Outside the Metro window, I could still see flashing, from one support beam to the next, the clouded look on Professor Didier Dupont’s face—that same sour look that appeared on his face this morning when he watched the video footage I had produced over a period of several months on the subject of my final assignment: Le Quartier Algérien à Paris, the Algerian quarter in Paris.
The light from the small screen flickered on his face. I watched the images of the Algerian immigrants I had interviewed these past few months and whose stories I had methodically recorded. Occasionally, Professor Dupont would squint his eyes and sometimes purse his lips at footage of the adorable and wide-eyed Algerian children but, after ten tense minutes, the professor asked me to sit down in front of him.
For several minutes, my advisor allowed me to fidget nervously as he busily scribbled notes on a pad. Finally he took a breath and looked at me. “Quelle est votre opinion? C’est un bon plan …”
His voice was deep as he asked my own opinion of the footage and my future plans.
Professor Dupont was economic with his words and didn’t continue his sentence. He took off his glasses, wiped the lenses with an old handkerchief, and then put them back on in a slow, almost stylized, movement.
I knew that he had more to add, but impatiently I raised my hands, palms up, as if to ask, “Well?” The man was getting old.
Professor Dupont tapped the keyboard of his computer, and on the monitor there suddenly appeared a list of final assignments previously undertaken by students of the Sorbonne on the subject of Algerians in Paris. As he scrolled, the list grew longer, with hundreds of titles. My heart suddenly skipped a beat. I knew, of course, that numerous Sorbonne alumni had made documentary films about the Algerians in Paris when they were students. But I was convinced the documentary film I planned to make would be different.
Before I had the chance to express my argument, Professor Dupont turned the computer screen in my direction. “This is a subject that’s been hashed and rehashed by students here. Your proposal isn’t a bad one, Lintang. Non, not at all,” he said, his blue eyes burrowing into mine. “But it’s a good thing this is only a proposal… I strongly suggest you drop it at this stage.”
I found myself forced to nod. I thought of all the footage I had already shot with Algerian immigrants. I had been sure that the professor would agree to my proposal for my final assignment.
“You have great potential, talent, and spirit, Mademoiselle. So, eh, why don’t we try coming up with something a little more original?”
T.S. Eliot’s poem immediately reverberated in my ears. No wonder the poet hated the month of April.
“I find the Algerian immigrant experience in Paris to be extremely interesting, Professor,” I tried to say in a non-defensive tone. “They are French people who feel themselves to have two homelands.”
Professor Dupont stared me in the eye. His blue eyes reminded me of the turquoise in a ring my mother owned. The stone seemed to be boring into my dulled brain.
“But aren’t you forgetting, Lintang, that there is also something very interesting about you and your own background?”
My heart, which I thought had stopped functioning for the past few minutes, suddenly seemed to expand with a surge of new oxygen-giving blood.
“You, too, have two homelands: France and Indonesia. You were born in Paris, grew up in Paris. You know the place. But aren’t you curious about that other side of your identity, the land of your father’s birth?”
Professor Dupont took a copy of Le Monde from off his desk, which, given its crumpled state, he had apparently read. He opened the paper, folded it, and handed it to me. On page three, a headline read, “Enlèvement: un Militant Indonésien Prend la Parole,” a short article about an Indonesian student activist who had been kidnapped but now was speaking out. On the Economics page opposite was a bigger headline and longer article about the monetary crisis now affecting the Asian region, Indonesia included.
I said nothing. I knew the direction Monsieur Dupont’s conversation was taking. Indeed, I knew it very well. His question was one that had often disturbed my sleep. It was one that I had long ago stored away and buried deeply in my heart. I didn’t want to arouse something that was now at peace, there in the deepest recesses of my heart.
“Your father is a part of an important period in Indonesian history,” he said, refolding the paper and giving it to me. “Take it.”
I took the paper but couldn’t find a reply for Monsieur Dupont’s suggestion. Staring down at my smudged sneakers now seemed to be much more interesting than looking into the man’s blue eyes.
