Leila Chudori - Home

“Whatever the case, he is our son. We can’t just let go of him.”

“Didn’t he let go of us?”

“No, he didn’t. He’s just confused is all.”

“A teenager having an identity crisis is normal. That’s the time when people change. But Rama is an adult, almost thirty years old. Your thinking is too complicated. There’s no need to defend him. It’s simple: he’s ashamed of us and himself!”

The light in Retno’s eyes dimmed as she listened to her husband. Although his criticism was justified and he made no false accusations, almost any mother is going to feel a sting when fault is found with her child. A child’s umbilical cord with his mother can be severed only by the angel of death. Between Retno and her son there was an everlasting bond, which not even her husband and Rama’s father would ever understand.

“Not every child can be as happy-go-lucky as Andini,” she said softly to her husband. “Children have their own nature, even when they have the same parents.”

Retno tried to be philosophical, even though she, too, felt hurt by the absence of their son in their lives and their home.

Aji took another sip of coffee and then stroked the arms of his wife whose heart and soul were far more noble than his own, this husband who became easily riled when unable to accept things as they were.

“What does he want? He’s not coming here just to say hello, for sure.”

“Hush…”

With her husband’s anger now in abatement, Retno stood to return to the kitchen; but Aji was certain his wife knew the reason for Rama coming to the house.

“Where’s Lintang?”

“She’s been out with Alam since morning. They went to Bimo’s house. Said it had to do with her documentary.”

“And Dini?”

“Still sleeping. She was up all night working on her thesis,” his wife replied from the kitchen. “I’m making nasi uduk , is that all right?”

Aji nodded. While he knew that Retno could not have heard his non-vocal response, it didn’t really matter; he wasn’t very particular about what he ate for breakfast. Aji guessed that his wife had, if only subconsciously, reverted to being a mother of two children at home in the house. Nasi uduk with all the fixings — fried chicken, chicken livers, and shredded omelet on top of rice that had been cooked in coconut milk — had always been Rama’s favorite dish. Andini had never been a picky eater and devoured anything on her plate. She could eat a boiled fence post. But Rama had always been much choosier in his tastes: in his diet and the moods of his heart. This his mother recognized, which is why she tried so hard to make the house a happier place whenever Rama came to visit.

The television was now off and the screen mute and dark gray, yet Aji seemed to see in it an electric flashpoint that expanded into a television series about his family — one episode after another telling the story of how his children had been born and raised in a family always haunted by fear. Despite the fact that his family lived in Jakarta and that the hunt for members of the Communist Party and affiliated organizations had waned in the years after 1965, as had the tracking of families and sympathizers of Party members, this did not mean that the Aji Suryo family had ever been able to live in a state of loh jinawi , the kind of complete happiness and harmony that marks the end of every wayang tale.

Aji was well aware of the paranoia of the New Order government, which issued decrees whose only purpose was to strengthen the regime’s hold on power. Given his own experience, with his family’s home in Solo having been frequently raided by the military and the interrogations he had been submitted to during their search for his brother, it was natural that Aji chose to keep his head down in later years, both in his career and in his social life.

Unfortunately, his chosen way of life seemed to have had a negative effect on his son Rama, who grew up with an inferiority complex from thinking there was nothing about his family that he could be proud of. His parents rarely held parties or convened large gatherings with relatives or neighbors. Unlike in “normal” families, birthdays, graduations, and even Rama’s and Andini’s achievements in school competitions were never celebrated in any big way. Unlike many of Rama’s classmates, his family didn’t live in a palatial home or own an expensive car. Never anything flashy, and not because his family was poor. In fact, they were far from it. With Aji holding a degree in the field of industrial technology from the Bandung Institute of Technology and as head of the materials processing laboratory for research and development at a leading tire manufacturing company, he earned a very reasonable income, even if it was not astronomical.

Ever since Rama was a child, Aji observed, his son had always been good with figures. He paid close attention to everything said to him and was diligent in doing his homework. He was serious in undertaking each task assigned to him — and expected the same degree of fastidiousness on the part of the person giving the assignment. With his family choosing to live outside the radar, as it were, Rama often felt stymied; but he forced himself to hide his frustration — at least until he was a teenager, when it began to burst out of him. At that point he began to complain of how his uncle’s political “adventures” had caused such discomfort for his own family’s life. In Aji’s eyes, however, what his family had had to go through was far from, for instance, what the Hananto Prawiro family had experienced, with their entire life spent beneath the microscopic scrutiny of intelligence agents.

When the government launched its so-called “Personal Hygiene” and “Environmental Cleanliness” programs in 1981, it meant that anyone hoping to become a civil servant or to occupy a public service position — like a teacher or journalist — had to first go through a special background check. Rama, who was in junior high school at the time and beginning to think of his own future, became an ever more tense adolescent. These policies served as a filter and were intended to keep the families of political prisoners from ever playing a significant role in public life. At once, Rama’s and Andini’s future prospects narrowed.

Rama felt that all his classmates, friends, and neighbors looked down on his family, that they carried a stigma which had best be kept at a safe distance. Rama’s paranoia was such that every day he asked his father whether he had been harassed at his office. Rama began to drop his use of the name “Suryo” and, in its place, use his second name instead: “Rama Dahana.”

Andini, unlike her older and anxious brother, was born with an easy-going and carefree nature. Whenever she succeeded at something, she never sought to bask in the attention garnered by her achievement. What she liked best was not the end goal — high marks, a trophy, or whatever — but the process leading to that achievement, whether in her education at school or in the stacks of books her father gave her. Without ever having met her cousin Lintang, she had initiated a correspondence, and the two cousins began to send each other books of literature whenever someone their families knew was going to or coming from Paris. The two cousins were equally avid readers who found untold joy in words and their meanings.

Andini never had problems with her homework and never intentionally would do anything to upset her parents. She didn’t make an issue of her family’s position, which meant always having to keep their heads down as a result of the political views of an uncle she didn’t even know. About the only thing that could make Andini lose her control was when her brother unleashed a torrent of complaints or began to shout in anger at their parents — which is something that happened all too often when he was a teenager. Andini was a person who believed that all people had in themselves the strength and ability to overcome and settle their own problems. She didn’t believe in weakness and she didn’t tolerate whining or sniveling behavior.