“It all began on the morning of October 2 when Mas Hananto left to go to the office. He said the situation there was very uncertain. He told me not to leave the house unless it was absolutely necessary. Or, if I didn’t feel safe, then I was to go to my parents’ home in Bogor. But because I had just been at my parents’ house for an extended period of time for an entirely different reason — ehem, let’s just say that we were having marital problems — I declined his suggestion. I had no inkling of how bad things were to come.
“When Mas Hananto left, he looked worried but he tried to act normal. He reminded me not to be late in feeding Alam. Alam was a fussy child, you see. I reassured him that I would continue breastfeeding Alam as long as possible. Obviously, we didn’t know that this would be our last meeting before the day Mas Han was executed a few years later.
“When Mas Han didn’t come home that night, I wasn’t overly worried and was quite sure that the next morning he would show up at the house complaining about all the unfinished work he had to do. But this time, the situation was different. This wasn’t a problem of meeting a deadline, that became clear. When the next day Mas Han still didn’t come home, I began to make calls. First I called his office, but no one picked up the line, then the homes of colleagues and friends. I decided I had to go to see for myself. I left Bulan and Alam with neighbors, a kind old couple who lived next door, and then went with Kenanga to the Nusantara News office. Mas Han wasn’t there. I wasn’t able to meet the editor-in-chief either, who I was told also had stopped coming in to the office.
“The following days, I was tense with worry and paranoia. I tried to be calm so that Kenanga and Bulan could continue to go to school — even though, more often than not, they came home early because they said that class had been ‘let out.’ My mother called and begged me to bring the children to Bogor, all the while cursing Mas Hananto for being a man who thought nothing of his family’s safety. Hearing my mother criticize Mas Han like that, I became defensive and decided to remain at home in Jakarta.
“One night, about three weeks later, I received a visit from Kusno, a journalist who worked with Mas Hananto at Nusantara News. …I suppose your father must have known him as well. Anyway, he told me that the editor-in-chief and a number of other agency employees had been detained. Others had been called in for interrogation, but then allowed to go home. Kusno was one of the latter.
“Kusno told me that coming to my home was risky for him. He quickly conveyed that Mas Han was being pursued by the military and that he was in hiding and could not be contacted but that he wanted me to know that it was urgent I take the children and go to my parents’ home. After telling me this, he immediately left, leaving me to wonder whether his message was real or not — which has been a source of anxiety in my life from then on. Where was Mas Han? Where could he hiding? And what was he running from? And why hadn’t he called or tried to get in contact with me, if only for a moment?
“These were my questions, those of a wife, a woman, who had no idea how what had happened would affect the fate of the Indonesian people — not only members of the Communist Party and their friends or colleagues, but anyone who sympathized with the goals of the Party or were involved in its affiliated organizations.
“A few days later, after Kusno’s visit, a number of men in civilian clothes came to the house to search through my husband’s belongings. They searched our bedroom and then went into the children’s room, which made Alam scream. They turned everything upside down, but wouldn’t say what they were looking for. They asked the same questions, again and again. Where is Hananto Prawiro? When did he disappear? What did he take with him? Where did he usually hide? Did I know that he had a mistress? Did I know where she lived?”
At this point Tante Surti stopped speaking. Her eyes glistened and her lips trembled with anger. I asked her if she would like to stop and take a break, but she insisted on finishing what she had to say, then and there.
“They didn’t take us in that night. That happened a few days later, when a couple of them returned to the house and asked me to come to Guntur — the military detention center on Jalan Guntur — for interrogation. It was difficult for me to leave the children at home because my parents didn’t live in Jakarta. Naïve as I was, I took the children with me, assuming that they would let me go home after I answered their questions. And so it was that all of us went to Guntur.”
The story Tante Surti then went on to tell about the family’s experience at Guntur was the same as the reports in the letters from her and Kenanga that I had found in my father’s apartment. She said that they had been allowed to go home, but then had been called in again for interrogation, this time at the detention center on Jalan Budi Kemuliaan. The difference in experience of reading those letters and this interview was that I was now hearing her speak, firsthand and in her own voice, one that had been suppressed for thirty-two years.
Throughout the course of the interview, Tante Surti was able to maintain a calm and even tone of voice, but when she started talking about Kenanga, who first witnessed torture at such a young age, her voice grew raw with emotion. She said, “I could face anything but that: the shouting at me, the lack of food, sleeping on a mat, and being interrogated day after day, but not that. I could not bear the thought of what they might do to my daughter.”
Despite the discomfort it might cause, I decided to pursue this avenue of conversation and asked Tante Surti about it indirectly: “During this time of unknowing, the three years in which you didn’t know what had happened to your husband, what would you say was the most difficult time for you?”
“The worst time for me was in the last year, before they captured Mas Hananto, when we were transferred to Budi Kemuliaan. I repeat again, I could endure whatever treatment they dished out to me. I did what they asked: I cooked, cleaned the latrines, ironed their clothing, even after being interrogated for hours on end. But the most fearful thing for me as a mother, something that made my soul want to jump out of my body, was a threat to my children’s safety.
“One morning, when we were still at the Budi Kemuliaan detention center, I found Kenanga in the hall, massaging the shoulders of one of the interrogators. It was a sight that made my heart shrink. She had such an innocent look on her face, not understanding the evil ways of the world.
“It was one thing if they asked Kenanga to clean up the blood in their torture chamber; but when they brought themselves into bodily contact with her — even if it was ‘only’ a shoulder massage — the blood rushed to my brain. Kenanga was fourteen years old: a girl on the brink of womanhood, entering puberty in a detention center.
“I looked at her, studying her features more carefully. After all this time at the detention center, her skin no longer had a healthy glow. Her eyes were red and she was thin as a rail. Even so, I could also see that she was an attractive young girl whose breasts were beginning to develop. I wanted to scream at the man and scratch his face. I don’t know how but I did somehow restrain myself — even as he and the others undressed Kenanga with their wicked stares.
“Seeing what was happening, I immediately called out for Kenanga to help me with the cooking. The officer nodded his consent and Kenanga went with me back to the kitchen; but then, not more than a few minutes later, one of the man’s lackeys came to tell me that I was wanted ‘in the middle room.’ That was the term they used for the interrogation room.
“In this ‘middle room’ there was just a table and two chairs. And there was a long neon light overhead that kept flickering.