No, I didn’t have the holes then. We escaped.
Some people called us lucky. Some accused us of not appreciating how lucky we were. Chinese who got to run away. Lucky. Doesn’t that sound ludicrous to you? We were lucky because my parents had the money to take refuge in a hotel and flee to Singapore. The whole idea of luck is wrong. My aunt lost everything. Her shop in Glodok was torched. What’s the opposite of lucky? Unlucky? What do you call those who were burned alive, scorched until their flesh bubbled and melted on the shop floor? Women who were raped – were they ‘unlucky’? The word sounds so barbaric.
We returned to Indonesia for the most primordial reasons. My parents knew no home but Jakarta. I always thought people like them had choices. They had investments abroad and could change citizenship, but it turned out that for them home was preordained destiny.
Your home, your trap.
Neither you nor I wanted to live in Indonesia, but for different reasons. You said you were sick of being common and wanted adventure. I went through high school in Jakarta, but then I asked to be sent to Los Angeles for university. As you know, I only lasted two years. Maybe I’m not cut out for study. Maybe, like you, I get bored quickly. But I didn’t think about adventure. I saw no reason to do anything, to be anything. I only wanted everything to pass quickly, to just pass, including life. My visa expired, but I didn’t want to go home.
From Pacific Beach, we continued our journey to Old Town San Diego. This time you drove. I managed to convince you: it doesn’t count as a holiday if you don’t drive for at least an hour or two. You opened the left door of the car and sat in the driver’s seat.
Take off your scarf, I said.
Why?
Do you know how Isadora Duncan died? The dancer. She was driving in France, and the scarf around her neck got caught in the car’s rear wheel. It strangled her.
You immediately took off your scarf and said OK, fine. Besides, you’d learned that adventure isn’t always glamorous.
I observed you from the passenger seat. You were a little tense, but over time you seemed to relax. Don’t speed, I said. Your hair was fluttering, and you were laughing like a kid.
We drove around Old Town, looking at Spanish colonial buildings. America and Mexico were each visible everywhere: architecture, food, street names. A border town. We met Hispanic people wherever we went. But so far, and as long as I’ve lived in southern California, no one has ever greeted me and then asked hablas español?
Maybe my face really is Chinese.
I wanted to be anyone, Mexican, Malay, anything. As long as it wasn’t Chinese.
You asked: Did you forget you were going to tell me about the holes?
No, I hadn’t forgotten. We had reached that point.
When I arrived in Los Angeles, I sunbathed every day to get a tan. I’d always hated being Chinese, and May 1998 only strengthened that hatred. Then, all of a sudden, I saw the holes in my arm. I don’t know exactly when they appeared. Maybe sunshine and sea air are the cause. My skin refuses to accept them because it’s used to foul, polluted air.
You asked anxiously: Have you seen a doctor?
Doctors can’t cure curses.
Whenever a breeze skirts across them, the pink shoots on my skin hurt. Sometimes the pain is so intense that I cry. I keep feeling cold. That’s why I wear long sleeves everywhere, even under the hot California sun.
May 1998. What’s your story?
I didn’t dare leave the house, you said. My parents wouldn’t let me leave.
Because you look Chinese?
They say that getting to Mexico from downtown San Diego is a cinch. Less than an hour and, bang, you’re in Tijuana. But returning isn’t as straightforward. The border patrol checks your passport. If they see that my visa has expired, I’ll get deported. You too, unless you want to fight hard over the status of your marriage. As far as I’m concerned, you won’t have a chance. You don’t even have a letter.
I thought our conversation would be over and done with right there. But later, while we were having dinner at a restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter, Tijuana came up again. You gulped your margarita and mentioned that you’d never been to Mexico.
I hadn’t either.
We’ve arrived in San Diego. We’ve got to do it. Vámonos.
Do you want to risk everything you have?
For a long while you said nothing, staring at your almost empty glass, then you asked a frightening question:
But what do we have?
