Leila Chudori - Home

Lintang nodded. “All right, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“But…” My stepfather was never satisfied until he had driven a thorn into the flesh. “Even if you are granted permission, I won’t say anything to you.”

He smiled. Coldly. As if he had won.

“We got to go,” I said to my mother while taking Lintang’s hand. “Goodbye, ma’am, sir.”

“Bye…”

The three of us left the house, not breathing again it seemed until we had reached the front terrace. The nervous tension that Alam and Lintang felt was, I knew, very different from what I was feeling.

What I had felt during that brief time with my stepfather and mother was the endless torture of my childhood years, which suddenly returned to grip me.

“Are you all right?” Alam asked when he saw that my body was suddenly wet from sweat.

I nodded. Alam hailed a taxi. Lintang held my shoulders. In the taxi, none of us said anything.

In just twenty minutes we arrived at Jalan Diponegoro. Even though it was Saturday, our office was full of people. One could hardly see the office signboard, “Satu Bangsa,” because of the many banners with protest slogans about the increase in the price of fuel, the need for reform, the abusive practices of corruption, collusion, and nepotism. People were lounging about the place, on floors and benches.

Lintang got out of the taxi with her large knapsack and the laptop she seemed to carry everywhere. The girl was a mobile library with everything on board she might possibly need. Even so, she refused my offer to help lighten her load.

Gilang, who seemed to have just bathed because his hair was still wet, was on the terrace smoking a cigarette. He smiled when he saw the three of us.

“Hi, Lintang. Where have you been? Have you eaten?”

Then, in front of us, Ujang appeared and asked, “Lintang, would you like to order something to eat?”

Alam shook his head to see the attention being paid to Lintang.

“Thank you, but not now. Maybe later, OK?”

“Come on, let’s order something,” Alam suggested. “If you don’t, you’re going to get hungry and then start to cry,” he wisecracked. “ Nasi Padang for all of us,” he said to Ujang. “Would you like rendang or chicken?” he then asked Lintang, very attentively. Whenever Alam went into such a supercilious mode, it usually meant he liked the woman he was with. If he wasn’t interested in Lintang, he wouldn’t be so fawning or showing her so much attention.

“Do they have grilled chicken?”

“Sure they do. Breast or thigh?” Ujang piped in. “And how about a cold fruit cocktail for desert?” Now he was going close to going overboard in showing off his hospitality skills.

Lintang laughed and nodded, then opened her wallet.

“Put that away!” Gilang said, shaking his finger to stop Lintang from giving money to Ujang. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll treat you to a meal here and you can treat me in Paris!”

“Why don’t you introduce Ms. Sorbonne to our other friends here,” he said to me. “I need to talk to you,” he said to Alam.

Alam looked at Lintang and pointed at his desk. “You can put your things over there, on my desk.”

Lintang followed Alam’s suggestion and then went with me as I began to show her around, but I could see that she was keeping a watch out of the corner of her eyes on Alam, who was now off with Gilang in a corner of the room discussing something.

“We have several advocacy divisions,” I said to Lintang as I began to introduce her to other staff members. “This is Odi. He handles cases of discrimination towards the ethnic Chinese. Odi, this is Lintang. And that’s Agam. He’s in charge of land rights issues.”

Lintang greeted our fellow activists, one by one, who were busy working at their desks. Then I led her into what we called our audio-visual room, a very simple affair. Lintang looked at the computer and our set of editing equipment, which was old and out of date.

“These antiques… I’m sure you don’t have anything like them at the Sorbonne,” I remarked.

Lintang looked with wonder at Mita, who was operating the editing equipment. “What’s important is the result, not the equipment itself,” she said with a smile.

“This is Mita. She rules this room. Mita handles the documentation of all our advocacy activities, both audio-visual and print material. Mita, this is Lintang. Lintang is making a documentary about September 30, 1965, and its impact on the families of victims. She might want to use this beautiful set of equipment one day.”

“You’d be welcome,” Mita said, “but you’ll have to be patient. The equipment is mighty ancient.”

“I’m used to it,” Lintang commiserated. “The cameras and editing tools at my school are pretty old, too.”

I was getting the impression that Lintang would quickly fit in with the other people in the office.

“And what do you and Alam do?”

Lintang asked at the end of our brief tour.

When I smiled at her she immediately guessed my answer: “Victims of 1965?”

“Yes, but we can’t be too out in the open,” I explained to her. “The other people handle advocacy issues; they are our public face. Meanwhile, we work in the background, collecting and documenting the treatment of families of the victims of 1965. We’ve collected a lot of material, but we’re not yet at the point where we can take anything to court.”

“But one day you will, Bimo. I’m sure of it,” Lintang told me, with conviction in her voice. Not entertaining me, not trying to soothe me. Her sentence had the same kind of effect that Bulan’s words had had on me when she treated my injuries after being beaten by Denny and his gang: “One day, don’t you worry, they’ll get their just desserts.”

I don’t know if what Bulan said is true but, at the very least, her words helped to assure me that my life still had meaning. I became increasingly sure that Lintang being here in Indonesia — even with all her French beauty and Sorbonne smarts — was like a fish just released in its own sea. I watched as she looked at the walls near my desk, which were covered with my sketches. There were a few of my father. There was one with a clenched fist and the words “Historical Malpractice.”

Lintang gave me a smile as she pointed to that particular sketch. “Is that your work?”

“That’s not ‘work.’ That’s just doodling.”

“No, it’s better than that.”

She shook her head and looked more closely at the images.

“Om Nug, your father, looks so young and handsome,” she commented. “His mustache is still the same.”

“That’s a sketch of an old photograph. I’ve only met my father twice, you know. It’s too expensive to go see him,” I answered off the top of my head.

Lintang looked at me and then took my hand. “But now you can make some new sketches with the recent photographs I brought for you. You looked at them, didn’t you? He’s still handsome, isn’t he?”

Lintang smiled as if wanting to draw me out from my sadness. I nodded. Sad and happy, the two feelings mixed together.

Lintang looked again at the sketch of the fist. “Historical Malpractice?”

“That’s a term Alam made up,” I answered.

“He does seem to like making up new terms.”

I smiled. “That he does, Lintang. But I’d be careful; he’s a ladies’ man.”

Lintang laughed. I led her back to Alam’s desk.

“If you want to use Alam’s desk or phone, go ahead. I’ll be right over here.”

Lintang quickly removed from her knapsack her notebook with its list of potential respondents and began to make telephone calls. Meanwhile, I busied myself answering e-mails. As I typed, I kept an eye on Lintang, and could see on her face growing frustration as she learned that this person was out of town, that one was down for an afternoon nap, this one would have to first check out Lintang’s background, and that one hung up before she could speak.