Leila Chudori - Home

Yazir jumped straight into the world of metaphor. Now he looked at the pieces of chicken, salmon, and beef on the kitchen table as if they were living creatures looking for the spice of their life. Yazir picked the pieces up, one by one, as if having found a diamond amidst the booty. Meanwhile, Bahrum, a calculating young man but one with limited imagination — I had begun to suspect he was Tjai’s offspring — looked at me the way he might look at an orangutan who needed to be put back in his cage.

“But there are traditional recipes for all these dishes, complete with measurements for spices, right?” he asked. “How are we supposed to know that, uh, this onion here might be attracted to this.” He picked up a slice of fresh turmeric.

My heart skipped a beat. I took the turmeric and put it down in front of me, exactly in front of me.

“Turmeric is the spice that everyone competes for,” I said, as if reciting a legal writ. “This is the flavor for all kinds of cuisines and a curative for all kinds of ills. Turmeric is the jewel in the crown of spices. Don’t ever question its status or use.”

“Use your feeling, your sense of taste, Bahrum,” said Yazir, lifting his two hands as if suddenly imbued with the feeling that he could write a thousand poems of the same caliber as those of Chairil Anwar.

Bahrum rolled his eyes and took a knife. “I’m just more practical,” he said to me. “Give me a recipe and I’ll follow it.” He threw up his hands and refused to join in the party of metaphors in the kitchen. “So,” he said, trying to usher Yazir and me to reality, “are we going to put ikan pindang serani on the menu?” Bahrum pointed to the pile of turmeric in front of me.

I nodded. My Javanese spicy and sour milkfish soup was going to be the star of our menu, the restaurant’s signature dish.

90 RUE DE VAUGIRARD, PARIS; DECEMBER 12, 1982

The poet Robert Frost once said that home is our destination, the place that will embrace us. Tanah Air Restaurant was our destination, the place that would embrace us, but she had to be able to demonstrate cheer upon our arrival.

Mas Nug looked at himself frequently in the mirror, studying his mustache — which he had kept from Jakarta to Peking, then on to Zurich and finally to Paris — practicing how to demonstrate that cheer. He practiced smiling in front of the mirror, repeating the question “ Ça va? ” and nodding his head in interest as he listened to the patter of his imaginary guests.

No one criticized or made fun of Mas Nug; each of the four pillars had his own way of standing strong in the face of mounting apprehension. Sometime before the opening day, Mas Nug and Risjaf asked me to hand-write an announcement, which they enlarged to create a large poster for display in the front window. I wrote: “ L’ouverture du Restaurant Tanah Air. Cuisine Indonésienne. Prix spécial pour la première semaine. Grand opening of Tanah Air Restaurant. Indonesian cuisine. Special prices during the first week.”

Risjaf paced the floor of the restaurant, righting the position of tables and chairs and checking on the attendants — students, most of whom would be working for us part-time — and teaching them how to pronounce “welcome” in Indonesian. “Se … la … mat ma … lam,” he intoned. “Sa … la … ma’ ma … laaaam,” they replied; yet he was satisfied. They were better at the pronunciation of Indonesian than Indonesians were at trying to get their tongues around French.

Mas Nug hooked up loudspeakers outside the restaurant so that passing flâneurs could hear the alternating sounds of Javanese and Balinese gamelans. A few of our French friends, including Jean-Paul and Marie who had helped to set up the cooperative, arrived early to listen to the gamelan music, even though it was only coming from a cassette. Vivienne arrived shortly afterwards and engaged the two in conversation. She also tried to calm the four pillars, who at that tense moment in time did not in the least resemble strong or solid uprights.

To calm his nerves, Mas Nug stopped twisting his mustache and began sipping on a glass of wine in a corner of the room. Tjai and Risjaf took up posts outside the front door, waiting for our first customers to arrive. I remained at my place in the kitchen, while frequently glancing through the window of the door towards the ground floor dining area.

The hands of the clock pointed to six. The heavy beating of hearts, those of the four pillars, was almost audible to my ears. Even with the gamelan music playing, filling the room with its sound, I couldn’t bear to view the emptiness of the dining room. I came out of the kitchen to join Jean-Paul, Marie, Vivienne, and Mas Nug, who was futilely attempting to the whistle to the tune of the gamelan’s pentatonic scale. A sorry sound, indeed, but I didn’t have the energy to tell him to stop. My eyes were glued on the front door.

“Stop staring at the door,” Vivienne said in hopes of calming my nerves. “It’s not going to look back.”

I smiled, and I had just taken out a cigarette to smoke when the bell hanging from the top of the front door began to ring. I looked over to see a French couple enter. They stopped just inside to look around the room and study the shadow puppets and masks that decorated the wall.

Mas Nug and Risjaf immediately greeted them with a mixture of overwhelming good cheer and utter nervousness. I was just about to return to my domain of authority, when Risjaf called my name.

“Madame and Monsieur would like you to explain the menu and, perhaps, advise them what to eat,” he said to me in front of the middle-aged pair.

Before advising anything, I first asked the two of them whether they preferred beef, fish, or chicken, or if they were vegetarian. I also asked whether they liked spicy food. Their answers would tell me what to recommend. Apparently, the couple were culinary adventurers and liked to try all sorts of food — which is why they had come to the restaurant. They had vacationed in India and Thailand and liked the foods they tried there. Now they wanted to sample Indonesian cuisine.

Based on their answers, I recommended that they try a complete Padang meal with an assortment of dishes from West Sumatra. So as not to put his practice in front of the mirror to waste, Mas Nug spoke with the couple in French and offered to bring them wine.

I had just turned to go to the kitchen when the bell on the door rang again. A group of six people came in, all of them French as well. Mas Nug called me over to speak with them. The first lesson learned on opening night was that customers liked this personal touch — the chef of the restaurant discussing with them what they would like to eat.

Then an Indonesian family came in, and then another group of French people. And then, and then, and then… All of a sudden, as if the flood gates had been opened, more and more people came in. Apparently, Risjaf had done a very good job of spreading the news about the opening of the restaurant. But I really did have to return to the kitchen in order to prove that Tanah Air could serve as a home away from home.

Vivienne and Risjaf took over my task of explaining to our curious but mostly unknowing French customers the various dishes on the menu. Watching and listening to Vivienne and Risjaf, our waiters and waitresses also learned about the food they were going to serve.

My hands, and those of Bahrum and Yazir as well, did not stop moving at the work counter. Through the kitchen window, we could observe the expression of customers’ faces. The hits of the evening were grilled chicken; goat satay; gulai anam or Lampung-style chicken curry; soto ayam , spicy yellow chicken soup; and nasi Padang , with a medley of dishes special to Padang, West Sumatra. The waiters delivered hand-written notes from customers full of praise for their meals. I tacked them to the wall of the kitchen so that they would one day serve as a reminder of my first day as a poet in the world of Indonesian cuisine.