Leila Chudori - Home

Suddenly I needed that small space, that vacuum — the one Bang Amir said Allah had given to him. I didn’t know whether I was His true servant but I knew I wanted that space, that small vacuum. I longed to see Bang Amir and talk to him again. Where was he now?

I posted numerous letters to my good-hearted friend, but had no proof they ever arrived safely in his, Bang Amir’s, hands. In them, I asked about the meaning of that vacuum he once had mentioned, the one he said that could be found in every human heart. I desperately longed for something, but I didn’t know what it was. Was it some kind of spiritual essence? When I wrote to Bang Amir, I wrote as if he were standing before me with that calm look of his on his face and speaking to me in the low voice of the popular Indonesian singer, Rahmat Kartolo.

I didn’t know where to position myself in order to find that essence. If, in this tumultuous and transient world, the natural blue color of a river’s waters could be changed to red, where was my station on this map of life to be?

I found no answer to my question.

In February 1969, the following year, Aji called me to convey the news that Mother had died in her sleep.

Was that the answer to my questions? To take Mother away from me? Away from Aji?

A rapid series of snapshots flashed before my eyes from our childhood in Solo with our parents. My father was a teacher of English at the city’s State Senior High School, a school with a reputation for its rigorous curriculum and the belief that Indonesian children had to learn to appreciate both Indonesian and Western literature. It was my father who instilled in me the importance of books as one of life’s staples — just as important as food, drink, and sleep, he said (though he neglected to point out that sex was another necessary and natural part of life as well). When he told me this, my mother gave him a slight nudge. Though she was not particularly religious herself (unlike her brother, my uncle Kiasno), she did feel that some attention must be given to God and religion, that these things, too, were among life’s needs.

It was Om Kiasno who first taught me and then, later, Aji, who was ten years younger than me, to recite the Quran. My father voiced no objection to this, just as he never protested when our uncle assertively reminded us to pray. Father was more concerned with matters of daily life and was apt to make much more of a fuss when Mother forgot to put her batik implements away after using them, because Aji would end up making them his playthings and leave them scattered around the house.

My mother, who was usually called Bu Giri—“Giri” being short for my father’s full name, “Giri Suryo”—but who was also known by her own name, Pratiwi, had a creative hand and would, for nights on end, give herself completely to the transformation of a solid white length of cloth into a most remarkable thing of beauty.

After a day spent preparing meals — cooking was something Mother also enjoyed, a fondness for which she passed down to me — and tending to the needs of two overly active sons and a husband weary from teaching Solonese teenagers who he thought were growing up too fast, Mother would sit cross-legged on the floor for an hour or two with her canting , the small copper vessel with a spouted nib she had to frequently refill with melted beeswax, to create her batik designs. Ever since I was young, I likened Mother’s work with wax to a poet’s work with words — both of which processes produced something of beauty.

Perhaps my discovery of the joy of poetry began not with the fantastic verses of Chairil Anwar, but as the combined result of pressure from my father to speak Indonesian well and to mind my words, just as a body must mind its soul, and of my mother’s love for the canting and melted beeswax.

After I had graduated from senior high school, my father sent me to Jakarta to live with his older brother, Om Muryanto, in order that I might obtain a better and more focused education than was possible in Solo at that time.

After adjusting to my new life as a student in Jakarta and learning my way around the city, I moved from my uncle’s home into a boarding house with Risjaf, a fellow classmate. Thereafter, my visits home to Solo became rare, except for the Idul Fitri holidays, at the end of the fasting month. Patient man that he was, my father voiced no complaint about his wayward son’s avoidance of home. He continued, to the best of his limited financial ability, to send me books of literature so that I would maintain and improve my Indonesian. Meanwhile, Mother would send me reminders from my uncle Kiasno to pray regularly so as “to fill myself with thanks for God’s grace.” Along with her missives of advice, Mother would also often send a newly made length of batik cloth — often one with a bird motif typical of Java’s north coast. Mother knew I liked Cirebon-style batik.

After my father died in my sophomore year, Mother’s letters to me would echo his reminder (to read and speak Indonesian well) and Om Kiasno’s advice (to pray), before including her own personal counsel for me to eat nutritiously the food that I myself had prepared.

Throughout my sojourn, from Peking to Paris, the advice from my elders that I did follow was to read — how could I not? It was part of my oxygen — to cook my own food, and to eat well. Somehow, it slipped my mind to pray regularly.

I wondered whether when Mother died she was thinking about her wastrel son living so far away.

I couldn’t speak for several weeks. I felt as if stones were lodged in my throat. Risjaf, Mas Nug, and Tjai tried various ways to console me, from the most profane of ways — with my favorite kinds of Chinese food that Theresa would cook for me, for instance — to the most spiritual, by arranging special prayer sessions on Mother’s behalf. Nothing worked. Nothing could comfort me. No one could succeed in making me talk. Even a lovely stretch of batik, brown colored in background with green-colored birds, did not make me feel better or bring me calm. The fact was my mother had died and I was not there to kiss her forehead and to say a final goodbye. No voice escaped me.

After several weeks of virtual silence, I awoke one morning suddenly feeling both energetic and panicky, as if I were on some kind of stimulant. I went from one friend to another — to Mas Nug, Risjaf, Tjai and Theresa; to Vivienne and her family; to our neighbors; and to the offices of the French agency that arranged for us to obtain our asylum status — asking the same question: was it possible, with my exile status, for me to somehow enter Indonesia?

“Enter Indonesia? Impossible! You cannot enter Indonesia with a titre de voyage . And even if you were able to, there’s a very good chance you’d never be able to leave that place again.”

I didn’t care. I had to pay my last respects to Mother.

I brushed off all attempts by Mas Nug and Vivienne to calm me down. I had to go home. I had to go home! I would find a ticket. Any kind of ticket. Plane, boat, whatever. The important thing was for me to go home.

In my apartment, Risjaf took me by my shoulders and tried to calm me down. I roughly pushed him aside as well. Finally, they were all silent.

That night Mas Nug handed me a telegram from my brother, which read:

DON’T COME HOME COMMA NOT SAFE STOP PRAY MOTHER IS AT PEACE COMMA WE PRAY FOR HER SOUL STOP

I crushed the telegram in my hand, threw it in the garbage can, and stomped out of our miserable apartment into a winter night whose chilled air seized my bones. I heard the voices of Risjaf and Mas Nug calling after me, but I picked up my pace and ran. The cold wind was a knife stabbing me in the face, but I didn’t feel a thing. I ran and ran. When I finally stopped, I found myself standing on the bank of the Seine. The river was red in color. My face was hot with tears.