“The country where your father was born is in a state of unrest. Economics is the trigger, but the political situation is becoming increasingly unstable because of the country’s one-man rule for so many decades.”
So what if it was!? Wasn’t this the case in almost all developing countries, which were constantly going through periods of unrest because of uncertain social and political situations? Many countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia were led by corrupt authoritarian leaders.
“Don’t you want to visit the place of your origins? Don’t you want to understand what brought your father and his fellow exiles to a country that has almost no historical links to Indonesia?”
Obviously, I knew that my father had come to Paris not to admire the Eiffel Tower or to trace the steps of history at Notre Dame Cathedral. In fact, my father once told me that in all his life he had only twice set foot in the Eiffel Tower and those times had only been because a visiting Indonesian poet had forced him to go there. My father hated tourist sites.
I also knew that my father and his friends had not come to Paris with a briefcase of dreams or a suitcase of plans; there had been something darker, dangerous, and more covert. Even when I was too young to understand much about politics, I already knew that Indonesia—or rather, Soeharto’s everlasting and seemingly invincible New Order government—would not make it easy for my father to return to his homeland. This was what Maman always told me. And this was a topic I always avoided, because whenever Ayah began to think of Indonesia, he would inevitably begin to cry, painful and bitter tears.
I pretended to clear my throat. “I’ve never been to Indonesia.”
Monsieur Dupont pretended to be deaf. “What?”
“I know very little about Indonesia.”
My first statement was true: in all of my twenty-three years I had never once set foot in Indonesia, because my father, regardless of how much he missed his homeland, could not take me there. But the second statement, I had to admit, was a lie. Of course I “knew” Indonesia, even if only in second-hand fashion—from Ayah, and his three friends, my three adoptive uncles, Om Nugroho, Om Tjahjadi, and Om Risjaf; from books and documentary films; and even from arguments my parents had. But also from certain incidents, both good and bad, which formed a source of tension between my father and myself to this very day.
“If you know so little, don’t you want to know more? Tu veux s’évader de l’histoire? Do you wish to run from your history?”
Monsieur Dupont spoke with a flat tone, but I could hear him clearly. His questions were daggers and I could feel drops of fresh blood dripping from my heart. I’m sure he knew just what he was doing and what was happening inside me.
He took a calendar from his desk and counted off the amount of time that was left for me to find a topic for my final assignment to which he could agree. He muttered to himself as he took an empty form and then quickly wrote something on it in a hand that was fairly neat and even by European standards.
“You have six months to get to know Indonesia while undertaking research and taping your final assignment. D’accord?”
I took the form without replying, though my advisor’s eyes demanded an answer.
“D’accord,” I was finally forced to agree.
“Surprise me. Come up with something brilliant. Come back to me when you have a clear plan.”
B
ecause the professor then stood, I, too, was forced to stand. He was not going to allow more room for debate, much less a chance for me to refuse.
“Don’t be late, Lintang. You know the consequences if you’re unable to finish your work on time.”
The air in Professor Dupont’s office suddenly felt stifling. April was indeed the cruelest month. At that moment, I heard the sound of the Metro, which seemed to be keeping time with the gusting wind.
From behind the Metro window, Paris looked gray and gloomy. Letters, words, posters, and photographs flashed past so quickly. Gray, black, white, gray…
My roots were in a foreign land. I was born in France, a country with a beautiful body and fragrant scent. But, according to my father, my blood came from another country, one far distant from the European land mass, a place that gave the world the scent of cloves and wasted sadness; a land of fecundity, rich with plants of myriad colors, shapes, and faiths, yet one that could crush its own citizens merely because of a difference in opinion.
