IRONY

Irony. Sitting on the train looking out of the window at the slums outside of Surabaya, I couldn't get that word out of my head. Corrogated metal boxes crowded together with enough garbage and waste around them to give the appearance of a city's dump. That's what I thought at first.

Then I saw the clothesline. Tattered shirts, stretched-out pants, clothes that would never make my wardrobe standards, hung on a line stretched between two poles. Whatever their condition, they were clean. Seeing it almost made me laugh as I wondered why anyone who lived here would care about clean clothes or would take pride in arranging them so neatly on the line.

Then I saw her. She must have been about my age, a young mother perhaps. As she walked out of the door of her rusted box, our eyes met as somehow she spoke one word to me: Home.