Empire of the East (6 page)

We changed in a shack at the end of the beach. This called itself a restaurant. Part of the ritual of the Sunday visit was to sit on its veranda a few minutes and look out in silent admiration over the sea. The visitors came and went all the time but nobody ordered food while we were there. A bill of fare, listing a number of dishes, was nailed to the wall, but on this day nothing was available but tinned sardines and vanilla-flavoured tea. The shack, Andy discovered, was also the official meeting place of the village council, and a number of notices relating to its activities were displayed on a board. All these, as was to be expected, were in Indonesian, but among them a single announcement in English came to the aid of the Anglo-Saxon who found his way here,
ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES ARE HARD TO FIND IN SABANG. BUT IN EVENT OF REAL THIRST CONSULT WITH STAFF OF HOTEL WHERE YOU ARE STAYING.

The time had come for Andy’s introduction to sub-aquatic pleasures. We fixed his mask for him, pulled on our own, and waded into the water. We were the only swimmers. People came here to stand alone or in groups to derive benefit from looking at the sea, but I was beginning to suspect that only the occasional foreigner entered the water. This may have contributed to the fact that there were more fish and a greater variety of them here than I had seen anywhere, even in such remote Pacific islands as Raiatea where hardly anyone lived, and for that reason the fish went largely undisturbed. It would have called for many hours of exploration of the coral heads and the innumerable shallow caves to catalogue the varieties present in this small bay. Watching terrestrial animals, even in the most plentifully stocked reserve, may offer a wide range of pleasures but rarely exceptional surprise. If there are colours, with the exception of some exotic birds, they will have been chosen by nature to blend defensively with those of the drab backgrounds of forest or plain — sober, and therefore unassertive.

The world of the coral reef had nothing to conceal. Or could it be that these wildly self-advertising colours proclaimed inedibility? Fish filled every crevice of the field of vision with impossible combinations of purple, lemon, chocolate, violet, scarlet and black. How could it be that such colour clashes, such violent contrasts, were acceptable in a fish although certainly in nothing on land? Some of the fish were strikingly marked, scribbled upon with symbols, Arabic dots and diacritic signs, hieroglyphs, and black sprawling graffiti on brilliant walls. There were fish that changed colours, as if at the touch of a switch, puffed themselves up, deflated themselves, fish like Disneyland toys, clownish fish, and transparent fish — visually a matter of guesswork, apart from a floating eye linked to a digestive tract.

They moved slowly, indifferent to us, sweeping in listless peregrination through clear aqueous space or the thousand particles of glittering small-fry into the coral thickets and out again. Why this extravagant discord of colours in the vast sameness of the coral, which, it was to be assumed, imposed an identical environment upon its myriad inhabitants? Terra firma has its confident biological answers to such questions, but they are less easily provided by the sea. A few hundred yards out, on the brink of the deep water, the coral came to an abrupt end with a row of heads emblazoned with sea anemones, thrust like final bouquets into the misted depths. Beyond this a few predators, small sharks and barracudas, hung in passive suspension, camouflaged to match the grey monochrome of the sea.

Iboih was right across the island where the east-west road suddenly broke into fragments. Before this happened it had curved round the bruised slopes of what remained of the volcano Guning Meradi, which in bad weather occasionally deposited landslides of tufa upon the cracked road-surfaces. Cyclopean black boulders, some of them the size of a house, are poised precariously on the slopes and a number of them have rolled down to the beach. It is this which makes the area memorable and a little fantastic, for in addition to innumerable orchids, these rocks have trees growing out of them — some very large. The oldest of the trees have succeeded in plunging their roots through the rock into the earth. A final stage in the process is reached when the tree swells up to envelop its host so that the rock is lifted, like an enormous goitrous swelling, clear of the ground. Dali would have been at home in Iboih.

There was no real village here, just a line of shacks yet, in this place where tourism had hardly issued from the womb, the tourists were awaited. A man with a watchful, calculating expression and a fawning smile learned in a big city had established himself in a café here. For those who had walked the many dusty miles from Sabang, bottled water was on sale at double normal prices. Several doubtful characters lurked in the vicinity.