We live on the road, we have no home. When you left Indonesia, you left everything – family and friends, if not possessions. Your marriage should have been your emergency exit, your security, but it ended before you made it fail.
Is your husband really dead?
Maybe, you said. Sometimes I feel a glimmer of hope – just a glimmer, and then it disappears – that he’ll return one day. Maybe he won’t come home, to me, or any place. Travelling also turns out to be a waiting room. I’m not going anywhere.
You were beginning to get drunk, but maybe this city really was stirring something inside you. A border city, a city in between. You were right. This city was responsible. All it would take was a few more inches and we’d be on the other side.
A fence runs along the border between San Diego and Tijuana. You heard that the government wanted to reinforce the fence because hundreds of thousands of people cross from Mexico to America every year. Fences are a safety barrier, between home and what lies beyond, between security and threats.
I wanted to cross to the other side.
I’ve been surrounded by an invisible fence for my entire life, but I didn’t realise it until May 1998, when the whole city seemed to unveil. Walls and fences sprayed with black Pylox: Native Muslim Property. They made fences to ward off militias, but we were out there, beyond. We couldn’t enter.
Do you really want to go across?
In silence you stared out the window, as if wanting to run away. The restaurant was getting livelier and livelier, but we sat across from each other without speaking.
Maybe you don’t really want to go to Mexico. It’s just that limits and danger tempt you. Think it over. After this, there’ll be no way home.
Afraid?
Now? you asked.
Now. Then.
The night had deepened. Again, we were in the car, but this time we kept the window closed. I stared at the highway while occasionally stealing glances at you, hazarding guesses at what was passing through your head. It was as if we were hiding, from what I didn’t know, in an underground chamber. The music from the Nirvana CD that I was playing helped bury us.
Rape me, rape me my friend. I turned off the stereo. Even a decade on, I still listened to their music. There are always songs that repeat in our heads. I said to you that we’re a desperate generation because we grew up on Kurt Cobain.
Not necessarily, you said. My sister was into Celine Dion.
May 1998. Your family didn’t dare leave the house either. Your mother is Javanese, your father is Lahat. Muslim. But people from South Sumatra have small eyes, sallow skin. You resemble your father, so you hid in your house all day. Your sister didn’t go into hiding. She was studying in Bandung and already wearing the hijab. You didn’t go to school, but at the time it seemed nobody else wanted to either.
Then what happened?
Nothing. You started going to classes, as usual. When we came back from Singapore, I also hoped my life would revert to normal. I returned to school in Jakarta, but I got nothing but advice and stories. My parents repeated their mantra: look down when you walk. Don’t look other people in the eye. This was how to become Chinese. And I heard lots of stories. Lots of stories. Stories of women being raped, their corpses thrown into burning shops. Stories about people being attacked, their bodies slashed, thrown away. I was forced to learn that women’s bodies were so disturbing that they had to be mutilated before they could be disposed of.
We told stories because that was how we bonde
d, survived, learned to be Chinese. We kept remembering, secretly, because our stories weren’t to be trusted. They wanted evidence. But there was no evidence because nobody dared make reports. And even if you didn’t become a corpse, talking wouldn’t save you. One witness was stabbed to death, so silence became the only choice.
Later, people tried to heal their own wounds. Our family’s driver stopped working and didn’t want to live in Jakarta any more. One day during the riots, he rode his motorbike along a deserted road and saw the corpse of a Chinese woman in the bushes. When he returned, the body was gone. Vanished. Nobody knew who took it. He even wondered whether he’d really seen it at all.
He came to doubt whether these events really happened. No one made reports, and even the corpses left no trace.
Soon he started questioning his sanity because he had recurrent dreams of bodies by the roadside. I realised that it wasn’t just him but all of us who were terrorised by nightmares. And do you know what hurts more than nightmares? We were made to believe that nothing had really happened.
