Leila Chudori - Home

Lintang nodded. “I know that, Ayah. I read about that; but, still, I’ve never felt more prepared than I do now.”

“One more thing,” Dimas added. “I know that you know — from articles in the paper and news on the television — that Indonesia is going through a very unstable period at this time.”

“Yes, I know. President Soeharto installed his daughter as Minister for Social Affairs and packed the cabinet with his cronies! That stuff has been widely covered by the media.”

“I know,” Dimas agreed. “Ever since the Asian economic crisis at the end of last year, problems have been growing: economic, political, and social. Indonesia appears to be on the brink of chaos. In this situation, not only will it be difficult for you to focus on your work, but you yourself might be put in danger’s way. You must be very careful.”

“I will be,” she promised.

“If your mind is made up and you are going to do this, Om Nug and I will send messages to friends and family members who will be able to help you locate sources. But before we can do this, you must clearly define what your film is to be about. Once you’ve done that, we will do everything we can to help.”

Lintang leaned against her father’s shoulder and smiled. “ Oui … Merci , Ayah.”

Dimas smiled. Beginning to feel the effect of the medicine he had taken and the drowsiness it induced, he yawned.

Lintang felt it was time to speak of something she had been avoiding for months. “About that argument of ours, Ayah, I…”

Dimas waved his hand, a sign that he’d already forgotten about it. He closed his eyes as he leaned against the arm of the sofa. “I’ll just lie down. I’m not sleepy yet.”

Lintang rose to give her father more room to rest. No sooner had he stretched out on the sofa than he fell asleep. Lintang covered her father with a blanket. He looked pale and tired. Lintang leaned down and kissed him on the cheek.

Because the sound of the vacuum cleaner would surely disturb her father’s sleep, Lintang decided to put off cleaning the floors of the apartment. Instead, she concentrated on straightening the books on the shelf. After a half hour doing this, she then moved to her father’s desk in his bedroom, the only territory that was in relatively good order. Apparently, during this time of recovery, her father had been unable to do much work. She pulled out the rolling office chair and sat down. Her eyes fell on a manuscript, one that her father had been working on for some time now, apparently with the view of having it published one day as a book. On the first page of the manuscript was its working title: “Testimony.” She turned the first page to scan the table of contents. Chapter headings denoted that the manuscript contained life histories of people from various regions of Indonesia who had been hunted down by the military in the period 1965–1968. Subchapters were devoted to the fate of their families, their children, and the parents of the targets who were hunted down.

Lintang glanced at her father who was breathing slowly, his chest rising and falling like that of a baby. Near the desk were several large wooden chests apparently serving as file cabinets for her father’s work. Opening the lid of one of the chests, she saw that it contained clippings from newspapers and magazines, as well as scholarly books by Western political analysts with various views and theories about the September 30 Movement — whether the Indonesian Communist Party had been behind the attempted coup or whether the alleged coup had been the result of fractures in the military that pitted leftist officers against the military elite. Based on her research into materials available at the Beaubourg library, Lintang could see that her father’s collection was fairly comprehensive. It was also in neat order.

Closing the lid of the chest, Lintang’s eyes moved to the next one. When she opened the cover, the sight of its contents made her heart beat faster. The letters inside were her father’s personal domain, which could very well be out of bounds for her. She recalled a letter she’d come across years before, when she was thirteen years old. The letter was from Surti Anandari, the wife of Hananto Prawiro, her father’s good friend. Lintang shivered to remember that night. The letter had led to an explosive argument between her parents, and that same night her father had left the family’s apartment.

The letters in the second chest, it seems, were there because they related to her father’s work. Lintang went through the stack, careful not to disturb their order. One that was dated August 1968 was from her uncle Aji, her father’s younger brother. She perused its contents. In the letter Aji informed her father that his friend, Hananto Prawiro, had been arrested and that no one knew where he had been taken. He also mentioned that during the time Hananto was on the run, his wife Surti and their children, Kenanga, Bulan, and Alam, had been detained twice, first for a time at the detention center on Jalan Guntur and later, for a longer period, at the one on Budi Kemuliaan. The intelligence agents knew that it was Hananto who was supposed to have gone to Santiago. Why then, they asked, had Dimas Suryo had gone instead?

Lintang mused. If it had been Hananto and not her father who had gone to Santiago, her father would never have met her mother and she would not exist.

Lintang continued going through the stack of letters until she came to another one from her uncle Aji, but this was one that time had not served well. So faded its ink and so fragile the paper, her father had placed it in a protective plastic sleeve. In sections of the letter the ink had faded so much she found it almost impossible to decipher. It was written in “1968,” but she couldn’t read the month or date.

… 1968

Dear Mas Dimas,

Now that we’ve moved to Jakarta, I finally can give you some detail on what happened in Solo. In Solo, I was much too paranoid to write at length about the hell that the city became after September 1965. Even now, three years after the tragedy, it seems like only yesterday the world was turned upside down. Imagine: three years later and we still live in fear! How did it all happen? How did our hometown come to be divided into two ever opposing camps — with one in support of the PKI and the other against the Party — when previous to that time differences in opinion were accepted and tolerated? I remember you telling me before you left for Santiago that the pro-PKI people had become ever more aggressive in their tactics and had begun to go after their opponents. Maybe that’s why, after September 30, the table turned. But what I witnessed wasn’t just a matter of anti-PKI people getting revenge for the past actions of PKI supporters. A concerted effort was made by the military to inflame the enmity of the one camp towards the other, so much so that the hunting down and slaughter of communists came to be seen as normal.

I remember in mid-October, two or three weeks after the events of September 30, military troops arriving at Balapan train station. They weren’t brought in just to tear down anti-military posters or to help clean up the town; they were brought in to stir people up and drive them to burn and destroy all Communist Party offices, symbols, and equipment. By this time

the PKI in Solo was completely paralyzed and powerless — at least that’s what was reported in the news. With them now so weak, I thought the madness would end and the situation would be brought under control. In fact, it was allowed to spin further out of control.

One day when I left the house to send a telegram, I heard that the military had embarked on a coordinated roundup of senior PKI officials who were said to be hiding in the Sambeng area of Sidorejo. I wasn’t sure if this was true, but I heard it from Om Kiasno.