The Food Fair. Photo by Brandon Griggs on Unsplash | by Zi | Sep, 2025

The night in Samarinda was restless with noise and smoke. The annual food fair had taken over the square near the old riverfront, a labyrinth of neon tents and tarpaulin roofs sagging under the weight of humidity. Smoke rose from charcoal grills, carrying the scents of sate, roasted corn, and fried bananas mixed with the sticky sweetness of condensed milk from a dozen kopi susu stalls. My introverted nature usually kept me away from places like this, but sometimes the draw of food—cheap, greasy, and abundant—was stronger than the fear of crowds.

I was standing in line for sate taichan when she appeared beside me. A woman about my age or might be younger. She wore a denim jacket faded at the elbows and had a face that carried the kind of tiredness one doesn’t get from a single day, but from years. She wore her hair loose down her back, with stray strands clinging to her temples.

“Is this line for sate taichan?” she asked me, her voice soft but clear enough to cut through the noise.

“Yes,” I said. “Though I think it might take forever.”

She gave a small laugh. “I don’t mind waiting. The smell already feels like dinner.”

We stood there in the thick smoke, the crowd pressing from all directions. I wanted to stay quiet, but something about her presence felt oddly calm, like an anchor in the chaos.

“Do you come here often?” I asked, surprising myself.

“Once a year,” she replied. “The fair comes, I come. It’s like a tradition I can’t break.”

There was a pause before she added, “I’m Maya.”

I told her my name. We shook hands briefly, her palm warm and dry despite the sweat in the air.

For a while we spoke about food. Which stalls had the best sate, which vendors tricked you with too much chili sauce, how the fair never seemed to change from year to year yet always drew the same enormous crowd. The conversation was light, almost rehearsed, the way strangers keep each other company without asking for anything more. But then her tone shifted. She looked toward the grill—or perhaps it was a pan, I can’t quite recall. All I remember is the smoke, thick as hell, then away, as if the smoke reminded her of something she’d rather not recall.

“Do you live in Samarinda?” I asked, just to fill the silence.

“Yes. Born here, raised here.” She hesitated, then added, “Orphaned here too.”

I looked at her, unsure if she wanted me to respond. She didn’t seem sad, just factual.

“My parents died when I was little,” she continued. “I grew up with my aunt. She was… well, she was my only family.”

The sate taichan vendor shouted for the next order, but Maya and I stayed where we were, caught in the invisible pause of her story.

“She raised me. Gave me food, clothes, school. I was grateful. But when I finished high school and started working, she asked me to start paying rent. Not a lot at first, but it was strange—paying rent to the only person who’d ever been close to a mother.”

Her words were steady, not bitter. The way someone speaks when they’ve repeated the story too many times in their head.

“What kind of work did you do?” I asked.

“Sales. Motorcycles. I spent my days persuading people to buy engines they couldn’t afford, to take credit schemes that would drown them in debt.” She gave a short laugh. “Ironic, right?”

I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if irony was the right word.

“One day,” she went on, “my aunt asked to borrow my name.”

I frowned. “Borrow your name?”

“For a loan. Online loan. She said it was for capital, to expand her little grocery store. She swore she’d pay every installment. She even promised me that someday, the store would be mine.” Maya’s voice tightened. “But the money… it went somewhere else. To a man half her age. To nights in karaoke bars. And then one day, she was gone.”

I inhaled sharply, the smoke from whatever it was catching in my throat.

“She left her children with me. Two of them. Eleven and thirteen. My cousins, though they call me kakak now because I feed them, send them to school, make sure they brush their teeth.”

“Where is she now?” I asked carefully.

“No one knows. Maybe Bali, maybe gone across the water. Maybe she’ll never come back. What she left me with is debt, bigger than I ever thought possible, and two children who look at me like I’m their last chance at survival.”

The line had moved forward, but we didn’t. The vendor was shouting, impatient, but Maya ignored him. She had locked her eyes on me, as though I were the only person in this crowded fair who could hold the weight of her confession.

“Every month,” she said, “I get the calls. The collectors want their money. I can pay part of it, but never all. I work, I sell, I count every rupiah. Sometimes I skip meals. Sometimes I pretend the noise from the fair can fill me up.”

Her words spilled out faster now, like she had kept them bottled for too long. I didn’t interrupt. My instinct as an introvert is to listen, to let people carve their silence into me.

“I’m twenty-four,” she said. “I should be free. I should be out with friends, laughing at stupid things, maybe traveling if I’m lucky. Instead, I’m mother to children who aren’t mine, debtor to loans I never asked for, and daughter to an aunt who abandoned me. Tell me, does that sound fair?”

Her eyes glistened under the yellow light of the stall. But she wasn’t crying. She was daring me to answer.

“No,” I said quietly. “It doesn’t.”

She looked relieved, as if all she needed was a witness to say it aloud.

Finally, we ordered our sate taichan. The vendor wrapped them in paper box and passed them over. We stepped aside to the plastic tables under a sagging tent. Around us, the fair pulsed with laughter, bargaining, the clang of woks, the hiss of oil.

We ate in silence for a while. The sate was dry but smoky—I don’t even know why. Sate taichan isn’t supposed to be smoky, but all I could think about was Maya’s story, the sambal sharp with heat, but the food barely registered. I kept glancing at her, wondering how someone could carry so much weight and still sit so calmly.

“You must love them,” I said at last. “Your cousins.”

Maya chewed slowly before answering. “I don’t know if love is the word. Responsibility, maybe. Obligation. Or maybe just the knowledge that if I don’t, no one else will. There are relatives in Sulawesi, but they’re distant, and distance makes people cruel.”

I nodded.

“Sometimes I wish I could leave too,” she confessed. “Just disappear like she did. But then I see their faces. Two kids who still believe adults will keep them safe. If I break that belief, they’ll never trust anyone again.”

The fair around us grew louder as the night deepened. Neon lights flickered against puddles on the ground. Somewhere nearby, a band played a pop song that came out sounding like dangdut on cheap speakers, the rhythm thumping through the tarpaulin roof.

Maya finished her sate and set down the paper wrapper. Her hands were steady, but her voice was low.

“Do you know what it feels like to carry someone else’s sins? To pay every month for a mistake you didn’t make? It’s like drowning, but the water is invisible. No one notices until you stop breathing.”

I didn’t answer. What could I possibly say?

She leaned back, exhaled, and for the first time that night she smiled, a thin fragile curve. “Maybe one day I’ll be free. Until then, I just keep showing up. Selling. Feeding. Waiting.”

She stood then, slinging her bag over her shoulder. The crowd swallowed her almost instantly, just another figure among hundreds, yet I felt the space she left beside me like a hollow.

I remained at the plastic table, the empty wrapper before me, the air still thick with smoke and oil. Around me, life at the fair carried on without pause—children begged for cotton candy, lovers posed for selfies, vendors shouted their prices. But her story lingered, heavy and invisible, like the aftertaste of sambal that refused to fade.