by Jamie Maslin
Stepping from the car, my foot sank into about ten inches of water, as the rest of me got battered by the cold power-shower coming from the sky. I hastily dragged my backpack from the vehicle and sprinted for a nearby car mechanics with an overhanging tin roof. From its corrugated channels gushed murky individual jets, their collective appearance resembling a waterfall. I slipped around its side just as a bolt of lightning exploded nearby, its almost instantaneous thunder echoing through the streets.
I was keen to get back inside the warm, dry interior of a car or truck, so stood here attempting to wave one down. After ten minutes, a car that had passed moments earlier began reversing in my direction through a near-lake of water, creating a stern wave in the process. The passenger window wound down the merest of cracks so that conversation could ensue without soaking the car.
“We’re only going to our house around the corner,” said the middle-aged male driver, leaning across his wife in the passenger seat. “Would you like to wait there until the rain stops?”
My heart swelled at their kindness. I jumped in.
They introduced themselves as Herwin and Jrawati. Moments later we were reversing into the garage of their humble bungalow, or at least trying to, the downpour making visibility so atrocious that poor Herwin botched the operation, hitting the garage wall twice before finally slotting the car inside. While Herwin inspected the damage, both to wall and car, Jrawati led me inside the house. Here she introduced me to their three children, the oldest of whom had been babysitting. They were Krisna and Haryo, both teenagers, and their adorable little sister, Andari, who was about seven.
“Would you like a tea?” asked Herwin when he returned from outside.
We sat on a rug sipping our drinks, while rain reverberated on the roof and thunder discharged outside. It was great to be indoors, but more so to be amid such welcoming people.
I’d been in plenty of situations like this, where strangers had shown me touching generosity, often culminating in an offer of accommodation. And sure enough, before I’d finished my first cup of tea, Herwin asked if I needed a place to stay for the night. It couldn’t have come at a better time. By now it was growing dark outside and the rain was unabated. I accepted and thanked him.
“I do not discriminate between Indonesian, European, Japanese, or Australian. I have a responsibility to help others. You will find this often in central Java, much more than the west of the island. You could say that helping people is very much the tradition here.”
Next up he offered me a meal.
His hospitality was indicative of other Muslim countries I had traveled through before, and I immediately felt at home and a strong kinship towards Herwin and his family. Meeting people like them was the essence of traveling.
While Jrawati organized a meal, Herwin and I sat down and conversed over several additional teas. I told him of my journey so far and plans to reach the western town of Merak tomorrow, where I would catch a ferry to Sumatra; he told me of his life on Java and work as a government attorney.
Jrawati served up a traditional Javan meal called Rawon, or beef black soup, made up of diced beef mixed with black nuts of the keluak mangrove tree, which, although poisonous, are made edible through fermentation. Added to this base is a medley of exotic herbs and spices including red chilli, turmeric, ginger, garlic, lemon grass, lime leaves, and sugar. We ate together on the floor, and very nice it was too, with a rich nutty flavor and sweet aroma. When finished, the family sat back and watched the nightly news on television. Reports of two fatal transport disasters dominated the program, both of which had struck Java earlier in the day. Two passenger trains had collided head-on near the town of Bajar, roughly forty five miles away, and then thirty minutes afterwards a ferry sailing between Java and Sumatra had caught fire. Hundreds were injured in the twin disasters and at least 16 people killed. The ferry had been traveling the route I intended to take tomorrow. I was pleased I hadn’t made it there today. After discussing my onward journey with Herwin, he recommended I change my destination from Merak to the country’s capital, Jakarta, and to catch a ferry from there to Sumatra instead.
If I wanted to hit Jakarta in time then I would need to be up at the crack of dawn, so I asked Herwin and Jrawati if they’d mind if I let myself out in the morning without saying goodbye so that I didn’t wake them up. Amazingly, Herwin said he normally got up between 3 and 4 a.m. I wondered if this was to pray. Nearly every morning on Java, I had been awoken around this time by the infuriating sound of loudspeakers on mosques pumping out a calling to prayer. When it was time to hit the sack, Herwin said that I should share his son’s bed, which was arranged with a long separator pillow down the middle. This was fine by me, but in the end his son, who went to bed after me, slept on a mat in the sitting room.
I awoke to the sight of light streaming through the slats of the bedroom window blind.
