Leila Chudori - Home

France would never be Dimas’s home. I realized that from the moment our eyes first met. There was something that prevented him from being happy, from feeling completely at home. Was it the bloodbath that had occurred in his own homeland? Was it the country’s political upheaval, which had not only eroded but also depleted all sense of humanity in Dimas and his friends, forcing them to pick up, here and there, whatever bits and pieces they could find in order to rebuild themselves into a new whole as human beings possessing a sense of dignity and pride?

Politics is never simple, and ideological struggle is but a pretense for the lust for power. All the books I’ve read on the subject have their own theories about what happened in Indonesia in September 1965. In my first few years of knowing Dimas and his friends — Nugroho, Tjai, and Risjaf — it wasn’t easy for me to piece together their life stories, which they delivered in a piecemeal fashion. There were numerous common experiences they shared as wanderers, but they all had very different personalities and different reactions towards the tragedy that had occurred in their homeland. That said, they all wanted to go home and waited for the opportunity to see a better Indonesia. But thirty years had passed and “the Smiling General”—the country’s long-reigning authoritarian leader, President Soeharto — was all the more strong and feared.

Maybe the overtly civilian style of government in Indonesia wasn’t the same as the one adopted by military leaders in Latin American countries, but the Smiling General continued to retain a firm grip on his throne.

It’s been a while now since I’ve seen Dimas, but I still look for the news about Indonesia that occasionally appears in the mass media, on the television and in the press. I’m sure that following the recent tumble in the value of the rupiah and the economic crisis that befell the region, President Soeharto felt the need to do something, the need to act. But what he did, according to the reports I’ve seen, was to install his own daughter in the government cabinet! Whether or not his political panic will escalate and one day cause him to fall, I don’t know, but if he does fall, I am very sure that of the four pillars — Dimas and his three friends — Dimas will be the first to return in order to live out his old age in Indonesia. I’m also sure that if at all possible he will return home with a green Republic of Indonesia passport in his hand. If at all possible, that is, but likely it’s not. Regardless, I’m very sure that he will try to return home.

Unlike Dimas, his three friends in exile seem to have long ago given up the obsession of spending the rest of their days in their home country. Nugroho seems to be comfortable, and long ago accepted the fact that he must consider Paris to be his second home. Tjai has said that he would like to go back to visit but not to stay permanently. Risjaf, meanwhile, somehow succeeded in getting a visa for Indonesia. But as long as he has Amira and their son Ardi at his side, he could feel complete and safe anywhere.

Dimas is in a different category altogether. He and his three friends are all Indonesian, and all of them come from Java with the exception of Risjaf, who comes from Riau, in Sumatra. Even so, after meeting friends of Dimas in Paris, Amsterdam, Leiden, The Hague, Berlin, and Cologne, I got the sense that there was something that set Dimas apart from his fellow political exiles. At first I thought of them as seagulls, flying from one continent to another as a flock and then setting down roots and establishing homes in the continent where they alighted (if only temporarily). But after meeting Dimas, marrying him, and raising a family, I came to see that Dimas was not, and had never been, in fact, an inseparable part of the flock. His camaraderie with his friends was deep and his loyalty to the group was not to be doubted, but Dimas still differed from the flock’s other members. While the others tried to adapt and to build a home in another continent, Dimas’s spirit remained in the nest where he had been born and raised. Differing from other gulls of the same generation, Dimas was a bird that always wanted to return to the land of his birth, never content to simply remain with the family he had formed in an alien land.

I was ready to follow Dimas in his desire to return to Indonesia one day — if that day were ever to come — which is why from the time Lintang was just a baby I began to prepare her as well, making sure that she could speak not just French, but also Indonesian and English. Supposing, just supposing that miracle were to happen… But seeing the inexorable power of the Smiling General, I was never sure it would. And even in my dreams, I imagined that if one day Soeharto were to die, his replacement would be a person cut from the very same cloth, of one mind and imagination — which is, in effect, to say, there would be no change in Indonesian government policy whatsoever and the wandering flock of birds would be left stranded in their foreign lands. Their names would be expunged from Indonesian history and the history of civilization as well, whereas the regime that oversaw their erasure would continue to live on, one generation after the other. I hoped I was wrong.

Every year Dimas did the same thing and experienced the same disappointment. My heart bled for him. Year in, year out, Dimas would submit an application to the Indonesian embassy for a visa to Indonesia, which was always rejected for reasons never given. If the embassy had summarily rejected the visa applications of all Indonesian political exiles, that might have helped to alleviate Dimas’s frustration. But there were those among his friends — probably ones the Indonesian government deemed would make no noise — who were granted tourist visas: Risjaf was one; Mirza, in Leiden, another; and several of his friends in Germany. But it was after the protests and demonstration in Dresden two years ago, at the time of Soeharto’s state visit, that I truly began to wonder how easy it would be for Indonesia to open the doors to its prodigal children abroad. Whatever the case, there were bureaucratic mountains and canyons to pass through in the Indonesian government’s alleged open-door policy for exiles. That is why — just to try to get Dimas from forever feeling rejected like Ekalaya, that favorite puppet character of his — I once spoke my mind and suggested that he accept the possibility of not being able to spend his old age, and one day shut his eyes forever, in Indonesia.

Mon Dieu. You should have seen the hurt look in his eyes. My own words surprised me. I suddenly realized that sometimes stating the obvious, in a rational manner, can have calamitous consequences. I had extinguished the small light in a dark tunnel.

Dimas didn’t say anything, didn’t even express his distress. But that wouldn’t have been Dimas’s style. He just picked himself up from where he was and went out to the terrace to smoke. Because he didn’t bother to close the door, cold winter air rushed into the apartment. I knew that I had said something wrong. But I was not wrong.

I followed Dimas to the terrace and attempted to defend my point of view without further upsetting him.

“Home is where your family lives.”

“Home is the place where I feel I am at home,” Dimas replied, his voice cold and flat. That conversation was not the point that determined our separation. That night was just one dot in a long line of dots that finally forced us to take our separate ways.

“ Bonjour .”

“ Bonjour . Vivienne?”

“ Oui . Is that you, Nugroho? Is Dimas there?”

“Yes, Viv, I’m here, just keeping Dimas company. My word, how long has it been? How are you!? It’s been such a while since you’ve been to Tanah Air. And how is Lintang?”