Child of the sunrise

Sri Mulyanti Goenawan

It had rained many days before she came. Ceaselessly, it seemed, the rain fell and made the last days of my pregnancy so dull that I began to feel sullen.

I even began to wonder and fear that I was going to lose this baby, too, but, thank goodness, it was not to be the case.

She was born as the sun rose; a child of the sunrise. The skies above were blue and there was barely a cloud in the sky; the occasional cloud to be seen was fluffy and perfectly white. Their presence in the sky seemed to be that of angels looking down protectively and approvingly upon the birth of my precious child.

I had never heard of the old tales that children born at sunrise are believed to be lucky and will be charmed with a warm personality and a happy life ahead of them. But in those first few days of my daughter's life, every one of the villages that came to visit her told me of this superstitious tale.

I had always prided myself on my common sense approach to life. In fact, I think that it was this side of my personality which allowed me to get through the appalling sorrow and loss of my first child. Although that child never saw the light of day, never saw the sunrise, it was nevertheless a terrible loss to me.

It was the loss of a life. But my personality and my philosophy in life, along with the support of my family, allowed me to continue.

Throughout my life, though, up until the birth of my daughter, I had never really bothered much or given much credence to superstition. But in those first few days after her birth, there seemed to be a continuous stream of the elderly ladies of our village telling me of their belief in the charmed life that lay ahead for a child of the sunrise.

On the third day of her life, three of the eldest women of the village came.

"This child, my dear", the eldest of them explained, "will have a truly prosperous and adventurous life. Why!? I know you will ask!" she cried, the pitch of her voice surprising me, her companions and the baby, who gave out a little giggle.

"Well, you see", she continued, now fully enjoying the attention of her small audience, "at the time of this child's birth the sun was just rising and in the sky there were beautifully white clouds.

"But those clouds were not still, as clouds often are on such a clear and calm day. No! Those clouds were moving and their movement along with the beautiful sunrise told of your child's prosperous future and of the fact that she will be a traveler."

In those early days of my daughter's life, I was open to these ideas. They filled me with a glow and a sense of the good things to come -- and an end to the bad memories of previous losses. Soon I found that this child was indeed charmed.

She was loved by all in our village. She was courteous and polite without ever having to be told to be so. She was indeed a child of the sunrise and it seemed that angels were looking down on her.

She was an intelligent child. Her interests were so many that we could not keep up with all that she wanted to do and learn about. She was filled with curiosity for the world around her, and soon she became curious about what lay beyond our small village.

She learned languages. Arabic came easily to her and it was not long before she was fluent in English, too. Japanese followed on from that, and her progress through school was so successful that it almost became inevitable that she would seek and get a scholarship to university.

We, as a family, had little money to support her education and my husband was not wholly approving of her move from our village to Jakarta when she won her scholarship. But we both knew that this was what she needed to do. We both remembered that she was a child of the sunrise and as such would be a traveler.

So she traveled to Jakarta and pursued her studies. The success that she had enjoyed in school was repeated at university. We were filled with pride when she landed her first job working with a non-governmental organization bringing relief programs to remote areas of the country.

Within a year of her graduation, her organization sent her to the troubled islands of eastern Indonesia. We looked upon this with some fear for her safety, but we remembered she was a child of the sunrise, destined to go far afield. We told ourselves that she was heading east, from where the sun rises.

So she went, with her charming personality and caring spirit. She worked among orphans and refugees, trying to help them through their difficult times. Sometimes she would send us photographs in which she was surrounded by smiling children, the smile on her own face reflecting the sunny nature within her that we had become so accustomed to.

That was until the terrible news arrived.

One night, it seems, an argument had arisen among the villagers and the orphanage where my daughter worked.

Claims had been made that the orphanage was only helping children from one village. Gossip fueled more wild stories, and soon it seems that the disgruntled people from one village had convinced themselves that the orphanage was favoring other people and ignoring their needs.

Soon an angry mob was headed to the orphanage, their anger fueled by nothing but false rumors.

They ordered the people from the building. They had no intention to harm the people, it was said later, they just wanted to take away the facilities that they felt were being unfairly given to those people and not to them. They carried flaming torches with them and in the gathering light of the new day, they started to set fire to the building.

My daughter pleaded with them not to burn the building down but it was in vain. The flames started to engulf the building and all she could do was stand back and watch in silent horror. The roar of the flames and the crackling of materials being burnt was all that could be heard.

But then they heard a cry; a cry for help from a child trapped in the building.

My daughter immediately ran in, and several minutes later a little boy staggered and stumbled from the blaze of the building and into the brilliant light of a new day -- a new sunrise.

But she did not come out.

On this day as the sun rose, my daughter left this world. She came with the sunrise and she left with the sunrise. Each day now, I wake early and await the sunrise. I watch for it to come up over the ridge that shades our village. I look for it to silhouette our mosque and the trees nearby.

I look for it for my daughter and I remember her. Was her life charmed? She died so young, how can I believe that?

But I do. Although her time was short, it gave so much to me and to all those that she touched. She came, lived and left as a true child of the sunrise.