Reading Hariadi, Thinking About Taxi and Still Dreaming of Jerusalem

[Jakarta, 12/18/23]

A timid, retiring type without vices, I can’t remember the last time I had beer, bourbon, pot, cocaine or acid. Shit, I can barely remember what I did three hours ago. Going to bed absurdly sober last night, I read Cyntha Hariadi’s “The Sun Sets in the North,” as ably translated by Eliza Vitri Handayani.

(My vast knowledge of Malay begins with nasi and ends with gado-gado, so just enough food terms to procure bebek when I desperately need bebek. Much more inevitable than anatra, canard, pato, Ente or eend, etc., it ranks right up there with kaczka as the perfect word for duck.)

To me, the story didn’t begin promisingly, for I’m not overly interested in the inner lives of teenaged girls, but I kept reading. Tata caught Ace kissing a boy in an empty classroom. Though Tata was ashamed at just seeing this, she didn’t rat Ace out, so they became good, then great friends. Daily, Ace gave Tata a ride home in her chauffeured car, then lingered at her friend’s modest dwelling in Mangga Besar. Her opulent villa with its guard’s post in Pantai Muriata, we and Tata don’t enter until well into the story. Jutting into the ocean, it’s an exclusive enclave where even the sun must be realigned. To give the rich their best view, it sets in the north.

Only gradually do we learn they’re both Chinese. Seeing pinups of Gunawan on Tata’s wardrobe facing her bed, Ace remarked, “Ta, if your type is Tiko, you will never find a boyfriend at school.” Tata flinched at the Tiko slur. With his full, wet lips and thick eyebrows, Gunawan was an Indonesian heartthrob. So infatuated by Gunawan, Tata even gave her long pillow his nickname, Gugu, and pretended it’s the actor himself. Lying on her side each night, the virginal Chinese girl hugs an idealized Indonesia.

Though born in Indonesia and culturally Indonesian, Tata won’t find an Indonesian boyfriend, Ace spat, because she’s a Cina, Tionghoa, Amoy or Cokin, with the last equivalent to the English “Chink.”

This far into the story, we don’t even know that Tata is Chinese. She may be offended at “Tiko” because she’s one herself. Ace, too, turned out to be half Tiko, for her brother, Sebastian, looked just like Gunawan. He’s dubbed “Tian Tiko.” Named after a saint pierced with arrows, he’s clearly not a Muslim, however. Expertly inserting these clues into her social and political parable, Hariadi reminds us why we must read fiction.

When Ace said her brother got all the good looks from their parents, she admitted to finding Indonesian males attractive, but being a half Amoy, she wouldn’t land one. Sebastian’s endearment for her was “Cokin.” Of course, race is always complicated and often inhumane, but keep in mind we’re also looking at religious differences here.

Receiving her first kiss from Sebastian, Tata got her Indonesian, albeit half. Dreamy in its afterglow, her reveries and innocence were shattered for good, however, when Chinese were raped and butchered during the rioting that accompanied Suharto’s downfall in 1998. Fearing their shop would be burnt, her parents hung a sign, “OWNED BY NATIVE INDONESIANS.” To appease the gods, her terrified mom even released all her chickens:

Tata heard the shrieks of the chickens running around in a panic, wishing they could fly. Her tears overflowed as she pictured the little chicks, separated from their mothers and trampled by the rioting mass.

Tata was also flightless. As she “was going mad with worry” about her best friend and incipient boyfriend, they had flown away without saying goodbye. This fact, she only discovered days later:

She was a chicken, and Ace was a bird. When shots had been fired, even though they were best friends, their survival instincts were completely different. In the end, someone left and the other was left behind. Tata did not blame Ace for leaving but she couldn’t help but feel abandoned. When the country was in turmoil, people like Tata’s family became shields for people like Ace’s family. Her family was lucky—this time.

The key phrase here is “this time.” Of course, it will happen again. It’s occurring in Gaza. It can certainly happen to you, so stop sneering!

When Sebastian showed up 20 years later to say Ace had died of a brain tumor, Tata stayed placid. “Their teenage years together meant little more to her than the old books and drawings that she had given away.” Though she was touched that Ace’s “last wish was to have Tata join the family to spread her ashes in Pantai Mutiara at sunset,” she would skip that sentimental ceremony. Trauma and betrayal had hardened her:

All she found was a scar, which no longer pained her but reminded her that people were born differently, had different preferences and carried different shaped wounds. Know your place, know yourself—that was Tata’s family’s principle, which had helped her avoid many disappointments and kept her from dreaming of the impossible.

There are people so delusional, they think everyone is the same. Some even insist that fighting, or fighting back, is unnecessary. If lucky enough to not be trampled, bombed or decapitated, they might just learn.

My first three days in Jakarta, I saw just four white people. That’s bizarre for any cosmopolitan city of this size, and, no, I haven’t booked a room in the worst slum and stayed there. Only at the end of my fourth day did I see a bunch of whites, when I strayed into Sarinah, a nice enough mall with McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut and Starbucks right across the street.

Since Jakarta doesn’t have a redlight district, creepy sex tourists aren’t here, and those caught with even tiny bits of drugs are jailed, with more serious offenders executed. Alcohol isn’t widely available. Unlike in Bangkok, Phnom Penh or Saigon, etc., you don’t see corpselike white men walking hand in hand with barely legal prostitutes.

