Elegant and beautiful.
That is what people in my village say about me. Whenever I walk past the green rice fields in the early morning, carrying a basket of vegetables on my head, I can hear the old women whispering to each other by the well, "Look, that is Sri Lestari. So elegant. So beautiful. Like a princess from the royal palace in Yogyakarta."
But they do not know me. They do not know what is truly behind this soft, innocent face that I show to the world.
If they really knew me, if they knew what happened to me in the city, they would not say I am elegant. They would say I am cold. They would say I am broken. They would say I am a girl whose heart has turned to ice.
My name is Sri Lestari. People just call me Sri. I am twenty-five years old, and I have already given up on love. I have told myself that I will never, ever believe a man again.
Six months ago, I was a completely different girl. I swear to God, I was a different person. I lived in the city of Yogyakarta. I had an apartment, a small boarding room that I rented with my friend. I worked as an admin staff in a big batik garment factory near the city center. I had a life. I had big dreams. I had air conditioning in my office, which was a luxury for a village girl like me. I had friends who would invite me to drink sweet boba tea and eat fried chicken in Malioboro Mall on weekends. And most importantly, I had a fiancé. I had a man who I thought would be my husband.
His name was Agus. I loved him with all my heart for three long years. He was my supervisor in the factory. He was handsome, at least I thought he was handsome back then. He promised me he would marry me. He knelt down in front of my boarding room and gave me a small, cheap silver ring, and I thought it was the most precious, most beautiful thing in the entire world. I cried when he gave it to me. I still remember how my mother, Mrs. Warsinah, was already so happy, already preparing the traditional Javanese wedding souvenirs, small beautiful boxes with candy and coins inside, to give to our neighbors. My father, Mr. Poniman, even though we are a very poor family, had worked extra hard in the rice fields, had saved a little money, little by little, for my wedding dowry.
I really, truly thought I would be a happy wife. I thought I would have children. I thought my suffering was finally over.
Then, in one single, cruel month, God took everything from me. Everything.
First, the massive layoff. It came without any warning at all. One Monday morning, the factory owner, a rich Chinese-Indonesian man, called all the employees to the main hall. He announced that the factory had lost a very big buyer from Europe, from Germany, because our quality was not good enough. Because of that, the factory had to close half of its production line. Two hundred employees had to be fired on the same day, terminated immediately, with no chance to say goodbye. My name was on that long list. The name Sri Lestari, employee number 045. The HR manager, a cold woman with thick glasses, just called me into her small office and gave me a thin brown envelope containing my last salary, one month's salary, and said with no emotion at all, "Sorry, Sri, you have to go home today. You are fired. Please pack your things."
I cried all the way back to my small boarding house, riding on the back of a public motorcycle taxi, in the rain. But I told myself, trying to be strong, trying to be a good Javanese woman, "It's okay, Sri. It's just a job. You still have Agus. You will get married next month. You will build a new life together as husband and wife. God has a better plan."
I was so stupid. So incredibly stupid.
A week later, exactly seven days after I lost my job, Agus came to my small boarding room. He did not come alone. He came with another woman. I will never forget that day. A girl with heavy red lipstick, with heavy makeup that made her look much older, wearing a tight, short red dress that showed everything, that left nothing to the imagination. She was clinging to his arm, holding his hand like he belonged to her. She was looking at me, at my cheap clothes, at my small, poor boarding room, with a smirk, with a look of disgust, like I was trash, like I was garbage.
Agus could not even look into my eyes. He stared at the dirty cement floor of my room. His voice was shaking, but not from sadness, from guilt.
"Sri, I am sorry," he said. "I have to break our engagement. I have found someone else. She is... she is pregnant with my child. Two months. I have to take responsibility. I have to marry her. I am sorry."
I remember I could not breathe. My chest felt so tight. I remember my hands were shaking so hard I could not hold anything. I was holding the cheap silver ring that he had given me, the ring that I had thought was so precious. I looked at that ring. I looked at his new woman. I looked at his face, a face that I had loved for three years.
And then, something inside me snapped.
I took off the ring from my finger, and I threw it right at his feet. It made a small, pathetic tinkling sound on the cement floor. It rolled and stopped near his cheap black shoes.
I whispered, with a voice that was barely a voice, "Go. Just go away from my life. Get out."
