Teenagers
in a twisted world
“Dad, how
come we didn’t know some people in Indonesia hated us so much? We had heaps of friends and everyone was
always nice to us. Was it anything we
did or said?”
A troubling
question from 14-year old Ruth Scott to her father Robert after his Muslim
friend Urip and 20 other academics and students had been torn apart by a female
suicide bomber.
On that
fateful day at a Christian university in Central Java, Robert was scheduled to
deliver the lecture. Instead he’d
invited Urip to speak in a bid to build religious tolerance and understanding.
So Robert
was watching from the back of the hall when a Jemaah Islamiyah fanatic struck
the podium targeting Westerners but killing Indonesians.
The Scott
family flees to New Zealand in deep shock.
Ruth mourns the loss of her friends and those she’s had to leave,
particularly her best mate Ari, (Urip’s daughter), and her happy life in
Indonesia.
Back in her
safe and snug homeland Ruth rejects counselling and makes a telling point about
Kiwi’s ignorance: “No, I hated it. They
had no idea about the bomb. Or
Indonesia.”
Robert
blames himself for not realizing militant Islam had grown so fast and
penetrated the campuses. His daughter’s
questions scratch the guilt scabs raw.
Fortunately
it’s fiction and on the keyboard of a writer hostile to Indonesia The Red
Suitcase could have been a polemic against Islam. But prize-winning author Jill Harris turns
the brutality of religious intolerance around, to nurture understanding of the
complexities of faith and culture.
This is
something she knows well, having spent a “tumultuous” three years in the early
1960s teaching English at the Christian Satya Wacana University in Salatiga,
Central Java with her journalist husband Ian.
The couple
had been inspired by a Protestant minister in NZ who told them their nation’s
future lay in Asia, not Europe. At the
time most young adventure seekers spent their gap years in Britain.
“We did not
have exalted ideas about ourselves and certainly no belief in the superiority
of Western values,” she said forcefully.
“We wanted to learn about our neighbors, to get alongside people of
another culture. Missionaries? Heavens
no, horror, horror.”
It took
almost a year to get visas, time spent learning Indonesian from the only
available text in NZ.
“It was an
incredibly tough time but a life-changing experience,” she recalled. “Martial law was in place; on the drive from
Jakarta we were stopped by soldiers ten times.
“We lived
on Indonesian wages, but in fact got less than local staff who took other jobs
to survive. We called the local shop Tidak Ada (don’t have) because it
was almost always empty of stock.
Relatives sent us food parcels. Yet we never felt unsafe.
“The
economy was collapsing – people were eating rats. Rice that sold for four rupiah a kilo when we
arrived was priced at 95 rupiah when we left.
“Many, many
times I wanted to give up. It was very
difficult, but it changed my life in a positive way, though I’ve never
completely bridged the cultural gap.
“Back in
Auckland I realised how racism was part of our society. In those days Maori people were hardly
recognized. That’s no longer the
situation.”
While in
Indonesia Ruth gave birth to her two sons.
Medical problems gave her further insights into the Republic’s health
services.
On her
return Jill taught Indonesian and gave public lectures on NZ’s closest Asian
neighbour. The couple also helped establish the NZ-Indonesia Association, a
non-government organization dedicated to improving relationships between the
two nations and which still exists.
The Red
Suitcase maintains
the message that NZ’s future lies in understanding Asia, the same direction
given by the minister who first inspired the couple to head to Indonesia.
Fortunately it does this subtlety. Just because readers are young doesn’t mean
they can’t spot and reject a barrow-pusher.
Later the
story moves to another level as Ruth discovers letters from an airman relative
killed in World War I1 and enters the “slippery nature of time.” But it’s the Indonesian bombing which sets
the scene for a girl rushing into womanhood and confronting the great
questions: Why is life not always good?
Why do people cause grief?
Teenage
novels have accelerated far beyond tales of enchanting princesses who find true
love and live happily ever after. Kids
who get hate and horror served on breakfast TV can’t be protected from the
great tragedies of the world they’re entering.
“Hush –
you’ll understand when you grow up,” is no longer an acceptable response when
Generation Net reaches the age of inquiry. A child’s book no longer has to be
childish.
Jill Harris
understands this market, reasoning that modern kids need frank answers in
fiction that reflects reality, not tip-toeing around the topics that set adults
trembling.
The Red
Suitcase is her
fourth book, but the first based on her time in Indonesia. The title comes from the real life discovery
of a box holding almost 100 letters from the writer’s journalist uncle Colwyn
Jones, a bomber navigator who died in Europe.
These facts
form the major plot as the fictional Ruth comes across similar correspondence,
entering “a sliding time zone,” that puts her into the aircraft raining death
over Germany.
Despite the
Scott family’s ghastly experience in Indonesia they don’t hate the
country, peppering their conversations
with Indonesian, illustrating the author’s “affection” for the archipelago.
“The media
now offers a softer image of Indonesia,” she said. “But Indonesian is no longer
taught in NZ schools or universities.”
Although
Ian has been back, leukaemia has prevented Mrs Harris, 75, from returning to
the land that shaped her thinking. Her
next project is to publish the couple’s Salatiga diaries so readers can
understand more of life in the Soekarno era.
“Indonesia
taught me about resilience, tolerance and friendship, and what it means to be
really poor,” she said in her batik-draped home. “It also helped me discover myself.”
(First published in The Jakarta Post 24 November 2014)
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