It was from Hana that the man finally learned the woman everyone called Bunda only wanted to know what it felt like to lose someone she had wanted to watch grow up. That was why, whenever she saw other children in need of attention, her heart could not turn away.
She set aside one rupiah at a time to pay for several children's schooling, buying them what they needed even if she could only do so modestly.
Hana had seen her come quietly in the middle of the night just to leave packages of food and medicine outside the house whenever she learned that one of the children was sick.
The woman only wanted them to know that someone still cared.
One afternoon, while she was reading a book, a boy named Farhan sat down beside her. He was about eight years old. He stared at the woman for a long while before finally asking,
“Bunda.”
The woman turned toward him and smiled.
“Why does Bunda come here so often?”
The woman did not answer. She only smiled, then slowly picked up a piece of paper, wrote something down, and handed it to Farhan.
“Because I like seeing all of you.” Farhan read it aloud.
“Why?”
“Because you make me happy.”
Farhan furrowed his brow. He looked puzzled, then gathered the courage to ask again. “Does Bunda have a child?”
The question made the smile on the woman's lips slowly fade. She turned her gaze toward the page. Several children were playing soccer, and then she slowly nodded.
“Where is Bunda's child?”
The woman did not answer right away. She let out a long breath, allowing the evening breeze to brush against her face. For a moment, her eyes looked glassy.
“He's no longer with me.” Farhan read the words on the woman's lap.
“I'm sorry, Bunda.”
Humairah nodded, then began writing again. Farhan carefully sounded out each letter she wrote.
“He went away... very far away.”
“Will he come back?”
The woman drew a long breath. The sentence was simple and innocent. But to a mother who had lost her child, the question was like tearing open a wound she had kept tightly closed all this time. She shook her head, her lips trembling.
Farhan asked no more questions. He only clasped the hand of the woman he called Bunda tightly. His small hand felt warm. The woman looked at him, and at last, her tears fell. One... then two. She quickly wiped them away.
“Don't cry, Bunda,” Farhan whispered. He felt guilty for making the kind woman cry. With his small hands, he wiped the tears from her cheeks, then hugged her.
But the hug only made her sob harder, and for the first time in a long while, the woman allowed herself to cry in front of someone. There was no sound, no wailing—only shoulders trembling in silence.
That night, when she arrived home, the woman locked herself in her room and slowly opened Fatih's closet. Her hand brushed against the jacket that had been neatly folded there since the year before.
“A child held my hand today,” she said silently. A bitter smile touched her lips.
“Maybe God sent them so I wouldn't drown completely in my grief.”
The woman then sat on the floor, hugging the jacket, until she fell asleep. That night, she cried again, longer than on the nights before. Not because she wanted to return to the past, but because she had finally come to understand something.
Loss did not always have to be healed by forgetting. Sometimes, a person learned to live with the wound and transform it into kindness.
From that day on, the woman hardly ever let a day pass without visiting the children in her care. She still kept most of her pain to herself, without a single word leaving her lips. She only smiled when someone praised her, or nodded when someone asked a question.
“Because every child deserves to feel loved.” That was the sentence she wrote in answer when the old man asked why she cared about children who had nowhere to return to. She never said that behind every bit of attention and assistance she gave was a little boy who continued to live in her memory.
Not once did she say that every smile from the children reminded her of Fatih's smile. Nor did she ever reveal that part of her was still waiting for the small voice that had once called her Bunda.
The woman might not have been able to tell the whole story of her pain, but she found another way to speak—through every hug, every clasp of the hand, every prayer, and her willingness to listen.
kept tightly hidden so that only the goodness could be seen.