That morning . I looked at the calendar, and then I looked at the hands of the clock. Icould hear the clamour of shouts and claping from outside, and I opened the window I saw a display of banners :'Save Women's womb, for the future of the world!' I had terrible pain in my gut. There was a knock at the door, and three men came into my room. " See what you've done now? Gout and tell them that you never removed your womb! tell them that you did had nothing to do with the rising cost of living! And tell them that they need not worry, that the next generation will not be born stupid and undernourished. Tell them! They don't have to remove their wombs!" I held my stomach. The pain was unbearable. Then suddenly, everything went pitch black. Calm down, calm down." I could only faintly hear the man's voice ashe apealed to the crowd."Saudari Nagari will soon come to. Please allow us to carry out our duties for the sake of saudari Nagari's safety." I forced my eyes open. I knew that light. It had a 25-watt bulb. I knew that clock. And I remembered that cicak. I knew that face, too                                          *************************

I understood, and nothing had to be explained. It was exactly how so many of my friends had said it would be. These days, there's no need for explanations and there's no need for clarity. Because explanation and clarity nly thicken obscurity. There was a strange voice which, by the time it reached my ears, was quite muffled, Name, Nagari. Thirty years old. Occupation, miscellaneous. Sex, female. Room number, 2212. Case, victim of crime. Womb torn out with a broad-blade knife by the Movement Against the Brth of a New Generation. It was baffling. Had my womb really been ripped out with a broad-blade knife? Hoe extraordinary! Why were they saying such things? All my friends knew that my womb had been removed because it had grown a tumor. How on earth had the simple removal of my rotten womb turned into such a tremendous event? As the clamour continued on, I closed my eyes tightly and tried to remember if I had ever seen that rotten womb. But I only suceeded inmaking myself dizzy. I will never know what that rotten womb looked like, that womb that makes my head turn and lashes me with strange questions.                                                                                                     To be honest, it was only then that I began to feel proud. I felt proud for having been given the chance to face those who are panicked by the removal of a womb, those who can only comprehend that removal as an act of violent crime, and those who find in this act political opposition, a movement capable of inciting hate, and ultimate disorder. As it turned out, that rotten womb led me to an explanation of some of the things I had previously thought of as mysterious, or merely sensational.                     ************************                                                                             

A month later I happened to walk by a hospital and was surprised to see a long queue outside. Like a coward, Iquickly moved on. I wasn't up to asking those people why there were queuing there. My gut felt empty and void. Had the suspected puppetmaster, the cancer that had occupied my womb, move on perhaps, to its next victim at the back of that queue? For my gut felt emptier and emptier.     - the end