‘Put up car windows,’ Andy said.

‘Why, what’s the problem?’

‘They may drop packet of dope in car. The policemen will come and arrest us.’

On my return to Banda a second letter from Claudia on the subject of the Pasola awaited me.

It was altogether different from anything we expected. It turned out they hold three Pasolas. They are the most important ceremonies in the Merapu religion, and they are based on harvests of sea-worms, called myale, at three different points on the south coast. Timing is uncertain. It can happen any time in February or March after a full moon. For one day only the tides bring in the annual crop (unappetising-looking worms, about 9 ins long) which is ritually scooped up by hordes of people on the beaches, and then the Pasola starts. Apart from being jolly delicious, these worms have great significance as omens of the coming harvest — depending on their quality and abundance. The Pasola is to welcome them, and to entertain the sea spirits who have helped with their arrival. A few nights ago the whole family we were staying with rushed down to the beach to sniff at the sea breeze with great excitement, and were able to tell with all certainty the worms were on their way and due to arrive the day after next, which they did.

Apparently, at Wanokaka the worms turned up about a month earlier than usual and the ratu priest called for the Pasola to take place, with everybody ready assembled. Unfortunately the local governor, top brass, and police were there to forbid the proceedings. It transpired that a recent glossy brochure published by the Jakarta tourist board had stated that this year’s Pasola in Wanokaka would be on 26 March, and various Jakarta notables and tour groups had arranged to come. It seems that centuries-old tradition and the very significance of the Pasola is to be sacrificed to tourism. Reminiscent of the government tax-incentives to encourage Torajas to hold their celebrated funerals in the peak tourist season.

We were lucky at Kodi, where there was a huge crowd but few soldiers and police and the event went off in traditional fashion. What happens is that thirty or forty mounted men armed with javelins line up in semi-circles facing each other and, after an exchange of taunts and insults, champions challenge each other to single combat and ride out to do battle. The government has forbidden the use of steel tips on the javelins so the contestants break off the ends, leaving jagged spikes of wood. No one was killed at the Kodi Pasola, although this sometimes happens, but a rider got a javelin through his cheek. They have very strict rules against cheating or throwing a javelin when an opponent’s back is turned. This happened while we were there with a wildly excited crowd pouring into the field of battle, and the police blazing away with their submachine guns — luckily for us into the air. The one drawback to all this excitement was the ritual food we had to eat. The ratu stood over us while we were forced to consume really enormous piles of rice cooked in brackish water. This took up at least a half-hour, and the Pasola had started before we had got it down. The story is that Jakarta is thinking of having a Pasola every month.

There was another note, too, from the friend who had sent me the cutting from the
Financial Times:
‘I gather you’re in this part of the world now, so thought I’d send you the enclosed, published in
Tapol.’

On 1st June a Dutch journalist published accounts of two mass murders in Aceh. One occurred on 12th September 1990 on the road from Bireuën to Takingeun. A truck carrying 56 detainees from Rancong Prison, Lhokseumawe, came to a halt. The detainees were shot with M16s, their bodies thrown down a ravine … in April a truck with 41 men and women drove to a point 30 kms from Takingeun. The victims alighted and were shot dead. Local people insist that the murders were the work of army murder-squads wearing civilian clothing. [NRC Handelsblad 1st June.]

A second cutting gave the views on such matters of Major-General Pramono, military commander of North Sumatra, as expressed in an interview with the Jakarta weekly
Tempo:

I have told the people the important thing if you see GPK [the army term for Free Aceh Movement activist] you should kill him. There’s no need to investigate. Just shoot him or knife him. People are forced to do this or that and if they don’t want to they are shot or get their throats slit. So I have instructed people to carry weapons, machetes or whatever. If you see a GPK just kill him.

