Leila Chudori - Home

The atmosphere at the restaurant was also tense at that time. All of us were on tenterhooks as we watched the television, minute by minute, hour by hour. Even with the delays in news coverage, quite a lot of information was conveyed. (Apparently, CNN and other major news outlets deemed other world news to be far more important so that news about Indonesia was aired only a few times a day.)

On May 21, when President Soeharto made his resignation speech, the whole lot of us roared aloud. The entire restaurant erupted in shouting. Our two cynics, Om Nug and Om Risjaf, yelled that they were going to find a goat to slaughter. (Don’t ask me where they were going to find a goat in the middle of Paris!) And as if they didn’t know better, they also said they were going to order plane tickets for all of us to come to Jakarta. Om Nug said that the New Order government had fallen, that we could at last go home and set foot in our native land.

Your mother kept insisting that it was time for you to come back to Paris to see me but, I’m sorry, I had to forbid her from telling you so. By this time I was just surviving on medicines, but you were in the middle of finishing your assignment.

And now I am surrounded by four white and boring walls

and a nurse with the look on her face that’s likely to hasten my death. She never seems to smile, but then becomes delighted when she’s sticking a needle in me to extract another blood sample.

Oh, my dearest Lintang…

It’s truly ironic that with the fall of Soeharto there is, indeed, a good possibility that we pillars here will be able to come home to Indonesia, but that I will be coming home in a coffin (if not in the open-sided

keranda

we Muslims are supposed to be in). But that’s all right. Didn’t I always say that I wanted my final home to be in Karet cemetery? No need for an expensive plot for me at Père Lachaise in Paris — and don’t dare purchase a plot at Tanah Kusir or Jeruk Purut cemeteries in Jakarta. Choose for me a rectangle of earth in Karet. The soil there, with which my body will fuse, has a smell and texture I know.

Don’t cry for me. Don’t cry.

Scatter cloves and jasmine flowers on my grave so that their scent reaches my body lying there below, silent and alone. I am confident of capturing their fragrance through the spaces in the soil that kindly provide a path for their scent I know so intimately to reach me.

I can picture the ceremony. I can see who will be there to attend my burial alongside you, my life’s most shining star, and your mother, the most beautiful and strongest woman I’ve ever known, who stood at my side through my life’s ordeals. I can see my brother Aji and his fine family; Tante Surti and her three children; and the remaining three pillars of Tanah Air. (Try to comfort Om Risjaf, who won’t have the strength to hold back the bitter pain of it all. Of the four pillars, he was always the most sensitive, and the one the rest of us always thought of as a youngest brother. Stay beside him, please.)

I can also see Nara and Alam and all of the friends you made at Satu Bangsa among the crowd of mourners. Maybe you will pray for me. Maybe Om Aji will lead the prayer. Maybe the lot of you will be even so wacky as to play Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” But if you want to help console Om Risjaf, let him play his harmonica — as long as he doesn’t play “When the Orchids Start to Bloom” because, for me, my orchid withered long ago. Tell him instead to play John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Road.” And if that does happen, don’t be surprised if you hear me humming along from my final place of rest.

There are a few things I need to tell you and I must do it quickly because that foul-humored nurse of mine will be back here soon to jab me with her damned needle. But I can’t resist telling you first that a couple of days ago I played a trick on the nurse that almost drove her crazy. I packed up all my belongings, then straightened my bed and found a place to hide. When she came into my room, she must have panicked, because she pushed the blue emergency call button which brought all the other nurses and caused the guards to start a manhunt. Political exile that I am, used to wandering from one country to the next, hoodwinking my minders was easy for me. I found myself a place to hide in a storage closet where they keep sheets and blankets. Even with the commotion in the hallway, it was so nice and warm and soft in there, I ended up falling asleep. In the end, they did find me, of course, and with their hands on their hips marched me back to my room like an apprehended fugitive.

The price I paid for my insurrection was high: ever since

then, Om Nug and Om Risjaf have been on guard duty, taking turns to watch over me, day and night, as if I were a hardcore criminal. And then when your mother comes to see me in the mornings and evenings, before and after her classes, she always has this little smirk on her face, like I’ve finally been put in my place. Well, just wait! I fully intend to find another way to make a disturbance.

But, anyway, back to what I was saying. This is the most important part of what I want to say to you and it has to do with Alam and Narayana. Though you never said as much in your e-mails to me, I know that something special has happened between you and Alam. It’s easy to catch the carefreeness and passion in your words whenever you write about Alam or quote for me something that he has told you. You have been struck by lightning. And that’s OK. That’s normal. And although I don’t know Alam — he was just a baby when I left — I’ve seen enough pictures of him to know that he’s gotten the best physical traits of both Om Hananto and Tante Surti. But I’m sure you’re not attracted to him just because of his height or muscular build; such specimens are easily available in Europe. There must be something in Alam that has made you feel at home in Jakarta. It couldn’t just be because of your film assignment.

And then we have Narayana who has the good looks of a French actor. Again, of course, I know that’s not the reason that you’ve maintained a relationship with him for several years. I won’t say much about this and I won’t try to interfere, but what I want to tell you is this: don’t play with the feelings of a person until his heart is broken to pieces and scattered everywhere. Be brave enough to make a choice, even with all the

risks it might entail. You’re still young. Making a choice doesn’t mean having to get married tomorrow. And not choosing either Nara or Alam is still a choice. Whatever it is, make your own choice, for yourself and for your peace of heart.

I don’t want you to be a person like me, who was never able to choose. I found myself enchanted by so many things, and wandered from one way of thinking to another without finding one that was enduring. The only thing I was ever sure of was myself and my desire to continue my unending voyage. Or, in your mother’s words, to fly like a seagull without ever wanting to alight. As a result of my indecision, life made its choices for me and it was not I who determined my life’s course.

Your mother had the courage to choose. She chose to marry me, crazy nomad that I am. And then she chose not to marry again. So, too, Tante Surti, another woman who was brave enough to make a choice. Believe me, even people like my friend Hananto and Aji’s son, Rama, are people who made choices. Even if we don’t agree with their choices, we must respect their right to choose.

The other thing, Lintang, and this is a question: what did you in the end finally pluck from I-N-D-O-N-E-S-I-A? I’m sure that what you found in your time in Jakarta of just a little more than a month is not enough to explain all of the factors that have shaped Indonesia. Your final assignment will help to explain a small part of the country, will reveal a few of the voices to be found there. I do not use the word “small” disparagingly, because I am confident that your work will have an immense impact. Your documentary will be another voice, a voice from the other side which for thirty-two years has been silenced.