Since that day, I stopped believing in the sweet words of men. All those beautiful lies, all those "I love you," all those "I will always love you," all those "You are my future, Sri," I know now they are all lies. They are dirty, cheap lies that men use to get what they want from a woman, before they leave her for another woman who is younger, or prettier, or richer.
With no job, no fiancé, no money, and a broken heart that felt like a block of ice in my chest, I had no choice. I packed my one small, old bag, with my few clothes, and I returned to my hometown. I returned to a small, poor village in the Bantul region of Yogyakarta, a village where the green rice fields stretch as far as the eye can see, where the only sound you can hear at night is the insects and the call to prayer from the small mosque.
I now live again with my father, Mr. Poniman, a thin, tired, old farm laborer whose back is already bent, permanently bent, from years and years of working under the scorching hot sun in other people's rice fields. And my mother, Mrs. Warsinah, a kind, round-faced woman with a beautiful smile, whose hands are always rough, red, and cracked from cooking, washing, and cleaning all day long without gloves.
Our family is very, very poor. I mean, really poor. The kind of poor that people from America, people from Europe, cannot even imagine. The kind of poor that you only see in documentaries. Our house is made of half red brick and half woven bamboo. The floor is still cement, not tile. The roof is made of old red clay tiles, many of which are cracked and broken, so when it rains, and in Yogyakarta it rains very, very hard during the rainy season, we have to put old plastic buckets and pots all over the floor to catch the rainwater that leaks through the roof. My father's income is uncertain. Sometimes he gets work as a farm laborer, getting fifty thousand rupiah a day, which is about three American dollars. Sometimes, during the dry season, there is no work at all for weeks, and we have to eat only white rice with a little bit of salt and chili.
That is what forced my mother to open a small food stall near our house, in front of our house, under a mango tree. A very small wooden stall with a blue plastic tarp to protect it from the sun and rain. Every morning, before the sun even rises, at four in the morning, while the whole village is still asleep, my mother wakes up to cook. She cooks traditional Javanese vegetable dishes, sweet jackfruit stew, fried fermented soybean cakes, and crispy fried tofu. Food that costs only five thousand rupiah per portion, which is about thirty American cents. Food for the poor farmers and the motorcycle drivers who pass by our village.
And I am the one who helps her. I am the one who wakes up at four AM with her, even though I am so tired and my heart is so broken. I go with her to the traditional market in the city, Beringharjo Market, riding on the back of her old, broken motorcycle, to buy fresh chilies, fresh spinach, and fresh coconut milk. I am the one who guards the small food stall until the afternoon, until three PM, serving customers with a small, polite, fake smile, even though inside my heart is frozen solid, even though I want to scream.
That is my life now. Wake up, go to the market, guard the food stall, sleep, and repeat. No dreams. No future. No love. Just survival. Just trying to live one more day.
Until that one midnight. That one midnight that changed my entire life.
It was midnight. Twelve o'clock. The whole village was asleep. Dead asleep. I could hear the loud chorus of the crickets singing in the rice fields behind our house. Sometimes, a stray dog barked far away in the distance. The air was so hot and humid, typical of Yogyakarta in the dry season, that my thin, old house dress was sticking to my sweaty skin. Inside our small house, my parents, Mr. Poniman and Mrs. Warsinah, were already snoring softly in their small bedroom, exhausted from a whole day of hard work.
But I could not close my eyes. I could not sleep.
I was lying on a thin, hard mattress on the floor of my small room. My room is separated from my parents' room only by a very thin plywood wall that has many holes in it. I stared at the dark ceiling, which is made of woven bamboo. I felt so lonely, so tired, and so empty. It was a feeling that was worse than being poor. It was worse than hunger. It was the feeling of being completely alone in this vast world, even though I was surrounded by people. I felt like a ghost. I felt like I was already dead inside, but my body was still alive, still breathing.
Without thinking, almost automatically, my hand reached for my phone on the floor beside my mattress. My old Samsung phone with a cracked screen protector that I could not afford to replace. The battery was at 15%, almost dead. On my phone, there were not many apps. Only WhatsApp, Facebook, and one dating app that had been on my phone for a long time. I had downloaded it months ago when I was still living in the city, out of loneliness, out of curiosity, but I had never really used it, because after what Agus did to me, I was disgusted with all men.
The app was called Global Connect.
