But Kenanga was almost a teenager. She knew that her father was being pursued and that we were being held there because of something he’d done.
If I wasn’t careful, I feared they might do something to her.
One day, one of the interrogators politely asked if Kenanga could be assigned to clean one of the rooms in the building. I could say nothing but agree, even though it turns out that her job was to mop up the dried blood on the floor of the torture room. She once found a stingray tail in the room, matted with dried blood — but this she didn’t tell me until a month afterwards. I had been down with a terrible fever for ever so long and she didn’t want to make anything harder for me. She finally told me, crying all the while. She imagined her father being captured and that happening to him as well. She’s seen too much. She’s told me of the men she’s seen, their bodies covered with blood and staggering all the way, as they were moved from one cell to another.
I write this to you, Dimas, only to share with you and at once thank you for taking the time to send us assistance, even though as an exile you are in difficult straits and don’t know what lies ahead.
Whatever difficulties we here might face, we know and recognize that you are doing whatever you can to make our lives easier. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know that you are a friend forever.
Surti Anandari
Lintang breathed in and out, trying to fathom how her father’s friends and family had coped in such straits, even as she began to become aware of the difficulties that she herself might face after her arrival in Jakarta. The letters she was reading were old ones, written ten, twenty or more years previously, but the Indonesian government now in power was still one and the same.
Lintang fingered another letter, written with a deft hand on white paper. She studied the penmanship: so neat and written in evenly spaced lines, almost as if by a machine because of its uniformity. The thought occurred to her that Indonesian teachers of penmanship must be very patient. Most of the samples of writing by Indonesians she’d seen were very similar and very neat — far different from the way that she and her French schoolmates wrote, paying little attention to the uniformity of size and shape of the letters they put on papers, not controlling their fingers, and letting them moved as they pleased.
Jakarta, June 18, 1970
Om Dimas,
I feel like the sky in Jakarta has cracked apart and sharp pieces of dark metal are raining down on us.
There’s no end to the problems affecting us. I don’t know if this is the start or the end of our suffering. For the last month, ever since they executed Bapak, I haven’t been able to function at all. All I’ve been able to do is stay in my room until, finally, it seemed that I became part of the room’s features, no different from the bed or the floor. I felt more useless by the day.
Exactly a month ago, we were told to come to Salemba Prison in order to see Bapak for the last time. We were given two hours to talk to him before he was to be executed. What
were we supposed to say in those two hours when all we could do is imagine him standing in front of a row of men with rifles aimed at him?
My father held Alam on his lap where he giggled and played with Bapak’s fingers. Just five years old, of course he’s going to look at the sky and see rainbows. Bulan, who had just turned eight, understood the meaning of “coming” and “going,” All she could do was cry and repeatedly ask if she was going to see Bapak again. Mother tried to be strong. She held Bapak’s hand tightly and tried to stop herself from crying. Every once in a while, she would whisper something to him I couldn’t hear.
Trying to avoid the sadness, I sat as far away from Bapak as possible. I wasn’t strong. I didn’t know what to do to make my body sit up straight when all I really wanted to do was to scream and wail. I didn’t cry and I don’t know why, but I was actually proud not to leave a trail of tears in there. I didn’t want to look at my father’s face, which, on that day, in those two hours, looked so calm and wise. What could have been going through his mind?
In the last thirty minutes, Bapak came to me, alone. He kneeled beside me and took my hands in his own. “Kenanga,” he said, “you are the tree that protects the entire family. You are the heartbeat of us all…”
Still trying to avoid looking into his face, I stared down at my shoes, a rundown pair of sneakers I’d been wearing for years, and all I could think about at the time was to wonder where Mother had bought them and what color they once had been. Was it pink or orange? Their color had faded so much and the shoes were so stained, the only way to describe their color was a muddy brown.
But then, suddenly, I felt my father’s hands holding mine in his own. He said “Kenanga … I beg your forgiveness for all the trouble I have caused. Because I now must take my leave, I can ask only that you remain strong — for Mother, for Bulan, and for Alam…”
I hate tears, I hate crying. Tears come and go as they please with no regard to me.
Kenanga Prawiro
Lintang felt all her energy exhausted by these blood-filled letters — not only because she was spent from trying to chase away her own tears, crying for the broken family she didn’t know, but because she suddenly felt so close to them all. Reading these blood-filled letters had made her feel bloodied herself. She wanted to find a message that might lift her spirits. Within the pile was one written on light blue paper. The letter was short, the penmanship superb. Jumping to the bottom of the paper, she saw from the signature that it was from her father’s friend, Bang Amir.
Jakarta, 1969
My brother Dimas,
Having received your message, I now write to you. I am sorry for the loss of your mother, Dimas. I kneel and pray to God that He has taken her to His side. I hope that you and our fellow countrymen there in that distant land are strong and in good health.
Do you remember our discussion that one time about the vacuum that each of us has inside, the one that only you and God can fill, to create a Union between you and God that can
never be broken or disturbed by anything or anyone? This is the right time for you to look at that space inside yourself, alone. To converse with it if that is your bent, or to be silent if that is what you choose. Either way, He will listen to you.
He is always listening.
Your friend,
Moh. Amir Jayadi
Unconsciously, Lintang held her chest. That vacuum. That little space in her body. That conversation between us and Him? Was it in her as well?
FLÂNEURS
On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur.
L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
LE PETIT PRINCE,
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“YOU CAN SEE CLEARLY ONLY WITH THE HEART. The essence cannot be seen with the eyes.” That’s the sentence from The Little Prince Lintang remembered best, ever since the first time her father read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s fantastic tale of a little boy whose plane crashes in the Sahara desert.