We passed shadow-puppet shows, musicians playing traditional instruments, fire-blowers, jugglers, and street vendors selling every imaginable ware, from contraband American cassettes to rare indigenous artifacts. Finally, we ended up at a tiny coffeehouse populated by young men and women whose clothes, hats, and hairstyles would have been right in fashion at a Beatles concert in the late 1960s; however, everyone was distinctly Indonesian. Rasy introduced me to a group seated around a table and we sat down.
They all spoke English, with varying degrees of fluency, but they appreciated and encouraged my attempts at Bahasa. They talked about this openly and asked me why Americans never learned their language. I had no answer. Nor could I explain why I was the only American or European in this part of the city, even though you could always find plenty of us at the Golf and Racket Club, the posh restaurants, the movie theaters, and the upscale supermarkets.
It was a night I shall always remember. Rasy and his friends treated me as one of their own. I enjoyed a sense of euphoria from being there, sharing their city, food, and music, smelling the clove cigarettes and other aromas that were part of their lives, joking and laughing with them. It was like the Peace Corps all over again, and I found myself wondering why I had thought that I wanted to travel first class and separate myself from people like this. As the night wore on, they became increasingly interested in learning my thoughts about their country and about the war my country was fighting in Vietnam. Every one of them was horrified by what they referred to as “the illegal invasion,” and they were relieved to discover I shared their feelings.
By the time Rasy and I returned to the guesthouse it was late and the place was dark. I thanked him profusely for inviting me into his world; he thanked me for opening up to his friends. We promised to do it again, hugged, and headed off to our respective rooms.
That experience with Rasy whetted my appetite for spending more time away from the MAIN team. The next morning, I had a meeting with Charlie and told him I was becoming frustrated trying to obtain information from local people. In addition, most of the statistics I needed for developing economic forecasts could only be found at government offices in Jakarta. Charlie and I agreed that I would need to spend one to two weeks in Jakarta.
He expressed sympathy for me, having to abandon Bandung for the steaming metropolis, and I professed to detest the idea. Secretly, however, I was excited by the opportunity to have some time to myself, to explore Jakarta and to live at the elegant Hotel InterContinental Indonesia. Once in Jakarta, however, I discovered that I now viewed life from a different perspective. The night spent with Rasy and the young Indonesians, as well as my travels around the country, had changed me. I found that I saw my fellow Americans in a different light. The young wives seemed not quite so beautiful. The chain-link fence around the pool and the steel bars outside the windows on the lower floors, which I had barely noticed before, now took on an ominous appearance. The food in the hotel’s elegant restaurants seemed insipid.
I noticed something else too. During my meetings with political and business leaders, I became aware of subtleties in the way they treated me. I had not perceived it before, but now I saw that many of them resented my presence. For example, when they introduced me to each other, they often used Bahasa terms that according to my dictionary translated to inquisitor and interrogator. I purposely neglected disclosing my knowledge of their language — even my translator knew only that I could recite a few stock phrases — and I purchased a good Bahasa/English dictionary, which I often used after leaving them.
Were these addresses just coincidences of language? Misinterpretations in my dictionary? I tried to convince myself they were. Yet, the more time I spent with these men, the more convinced I became that I was an intruder, that an order to cooperate had come down from someone, and that they had little choice but to comply. I had no idea whether a government official, a banker, a general, or the U.S. Embassy had sent the order. All I knew was that although they invited me into their offices, offered me tea, politely answered my questions, and in every overt manner seemed to welcome my presence, beneath the surface there was a shadow of resignation and rancor.
It made me wonder, too, about their answers to my questions and about the validity of their data. For instance, I could never just walk into an office with my translator and meet with someone; we first had to set up an appointment. In itself, this would not have seemed so strange, except that doing so was outrageously time consuming. Since the phones seldom worked, we had to drive through the traffic-choked streets, which were laid out in such a contorted manner that it could take an hour to reach a building only blocks away. Once there, we were asked to fill out several forms. Eventually, a male secretary would appear. Politely — always with the courteous smile for which the Javanese are famous — he would question me about the types of information I desired, and then he would establish a time for the meeting.
Without exception, the scheduled appointment was at least several days away, and when the meeting finally occurred I was handed a folder of prepared materials. The industry owners gave me five-and ten-year plans, the bankers had charts and graphs, and the government officials provided lists of projects that were in the process of leaving the drawing boards to become engines of economic growth. Everything these captains of commerce and government provided, and all they said during the interviews, indicated that Java was poised for perhaps the biggest boom any economy had ever enjoyed. No one — not a single person — ever questioned this premise or gave me any negative information.
As I headed back to Bandung, though, I found myself wondering about all these experiences; something was deeply disturbing. It occurred to me that everything I was doing in Indonesia was more like a game than reality. It was as though we were playing a game of poker. We kept our cards hidden. We could not trust each other or count on the reliability of the information we shared. Yet, this game was deadly serious, and its outcome would impact millions of lives for decades to come.
CHAPTER 7. Civilization on Trial
“I’m taking you to a dalang,” Rasy beamed. “You know, the famous Indonesian puppet masters.” He was obviously pleased to have me back in Bandung. “There’s a very important one in town tonight.”
He drove me on his scooter through parts of his city I did not know existed, through sections filled with traditional Javanese kampong houses, which looked like a poor person’s version of tiny tile-roofed temples. Gone were the stately Dutch Colonial mansions and office buildings I had grown to expect. The people were obviously poor, yet they bore themselves with great pride. They wore threadbare but clean batik sarongs, brightly colored blouses, and wide-brimmed straw hats. Everywhere we went we were greeted with smiles and laughter. When we stopped, children rushed up to touch me and feel the fabric of my jeans. One little girl stuck a fragrant frangipani blossom in my hair.
We parked the scooter near a sidewalk theater where several hundred people were gathered, some standing, others sitting in portable chairs. The night was clear and beautiful. Although we were in the heart of the oldest section of Bandung, there were no streetlights, so the stars sparkled over our heads. The air was filled with the aromas of wood fires, peanuts, and cloves.
Rasy disappeared into the crowd and soon returned with many of the young people I had met at the coffeehouse. They offered me hot tea, little cakes, and sate, tiny bits of meat cooked in peanut oil. I must have hesitated before accepting the latter, because one of the women pointed at a small fire. “Very fresh meat,” she laughed. “Just cooked.”