Ini adalah sebuah tulisan
dari seorang Frater asal Malaysia
yang mengunjungi Rumah Singgah Sahabat Insan pada Jumat 29 September 2012
Life Stopped Here
Fridays are days of anticipation,
for those waiting for the weekend, the end of work and a resumption of their
private lives. On this particular Friday I visited the Shelter Sahabat Insan,
and anticipation was not there.
What I found was a woman who despairs
about the unknown life of her eldest son, now in the care of her divorced and
estranged husband. As woman, she believed there still was meaning in life, as
she re-married, and now has two young sons. But despite her beliefs, she felt
compelled to leave her own country to work illegally and dangerously in a
foreign land because as a woman there was no meaning or work to be found in her
community.
As a woman with courage, she
tried to do the best she can. Yet she suffers a fall, she broke her thigh bone,
and she cannot work – she had to return home. Now, she cries, thinking about
her two younger sons, one each in the care of her mother-in-law and her own
parents, because of her previous return to the Middle East
to illegally work there. She cries, thinking about how her own husband died
suddenly in a crash, two Aidil Fitri celebrations ago, while she was away from
her family’s side. She cries, clinging on to her faith of an all-knowing and
merciful Allah, even as she tries but fails to come to grips with the fate
dealt to her.
Ibu Ilis, as she is called,
dreamed of owning her own house, of opening the doors and windows of her own
home. Now she feels that there is no home, the phone numbers of her relatives
are now no longer active, and she is not well enough and too poor to look for
her two sons personally. She is a broken woman who tried her very best, yet
feels very, very alone. There was no anticipation from her at the Shelter
Sahabat Insan, because hope is nowhere yet to be found.[1]
This Friday, one life nears the
end of its journey, as the body of a migrant worker arrives at the airport. It
is not the parents or the immediate family who will be greeting it on arrival
but Lily, who works for the Shelter Sahabat Insan. Apart from helping to verify
the identity of the deceased[2] and locate their family,
the Shelter Sahabat Insan also facilitates the sending of the body to the
family. Currently, there is a backlog of documents to be processed by the
Shelter Sahabat Insan, as yesterday, a plane-load of about only 400 Indonesian
migrant workers originally working in Syria[3] returned home via Jordan, courtesy
of the Indonesian embassy. All of them are now on their way back home, which
could take another day or two within Indonesia itself. On any other
Friday, we can anticipate the weekend ahead. For some, there is nothing to look
forward to, but for some fortunate ones, despite the processing backlog of
documents, there is the rest of their life.
[1]
Ibu Ilis (not her real name) will receive help from the International
Organization for Migration, as she is defined as a victim of human trafficking,
who was sent to a country in contra to a moratorium by the Indonesian
government. With this international aid, and the support of the Shelter Sahabat
Insan community, it is hoped that she can come to grips with her trauma and try
to find her way in life once more. Efforts are underway to contact her family,
though there are difficulties given her state of mind which affects her memory.
[2]
The migrant workers are often forced at the last minute by the sending labour
agents to sign documents which do not mention or contain their real identities.
Instead, in such incidences just before boarding their flight out of Indonesia, the
migrant workers are told of their new identities, by which time it is too late
to protest or do anything about it.
[3]
The reason they returned was because of the trauma of being bombed, and seeing
people being shot dead, on an almost daily basis. Out of the 400-odd migrant
workers, only one of them was a man. There could easily be a thousand or so
Indonesian workers still in Syria,
according to a source close to the migrant worker issue.
