Leila Chudori - Home

In the picture, my father looks like a handsome and intelligent man, simple in his taste in clothing and appearance. Both my mother and Kenanga say that I look just like him. But I’m not all that sure about the comparison. To me, he looks much more self-assured, with a steady gaze capable of piercing the heart of anyone — even the person now holding this square of yellowed and cracked photographic paper. Whatever the case, that’s also what other women I’ve once been close to have always said about me. I say “once” here because I’ve never had a long-lasting relationship with a woman. Kenanga says the fault is mine and that if I ever hope to have a long-term relationship I’m first going to have to learn to control my anger. Maybe she’s right, but at least that hasn’t put a dent on intimate relations. Matters of the body and the heart are two different things. The body is on earth, the heart is in heaven. My problem is that while I prefer to spend my time on earth, most women seem always to want to talk about a future heaven. When that happens it is, for me, the time to say goodbye.

Starting from around the time my father was executed, Om Aji and Tante Retno became frequent visitors to our home. For years I thought that they were somehow related to my family. It wasn’t until I was in junior high school that I learned that “Uncle” Aji was no relative at all. He was my father’s friend or, to be more exact, his older brother, Dimas Suryo, had been a close friend of my father.

It was Om Aji who told me about the relationship between my father and Om Dimas, Om Risjaf, Om Tjai, and Om Nugroho, all of whom had worked together at Nusantara News. They were at once colleagues and friends, he said, who liked to discuss the important issues of the day. But while the rest had gone abroad and never been allowed to return home, my father had stayed behind and was hunted down by the military. It all seemed so hard to believe, like the plot of a film.

Whenever Om Aji spoke to me about these things, he’d always get this bright look in his eyes. But then, afterwards, he’d hug my shoulders and tell me over and again that if my father were still alive, he would be proud to see my dedication to my work and my lack of concern for material standing or wealth. For me to have started an NGO during the New Order regime, especially with the stigma I carry as the son of an executed communist prisoner, was not a choice that many people in my position would have made.

I suppose Om Aji says such things to console me, but I always nod in agreement anyway. Supposing my father were still alive, I think the question I would most like to ask him is whether or not what has happened in this country is a case of historical malpractice. That’s the term I devised for it: “historical malpractice.” I didn’t want to ask Om Aji, because I’m sure he’d just tell me not to get all worked up thinking about the so-called “foundations” of the New Order government. I understand. Om Aji just wants me to be more cautious and not to be so overt in exercising my critical and challenging approach.

For my family, Om Aji and Tante Retno are a large umbrella under which we sheltered in times of rain and storms and from the heat of the sun. Almost as far back as I can remember, Om Aji and Tante Retno were always coming to our house to check on our well-being, bringing with them a dish of baked macaroni; the fried chicken in soy sauce that Bulan likes so much; children’s books by Soekanto S.A., Djokolelono, and Mark Twain; and magazines like Si Kuntjung and Kawanku that their kids had already read. At the end of each visit, I’d often catch sight of Om Aji slipping an envelope into my mother’s hands. Ibu, who worked as a seamstress with the help of two assistants, rarely had extra funds to spare. She, the daughter of a renowned and wealthy doctor, had to make ends meet by working as a seamstress. Whether she ever received any assistance from her parents, my grandparents, I didn’t know and din’t care to find out. They live in Bogor, which isn’t far from Jakarta, but it might as well be another world away from us. Om Aji, who was no blood relation at all, was more like family for us.

Many of the envelopes that Om Aji gave to Ibu came from those unknown uncles of mine in Paris — Om Dimas, Om Nug, Om Tjai, and Om Risjaf — who took turns sending funds her way; but it was Om Aji who gave Ibu the most assistance. Om Aji, with his degree in industrial technology from the Bandung Institute of Technology, was obviously very bright, but he was also highly practiced in the skill of not drawing attention to himself. The name on his identification card was simply “Samiaji S.”—with “Suryo” having been shortened to just an initial. As head of the laboratory for material processing in the research and development division of one of the country’s biggest tire manufacturers, Om Aji didn’t have much need to come in contact with the nitty-gritty of the world outside. He didn’t have to deal with the government, for instance, which, beginning in the 1980s, had been doing its best to implement its policy of “Environmental Cleanliness” and “Personal Hygiene.” He had no occasion to deal with the mass media either. He was able to keep himself busy in his laboratory, and didn’t have to mix so much with others, which helped guarantee for himself a safe if not stellar career. There had been no fast career track for him, but his had not been obstructed either.

I don’t know why Om Aji felt so responsible for my family; but every time there was any kind of emergency — whether financial, political, or domestic — he’d fly in like a mother hawk to take her chicks under her wide wings. Once, when I was in junior high school, I was called to the principal’s office for an infraction, and I probably would have been expelled for at least a week if Om Aji hadn’t suddenly showed up at school to speak to the principal. I’ll never forget that…

At my school there was a kid named Denny Hardianto, and it was he and his gang who controlled the school. But it wasn’t because they themselves were naturally strong, not like a banyan tree with its roots spreading in every direction. That’s not where their power came from. They were just rich kids whose hobby it was to heckle and harass anyone who would allow themselves to be stepped on. Maybe their target was a skinny little girl or a boy with acne covering his face. Or maybe a guy like me, who didn’t like to talk much and whose only close friend was Bimo, who shared my enthusiasm for books and karate.

One day, when Bimo and I were together, Denny and his five flunkies surrounded us and started calling us the sons of traitors. That’s when I lost it and completely forgot what Sempai Daniel, my karate teacher, had taught me: that karate is to be used only as a means of self-defense. But what was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to keep myself from punching Denny in the face when he kept calling my father a traitor? A traitor? What was that? I don’t suppose Denny knew that I’d never really known my father and that he had been executed when I was five years old, yet he had the gall to call me the son of a coward and a traitor. That information could only have come to him from his parents, whispered in his ear when they told him the New Order government’s version of Indonesian history. He was just repeating their words, shouting them just to rankle me.

What do I actually remember about my father except for those fleeting images? Ibu has always said that I have a good memory, a photographic memory. I know it’s not the kind depicted in Hollywood films, where savant-like characters are able to conjure up an amazingly detailed picture of past events and places; but, even so, I can remember most everything I’ve read; most every picture I’ve ever seen; most every road and every place I’ve passed; and, for damn certain, any person who has ever rapped my knuckles. They’re all recorded indelibly in my mind.