Home by Leila S. Chudori

region’s strongly anti-communist military, paramilitary, and religious groups reclaimed the Solo River and turned it into their dumping grounds. According to the information that made its way among the Indonesian residents of the Red Village—news conveyed in whispers and hushed voices—so many corpses had been dumped into it that at bends in the river, where the corpses accumulated, one could walk atop the bodies from one bank to another. After hearing this news, and for weeks on end, the distance between the Red Village and Solo suddenly evaporated, and I could smell in the air the putrid scent of decomposing bodies.
    When this mood came upon me, I grew furious, no longer caring about any threat to myself. Almost hysterical, I sent off a cable begging Aji to move Mother to Jakarta. I don’t know why, but I felt Mother would be safer in Jakarta.
    During our fourth week in the Red Village, friends in Pekingbrought word to Risjaf that most of our colleagues at Nusantara News had been detained. Miraculously, Mas Hananto was not among them. Somehow, he had managed to vanish without a trace.
    â€œProbably disguised himself,” Risjaf quipped in a low and mysterious-sounding voice.
    â€œWhat as? A beggar?” I scoffed.
    Mas Nugroho spoke firmly, optimistically: “Hananto can be slippery. I can see him being able to go most anywhere, without people catching his trail.”
    â€œI’m sure he’s in disguise,” Risjaf repeated.
    I didn’t have the will to rebut Risjaf’s foolish notion. In the dark and depressing atmosphere of the Red Village, the only thing we had to bolster strength in one another was a sliver of hope and a gram of energy.
    Mas Nug received news from his mother that Rukmini and Bimo had gone into hiding in Yogya a few weeks previously. He sent back the suggestion that they move back to Jakarta to live with his brother.
    We received the welcome news that Tjai and his family had made it safely to Singapore. Although Tjai was the most apolitical person among us, he had two strikes against him: he was of Chinese descent and he worked at the Nusantara News office. Because of this, in the current conditions—even though he was not a senior staff member—the odds were not in his favor. Fortunately for Tjai, he had an uncle in Singapore where he and his family were able to find refuge.
    There was always a two- or three-week lag in the news we received—sometimes even a month or more. In early April 1966, for instance, we received news dating from early March that was difficult to believe. On March 11, we were told, three army generalshad gone to see President Sukarno at the presidential palace in Bogor, where he had taken refuge from demonstrations in Jakarta. There they asked him to sign a statement known as “Super Semar,” an acronym for “The March 11 Letter of Command.” The effect of this command was to transfer the power of the executive office to army commander Lieutenant-General Soeharto. That same letter authorized Soeharto to take whatever measures “he deemed necessary” to restore order to the nation. It was hard to get my head around what was happening in Indonesia. How was it possible for a cabinet meeting that Bung Karno was leading to be interrupted by a demonstration and why had our “Great Leader of the Revolution” felt forced to flee to safety in Bogor? What kind of pressure had those three army generals exerted to make the president sign such an important document, one with repercussions of such great magnitude for the fate of the nation? That day, that event, determined the course of all things to come. I was beginning to grow extremely tired of the political circus taking place at home.

    After three years of life in Peking and having to constantly raise our fists in praise of Mao Tse Tung and calling out “Long Live Chairman Mao!” all the while studying agricultural production in a number of