Wa Sami

Wa Sami is Iwan Angsa’s wife, a shopkeeper and caretaker whose authority is expressed through practical work as much as reprimand. She chastises Ajo Kawir and Gecko for their reckless behavior, tends Ajo Kawir after his fights, and helps keep Scarlet Blush supplied without demanding conversation. Her everyday care anchors a fragile household around boys who repeatedly seek violence and people whom the surrounding community has left alone.

Identity and Household

Wa Sami lives with Iwan Angsa and is part of the home that becomes a refuge for Ajo Kawir. After Ajo Kawir’s father, a government employee at the local library, admits that his son never listens to him, Iwan Angsa becomes the person keeping track of the boy. Wa Sami supplies the corresponding physical care: when Ajo Kawir returns black and blue, she bandages him. Through his friendship with Gecko, Ajo Kawir increasingly stays at their house, helping watch the store or haul goods before going out to look for another fight.

This household does not simply approve of Ajo Kawir’s conduct. Iwan Angsa eventually tells him to fight for money rather than die for nothing, while Wa Sami’s response is to twist the boys’ ears and call out their useless behavior. The difference in their approaches is practical rather than a divide between concern and indifference: both adults see the danger in the boys’ habits, but Wa Sami’s care repeatedly takes the form of immediate correction and repair.

Rebuke and Religious Instruction

Wa Sami’s rebukes meet the boys’ bravado with exasperation. When she asks them to stop behaving like useless creatures, Gecko answers that God says nothing in the world is useless. Wa Sami cuts through the borrowed piety, telling him not to act like a know-it-all when he has no idea what God says. The exchange presents her as alert to the gap between religious language and the boys’ actual conduct, rather than impressed by a quick scriptural retort.

A later encounter over Ajo Kawir’s comics gives that skepticism a more curious edge. At the corner store, she initially assumes that comics make young people foolish and dim-witted. Ajo Kawir shows her comics about heaven and hell and says that even the religious teacher at the surau thinks they are good. Wa Sami changes her response when she sees what he is reading, conceding that she did not know there were comics like that. Her first judgment is not fixed: a concrete explanation allows her to revise it.

The comics also frame a lesson against killing. Ajo Kawir points to a story in which killing a mosquito on earth means a giant mosquito will kill the person repeatedly in hell; Wa Sami answers that he must never kill. The exchange places her moral instruction beside the boys’ habitual attraction to fighting, without suggesting that a single admonition can end that pattern. Her words establish a principle in the very setting where Ajo Kawir is temporarily absorbed in a comic’s imagined punishment.

Care for Scarlet Blush

Wa Sami’s care extends beyond the boys in her home. She sends Gecko to Scarlet Blush’s house carrying a sack of rice, instant noodles, salted fish, potatoes, long beans, and other provisions. Her instructions are precise: leave the food outside the door, do not knock, and do not try to talk to Scarlet Blush. The delivery is designed to respect the boundary of someone who does not want company, while still ensuring that she receives necessities.

The care matters because Scarlet Blush is isolated and regarded by the children as a madwoman, although they have never witnessed one of her fits. They know that she stays inside alone, sometimes laughing or shrieking, and repeat an uncertain story about social-welfare workers who supposedly tried to remove her. Wa Sami does not require certainty about that rumor, or emotional access to Scarlet Blush, before arranging help. Her ordinary deliveries offer a counterpoint to the neighborhood’s fearful distance: care here means providing food and not forcing a response.

Ajo Kawir’s Place in the Family

Wa Sami’s role in Ajo Kawir’s life is made visible through repetition. She is there to dress his wounds after his fights, while her household gives him work and a place to stay. This support does not turn him away from trouble; he continues to spend afternoons or evenings hoping to throw punches. Instead, the novel shows the labor required to keep receiving him: the household absorbs the consequences of his violence even as its adults try to limit the risks.

Her connection to Ajo Kawir also runs through the secret known at first only to Gecko: Ajo Kawir cannot get an erection. The other boys do not know this, and they assume his attempt at an absurd remedy comes from mistaken advice about virility. Wa Sami is not identified as someone who knows the secret, so her place in this part of the story is defined by what remains concealed from her as well as by what she does know of his visible injuries. The contrast is telling: she can tend the bruises that his fighting leaves on his body, while the private condition shaping his understanding of himself remains outside her knowledge.

Wedding and Narrative Role

A few months after Ajo Kawir turns twenty, and a few days after Iteung reaches the same age, they marry. Wa Sami and Iwan Angsa are among the people whose eyes fill with tears at seeing Ajo Kawir as a groom; Gecko joins them in welcoming the guests. Wa Sami’s emotional response marks the distance between the injured boy who repeatedly came home to be bandaged and the adult now entering marriage with the families’ approval.

The wedding’s happiness is immediately shadowed by the sleeping bird in Ajo Kawir’s pants, which remains asleep and does not share in the celebration. Wa Sami’s presence belongs to the public joy around the couple, not to knowledge of this intimate impediment. That contrast gathers her characteristic position in the story: close enough to help make a home for Ajo Kawir, and to witness his milestones, but not omniscient about the private wound that accompanies them. Across reprimand, food, bandages, and the wedding, her care is concrete and social—an effort to keep people connected without pretending that every danger or suffering can be seen or cured.