Shit. I had overslept.
I checked my watch but it was only 3 a.m. This was far earlier than I had intended to get on the road but if there was light then there would be vehicles, and the less crowded the roads were then the faster I could move along them. I quietly got dressed, picked up my pack and slipped into the living room. Sitting there was Herwin, wide awake. I couldn’t quite believe that he was up at this hour, or work out whether it was the sound of me getting up that had roused him.
“It is too early for you,” he said on seeing me.
“No, I think if there are cars then I should go,” I politely countered, keen to get moving and hit Jakarta by nightfall.
“But the road will be empty at this time.”
“Even if there are one or two vehicles, I think it’s best I set off now.”
The conversation went back and forth like this for a bit until Herwin finally conceded, but only after insisting that we share a final departing tea before I leave. I agreed. Having expected him to throw the kettle on the hob, it came as something of a surprise when he woke Jrawati up to do the honors. On finishing my tea I quietly thanked them for their touching hospitality and bade them both a warm farewell.
Getting into hitching mode I took a deep breath and opened the front door—stepping out into pitch darkness. This didn’t make sense. The source of “sunlight” that had woken me in such a panic to get on the move was now all too clear to see—a lightbulb on the front porch positioned directly in front of the bedroom window. I made an apologetic about-turn and stepped back inside. I felt like a right numpty, and a complete shit too, especially after Jrawati had been woken to make me tea.
“What time is it light?” I asked in a cringe-worthy reversal of my position of moments ago.
“Five o’clock,” said Herwin. “Shall I wake you then?”
“Yes, please,” I replied in as contrite a manner as I could muster, then crawled back into bed.
* * *
By the early evening I made it to Jakarta, a city of 10 million people, that thankfully I skirted around in a family car containing a middle-aged couple and their two young daughters, who went out of their way to drop me in the city’s port located in sub-district Tanjung Priok. The place was colossal. Mountains of containers from huge cargo ships lined the surrounding docks. Where the hell did I need to go?
Eventually I worked it out and strode towards the passenger ferry office, where several private ticket sellers approached me to do business. I continued without breaking step. Inside sat two headscarf-wearing girls working the desk. After confirming that they spoke English, I inquired after ferries to Sumatra.
“The next one leaves on Friday,” the nearest one stated bluntly.
That was six days away!
I asked after ferries to the port of Merak further down the coast, with a view to catching a trans-island ferry from there to Sumatra instead.
There were none.
I wondered if yesterday’s disaster had played a part in their apparent scarcity.
“Are there no ferries leaving tonight for anywhere at all?” I asked.
&n
bsp; At first the girls seemed to say there weren’t, but then changed their minds and answered, “Yesterday”—hardly an improvement. Eventually though, after further prying it transpired that there was in fact a ferry leaving, and tonight at 10 p.m. for the tiny Indonesian island of Bintan.
“Where is that?” I asked.
With the assistance of a big map on the wall they pointed out its location. It sat just off the coast of neighboring countries Singapore and Malaysia, both of which you could apparently catch a “speedboat” to from Bintan.
My options seemed three-fold, and all presented their own problems. One: stay in Jakarta for six days until the next ferry departed, by which time I’d have burnt significant travel funds on the capital’s Western-priced accommodation. Two: crash here tonight and then hitchhike to Merak in the morning in the hope that I could get a ferry to Sumatra once there. Three: buy a ticket for Bintan and set off tonight but bypass Sumatra altogether. In the end the third option clinched it. Hanging around just didn’t appeal at all, nor did the uncertainty of another Javan port, and what with Sumatra’s orangutans being located far north of its ferry terminal for Malaysia, the island no longer held such interest for me. I purchased a ticket and hoped for a smooth voyage, which the girls informed me could take anything between one and two days, depending on weather conditions. Their other advice: be wary of thieves on board.
I had several hours to kill before departure, and spent the first thirty minutes in the office with the girls, who challenged me to a go on a “shoot-em up” computer game, in which these petite headscarfed Muslim girls, gleefully played the role of a U.S. solider, wantonly taking out stereotypical Middle Eastern “terrorists.”
A couple of doors down was a tiny travel agency, where I got talking to the competent English-speaking staff member, Mohammad.
“Would you like a coffee?” he offered.
