Tuesday, Jul 8, 2008
In his second letter from Jakarta, Jeff Pulice reports on amazing events that have happened since the resignation of President Suharto -- and on the expats who stayed behind.
May 29, 1998 | JAKARTA, INDONESIA -- May 22: Today, after the triple shock waves of A) Suharto's resigning, B) Habibie's taking over and C) my finding out that roughly 80 percent of the Americans here have left, it is decided that a party for visiting journalists and other hardy souls would be nice. My idea to call it "The Party for People Who Didn't Run Screaming for The Exits" is quickly and mercilessly ignored. While I might sound a bit flippant, please know that my ethnic-Chinese wife and I both agree that she should not go into downtown with me.
Stories have been coming in about what happened to my friends. It might have looked bad on CNN -- but imagine this: You're a French citizen, living here for seven years. You find yourself trapped in a burning shopping complex, surrounded by flames and looters, none of whom are smiling at you. At home, your Indonesian-Chinese wife and your two children are standing by the phone, praying with a friend, as they hear the neighborhood runners shouting out the location of the looting and burning.
"It's at the school three blocks over! They're breaking the windows!"
Then: "The church on the corner is burning!"
And finally: "They're at the corner! They're coming to this street!"
It's one thing to talk about this as an abstraction, as a plot to a film. It's another to sit down in that burned-out shopping center and fall asleep, unable to get home, not knowing if your family is dead or alive.
At Kafe Batavia, the downtown restaurant housed in a 150-year-old traditional Dutch mansion, the journalists are taking advantage of the open bar with both fists. I take pictures of them holding up the front page of the Jakarta Post, with its banner headline "I QUIT!" We sit down to talk about the future.
No one here knows anything -- we've just been reacting to what we see on the streets and read on the Net. We all agree, however, that we probably know more than some talking head in New York who might have visited Bali for a week last year and now knows everything about Indonesia.
It is quickly agreed that Habibie is probably going to be a transitional figure. The army will probably choose someone with more global respect. When? Estimates range from three weeks to six months, with one beery correspondent holding out for a year. We throw rolls at him.
We all talk about the policy changes that we might see. Yet this too is sheer conjecture -- there are too many live wires, too many loose ends. We'd like to see ethnic equality, we'd like to see complete transparency in the financial market, we'd like to see a coalition government and the dissolution of the long-standing Golkar party, Suharto's party. Membership is compulsory for military and government personnel. But again, what we want and what we'll get are probably very different. Rumor and prediction have taken the place of our day jobs.
We click glasses and toast the quiet as I think about finding new private students -- surely not all of the embassies are empty? Somebody must want to learn English, right? One fellow offers up the name of a somewhat obscure Muslim cleric as Habibie's successor. We all scratch our heads, but this man has some very good sources and I will not bet against him, not now.
After dinner and wine, we light cigars and talk about our favorite disco reopening. We wonder how the exodus of bules (the local term for white people) will affect the earning potential of the local party girls. My single friends offer anecdotes about the new marketing practices being employed: barhoppers calling and inviting themselves over for late -- very late -- "dinners." I want to find someone in the glass business to work with -- every window in Jakarta is gone, it seems. Construction and renovation companies will boom, if there really is a portion of the International Monetary Fund set aside for rebuilding our city and getting life back on track.
Later, at the Taramur disco, it's not the usual cattle-car/critical-mass situation on the dance floor, but I can see that the professional night-lifers (I'm only semi-pro) and the "business girls" and "rent boys" -- who rely on this scene for their livelihood -- are relishing reentering their nocturnal world. Dry-ice fog envelopes the dance floor, dancers whoop and grind against each other, and even I am the target of some marketing techniques (mostly having ice cubes rubbed on my chest -- why do they think this will turn me on enough to take them home?). I merely smile, sip my beer, and do the white-boy shuffle.
My cell phone rings. I duck out of Tanamur to answer it.
Another triple shock wave: Suharto has left the country. His son-in-law, the general of an elite military force, has been removed from command and may be arrested. The army, at this moment, is marching into the Parliament building to clear out the students after five days of protests.
"Are these confirmed?"
"Only the last one -- I can see it on CNN right now. The other two came from a good source."
"Have they started shooting yet?"
"No, but they look pissed and ready for a fight."
I sigh, hang my head. "Damn."
"Yeah," he answers, "welcome back to the shit."
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