August Reflection: A Bleak Portrait That Has Yet to Fade

I recently reread three old poems I wrote in Bogor, twenty-three years ago. ‘Whose Bleak Portrait Is This’, ‘Fly My Flag’, and ‘I Feel a Longing’—three verses born from the anxiety of a man who used public transport daily, witnessing the routine sights of children on the streets, begging, busking at traffic lights, and my own behaviour when crossing the road without a zebra crossing because the bus was already waiting at the terminal gate. Reading those verses again today, what I feel is not romanticism or nostalgia. What I feel is horror, because the bleak portrait I wrote in 2003 has evidently not yet faded.

In ‘Whose Bleak Portrait Is This’, I wrote about children who should have been in school but were instead busy busking to earn a living, about schoolchildren brawling in the streets, and about officials and touts sharing the proceeds of illegal levies at the bus terminal. Most of all, I wrote about myself, who upon seeing all this could only mutter, ‘how can that be’. Not a protest, not an action, just a cowardly grumble that passed by. More than two decades have passed. We have compulsory education programmes, social assistance, and digital complaint apps. But look around: children dropping out of school to help their family’s economy are still present, and nationally, the data remains a serious problem every year. Illegal levies have merely changed their packaging to digital payments, and touts have rebranded themselves as ‘insiders’. Only the wrapping has changed. The substance, I fear, remains the same. The most stinging part of what I wrote was not the social portrait, but the confession at the end of the poem: ‘my bleak portrait, negligent and cowardly, who only dared to say, how can that be’. Because the sharpest criticism is not for the system out there, but for oneself who chose to remain silent while passing by.

‘Fly My Flag’ was born from a different unease: the feeling of losing great figures. I wrote then that I no longer encountered the spirit of Sukarno, the wisdom of Hatta, the sincerity of Natsir, the intelligence of Roem, the strength of Sudirman. I chose those names deliberately because they represent character, not just position. Natsir, for instance, is remembered not for his power, but for his willingness to relinquish his position for the sake of Muslim unity—an example that grows increasingly rare in an era where positions are fought over to the death. The question I posed in that poem remains relevant today: who will be called a hero by future generations? Will it be the officials who are eloquent on television about justice and siding with the common people, or the simple, faithful ones who comfort and remind—the muezzin who never misses the call to prayer, the Qur’anic teacher who instructs without expecting reward, the small trader who remains honest amidst temptation? The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said that the best of people are those who are most beneficial to others. The standard of heroism in Islam is simple: benefit, not popularity. By that standard, perhaps the true heroes are not those whose faces frequently appear in the media, but those whose names are mentioned only in the prayers of the people they have quietly helped.

I wrote the third poem, ‘I Feel a Longing’, a few months later, at a time when the world was noisy with war and violence in the name of religion and ideology. I wrote about my confusion with liberalism, capitalism, Marxism, socialism, democracy—could all these ‘isms’ answer problems that cut across cultures, races, tribes, and religions? The answer I found then, and still hold today, is simple: did not the holy books brought by the prophets teach universalism, humanism, and peace long before these ‘isms’ were born? The Qur’an states that the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was sent as a mercy to all the worlds, not just to one group. The concept of rahmatan lil ’alamin had already answered the anxiety of how to coexist across identities, long before the world busied itself seeking alternative ideologies.

Now, as the month of independence approaches, an additional verse keeps echoing: the cry of ‘Merdeka’ is now merely a slogan, a million innocent faces longing for its meaning. Every August we still shout ‘Merdeka!’ loudly, put up flags in front of our houses, and take part in 17th August competitions in our neighbourhoods, offices, and communities. But try asking the children who still have to busk on the streets instead of sitting in school, the small traders crushed by a system that does not side with them, those who have been waiting years for justice—has independence reached them? Independence should not only mean freedom from foreign colonisation, but also freedom from structural poverty, freedom from prolonged injustice, and no less important, freedom from our own negligence that can only mutter ‘how can that be’ every time we witness inequality right before our eyes.

Twenty-three years since I wrote those verses, I have learned one thing: the bleak portrait of this nation will never be finished if we just wait for change to come from above. Borrowing a phrase from Ust. Adian Husaini: as long as the devil exists, the job vacancy remains open. Perhaps through small initiatives to empower the community around us, through educational programmes that help underprivileged children continue their religious studies.