think others were just jealous of how my beauty seemed to give me power. They made up some charge of adultery to get rid of me, finding some guy they could claim I slept with. I did have one lover who kept me warm from the chilling fires of political intrigue, but it was not who they accused me of loving. I was clever enough not to get caught with my actual lover. No, they picked someone who they also wanted to execute, a way to kill two birds with one stone.

I find the big struggles that living humans put themselves through perplexing. Over the years of my afterlife, I have realized how pointless it is. Men most of all. They seem to be caught up in grand narratives of gain and glory. They still do so now. All I see in this modern world is destructive fire, coming to consume my community from all sides. Deforestation, pollution, your society seems almost designed to destroy all I hold most dear. I guess that is how the world works; you can only build your world on the ashes of other worlds’ pasts. But I will keep my coal burning as long as I can. Then, I too will splinter, becoming the seed of whatever comes next.

Likewise, many Thai men seem to become entranced by me when they see me. They notice my beauty and my traditional green dress and project their fantasy for what they consider the simpler, Thai “traditional woman.” Many men in your current world seem to live what they consider unsuccessful lives. I am their solution, their simpler times. If they want to come live with me, to live out this fantasy, I tolerate it. That is their choice. I have more important things to think about to keep my community going than their little mortal lives.

I know others say that I entrap these men in a spell, keep them as a type of prisoner, and make them forget their past lives. I do nothing of the sort. Most men are initially drawn by my beauty, and those who stay do so because they see in me a beauty of Thailand’s past, or what they consider to be Thailand’s past. It’s not my fault if some get lost in their nostalgic world and slowly forget the present.

I am still largely indifferent to the ways of men, after seeing how destructive they can be, but I still enjoy sex with the men who join me. Well, at least with some of them. What the living don’t know about me is that I have multiple banana trees in the forest with multiple men, and you wouldn’t believe how easy it is to hide that fact. Some men are more considerate than others, but for most, they are not used to thinking outside their own world. All I need to do is dote on them. A few minutes of pampering a day, and they assume I will serve them always. Then I can leave for another home with another guy and do the same thing, and neither is the wiser.

Over time, I can slowly pull back my devotion, and they will start doting on me instead. Many men are not used to thinking beyond their quests, their desires, or their cravings enough to ask too many questions about what I am actually up to. They aren’t used to thinking of me as an independent person. To them, I represent the beauty of a bygone past, or what they think the past was like, when women supposedly quietly honored and served their husbands. I am the sense of success that they felt they could never get in the cruel world around them given their lowly positions. I can use this to my advantage.

Some might consider me exploitative, even predatory, but I’m not. They are like pets to me. Dogs live far shorter lives and possess neither as much wisdom or intelligence as humans, but humans still keep them around for their own amusement and affection. They give the dogs great lives in their care. Just like that, a regular human is far younger, less wise, and less mature, and unless they become a centuries-old ghost like me, has no real chance of catching up. I give them a great life, full of a sense of pride and pleasure, removed from the troubles of normal life that the current world throws at them. The mature ones with enough, without the insecurity and self-absorption eventually desire to escape, figuring out the ultimate emptiness of what I’m offering them. In time, they leave. Their choice, I don’t confine them against their will. To the others, life within my care seems to be what they want, so I give it to them. Little do they know that their energy and desire help preserve the trees they live in.