We were stranded in a cheap motel. The elevator door jammed and wouldn’t open on the third floor. We waited a while and finally managed to get out. What kind of motel is this? you asked. We locked the door tightly.
You had a good friend in high school, Dian Carolina Halim. I could tell from her name that she was Chinese. After the May riots you hardly saw her, until a few months later she informed you that she was moving to Jogja to study at Gadjah Mada. Living in Jakarta seemed to have traumatised her.
This story emerged as you pulled out a change of clothes and a toothbrush from your backpack. Previously you’d said that nothing happened after the riots and that you went to school as usual. Did you forget your friend Dian Carolina Halim? There was always something you didn’t reveal. I kept searching for more fragments.
What happened to your friend?
I haven’t seen her for a long time, you said. The last time we met she’d become an activist. She had befriended women who were victims of the violence in 1965.
I was glad to hear it. In the same way I liked hearing the story of a Haji who had sheltered a Chinese family in his home during the May riots. We need stories of humanity to stay sane. It’s not just the violent who inhabit this world.
After bathing I put on long-sleeved pyjamas. On the bed, you still had a book open under the reading lamp. You looked at me for a long time then asked:
What are the holes in your skin like?
I didn’t like your question. You wanted to see the disease that cursed me. But for what? As evidence? Facts? Was this an investigation?
You don’t trust me, like them?
I peppered you with questions. I was breathing hard, and I felt very cold. Then you rushed to embrace me and held me tight.
I believe you, you said. I believe you, and we will leave here.
For Tijuana.
Vámonos.
Tijuana is a border city too, a mirror image of San Diego. We took a walk on Avenida Revolución, oh so colourful, going from restaurant to restaurant, bar-hopping like true tourists. We visited the stores for typical Tijuana knick-knacks that are on every corner. Two years ago this place was quiet, an American tourist told us. The war between drug cartels made people afraid to come to Mexico. There were even kidnappings and massacres in broad daylight. So tourists preferred to look for souvenirs in Old Town, to seek Mexico in San Diego. They didn’t need to break through the mirror and enter the world where things were reversed.
We found no traces of that dark history. I was reminded of Glodok. After the shops were torched, Glodok Market was quickly rebuilt. Resuscitated, enlivened, a gravesite that had been paved over. We spent the following days in Tijuana, constantly alert. Maybe we were too careful. Although things were safer now, travelling as women kept us on guard. We didn’t drink too much or go home too late.
There was no carnival. There was no midsummer night’s dream. We didn’t get drunk in an upside-down world. Our expectations didn’t matter so much now. We had celebrated your special achievement. We had hit the road in your car as liberated women.
We had made the crossing, and that was more than enough.
How did we get here?
Hey, we both wanted to cross, right? In your car.
I mean here. To this point.
I told you about the holes in my skin.
We were in another motel, in that border city, no less dull or suspicious. But this was our final night, we agreed. Tomorrow would bring a fork in the road as we chose our own adventures.
On that last night, I swept in the last scrap of your story. We had turned off the lights. My eyes were half shut when your soft voice pierced the dark:
There’s something I didn’t tell you. I hid for a day inside the house, and the next morning I looked out through the curtains. There was a prayer rug hanging on our fence. My father had put it there. The mat was green, the colour of Paradise, with an image of the Ka’bah in the centre. It hung there for days, maybe weeks. Father wanted to make sure everything was safe. The prayer rug was where we prostrated, not a fortress wall. It shouldn’t have been on the fence. What about those who didn’t have a prayer rug? I didn’t ask my father a thing. Our family never talked about it. Maybe I was afraid, not of the violent people out there, but of my own thoughts. After that I forgot, or tried to forget.
Forgive me. Forgive us. We didn’t want to be burned, so we hung the prayer rug on the fence.
In the dark, I heard you sobbing.
Go to sleep.
I don’t want to sleep, you said. I don’t want all this to be just a bad dream and to disappear when we wake up.
I hugged you and whispered in your ear, again: Sleep. We have crossed, and that is more than enough.
