The Dead Ant in Between Lashes

Last week I was in Indonesia. As the matter of fact, I only got back to Australia three days ago after one year being away in Indonesia.

Back home in Indonesia, I have plenty nieces and nephews. One of them is Coco. Her real name is Aqsa, as in Masjidil Aqsa. But of course she needs a cute nick-name, right? So we call her coco.

Coco is only two years old. She is so adorable and bubbly, and sweet, and smart, and I miss her so much as I write this writing. I never miss kissing her every day, especially when days got rough and I need extra boosts. Just hugging and looking at her would definitely brighten my days.

Being two years old, Coco has her own ways to communicate. She picks up words pretty quick for her age, although her pronunciations are far from perfects.

She calls me “ati”, stands for “kholati” which means aunty.

She would say “uwi” instead of “umi” when she reaches out for her mother.

And everytime she is about to drink or eat, she would say “iiyaah”, which refers to “bismillah”.

With her communication ability, she is not quite able to say a longer sentence yet nor describing thing in much complex contexts. But she does understand things the adults say to her. For examples when I asked her to kiss and hug me, she would do so. Or when I told her to sit down as she started to drink.

But on more difficult situations when she couldn’t tell the adults what she wanted to say, she would smile or cry.

One night, we were gathering at my mom’s house. There were me, my parents (which technically makes them coco’s grandfather and grandmother), my sister, and my one other nephew who’s way older than coco. Seven years old he is.

We were eating dinner and right after dinner, coco and my other nephew played together.

As the adults talked to each other, coco suddenly cried quite out loud while rubbing her head.

My sister asked what have happened to my nephew.

“I have no idea, I was joking and jumping over her and she suddenly cried,” he said.

"You accidentally kicked her, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t!” my nephew insisted.

“You have to apologize to coco, why did you jump over her anyway?!” my sister started to rise her voice.

“Enough, enough, maybe coco is sleepy. Children always cry when they tired or something. Can you take her to sleep?” my mom tried to ease the tension.

I brought coco to my room because she was about to sleep over. Her mom’s home is right next to my mom’s, so sometimes coco sleeps over when me miss her.

I laid her down on the bed, but she didn’t stop crying. Even louder this time.

My heart was torn in pieces. I hugged her tight and asked her,

“What is it coco? What happened? Why are you crying this loud?”

They were of course rhetorical questions, because I knew she wouldn’t be able answering me yet.

She cried louder and louder.

“Please please tell me what’s wrong?”

I still asked her questions and hugged her and hoped she would calm down. Only that she didn’t.

I couldn’t understand her, so in desperation I offered her,

“Coco want to go home?”

And she nodded her head, while keep repeating

“Go home..go home…go home..go home..”

She continued saying that she wanted to go home for probably thirty times over and over. I assumed perhaps she was sleepy and wanted to be with her mom at the time.

“Okay co, let’s go home to umi. One second, okay?”

So I took her next door to her mom’s house. As soon as I opened the door, her mom (who is my older sister) asked me,

“What happened? Why is she crying? Does she poop?”

“No she doesn’t. I’m not sure either, she never cried this hard before. I can’t figure out what’s wrong really. Maybe she just wanna be with you?”

My older sister grabbed coco from me and it took her only five seconds to say,

“There’s an ant inside her eye! Look her eye is swollen, can you see?”

I checked on her face, and right there. There. There was a tiny dead ant in between her lashes! And it was true, her eye was a bit swollen. I was so upset with the fact that I didn’t notice her eye was swollen. I imagine how hard it must be for her to feel pain but had zero abilities to explain what happened to her.

Imagine how many people on this earth who suffer and have no access to tell their stories. It must be frustating to have to go through shits but you can't speak up. 

My nephew didn’t kick coco, but this did kick me in the heart.

If we are too busy making assumptions,

If we are too rushed trying to take conclusions,

If we are too hard looking for someone to blame,

our eyes might be closed from seeing the dead ant in between the lashes.

We might miss our chance in revealing the truth.

Truth that people couldn't tell us straight to our faces,
but truth that we have to deeply observe ourselves, even in silence.