In Sarinah’s foodcourt, there are carts mimicking or parodying those found all over Jakarta, on sidewalks and in alleys, but those are for the poorer, less Westernized natives. Ace would shudder or hold her nose.

Online, there are photos of Cyntha Hariadi. She looks Chinese. A bio note states she was educated at the New School for Social Research (in NYC), so she’s more like Ace than Tata, but, most interestingly, she now lives in Jakarta. No global citizen, Hariadi is still Indonesian.

Having seen enough of the West, Hariadi may have decided that, despite its social, racial and religious problems, Southeast Asia is still saner in every way. I can’t agree with her more. It’s lively yet languid here. In this heat, it’s harder to swing a baseball bat or machete. Everyone seems undersized if not malnourished. You’d be surprised, though, how much gusto or rage they can suddenly muster up.

Until then, it’s healing to be among mild, smiling people performing the most mundane tasks right out in the open. Some do get creative or just weird. Yesterday, I ran into a begging clown carrying her sleeping baby. On her chest dangled a speaker playing cheerful music. Her nose was red, her hair lemon yellow.

Just days from Christmas, I wish you Salamat Natal! It’s still OK to say that here. Happy Holidays or Xmas my ass!

Although Saint Teresa Catholic Church is a seven-minute walk away, I can’t enter. I remember Egyptian churches being guarded even more tightly. Just going into Sarinah, I must walk through a metal detector, so bombs can go off here, and have. The odds of me being murdered just minding my own business is infinitely higher in any American city, however. Abroad, at home or online, Americans are always at war.

The world is getting sick of her destruction, mendacity, degeneracy and hypocrisy. Two days ago, I saw an oddball with “HARLEY DAVIDSON” and the American flag on his back. All around him, though, were people protesting the American/Israeli genocide against Palestinians. On one man’s sweatshirt was a Hamas fighter. Babies waved the Palestinian flag. This sign sums it all up, “ISRAELI GENOCIDE FUNDED BY THE US.”

Americans, though, routinely laugh off accusations. Often too late, nations have learnt Uncle Sam can’t even be negotiated with. His words are either vapid or flippant. Even ticks at the base of the American totem pole will mouth off. Another “anonymous” comments at my blog:

A few years ago a politician here in the US said he was against gambling because it did nothing to advance human civilization. I think the same could be said about the Jews vs Muslim wars. Devoting time, money, energy to them is a waste. They cannot be solved, fixed, won, prevented, mitigated, attenuated, massaged, etc. Even time spent reading about them would be better spent playing solitaire or sweeping streets.

Funding endless war against innocents, Americans think genocides are non events or hilarious. The world has never seen such goofy or indifferent sadists. It’s always someone else’s screaming baby being slaughtered, someone else’s wife, daughter or mother being raped.

In 2020, my Serb landlord in Belgrade told me about his pizzeria in Brač. When it belonged to Yugoslavia, there were no problems between him and his Croat customers. Drinking beer and playing soccer, they were all friends, but some of these guys would toss his restaurant chairs into the ocean. That’s when he and his wife had to pack up and leave, but they had to be decisive. Soon after, Croats, Serbs and Albanians would all butcher each other. Having no time to sell their palatial house, Ace’s family just flew away. During crises, wafflers are often pancaked.

Speaking of his loss, my landlord just laughed.

Though much more low keyed than in Malaysia, the Chinese are still a major force in Indonesia. After Xi Jinping became general secretary of the CCP, the first Asian country he visited was Indonesia. He has been back twice. Vietnam, he has also visited three times. A new world order minus Uncle Sam is being mapped.

Flying from Saigon last week, I thought about all this talk about cutting down flights and even shutting down airports, but there’s no sign of it in East Asia. New airports are being built and more Orientals are flying than ever. More highways are being paved too. Vietnam’s VinFast cars are being sold not just in Asia, but Europe and North America. Just Stop Oil protesters wouldn’t be tolerated for one second over here.

Sitting on the Chinese built Whoosh from Jakarta to Bandung, reporter Haslinda Amin asked president Joko Widodo last month, “Do you feel proud that you have a bullet train when even the US doesn’t have one?”

Come on, Haslinda, that’s a preposterously low bar! It’s like comparing a man to some lesser orangutan! Uncle Sam can’t even link the slowest choo choo from DC to Dulles, and that bloated Greyhound station of an airport was finished 61 years ago!

It is, again, dinner time, but in Southeast Asia, you see people eating all day long, everywhere. Bebek with noodles wouldn’t be a bad but, to unwind, I’ll take a longish stroll to Taste of Arabia on Agus Salim. I’ve been thinking about Taxi in southern Lebanon. She has not answered my emails in months. Thanks to Satanic Jews, that lovely nation has been wrecked. Saying goodbye to Taxi three years ago, I promised to be back so we could ride together into a liberated Jerusalem.

From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Arabs have been at the front line in this war to liberate you too. Without Israel, all that innocent blood will also be washed from your soul.

[Jakarta, 12/17/23]

[Jakarta, 12/17/23]

[Jakarta, 12/17/23]

[Jakarta, 12/17/23]