Christmas Gift
They were very happy with their Christmas presents, the toddler with a few lumps of jelly, the housemaid with a new dress, the cat with a large fish.
Rather engrossed in daydreaming of recent events, Pak Arif was passing Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat when he saw a bird entangled in a string which was stretched between two trees. Who could rescue the bird? The fire brigade with a ladder? Unlikely that firemen would be willing to come. Or contact the society of animal lovers, if there was such an association here. Or shoot the string with an air rifle? Pak Arif went home and asked his son to come along with a grounded-glass coated string as used in flying kites.
Amid the vehicles roaring past him on the boulevard, his son braced himself to make an overhead throw, somewhat like a cowhand casting a lasso to catch a horse or a cow. The coated string landed on the stretched one above, snapping it in two, thus freeing the ensnared bird.
Pak Arif felt elated at having given the bird its freedom from an almost certain, slowly death as there’s no one who ever would take care of its fate. A Christmas gift, despite the absence of lighted candles, Christmas trees and carols.
From Jayakarta, The Jakarta Post January 19, 1996
They were very happy with their Christmas presents, the toddler with a few lumps of jelly, the housemaid with a new dress, the cat with a large fish.
Rather engrossed in daydreaming of recent events, Pak Arif was passing Jl. Medan Merdeka Barat when he saw a bird entangled in a string which was stretched between two trees. Who could rescue the bird? The fire brigade with a ladder? Unlikely that firemen would be willing to come. Or contact the society of animal lovers, if there was such an association here. Or shoot the string with an air rifle? Pak Arif went home and asked his son to come along with a grounded-glass coated string as used in flying kites.
Amid the vehicles roaring past him on the boulevard, his son braced himself to make an overhead throw, somewhat like a cowhand casting a lasso to catch a horse or a cow. The coated string landed on the stretched one above, snapping it in two, thus freeing the ensnared bird.
Pak Arif felt elated at having given the bird its freedom from an almost certain, slowly death as there’s no one who ever would take care of its fate. A Christmas gift, despite the absence of lighted candles, Christmas trees and carols.
From Jayakarta, The Jakarta Post January 19, 1996
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