I opened it, just to kill the unbearable loneliness that was crushing my chest. The bright, white light from the screen illuminated my beautiful, but sad, face in the dark room. I started swiping the screen, with no purpose at all. Swipe, swipe, swipe. Faces of men from all over Indonesia, from all over the world. Some without shirts, showing off their muscles in the gym. Some posing proudly with their old motorcycles. Some immediately sending me dirty, disgusting messages. I felt even more disgusted. I felt even more hopeless. I was about to close the app, turn off my phone, and try to force myself to sleep again.
When I swiped the screen one last time, a new message notification suddenly appeared at the top of my screen. A small red dot with the number 1. Someone had sent me a message first. Someone had chosen me.
My finger, with a little hesitation, with a little curiosity, clicked on it.
And then I saw his profile photo. And my breath stopped. It literally stopped.
His face did not look Asian at all. He did not look Indonesian at all. He looked like he came from another world, from a different planet. He was posing confidently next to a luxury sports car, a black Mercedes Benz that was shining like a black diamond. He looked incredibly neat, incredibly rich, wearing an expensive, tailored black suit, a crisp, perfect white shirt, and a black silk tie. His hair was perfectly styled, like a male model from a magazine. He was wearing cool, expensive black sunglasses, even though the photo was taken inside a building. He was so dashing, so charismatic, so captivating, so handsome. He did not look like an Indonesian movie actor. He looked like a prince, like a king, from a Turkish drama series that my mother and I sometimes watch together on our small, old television in the afternoons.
My heart started to beat so fast, so loud, I thought it would jump out of my chest.
Then I read the message that came with his photo.
He said, "Merhaba! (Hello!)"
I frowned. Merhaba? What language is that? What does that mean? I had no idea. I had never seen that word before in my life. I quickly copied the word and pasted it into Google Translate on my phone. The screen showed: Language detected: Turkish - Merhaba! means Hello! in English.
Turkish. He is Turkish. A man from Turkiye. From Istanbul. I have never, ever, in my twenty-five years of life, talked to a Turkish man before.
With my heart pounding out of my chest, feeling nervous, shy, and curious all at the same time, with my hands sweating, I replied in my very simple, very broken English that I had learned from high school many years ago.
"Hello!"
And then, something happened that made me almost drop my phone onto the floor.
Almost instantly, just three seconds after I sent that one small word, my phone screen suddenly changed. A loud, shocking ringing sound filled my small, quiet, poor room. So loud I was scared my parents, Mr. Poniman and Mrs. Warsinah, would wake up and come into my room.
A video call. He was video calling me. This handsome, rich, Turkish prince from the photo was video calling me. Live.
I panicked. Oh my God, oh my God. My hair was a complete mess, in a messy, ugly bun. I was only wearing my old, faded, cheap house dress with little yellow flowers on it, the one with a small tear on the left sleeve that my mother had tried to sew. My face had no makeup at all. No lipstick, no powder. I looked behind me, at my thin plywood wall, at my small, poor room with my cheap clothes hanging on a nail on the wall. I felt so ashamed, so embarrassed. He must be so rich. He will see my poverty and he will laugh at me and hang up.
But for some strange, brave reason, a feeling of courage that I did not know I still had inside my broken heart, made my shaking thumb press the green answer button.
"H-Ha... Hello!" My voice was a tiny, shaking whisper. I swear, my heart was pounding so hard, so violently, I thought he could hear it all the way from Istanbul to Yogyakarta, nine thousand kilometers away.
And there he was. Live. Real.
On my small, cracked phone screen, he appeared. He was not wearing sunglasses anymore. I could see his face clearly, perfectly, for the first time. He was wearing a tie, neatly dressed in a black suit and white shirt, just like in his profile photo. But he was even more handsome in motion, in real life. His skin was fair, pale, typical of a Turkish Caucasian man. He had a sharp, straight, perfect nose, like a Greek statue I once saw in a picture book at school. And his eyes...
Oh, his eyes. I will never, ever forget his eyes for as long as I live.
I was completely hypnotized by his blue-grey eyes. They were not dark brown like Indonesian men's eyes. They were blue-grey, like the ocean during a winter storm, like the sky just after heavy rain. And he had a thin, neat, well-trimmed beard, a stubble that was trimmed so perfectly, it made his strong jawline look even more charismatic, even more manly, even more handsome. He looked like he was maybe twenty-nine or thirty years old, but he carried himself with the maturity, the confidence, of a much older, successful businessman.