That morning we separated. I would continue to Mexico City and wander there, for who knows how long. Maybe until I got bored. After that maybe I’d return to Indonesia. That’s nuts, you said. All that made sense to me was this: why should I torture myself for hours in traffic at San Ysidro only to be deported? There had to be more exciting adventures, and I had no belongings and no regrets. Oh, look, you’ve converted me. I’m using your term now: adventure.
You said you wanted to try and return, to test the law. I thought that was pointless, as you’d never made your marriage official. True, you said. But what’s the harm in trying? You’d lived through ambiguity, between accepting the death of your husband and waiting for him to return, between a longing for home and an addiction to travel. You were neither here nor there, always in a waiting room, in the borderlands.
What, we’re not allowed to experiment in the borderlands? Your question, I liked your question.
Of course. Of course, we can. We’ll keep on experimenting in the borderlands.
Where are you now?
I’m not afraid any more.
FINIS
How many of the story threads have you passed through? Note them down below.
Author’s Acknowledgements
Gentayangan, the title of this book in its original Indonesian language, means wandering, haunting, being in between. It often refers to ghosts who are neither here, in our world, nor there, in the world of the dead.
The novel has travelled through various in-between places. It was conceived in New York, published in Jakarta, and written over the course of nine years as I moved across continents and lived in different countries. The translation and editing process of the novel in English took place in New Zealand, Australia, and the UK. It has passed through so many caring hands in transit. I would very much like to thank Stephen J. Epstein for tirelessly crafting and polishing the translation, and for an open, fun, and thought-provoking collaborative process; my editor Ellie Steel for taking care of the book with commitment and patience; Tiffany Tsao for her help in editing the book and for providing diverse perspectives in translation; and my agent Kelly Falconer for her insights, enthusiasm, and endless support. Thanks also to Anna Redman Aylward, Katherine
Fry, Rosie Palmer, and the Harvill Secker/Vintage team who have worked very hard to prepare for the publication of this book.
I am grateful for the translation funding support that The Wandering has received: a PEN Translates award from English PEN and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant from PEN America.
‘Visiting a Haunted House’ appeared in Asymptote, July 2017, with thanks to Lee Yew Leong and Tiffany Tsao.
Teaching has been an important lab to explore questions and perspectives around travel and displacement. I thank Malcolm Turvey and the students of ‘Travel and Gender in Cinema’ at Sarah Lawrence College (2015) as well as my film and global media students at Macquarie University.
Sam Cooney and Elizabeth Bryer from Brow Books and my colleagues at Macquarie University (especially the Creative Ecology Lab) have been highly supportive. I also thank friends, institutions, and communities who have supported this book in Indonesia: Mirna Yulistianti and her team at Gramedia Pustaka Utama, Eka Kurniawan, Sapardi Djoko Damono, Kartika Jahja, Gunawan Maryanto, Leilani Hermiasih, Asri Saraswati, Gita Putri Damayana, Marissa Anita, Rizal Iwan, Yudi Ahmad Tajudin, Norman Erikson Pasaribu, Alia Swastika, Gratiagusti Chananya Rompas, Mikael Johani, lit Boit, Lusia Neti Cahyani, Yennu Ariendra, Teater Garasi, Omuniuum, Paviliun Puisi, Melancholic Bitch.
Thanks to readers in Indonesia who have generously shared their reviews and photos of the novel, complete with their own maps and plenty of sticky notes.
My love and special thanks go to my daughter Ilana and my family:
My partner Ugoran Prasad has watched The Wandering grow – in his words – from a little creature sitting in the corners of our house to a towering monster running loose on the streets. He is the first reader and critic of this book, and a collaborator in A Red Shoe Odyssey, an ongoing project of collecting images of the red shoes adventure.
My mother passed away in June 2019 without having the chance to see the book travel. She will always live in the stories of disobedient women; good girls go to heaven, bad girls go wandering.
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