We discussed these new revelations concerning our immediate geographical surroundings. Suddenly our involvement in Aceh had changed. Until this moment we should always have remembered Lhokseumawe for a huge breakfast served in a splendid but vacant hotel, but now this image would be overshadowed by the news of its prison where so many final solutions were arranged. The thirty miles from Bireuën on the coast down to Takingeun and the peerless Lake Tawar had staged for us a succession of mountain and forest profiles that would endure in the memory. But now I understood that it was for its loneliness and therefore for the absence of prying eyes that it was chosen — for the concealment of those they preferred not to bury in a grave, but simply put away out of sight.

T
HERE WAS A DISCUSSION
before we set off about the policy to be followed with Andy. Our short stay at Weh seemed enormously to have improved him. He had given up locking himself in the car at night and occupied a room in the losmen in which we stayed. Snorkelling, with its revelation of sub-aquatic marvels, had given him something to talk about, and he spoke of the possibility of training to become a diving instructor at Lake Toba as soon as the tourist industry revived. We were all agreed that he suffered while with us not only from fear, but from boredom. It was clear that given the chance he was an active and energetic man, but so far there had been little for him to do but sit in the back of the car, awaiting the time when his services as a guide would be required, and this moment was about to arrive.

We took advice from the manager of the Sultan Hotel where we stayed while in Banda, who told us that so far as he knew buses still went to the small towns at the northern end of the west road, but after that no one could say. Much of the road was under repair, and unrepaired stretches before Tapaktuan were in extremely bad condition, and quite impassable in rain. Bridge replacements in some areas had been suspended as a result of the troubles, necessitating detours through swampy terrain in which anything but a powerful four-wheel-drive vehicle (which our Toyota was not) could expect to get stuck. Against this, although the rains were only a week or two away, the route was as dry now as it would ever be. This was what we wanted to hear, and we threw our odds and ends into the car and made a start.

Our first stop was the lively township of Lhoknga, which had something about it, both in appearance and atmosphere, of Dodge City in the 1860s as depicted in nostalgic old American movies of the western frontier. It was Dodge City in all but the hitching posts, though with the addition, as one turned a corner, of a spectacular but confusing vista of the sea. Lhoknga was full of shops, advertising for the benefit of those who felt like chancing the west coast road that this was the last place for two hundred miles where provisions of almost any kind could be obtained. The general store to which we were taken to stock up was an Aladdin’s cave of essential supplies and domestic bric-à-brac run by a family in a mean street. These people had on display a greater variety of goods, from decorated enemas to masks worn by line-fishermen to deceive the fish, than I had seen in a shop of this kind anywhere in the world.

All round the main cavern ran twelve deep shelves upon which thousands of items were crammed, and passages led off in all directions to stock-rooms under neighbouring premises. Above all there were thirty varieties of washing powder upon the abundant use of which advertisers have been able to persuade Indonesian country folk that their prestige depends.

As so often happens in the case of successful shopkeepers, the people running this emporium were morose. The wife, who served me, although fat and sad was incredibly beautiful. We had to buy spare five-gallon cans to carry petrol and these were instantly produced. Gawaine and I had a small bet as to whether they could supply a funnel. The wife pointed to a notice in Indonesian on the cluttered counter which said:
WE HAVE
EVERYTHING.
IF THERE IS SOMETHING YOU DO NOT SEE HERE WE WILL GET IT IN FIVE MINUTES,
and a funnel was produced.

We inspected several tins of canned foods nestling among elastic knee-supports and electrical machines that delivered a therapeutic shock, and decided against them. The owner thought we would be unlikely to find much to eat before Tapaktuan and recommended a good square meal of
nasi goreng
at a restaurant he owned before we left. Instead we laid in a supply of biscuits and stale but excellent cake.

Fortunately enough, Andy was not present at this time: we had bought him cleaning materials, and he was outside polishing the car. A lot of rumours were flying about and a shopper practising his English on us had depressing news. The army had been in action in the vicinity, and only a few weeks earlier a truckful of their Acehnese prisoners had been taken to a lonely spot a few miles away down the road, and there massacred.