Ziarah ke Museum of Innocence

Kemal menemukan kebahagian mencintai seorang Füsun dengan segenap warna dan misteri.

Saat itu ibuku menangis

Buat kakakku Hermanto Junaidi yang sedang damai bersemayam di bawah pohon ketapang, tempat aku selalu menjengukmu, saat pulang, atau saat pergi sekalipun.

Indeks Perdamaian Kota Itu Perlu

By measuring the state of peace, we can further our understanding of the social, political and economic factors that help develop more peaceful environments

Tentang Ingatan dan Ideologi

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” — Milan Kundera (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting).

A Journey: from Border to Border

Midyat is one of a must visited historical places in Mardin beside Old Mardin. Overall this city is cited as paths of the early civilizations named Mesopotamia or far before it—if we talked about Christianity and Jews history as well for its strategic location with rocky hill and plain near the Tigris River.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Türkiye’deki İlk Günüm Hakkında



benim mükemmel öğretmenım
20 Eylülde Türkiye’ye İstanbul Atatürk Havaalanına Endonezyalı bir arkadaşımla geldim. Havaalanındayken, yedi saat transit vardı, ona “Burası bizim rüyamız biz buraya okumak için geldik,” dedim. Arkadaşım “Bu andan itiberen bir hikayeye başlayalım,” dedi. Birdenbire onun karizmatik yüzü bana gülümsedi. Bir dakika sonra birlekte güldük. O andan itibaren İstanbul’da vaktimin boş geçmesini istemiyordum, benim için o şehir çok önemli cünkü. İstanbul tarihi şehirlerinden biridir o yüzden İstanbul’u çok seviyorum böylece bu duygularım beni bu sehri dolaşmaya yönlendirdi.

Saturday, November 02, 2013

Touching The Autumn

One upon a time, in the last year of Madrasah Ibtidaiyah (MI), I found a small book titled “Taman Sang Nabi” (The Garden of The Prophet), a lyrical prose by Kahlil Gibran, a magnificent poet from Lebanon. It belonged to my older brothers—either Hermanto (alm.) or Muhli—in which they bought at Pondok Pesantren Annuqayah Nirmala. I forgot whose book belonged to because they were in the same hobby as books collector and also as bookworm and they entirely affected me in loving books. I must say thanks to them. I remembered well the book: black cover with pinked-orb picture just like an earth or maybe like a flower sheath. I don’t know exactly. 

That book embraced me with a lot of something strange and difficult to understand at that time. It depicted well a small piece of autumn with marvelous scenery of powerful words as Gibran always did with their outstanding works. I was wrapped with a romantic but abstract and imaginary background: Mushtofa, the prophet seeking the truth in miles-away distance. There, alongside the sojourning path of the protagonist Mushtofa, I recognized autumn with magical touches under Gibran’s hand who beautifully tucked a breath of it; how trees stood still; how leaves fell down into the earth; how winds jolted the leaves and nestled them on the ground; and how Mushtofa (or Gibran himself) felt during his pursuit of somethingness! Yes, I felt those to wonderfully imagine such kind of depiction of autumn, almost in all Gibran's works.

Then, the other masterpieces come into my desk: Orhan Pamuk, William Shakespeare, Robert Frost, William Blake, O Henry, Akutagawa, Najib Mahfouz and other writers like Rainer Maria Rilke and also songs praising the autumn. Of course I will never forget November Rain by Gun 'N Rose. I was impressed with this piece of poem below:

"Now cast your shadow on the sundials,
and loose the winds on the open fields." 

(by Rilke ~ Autoumn Day)

Today I feel it deeply here in Anatolia peninsula. I take off my shoes to directly feel how wind touches my foot and unites it into the ground. Yes I admit this all as very romantic season as people always impress of autumn time. But I feel more than just a romantic time embodied by the season. It’s melancholy. Yes romanticism of melancholy!