Coursing through my veins was a kind of blood I did not know, but which was called Indonesia, and which melded with the other kind of blood in me called France. The flow of that foreign blood inside me always seemed to quicken and make my heart beat faster whenever I heard the sound of gamelan music in the biting cold of winter; when my father recounted tales from the shadow theater—about Ekalaya, for instance, the eternal outcast, or Bima, whose love went unrequited; or when Maman, in her halting Indonesian, would read to me Sitor Situmorang’s poem about the prodigal son who, when finally returning home, still feels himself to be in a foreign land.
That blood in me felt at once foreign, pleasurable, and mysterious. All that was Indonesia and all that smelled of Indonesia was, for me, a site in a magical tale, one that existed only in dreams, like reading a novel set in a country I’d never visited.
Indonesia was for me a name on a map, little more than a concept. And the knowledge of that country, which supposedly flowed through my veins, had to make room for the French blood that was in me as well.
For the longest time, it seemed, I had forgotten about that foreign substance in myself.
A series of arguments between me and my father had taken their toll, and a long-simmering dispute between Maman and Ayah which had ended with their divorce had not made our relationship easier. A few months earlier the tension between us had peaked and we hadn’t spoken to each other since that time—which meant, of course, that I had stopped going to Tanah Air Restaurant, which in turn meant I had long been separated from the restaurant’s genial atmosphere, with its distinctive sound of gamelan music, and its interior walls decorated with shadow puppets, masks, and a map of Indonesia. Making things much more difficult for me was that I now rarely saw my father’s friends: Om Nug, Om Risjaf, and Om Tjai, who were like true uncles for me. Yet another hardship was no longer being able to smell the scent of my father’s goat curry, a dish that could compete with signature dishes of Europe’s master chefs.
This estrangement between me and my father was thus, for me, hardly an ideal situation. But then having a father who was so complicated and filled with anger was not exactly easy either.
When the Metro came to a stop at Rue de Vaugirard station, I suddenly felt the need to leave the train and calm my thoughts. Professor Dupont’s suggestion was a command I could not countermand. It meant that I somehow had to make a documentary film that was connected to my father or to Indonesia.
I-N-D-O-N-E-S-I-A.
On that spring morning, I felt myself being prodded to explore that foreign part of my body. I didn’t want to do so, to thoroughly examine that region. There were things about Indonesia which for others would always seem to be exotic or unique—Java, Bali, Sumatra, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Panji Semirang, Srikandi, gamelan music, pink kebaya, the scent of luwak coffee, the spicy taste of beef rendang, and mouth-watering richness of goat curry—but for me, whatever cultural exoticism that Indonesia had to offer was concealed. Ever since I was a girl, I had always been haunted by a political upheaval that my peers knew nothing about, an event whose gory details had been expunged from Indonesia’s official history books.
TANAH AIR RESTAURANT, 90 RUE DE VAUGIRARD, 1985
Winter in Paris. The smell of fried chili sambal bajak assails the nose. The ground red chilies and garlic that stimulate my olfactory nerves is a most pleasing torture. Om Nug is a great cook, but for me, my father is the best cook in the world.
There was a basic difference between my father’s cooking and that of Om Nug. Om Nug was a modern-day cook who had only begun to study the wealth of Indonesian spices after the band of four decided to establish a cooperative and open an Indonesian restaurant. Om Nug emphasized efficiency. For example, he saw the preparation of spices for rendang as something simple; there was no need for the kind of elaborate ritual that made life difficult. All the spices could be put into a blender into which he’d pour coconut milk from a can that he bought in Belleville.
Ayah, on the other hand, loved ritual. He was both obsessive about and possessive of his stone mortar, which an aunt of his had sent him from Yogyakarta. With his faithful mortar in hand, Ayah kept the blender at a distance. He ground his spices slowly and carefully, mixing in the coconut milk, little by little, while complaining occasionally about having been forced to use coconut milk from the can. Whatever the case, I had to admit that the spicing of my father’s rendang had a far more arresting taste than that of Om Nug, which he produced in a blender. I almost swooned whenever I tried my father’s rendang or gulai, their taste was so good. But that meant that Ayah had had to lock himself inside the kitchen for much of the day in order to prepare his spices in the traditional way.
