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LEILA S. CHUDORI spent six years researching this groundbreaking novel, interviewing exiles and their families in Paris and Jakarta, basing her characters on these real individuals, trapped in the tides of history. The novel’s central character, Dimas Suryo, abroad in 1965 and unable to return to Indonesia after Suharto’s rise to power, winds up in Paris, where he helps found a restaurant, based on the real Restaurant Indonesia, a place to join and celebrate their longed-for home culture through food, dance, and song, while suffering a lifetime of homelessness away from Indonesia. In another narrative strand of the novel, Lintang Utara, Suryo’s daughter with a Frenchwoman, arrives in Jakarta in 1998 for her thesis in film studies just as the student protests that bring down Suharto get underway. Father and daughter each become central characters in the history of Indonesia’s tragic 20th century, marking the rise and fall of a brutal dictatorship.

NIGHT HAD FALLEN, WITHOUT COMPLAINT, WITHOUT PRETEXT. Like a black net enclosing the city, ink from a monster squid spreading across Jakarta’s entire landscape — the color of my uncertain future.

Inside the darkroom, I know not the sun, the moon, or even my wristwatch. But the darkness that envelopes this room is imbrued with the scent of chemicals and anxiety.

Three years ago, the Nusantara News Agency where I worked was cleansed of lice and germs like myself. The army was the disinfectant and we, the lice and the germs, were eradicated from the face of the earth, with no trace left. Yet, somehow, this particular louse had survived and was now eking out a living at Tjahaja Photo Studio on the corner of Jalan Sabang in central Jakarta.

I switched on the red light to inspect the strips of negatives hanging on the drying-line overhead. It must have been around 6 p.m. because I could hear the muzzled sound of the muezzin drifting in to the darkroom through the grate in the door, summoning the faithful for evening prayer. I imagined the scene on Jalan Sabang outside: the quarrelsome cackling of motorized pedicabs; the huffing and puffing of slow-moving opelets searching for passengers; the creaking of human-driven pedicabs in need of an oil job; the cring-cring sound of hand bells on bicycles as their riders wove their way through the busy intersection; and the cries of the bread seller on his three-wheel contraption with its large box and clear glass windows. I could even see the early evening wind bearing the smoke and smell rising from skewers of goat satay being grilled on the brazier at Pak Heri’s itinerant but immensely popular food stall located smack dab at the intersection of Sabang and Asem Lama. I could see him using his well-worn pestle to grind fried peanuts and thinly sliced shallots on an oversized mortar, then drizzling sweet soy sauce over the mix. And then I imagined my good friend, Dimas Suryo, studiously observing Pak Heri and discussing with him his choice of peanuts with the same kind of intensity that he might employ when dissecting a poem by Rivai Apin.

Almost every evening, like clockwork, all other sounds from the outside were drowned out by the long shrill whistle from the steamer on Soehardi’s food cart as our regular vendor of steamed putu— a favorite treat of mine, those steamed rice-flour balls with their grated coconut on the outside and melted cane sugar inside — pulled up outside the photo studio. But other than the smell of Pak Heri’s goat satay, that sound was about the only thing — that shrieking sound — that was able to make its way into the darkroom. The deadly darkness of the developing room seemed to smother almost every sound. But the screak of the putu steamer and the smell of the cakes always served as a rap on the doors and windows of the photo studio. It was a sign the time had come for me to leave this room that knew no such a thing as time.

Today, I don’t know why, I felt reluctant to go outside. Maybe because I could picture the world outside the room and how depressing it seemed to me: neon lights casting their harsh glow on the studio’s white tiled floor and glass display cases; Suhardjo and Liang tending to customers who were there waiting to pick up prints from rolls of film they had left at the store a week before or to have their pictures taken for the formal photographs they now needed for identification purposes. For the past two years, income from the latter had been the largest source of revenue for the studio. Every day, at least ten to fifteen people came to have passport-size photographs taken to attach to government-issued letters of certification that they were not a communist, had never participated in any activity sponsored by the Indonesian Communist Party, and had not been involved in the so-called attempt to overthrow the Indonesian government now known as Gestapu, the September 30 Movement.

The banshee-like shriek of the steam whistle from the putu cart resounded again and again, as if calling out to me. But still I didn’t move. Mixed with the whistle of the putu cart, I thought I could hear the sound of a human whistle as well. Listening more carefully, I heard the ringing of the bell that hung from the top of the door to the studio and then the tromping of heavy footsteps as they crossed the tiled space between the doorway and the sales counter in the back of the studio. Now I didn’t know which was louder: the whistling of the putu cart or the beating of my heart.

My ear now to the door, I heard a stranger growl: “Hello.”

“Evening! May I help you,” came the reply of a familiar voice, that of Adi Tjahjono, owner of Tjahaja Photographic Studio.

“I’m looking for Pak Hananto.”

I couldn’t hear Adi’s reply but I imagined him being immediately on guard. I guessed that in addition to the stranger whose voice I’d heard, there were two or three other men as well.

“May I ask who you are?”

A different voice answered—“His cousin, from Central Java”—in a tone more educated and refined.

I waited for Adi to answer but heard no answer. Even if the man speaking was not my “cousin from Central Java,” because of the man’s politesse and refined tone of voice, Adi could do nothing but to demonstrate a similar level of courtesy. Yet I heard him say nothing. I’m sure he was pondering how to respond.

Now I heard another voice, this one brisker and heavier in tone. “Ha-nan-to Pra-wi-ro, that would be his full name,” the speaker stressed, as if to warn Adi that he was ready to throttle him if Adi persisted in stalling or pretending not to remember.

In the darkroom, I stood, motionless, unable to think of what to do. I could still hear the wail-like whistle of the putu cart which, for some odd reason, now reminded me of Ravel’s “Miroirs.” Why wasn’t I hearing “Bolero,” I mused. Maybe because “Miroirs” helped to dampen my sense of sentimentality?

The darkroom had no window to the outside, meaning that if I were to try to slip out and run away, I would still have to pass through the door, which was adjacent to the sales counter and which further meant that no matter how fast my feet might carry me, the visitors would easily be able to stop me in my tracks. But, that said, right there and then I made up my mind that I no longer wanted to live on the run — not because of the discomfort and poverty such a life entailed, and not because I had lost the will to resist or to fight for my life, but because of the news I’d recently heard: Surti and the children had been moved from the detention center on Jalan Guntur to the one on Budi Kemuliaan. The point had come where I had to stop, not because I no longer believed in the struggle, but because I wanted Surti and our three children to be able to live in safety. I owed them at least that for their years of deprivation during the time I was living on the run.