It is hard to imagine that the group you belong to, one that defines your identity, is guilty of despicable behavior. That actually you, at least by proxy, are one of the bad guys. That, in your name also, your mother- and fatherland for instance committed horrible crimes. That you were on the wrong side of history.
Yet, that was what I experienced when I watched the trailer of Merah Putih. The movie shows the wasted efforts by the Dutch to keep the independence fighters down. There is no denying and I don’t deny it: the Dutchmen were the oppressors and nasty, brutal murderers – in the movie and in real life.
But times have changed apparently. Very much so, I daresay. So much that Max Blom, a compatriot of mine who is in a hospital in Singapore just now, wrote a letter to president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono a few days ago. In that letter he told that in the five years he has lived in Indonesia he had fallen in love with the country. A love which didn’t diminish now he is trying to regain a life with what remains of his body after he met a few Indonesian martyrs in a posh hotel in Jakarta a month ago.
I can see what he means. The country is like an exciting woman: sexy, beautiful, mysterious and generous. Yet sometimes fickle-minded to the point of being malicious, cruel every now and then and hiding some dark dangerous secrets also. But, she gets under your skin. The kind of woman you can’t resist and of whom your mother would say you better stay away from – for your own wellbeing. I can sympathize with him because I am a fellow lover.
Such a woman also can make you feel ill at ease some of the time of course.
For instance when the convicted murderer of human rights activist Munir, Pollycarpus Budihari Priyanto, is being released from prison. Because of Independence Day, he got pardoned after serving only a short time of the sentence he got. Maybe ” ill at ease” isn’t the right expression in this case. To be honest, “outright rage” would have been more accurate. I never understood why justice should be distorted by rituals of nationalism. For God’s sake, in stead of liberating a criminal, the authorities should do their duty and bring the perpetrators of that crime who are still at large, to justice at long last.
And there he is again: the pain-in-the-ass Abu Bakar Baashir. The most nauseating part of the gorgeous lady RI. Though I should immediately admit he is diabolical funny. Look at his logic; at the funeral of two killed terrorists he publicly declared both men were martyrs. Yet he told elsewhere that suicide bombings were not right in the Indonesian context. So, his audience may conclude, they are in other contexts. Perhaps Manilla, Mumbai or Madrid are the appropriate targets according to this man of God?
Why, I wonder, don’t his fellow men of religion, who usually don’t waver in telling people what’s right and wrong ( and parade like they are the country’s conscience one might say) address this devilish man much harder. He should be dismissed by them as the criminal half baked intellectual he is. But all I see and hear is some half-hearted mutterings by MUI ( the Indonesian Muslim Council).
It is better to be frank to the one you love. I love Indonesia. That’s why I got it off my chest.
i read one of pram toer’s short stories once about that time (i think it’s caleld ‘revenge’). and basically it told of how a family and a village got fucked over by every side. that’s my abiding sentiment of indonesia’s war of independence.
mmmm…i never meet a person (who is not an indonesian) who is so in love with my country like u opa!
but with my postcolonial sensibility i can’t help cringing when people keep alluding a country to a woman. she is: “sexy, beautiful, mysterious and generous. Yet sometimes fickle-minded to the point of being malicious, cruel every now and then and hiding some dark dangerous secrets also”
i remember my professor once lectured that the discourse of colonialism is in cahoot with the ideology of patriarchy. for the former, the orient (the colonized countries) are ” an exciting woman [who are] sexy, beautiful, mysterious and generous…..yet sometimes fickle-minded to the point of being malicious, cruel every now and then and hiding some dark dangerous secrets also” that she is so alluring and mysterious that a muscular white man is tempted to conquer and penetrate her. for the latter, woman is also “sexy, beautiful, mysterious and generous…..yet sometimes fickle-minded to the point of being malicious, cruel every now and then and hiding some dark dangerous secrets also”. she is loved yet hated; desired yet derided; ambivalent in the bhabhaian sense. with this kind of mindset, woman of color or colonized woman or woman living in the orient, us, me have been double colonized for centuries said Leela Ghandi.
ah, i hope i do not sound like little Edward Said.
By the way, I am not able to watch this movie in any time this week since padang is constantly hit by earthquake. But surely, when things have calmed down I’ll write a review of this movie.
@ john: There are the victims, the heroes/heroines ( like Minke from Pramadoeya Anata Toer’s Buru Quartet) and the culprits. It feels bad to be the culprit ( by proxy – as I was only a small boy at the time).
@ delvi: You may be right about my “orientalism” and deep down, below the surface of an emancipated male, I even may want to be a patriarch. I of course will always deny it in public…
To my defense I would like to say that those who fall in love with the generals and the uniforms, would probably take a tall, strong, muscled man as the metaphorical Indonesia. But being a full blown heterosexual man, you can’t expect me to fall in love with a man, can you?
PS: I hope I need not worry about the earthquakes in Padang.
I’ve always referred to countries as ‘her’ because of the whole ‘mother earth’ thing. It makes me feel a tiny bit bisexual every time I do though. Hahaha.
Indonesia is a frustrating country to live in. But I guess its true of any country in the world today :/
@ mouse: Our mother earth may disapprove but every now and then life does occasionally sucks in the East, West, North and South of it indeeed.
(My frustration over here is that the majority of people over the last odd twenty years deliberately have been ruining what was the best we had on offer: common sense. One fifth of them has reached the point now that they should officially be declared of unsound mind, since they choose for intellectual low life Geert Wilders.
What is your Indonesian frustration, I wonder?).
i’m speechless… even only through the text (fortunately not verbal, because it’d melt me) your love for indonesia feels so genuine for me. something i haven’t yet felt for other places… (but my father/mother land).
an exciting woman, indeed, that’s a right metaphor. she just experienced too much… deep unhealed wounds all over. people of all kinds keep on abusing her in the name of money, religion, race… etc.
@ mer: I would like to think my love is genuine indeed. Though in this domain I confess to be polygamous: I still love my first love, Scandinavia, also.
As for Indonesia: “deep unhealed wounds all over” indeed. That is a reasonable explanation for some serious shortcomings. Yet one may doubt whether it always is satisfactory excuse.
My Indonesian frustration? Oh your usual bout of youthful rebellion against Society. I can rant, but I would rather chill and enjoy my renewed internet connection
@ mousey:Christ, didn’t now my “bouts of youthful rebellion” do show that much (??). Thanks for warning. I’ll try to keep them in the shade in the future. Main thing however is: www has another improved connection.