Medan, Indonesia, July 1, 2019

In a taxi between the airport and the banal city – Medan sketching its erasable shops, its grey boulevards and its common streets, its backfiring swarms and its becak motors –, a girl named river confides to me her business and her dreams.

I met her at the airport in Bangkok, in the boarding area. It was a smile and:

– You travel alone? Oh! So you’re going to Medan. I’m going there too.

She was with her father, and her sister, and her brother. Rivo the little Medanese with the face so special, aquiline nose, sparse hair, jug ears, dental braces that give her a kid’s look.

At the Medan airport we picked up where we had left off – as if it were the same place, the same conversation, only suspended. As if the plane had done nothing but go up and come down over the city.

– Do you want to go to the city in our taxi?

– You’re four people and I’m sure you have a lot of luggage to carry.

– We called two cabs.

The suspensions sag under the big nylon bags, the drivers wedge themselves behind their wheels, and all of it lurches off and is moved.

Here we are alone on the back seat, Rivo and I, in a space of confidence or of intimacy, behind the nape of the driver who knows no English.

The bags are full of clothes bought in Bangkok, bargained in baht and resold in rupiah. Rivo tells me about the price of garments, the shrinking profit margin, the plan she has to import dresses from China – but her brother and her sister don’t agree. Through the windows the city composes its ordinary face, behind Rivo’s imperfect figure, her small round skull, her skinny arms that she rests on my motorbike helmet, makeshift armrest. Our skins graze. Our bones seek each other like falling trees.

I don’t know her age or whether she has one. She seems old and young at once. She has hasty features, as if rubbed with time.

She is the unaccomplished woman, unfinishedness made body. The taxi stops in front of her shop. Goodbye, Rivo! Mauliate.

On her elbow she carries away a little shred of skin.