Leila Chudori - Home

“Go back to the kitchen,” Tjai said to me as he locked the front door, “and use that knife on some beef or chicken.” Lunch time was just one hour away.

I thought of Mas Hananto and of Surti and their children, and then of all the other friends whom Sumarno had put his finger on. I realized that Sumarno was not unique, but he was for me the personification of that mass of rats who prospered from misery. In life, it seemed to me, there are many people like Sumarno, all of whom easily breed to reproduce creatures of the same kind.

PARIS, APRIL 1998

I suddenly felt sunshine attacking my eyes. What was happening? This was crazy. Why was I back in my apartment? I was confused about both time and space. I slowly rose, feeling completely disoriented and agitated. Amazingly, though, my head now felt clear. I no longer felt dizzy or like I wanted to throw up. In the living room, I found Mas Nug stretched out on the sofa.

The sound I made caused him to stir.

“Hey,” he said, as he wiped his eyes and sat up. “Feeling better?”

“Much better. Who brought me home? And where is Sumarno?”

“Sumarno? What? You must have been dreaming.”

Hmm… I said nothing. This was serious. What year was it anyway?

“Don’t you remember getting sick last night? You took some medicine and fell asleep at the restaurant. I ended up cooking for those Malaysian friends of yours. And then Risjaf and I brought you home in a taxi.”

I took two cups from the cupboard and began to prepare coffee.

“You shouldn’t be drinking coffee or tea,” Nug told me.

I ignored his ridiculous suggestion. How could I live without coffee?

“Listen, Dimas. While you were asleep, I put my magic needles in several of your pressure points. That’s why you’re feeling better now. And from the points I stuck, I could tell that something is wrong with your liver.”

Mas Nug sounded more like a charlatan than a healer to me. After the coffee had brewed, I gave a cup to Nug and then poured one for myself. As I took a sip, I noticed that there were some used acupuncture needles in the waste basket. Good God, he wasn’t kidding.

“Where did you stick those things in me?” I asked, darting my eyes at my arms and stomach.

“You don’t need to know. The important thing is that you’re feeling better now. You are, aren’t you?”

I nodded. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you stick those things in me again.”

Mas Nug grinned and took a sip of coffee. “Before you go back to sleep, there are a couple of things that you should know.”

Now what was he going on about? I waited for him to speak.

“The first is that in our conversation with those Malaysian friends of yours last night, the subject of political activism in Indonesia came up. They especially had a lot to say about one particular activist, a young man by the name of Pius Lustrilanang who had been kidnapped and tortured. Not that I found this information particularly surprising, but what did surprise me is not only that this Pius kid survived the torture but, as the Malaysians told it, he convened an international press conference and described in detail how he had been kidnapped and tortured and that he fully intended to find his captors and make them face justice.”

I almost dropped my cup of coffee.

Wasn’t that crazy to think of? Justice? In Indonesia? It was one of the most startling things I had heard in my thirty-two years in exile.

“What’s happening there?”

Mas Nug shook his head. “I don’t know; but now that one person has spoken up, it will only be a matter of time before other victims begin to speak out as well.”

After mulling over this incident, I suddenly remembered something. “And what’s the other piece of news?”

“Vivienne called this morning to say that the hospital had contacted her because the results of your tests are still at the hospital, waiting to be picked up.”

“The hospital called Vivienne?”

Mas Nug shrugged. “When we filled out the registration form at the hospital the time you fell, we put down Vivienne’s name and number in case of emergency.”

“What the hell? Damn you!”

Mas Nug shrieked like a monkey with a banana. He knew very well that Vivienne would now be on my tail about getting medical treatment. We may have divorced years ago, but she and I continued to maintain an amicable relationship.

“When I talked to Vivienne, she mentioned that she had told Lintang about you collapsing at the Metro station.”

Merde! Now that Lintang knew, there would be no end to the matter.

Mas Nug finished his coffee and then packed his kit of needles. He needed to go home and take a bath and change his clothes, he said. Then he’d go to the restaurant to help in the kitchen and would come back to see me in this evening after the restaurant closed.

“We’ve all agreed that you need to rest. Go get the results of your test, and whatever they may be, follow the doctor’s orders! If you don’t, I’m going to come back here and stick you with a thousand needles,” he said with a threatening tone.

“But the kitchen…”

“Let me and your two assistants take care of the kitchen. There’s no bargaining this time,” said my dictatorial friend, not permitting a reply.

As Mas Nug left my apartment, I listened as he began to sing “What a Wonderful World” in his terribly off-tune voice.

FROM THE WINDOW OF THE METRO, I looked out on a gloomy Parisian spring. Dark and gray, thick with haze Where were the colors of cheerful times: bluish purple, golden yellow, and pastel pink? It was April. The air should be suffused with the scent of flowers and the aroma of a freshly baked croissant just dunked into a cup of sweet-smelling hot chocolate. And the people of Paris should be dressing up the city’s body in preparation for a glorious summer ahead. But as the great poet T.S. Eliot said so effectively, April is the cruelest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / memory and desire …

Thus, it’s not the fault of Paris, for this city is not a land of the dead that gives birth to putrid-smelling flowers. Nor is it the fault of spring, which should be festooned with flowers. April is an accursed month for the students at the Sorbonne, a time with no pause button for their lives. At this time, professors become gods, doling out assignments for tens of papers and examinations, even as they retire to cafés and bistros to drink glasses of wine and cackle with laughter.

Outside the Metro window, I could still see flashing, from one support beam to the next, the clouded look on Professor Didier Dupont’s face — that same sour look that appeared on his face this morning when he watched the video footage I had produced over a period of several months on the subject of my final assignment: Le Quartier Algérien à Paris , the Algerian quarter in Paris.

The light from the small screen flickered on his face. I watched the images of the Algerian immigrants I had interviewed these past few months and whose stories I had methodically recorded. Occasionally, Professor Dupont would squint his eyes and sometimes purse his lips at footage of the adorable and wide-eyed Algerian children but, after ten tense minutes, the professor asked me to sit down in front of him.

For several minutes, my advisor allowed me to fidget nervously as he busily scribbled notes on a pad. Finally he took a breath and looked at me. “ Quelle est votre opinion? C’est un bon plan … ”

His voice was deep as he asked my own opinion of the footage and my future plans.

Professor Dupont was economic with his words and didn’t continue his sentence. He took off his glasses, wiped the lenses with an old handkerchief, and then put them back on in a slow, almost stylized, movement.