Today was a rainy, from morning to afternoon, and I was feeling a little lethargic and in need of a leg stretch. I went for a bike ride down one of my favorite roads that goes off behind the university on the way to the new campus, then crosses a steep bridge and veers to the right where it becomes more of a wide trail than a road and meanders through rice paddies and jackfruit orchards, hugging the canal the whole way. I usually come to a “T” in the road and go left, back to the new university and the main road, where I head back to the guesthouse. I have only turned right at the “T” once before. Today makes it twice. The right fork took me along another canal, over more bridges, and through more rice paddies (at this time of the year under several feet of water) until I got to a narrow paved road. I remembered that I had turned right here before and managed to find myself back to one of the main roads, although quite far from my starting point. I took the right turn again, and when it made a sharp curve, instead of following it took the narrow muddy track straight ahead of me, through a narrow opening in a barbed wire fence. I could almost see the main road in the distance, but it was very quiet in this area. Quieter than almost any place I’ve been in this little city, and I stopped to look around me. It was at this point that I realized this peaceful quiet place was a cemetary. A sea of graves stretched out in every direction, back to the road far behind, and ahead to a clustered row of houses. I started looking around at the gravestones, reading them one by one, but really noticing onlythe years.
“died 1959, 26 years old”
“died 1973, 22 years old”
“died 1978, 24 years old”
“died 1966, 19 years old”
So many of them were from the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s. Maybe it was just the section of the cemetary that I was in. They were all so young. And in some ways it was so long ago, but it some ways it was not. I think about the old people here, the hunched women with leathery skin selling lottery tickets on the street. What have those deep, sunken eyes seen? What kind of pain have those stiff, frail old bones endured?
