[Of Aceh and Turning Tides: Songs to My Sisters. Debra H. Yatim, Acehkita Foundation, Banda Aceh/Jakarta, 2005. 71 pp.]
Nelden Djakababa, Jakarta – Acehnese are no strangers to the art of words: For centuries, Aceh has been known as the home of many forms of oral traditions; poets and songwriters are held in high regard in their communities. Thus, it is small wonder that Debra H. Yatim should pick poetry as her art-form of choice to express her personal reflections on what it means to be an Acehnese woman today.
On Aceh and Turning Tides: Songs to My Sisters brings together 60 poems by Debra with themes on Aceh, the tsunami (inevitably so) and about the pain, struggle and challenges that have been all-too familiar for Aceh before and after the giant wave came in and altered its landscapes forever. It is also about being and becoming a woman in this context.
A Jakarta-based former journalist who now runs her own public relations consultancy, Debra is known as an active speaker, panelist and moderator, and has also acted as mistress of ceremonies for issues concerning women. But the fact that she is half-Acehnese on her father's side has given Debra a unique vantage point when it comes to matters concerning Aceh.
In spare, clear and flowing words, with beautifully illustrated with artwork by Liang, the poems at times give voice to the Acehnese people's collective experience of pain, horror and grief, but also of hopes, strengths and laughter.
Many, for example, would be able to relate to SMS Conversation, the first poem, which captures the anxiety and confusion of the first hours after the tsunami, when Aceh was practically cut off from the rest of the world.
Following is an excerpt:
Sunday 8:30 a.m. Quake hits Banda, destroys Kuala Tripa! But you are back, right, here in Jakarta? Yes, thank God. But worried sick about our friends.
Midday 12:30 All friends are missing. What to do? But you, yourself? OK, aren't you? Yes, safe. But how to check our missing friends? Afternoon 4 p.m. Eight-point-nine on Richter scale, Not six-point-five as stated. And none of friends detected yet. Can we assume they're missing? Evening 8 p.m. By the way, how is your family? Our missing friends still missing. No, no contact yet with family. And do regret those missing.
Hello. Aceh, Aceh? Any news? Hello? Anyone. Do send word from you.
The text-messaging form has been used before in Indonesian literature, perhaps most notably by Djenar Maesa Ayu in her short story titled SMS (2002) – although it deals with a very different theme. However, the choice of this form still gives the poem a fresh effect, thanks to the brevity and urgency that characterize messaging. This feature, in turn, makes for quite an effective element in this opening piece.
In many of the poems, highly conscious self-reflections on "being a woman with Acehnese blood" are apparent, as in this stanza from Matri-line: There's a dark watery place where everything is female fecund and brackish and fertile and secret, and it needed tsunami to make me realize it.
In other instances, personal reflections on the in-between-ness of having multiple identities are more dominantly expressed.
In this world, where more and more people are constantly on the move and crossing borders (physical or otherwise), this theme appears time and again. Consider for example the question of how to attach meaning to the words in this excerpt from 1999: A draining two-hour discussion and by day's turn, I'm gone with salt fogging my vision for you, majestic land, with your burden of the hurt of decades, pain. Then Medan again, and home – but where?
The word "home" again appears as an existential question in Village Vignettes: How to describe coming home? How to describe the feeling of finally walking the ground of my fore-mothers and -fathers? Of breathing in the very air they breathed? While it would help readers to understand more of the context from which these poems were drawn with some background knowledge about Aceh and its current affairs, Of Aceh and Turning Tides is beautiful to read.
One of the things that render this beauty is the underlying optimism and hope in the midst of pain and sorrow – a stance that stems from the inner strength that makes the Acehnese people who they are.
Song of Sisters (excerpt) Bodies were stacked like fish in cold storage have we seen, said they. The search for meaning and order have we seen, said they. Yet through it all, the song of sisters ring so clear. A bell of hope in face of doom.