And behind him, I could see something that made my eyes open even wider. Huge rolls of luxury carpets. Not one or two, but dozens, maybe hundreds, stacked high, all the way up to the ceiling. Carpets with the most intricate, most beautiful, most expensive patterns in deep red, royal gold, and ocean blue. Persian carpets, Turkish carpets. It looked like a giant warehouse or a very, very luxurious showroom. Later I would learn that he owned several companies, but the most famous, the most profitable one, was his family's carpet company. He was a young billionaire. A billionaire heir.
I could not speak. I just stared at him like a foolish, poor village girl.
He smiled at me. It was not a dirty, lustful smile like other men. It was a gentle, polite, respectful, kind smile. And that kind smile reached his amazing blue-grey eyes. He did not look at me like Agus used to look at my body. He looked at me like I was a real person. Like I was worthy of respect.
"Hello, my name is Bahadır Emrah. You can call me Bahadır. I am from Istanbul, Turkiye. I work in my family's carpet company. And you?" His English was fluent, but with a deep, thick, incredibly attractive Turkish accent.
I gathered all the courage that I had left in my broken heart. My voice was still shaking like a leaf.
"Hello! My name is Sri Lestari. You can call me Sri. I am from Yogyakarta, Indonesia. I help my mother sell food. And what are you doing?"
He chuckled, a low, warm, kind chuckle. "I want to meet new people and look for friends. What about you?" he said.
"Same as you, I want to meet new people and look for friends," I said, and for the first time in six long months, I felt a small, shy, real, genuine smile appear on my own face. My frozen heart felt a tiny bit warmer.
In the middle of our awkward, sweet conversation, when I was about to ask him about the beautiful carpets behind him, I heard an old woman's voice calling out from off-screen, from somewhere behind him. It was a warm, motherly, slightly worried voice, speaking in Turkish.
His mother called, "Ne yapıyorsun canım? (What are you doing, my dear?)"
I saw Bahadır turn his head slightly, with so much love and respect for his mother. So much respect. Not like Indonesian boys who shout at their mothers.
"Anne, Arkadaşımla konuşuyorum. (Mom, I'm talking with my friend,)" Bahadır replied to her in Turkish.
Then, to my complete and utter shock, to my amazement, he handed his phone to his mother.
The screen shook for a second, blurry, and then a new face appeared on my small screen.
An older woman, maybe sixty-five years old, with kind, warm, wise eyes that looked exactly like Bahadır's blue-grey eyes, but softer, more motherly, more gentle. Her hair was covered with a light beige headscarf. She had no heavy makeup, just a kind, natural face. She looked at me on the screen, and her face lit up with a huge, genuine, motherly smile. She put her hand on her chest, over her heart.
She said, with a voice full of admiration and wonder, "Masha Allah, Sen çok güzelsin. (Masha Allah, you are very beautiful.)"
I did not understand Turkish, but I know the phrase Masha Allah, because we Muslims in Yogyakarta also say it when we see something beautiful. And I could tell from her tone, from her kind eyes, that she was calling me beautiful.
Bahadır came back on screen, taking the phone from his mother. He was laughing a little, looking a bit embarrassed but so proud.
"My mother is talking about you. She says you are so beautiful! She says you have a light on your face," he explained to me.
My cheeks burned so hot, so red. No man had ever complimented me like this, so respectfully, with his mother right there beside him, watching. I felt tears coming to my eyes, but I held them back. I did not want to cry in front of a prince.
"Please tell your mother thank you so much. But your mother is more beautiful," I answered politely, because that is how a Javanese girl is taught from childhood, to respect elders.
Bahadır translated my words to his mother, and I could hear his mother laughing happily from off-camera, saying a long, beautiful blessing in Turkish that I did not understand, but that made me feel warm.
We continued talking, but my Javanese upbringing, my trauma from Agus, made me cautious.
Suddenly, he asked, with a very polite and hesitant voice, as if he was scared to offend me, as if I was a delicate flower, "Can you give me your phone number, maybe your WhatsApp? So we can talk more easily? The video call here is a little laggy."
My cold wall, my wall of ice, came back up instantly. This is it, I thought. This is where he shows his true color. This is where all men are the same. All men want the same thing in the end.
I made my voice firm, cold, hard, just like I had been for the past six months.
"I am sorry, I can't give my number to new people," I said, looking down.
I waited for him to get angry, to call me rude, to call me arrogant, to hang up angrily, just like other men had done to me on that dating app.
