The stories I carry with me

Our entire life is a story, no, multiple stories unfolding all at once. There are the heartrending tales of the great love of our life. The full-blown drama-minggu-ini detailing the ugly family feuds. The comedy – yes, in hindsight – that is our tragic personal life. Some of our stories are long drawn out sagas spanning many years. Some have quick unfortunate endings. Still others -- making them the most difficult ones to bear -- are left to fester without closures.

Everyone has a story to tell, whether they realise it or not. Some have poignant tales that haunt us for days on end, others have happy anecdotes of a full life. From having lived, and in some cases, endured, their lives, these people weigh the words in their mouth and tell of fantastic fables and fantasies, exaggerated lives and inspiring parables.

Many of the people I’ve met have been candid enough to tell me their stories. I would like to think that I am the reason for this frank disclosure. That I somehow give off an aura that they could trust, that their confidences would not be betrayed, and that judgment -- the deadly sword of human thought -- would be sheathed and withheld. But, the truth is that, it is not my doing. It is they who I credit and respect for their forthrightness, for their capacity to share, hurtful though the memories may be.

Sometimes I feel that I should reciprocate the gesture by opening up to them with stories of my own. But the thought of exposing old wounds and leaving myself vulnerable again to people's judgments as well as to feelings that I’ve buried away make this merely a fleeting thought.

So, instead of spinning a tale about some long-ago lover or the crappy best friend he ran away with; the first taste of snow or the last supper in Provence, I lend you my ears and perhaps my shoulders, too, so that your life stories that you choose to share will have more meaning in the telling. So that the weight of your words, and of the life it tells, will be borne by this mind. So that some part of you will be carried eternal in me.

*****

On the 12-hour flight to Paris, we huddled under our blankets as other passengers slept in reclined seats and semi-darkness. You, who commanded an entire continent with your marketing strategies and who everyone respects for your work ethics, told me about what it was like to lose your first, long-awaited, child only months after he was brought into this world. I saw your sad eyes -- twin pools of regret and despair -- and that faraway look in them. As though you were re-living the moments again. The death could have been avoided, but it had been written in fate by the hand of God, and that was how it was to be. As you told it to me, there were no tears in your eyes, only in mine.

*****

In Africa, there came to me the tale of a magical child, who for the first nine years of her life, would suckle on nothing but her mother's milk and the water from the holy land. Any substitute of a lesser degree would not suffice the thirst of the child. This was told to me by the father who commanded a fleet of airplanes around the world to stock barrels of the holy water from the land of Mecca. The child, now fifteen, has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and is blessed with a keen sense of storytelling.

*****

From many years ago, at a time when our hearts were young and easily set a-flutter, you, my dear friend, told me of your lover. A boy who not just made your heart thump that much faster, but set it raging and on fire. A boy you were afraid to bring home to meet your parents. Not because he was the typical "bad" boy, but because you were already promised to someone else.

*****

On another flight, I sit with rapt attention listening to how a diamond was lost, never to be seen again for the next eight months, and found intact in another state. The ring had somehow slipped off Datin's finger without notice and the following months were spent in prayer for the return of the stone. Trips to Mecca were made and special prayers were offered in which it came to her like a dream, the knowledge that soon, the diamond would once again be in her posession. With nothing more than this flimsy assurance to hold on to, the Datin returned to Malaysia, to be greeted with the news that indeed, her ring had been found and returned. What began as a RM300k investment has now been valued at over RM1 million. A whopping figure for a 6.3 carat diamond with a story to tell.

*****

An Egyptian guide who works hard, talks fast and seems to have time to spare for everyone, was married to an eternally patient woman. His work takes him from city to desert to forests half a world away and back. Passport stamps and a ready suitcase witness the life of this traveller who leaves his wife at home for months on end in the name of work and comes back only to kiss her goodbye again. It was discovered later by the wife, from examining his expired passports, that the man and wife were together for a mere three months in their entire married life of twenty years!

*****

You think in words;
for you, language is an inexhaustible thread you weave
as if life were created as you tell it.

“Tell me a story,”
I say to you.

“What about?”

“Tell me a story you have never
told anyone before. Make it up for me.”
Prologue, The Stories of Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

Photo by Sam Hojati on Unsplash