What’s taking so long? It’s seven o’clock and time to eat! But I could see a delicious meal ahead. Le dîner sera délicieux! On the menu that night was nasi kuning with side dishes of tempe kering, little sticks of tempeh soaked in brine and then fried until crispy; sayur urap, mixed steamed vegetables with spiced coconut; empal, seasoned slices of tenderized fried beef that melted in your mouth; and sambal goreng udang, a dish made with shrimp and chili sauce. Ayah always made two kinds of sambal or hot sauce to further spice up a meal: a sambal bajak which was not too hot—Ayah always removed the seeds of the red chilies and parboiled the chili’s flesh before frying it—and thus more palatable for the tongues of French clientele, and a crushed peanut sambal into which he blended small green chilies that were so hot the sambal could be enjoyed by only the most tempered of tongues in Paris: those of Maman and me.
Maman was busy going back and forth from kitchen to dining room helping Ayah and Om Nug. In December the restaurant was always full. Over the years, dinner at Tanah Air seemed to have evolved into a kind of culinary picnic for French families wanting to celebrate the Christmas season. But Ayah had promised that tonight would be a family night and that no matter how busy the restaurant was, he would find time to sit with Maman and me so that we could enjoy together the meal he had prepared.
My eyes were on Maman. She was holding in her arms two large wide-necked glass containers filled with kerupuk shrimp crackers and was talking to Om Tjai and Ayah, who had just removed his white chef’s smock, a sign that he was now free from duties and ready to eat. Come on! Why is it taking so long? Couldn’t Maman and Ayah hear my stomach grumbling? Weren’t they ever…
The door creaked. A cold winter’s wind quickly swept into the dining room. And then I saw, un, deux, trois, quatre—four tall, hulking French men who filled the restaurant’s foyer. They stood, not smiling, as if having no reason for coming to the restaurant except to cast their surly gazes.
“Police…” Maman whispered.
Police? The men weren’t wearing the kind of uniform I usually saw policemen wearing on the streets.
I looked at Ayah. He seemed tense, with a fire suddenly flaring in his eyes, like the time I spilled a cup of luwak coffee on one of his books of poetry. I saw Om Nug and Om Tjai whisper something to him.
Ayah bit his lips. I guessed they told him that it would be best for him not to do anything and let them deal with the police. But Ayah ignored them and immediately approached the four men. Together with Om Nug, he ushered the policemen to a quiet corner, away from the main dining area so that they wouldn’t disturb the clientele. The restaurant was almost full.
“Lintang!” Maman called. She didn’t like me sticking my nose into adult conversations.
I pretended to be deaf and watched the mini drama unfold as Ayah, Om Nug, and Om Tjai faced the unblinking policemen. I didn’t want to miss a single thing. One of the policemen—I could see he had blue eyes—removed an identification card from his pocket.
I am Michel Durant,” he said, showing the card to Ayah, who gave it a cursory glance, “and this is my partner, Luc Blanchard.” He didn’t introduce the other two men.
“May I help you?”
“We received a report from the Indonesian embassy that a subversive meeting is being held here; that you’re planning a political demonstration.”
Ayah’s features hardened, a look that was somewhere between ghoulish humor and outright contempt. Om Nug, meanwhile, broke out in laughter. Maman’s cheeks turned bright pink, a sign that she was angry. She immediately went up to the policemen and started chattering at them in French.
“Meeting? A subversive meeting? This is too much. Can’t you see that we’re busy preparing food for our customers?”
Maman’s anger was evident from both the look on her face and the tone of her voice. The two officers, Michel Durant and Luc Blanchard, immediately stepped back as if being attacked by a rabid dog. The other two officers behind them backed away towards the door.
“The only thing we’re doing here is cooking in the kitchen and serving meals to our customers. There’s nothing political going on here,” said Ayah in a much calmer voice than Maman’s.
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