Destiny’s Small Victories
Words and Image by Salika Lamour
Some words take years to be written and put together. These took ten. These words are not from the work of creation, but rather from the craft of soul retrieval; a piece, not all.
This poem-story cracked out of me while I was re-visiting the island-town of Penang in Malaysia, a decade after the arrest that changed the course of my life and opened my heart to Prayer.
Trauma, Injustice, Prejudice. This is the trinity humans have to witness and suffer in order to break open, grow and sharpen. This one left me voiceless for many years, roaming the world with the ability to talk but not to speak.
People who cannot speak usually have too much to say. So much that it gets stuck in the guts. It is from there that howling turns into song the way writing becomes an essential means for living.
Speaking out finally, this is a piece I’ve redeemed:
Penang
I remember sitting in your prison across the bridge,
Because my nationality didn’t match my face,
And my face didn’t match my story.
Illegal working, they suspected.
Who are they?
Law enforcers, Immigration controllers, Human oppressors.
They are the ones who will drive you handcuffed into the dark
And strip you down in the courtyard with a bamboo stick in hand.
I remember the old Vietnamese woman who resisted getting naked
right next to me.
I whispered to her silently “Granny, please, please, drop the panty.”
I can take the humiliation but not your beating without intervening.
She dropped it, eventually.
A hundred pairs of eyes.
We were a hundred, women and babies, in one cell.
I met my first Indonesian friend there.
Her name was Vinni. She was from Bandung originally.
She showed me around and explained the internal spatial hierarchy.
Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, India, Indonesia
We were all there.
France: 1, on the board. That was me.
I’ve learned that a woman can take out her own life with her bra
Before they took the straps and wires out of mine.
I was taught Solidarity by the youngest of two sisters from Burma
Sitting across me on the floor during meal time.
As my tears of despair were rolling down over the dried fish
She ordered: “Eat,” the same way she could have said, “Suck it up.”
We don’t do this here.
Letting yourself down is letting everybody else down.
I ate and never dared crying again.
I shared the excitement of a big Indian woman
Who took me to the corner where she had hidden a pen.
Owning a pen, with nothing to write on,
As a rebellious act.
It brought us joy to hold it in the middle of the night.
Little children had found little pieces of stones that they used to crayon the concrete floor.
A cheerful Thai prostitute jogged on an imaginary treadmill, every morning, consistently.
The rest of us just lied there on the ground, waiting.
The younger guards were bitchy, especially the pretty one,
Whereas the elders were somewhat motherly.
I made out clearly some of the abusive strategies
Of our World’s society.
Sliding in covert authority on the inside
Choosing to favor the prisoners who would gladly play officers.
Lining us up in rows of 6 to count us, the locked flock.
Anytime, several times a day, adding insult to injury.
Sometimes making us stand arbitrarily to state our number out loud
Playing this game for hours to kill their boredom.
3437, tiga empat tiga tujuh. I will never forget.
I bought a stock of sanitary pads on the Friday order with the money they held under my prisoner’s number.
I gave them all to those who were penniless at their time of arrest.
On that day, I made friends forever.
We fueled each other laughter and dignity
Sharing dry biscuits and two working toilets.
Penang, in your prison my heart opened
And I finally fathomed the power of Prayer.
Where is Vinni now?
Stuffing my face with curry, I can only wonder.
I’d love to tell her that I can speak her language and use it almost daily.
I hope that she is with her family.
There are stories that will haunt me until they come out into poem form
Because the details of horror are too blurred to be told.
Over ten years later,
I’m travelling after a work permit,
Truly feeling the irony
In my destiny’s small victories.
