Leila Chudori - Home

At one point, Lintang leaned back against her chair and said out loud: “Now I can see why Alam said that three weeks would not be enough time.” She turned to me. “I guess it’s not easy for some families of former political prisoners to open up old wounds. Especially for people they don’t know, like me.”

“Be patient,” I told her, having no real answer. “This is just your first day.”

“I’m going to need your and Alam’s help to open their doors for me,” Lintang said.

“Later, we can look at that list of respondents and talk about them one by one. But to be honest with you, Alam would be the better person to help you.”

After Alam and Gilang had finished whatever it was they were discussing, Alam came to our corner of the room with a stern and serious look on his face. Just as I started to ask what was happening, Ujang returned with our meals.

“What is it, Alam?”

“Food’s on, Lintang.”

“What is it? What’s going on?”

Alam took his packet of rice and left Lintang’s question hanging. Lintang seemed to understand that she couldn’t force him to give her an answer.

The three of us ate our packets of rice with their Padang-style mix of side dishes while we talked about things that had nothing whatsoever to do with Alam’s furrowed look or the irksome time with my stepfather. Lintang, who I noticed was good at eating with her fingers, talked about my father and his Clark Gable mustache and how he had chased down her father with his acupuncture needles. The way she described the scene had us laughing so much we were holding our sides and trying to keep from choking on our rice.

That evening, after our work for the day was over, Gilang came to Alam and spoke again in a whispered voice about plans for the coming Monday.

Only when the three of us were on the sidewalk, walking to find a taxi, did Alam tell us what Gilang had said: “Gilang said I had to be careful. He found out that those four activists who were abducted last March…”

Lintang and I furrowed our brows.

“What?”

“He found out they heard that I was to be the next O.T.”

“O.T.?”

“Operation Target.”

“Oh…”

“What? Does that mean you can’t go anywhere?” Lintang asked.

“Are you supposed to keep your head down?” I asked.

Alam lit a cigarette, apparently to calm himself.

“Whatever…Gilang just wants me to keep a lower profile. Not to be so vocal. He said that there have been some flies around this place.”

“Flies?”

Ms. Sorbonne needed a translator. “Intelligence agents,” I told her.

Alam smiled, which surprised me. Normally, he would have been angry. With beautiful Ms. Sorbonne around, he had become extraordinarily docile.

Lintang looked around at us, left and right. “Do you mean, like spies?”

“Don’t worry, Lintang, our local brand of spy is easy to pick out, because they want to be seen,” said Alam with a laugh.

That night, the three of us walked the length of Diponegoro down to Salemba even though the sidewalks, which smelled of urine, were definitely different from those of Paris, which had been built with the pedestrian in mind. But Lintang seemed to enjoy the contrast. She listened to us attentively, every once in a while needing a translation for a term she didn’t know. Whenever that happened, she would try to find a synonym in French. “Intelligence,” she said, but the way she pronounced it was “entelijongs,” with a somewhat nasal sound. “When you say that word in French,” I told her, “it sounds much too poetic for the dirty flies the term describes.” We laughed at that and for the first time that day I was able to forget my childhood home of hell.

AS THE SCENT OF TORAJA COFFEE infused the morning air, Aji Suryo wished to do nothing more than spend the weekend in pleasing solitude. After a full week at the office listening to noisy and oft-repeated conversations about the demonstrations that were disrupting traffic and causing everyone to be late to work, that is what his intention had been. These conversations had grown even more clamorous when, as the demonstrations spread, it became increasingly difficult for the staff even to leave the office building. There was little choice for Aji or the members of his staff but to wait inside and talk about the political situation until dusk, when the call to evening prayer signaled that it was time for the protestors to go home.

As Aji listened to his colleagues rant about the country’s chaotic situation — from decisions President Soeharto had made, seemingly without forethought at a time when the value of the rupiah was in free-fall, to the announcement that the president had appointed his cronies and even one of his children to the cabinet — he felt very little except apathy. As bad as the country got, the government wasn’t going to change. Despite the perils that the current economic situation foreboded, the government’s leaders and their supporters still felt themselves to have the upper hand. One indication of this was that the president was still planning to leave for Cairo the following week — as if the problems at home were going to just vanish.

The strong scent of coffee stimulated his senses. There were times when Aji wanted to step out from the clichéd family portrait of a husband sitting and reading the newspaper as he waited for that morning miracle called coffee to appear, brought to him by his charming wife. Sometimes he wanted to turn the picture around or upside down, with him in the kitchen grinding the beans for coffee, like his brother with his cooking ingredients and spices, and Retno leaving the house to earn their daily bread. But Aji realized that even now as Retno was making cups of Toraja coffee for the two of them, their family was in fact very dissimilar from the one in the clichéd portrait.

While he waited for his wife and their morning coffee, Aji switched on the television and then began to turn the pages of the morning paper. The news in both media was the same: the ongoing demonstrations by students from nine universities in Medan. Finally Retno did appear with the cup of coffee he’d been waiting for, but also with a piece of news that and caused the clichéd structure of their Indonesian family to immediately implode.

“Rama called…”

The morning miracle began to dissipate. Aji tried to enjoy what remained, one small sip at a time.

“Aji…”

Aji was either not listening to his wife or pretending not to hear. His eyes were fixed on the television newscaster, who was reporting details of the demonstration that had ended in mayhem.

“Mas Aji…”

“Yes…?”

“Rama. Your son…”

“What is it? Did you see this? There’s rioting in Medan.”

“Rama is coming by; he’s on the way here now.”

This sentence caused Aji to turn and look at his wife. “What for?”

Retno sat down beside her husband and appeared to be searching for the right words, so that her husband’s Saturday, the day on which he saved his energy, would not be disturbed.

“Why? What for?” Aji asked again, this time with more stress in his voice in order to force his wife to quickly express whatever disturbing piece of news it was she had to convey. Was there ever any news about Rama that failed to dislodge the clichéd view of their home and family?

“All he said is that he wanted to speak to us.”

Aji took a breath and went back to watching television. “Almost four years now he’s had little to do with us. Last year he didn’t call or come over, just at Lebaran when he showed his face and then vanished like a ghost.”

Aji turned off the television with a look of hurt and insult on his face. “Does he even think of us as his parents anymore?”