Dada 113

In the visiting room; the murmuring, the shouting, the conversation continued all around me, the only oasis of silence was the small young man and the elderly woman who sat silently looking at each other. Gradually the Kalimantan’s were led out. Almost everyone stopped talking as soon as the first one left. The little old woman moved closer to the bars just as the guard gestured to her son. He said simply

‘Goodbye mama.’ She slipped her hands through the bars and attempted to touch him in a little wave and sad goodbye. She left just as a man holding his hands together came in to take her place. Another prisoner was led in where her son had been and the two men started to talk excitedly. They spoke softly though as the room had quietened .They came to take away the man to my right and his wife shouted as if she hadn’t realised the room contained less noise and was going quiet, ‘take good care of yourself  ’she bellowed. Then it was my turn. I tried to mouth a kiss to Mo but he had turned away by then. 

‘Look after yourself’ he said.

Then he looked up at me and his eyes were full of pain but he didn’t move his face or crush it against the bars like a flower with the same, tense, distressed smile of the little woman. His gestures might have rang with those things inside himself but I guess he was embarrassed here. I don’t like to talk about our time together. He wrote to me soon afterwards, mainly about my Family, my Ma and Da and said that no one would forget Dada but he never said anything about himself or even the price of food and that was that.