But he did not. He did the opposite.
He just nodded, with complete understanding and deep respect in his amazing blue-grey eyes.
"Okay, no problem. I understand completely. A good girl should be careful. I respect that," he said.
Four words. I respect that.
Nobody had ever said that to me before. Not even my father. Those four simple words melted a small, but important, piece of the thick ice that had covered my heart for six long months.
We had been talking for about an hour. It was already 1 o'clock in the morning in Yogyakarta. The night was silent except for the crickets outside. My eyes were getting heavy, drooping. In Turkiye, it was still only 9 PM, because the time difference is four hours.
I yawned, trying to cover my mouth politely with my hand.
"Sorry, I am sleepy. Maybe we can talk later?" I said softly.
"Okay. Of course. Sleep well, my beautiful Yogyakarta girl. See you later!" he answered, with that gentle, respectful, unforgettable smile again.
He ended the call. My small cracked screen went black, and my small room became dark again.
I lay back on my thin mattress, hugging my old phone to my chest, close to my heart. I could not sleep. But this time, it was not because I was lonely and empty and dead inside. It was because my heart was beating too fast, too loud, too alive.
That short chat, that unexpected, magical midnight video call from a Turkish billionaire carpet prince, had planted a tiny, tiny seed of love inside my frozen, broken heart. A very small, very tiny seed, but a seed nonetheless. A seed of hope.
What I did not know, while I was lying there smiling foolishly in the dark in my small, poor room in Yogyakarta, was that at the same exact moment, in his luxurious, enormous penthouse apartment in Istanbul, overlooking the sparkling, glittering lights of the Bosphorus Strait, Bahadır Emrah was also unable to sleep. For the past two years, he had never dated any woman, because every single woman in Istanbul only wanted him for his money, for his family's huge carpet empire, for his expensive Mercedes and his luxurious penthouse.
But tonight, on a small, cracked phone screen, he had seen a girl in a faded, cheap house dress, in a poor room with thin plywood walls, who refused to give her phone number to a stranger, who spoke to his mother with such deep, sincere, Javanese respect. A girl whose eyes were so innocent, so sad, and yet so incredibly strong.
That night was the beginning. For both of us. The beginning of everything.
****
The sun began to shine over the endless, beautiful green rice fields of Yogyakarta. The roosters crowed loudly, waking up the village. The beautiful call to prayer for the dawn prayer echoed from the small village mosque.
I rushed to help my mother, as I always do every morning.
"My daughter, tomorrow there will be a big catering order for 200 packed lunch boxes," my mother said while stirring a huge pot of sweet jackfruit stew that is Yogyakarta's specialty. The smell was heavenly, sweet and savory. Sweat was dripping from her forehead.
"The village head ordered them, Sri! His son is going to marry a rich businessman's daughter from Jakarta. When are you getting married, Sri? You are 25 years old already, my dear. All your friends are married and have children," my mother asked me, with that typical worried voice of a Javanese mother who wants her daughter to be safe and secure.
I was cutting red chilies for the spicy chili sauce, and I stopped for a moment. I thought about the blue-grey eyes I saw last night. I thought about the words "I respect that." Words that no one had ever said to me.
I tried to sound cheerful, so my mother would not worry about me.
"Never mind, Mom. When the time comes, I will definitely get married. I will marry when I find the right man, Mom! A good man, a respectful man, not like Agus," I said, forcing a smile.
Moments later, just as I finished arranging the fried tofu on a big plate, my phone, which was sitting on our old wooden table, vibrated. My heart jumped so high it almost came out of my mouth.
Bahadır had sent me a message.
It said, "Günaydın, nasılsın? (Good morning, how are you?)"
I smiled. I really smiled. A real, wide, genuine, happy smile, the first real smile I had smiled in six long months since Agus left me broken and cold. I could feel my cold cheeks getting warm. My fingers, which were no longer cold and dead, quickly typed a reply.
"I'm fine, and you?"
"Elhamdülillah, iyiyim. (Thank God, I am good,)" Bahadir replied instantly.
And just like that, with a simple good morning message sent from two different worlds, two different continents, four hours apart, that was the beginning of my love story. A love story between me, a poor Javanese girl who sells food in the rice fields of Yogyakarta, and a billionaire heir who sells luxury carpets in the palaces of Istanbul. A love story that would soon be tested by distance, by poverty, by a terrible debt, and by a jealous monster from my own village.