I did, and so we settled down to a cup. Minutes later we were joined by two tough-looking individuals with whom Mohammad was familiar. They spoke little English but when they heard that I was British said, “SAS, good. SBS, good,” accompanied with a muscle-flexing thumbs-up. Their reference to Britain’s special forces—the Special Air Service and the Special Boat Squadron—was an odd one, but became clear when Mohammad explained that both were members of Kopassus, and had trained with the British. I knew the name. Kopassus is an infamous brigade of killers, the Indonesian equivalent of the Nazi Gestapo or Waffen SS, notorious for carrying out horrendous war crimes during the country’s genocidal conquest of tiny neighboring country East Timor in 1975, and its subsequent quarter of a century’s occupation, which killed over 200,000 people, a third of the population;73 a number proportionately higher than those killed in Cambodia by Pol Pot.74 Kopassus led the heinous invasion and were almost certainly responsible for the brutal murder of an Australian, British and New Zealand film crew attempting to chronicle the beginnings of the genocide, most of whom, witnesses say, were captured alive, strung up by their feet, had their genitalia cut off and stuffed into their mouths, before being stabbed; dying from either choking on their own sexual organs or bleeding to death.75 (One senior Kopassus officer to receive training in Britain was the man an Australian inquiry identified as having ordered the films crews’ murder.)76 Other atrocities carried out during the invasion of East Timor include the systematic killing of children, with soldiers swinging infants by their legs and smashing their heads against rocks.77 “When you clean the field, don’t you kill all the snakes, the small and large alike?” explained an Indonesian officer.78
Once again it was an American, British, and Australian sanctioned slaughter. East Timor posed no threat to mighty Indonesia, which at the time was the fifth most populous nation on earth (now the fourth), nor did Indonesia hold any historic or legal claim to East Timor that could be used as a pretext to justify its annexation. But with East Timor residing next to a strategically important shipping lane and possessing resources described by Australia’s foreign minister, Gareth Evans, as a prize worth “zillions” of dollars,79 Indonesia decided to take it for her own. With foreknowledge of an imminent invasion of East Timor, British Ambassador to Indonesia Sir John Archibald Ford cabled the Foreign Office: “It is in Britain’s interests that Indonesia absorb the territory as soon and unobtrusively as possible and when it comes to the crunch we should keep our heads down.”80 During a visit by U.S. President Gerald Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Indonesia that was described as “the big wink”81 by a State Department official, the President and Kissinger gave the country’s military dictator General Suharto the go-ahead to launch the invasion and conquest of East Timor. “You can be one hundred percent certain that Suharto was explicitly given the green light to do what he did,” revealed C. Philip Liechty, a Senior C.I.A. Officer to Indonesia at the time.82 In 2001 the transcript of the meeting between Ford, Kissinger and Suharto was finally released in uncensored form, disclosing exactly that:
Suharto: I would like to speak to you, Mr. President, about another problem, Timor . . . We want your understanding if we deem it necessary to take rapid or drastic action.
President Ford: We will understand and will not press you on this issue. We understand . . . the intentions you have.
Kissinger: You appreciate that the use of US-made arms could create problems . . . It depends on how we construe it, whether it is in self defense or is a foreign operation. It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly, we would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens happens after we return.83
As the U.S. Presidential plane lifted off the Indonesian runway, the invasion of East Timor was launched, and the genocide commenced. On arrival back in Washington, Kissinger plotted how best to justify the aggression, opting for the 1970s catch-all equivalent that “fighting terrorism” is today. “Can’t we construe a Communist government in the middle of Indonesia as self defense?” he asked an emergency meeting at the State Department.84 (For more on this repugnant Western-armed and sanctioned crime against humanity, see acclaimed documentary film “The Timor Conspiracy,” viewable online: www.johnpilger.com/videos/the-timor-conspiracy-update-).
As nightfall arrived and the departure time of the ferry approached, hundreds of people began congregating on the poorly lit terrace outside the ticket office. I was the only Westerner about, and with my oversized pack stuck out in the crowds. Despite the numbers, for some reason the proper waiting room for the terminal was all locked up. Ten o’clock came and went, and the ferry was nowhere to be seen. By midnight half the crowd was lying down asleep.
Suddenly an announcement came over a loud speaker and the terminal waiting-room door was unlocked. Chaos erupted and a stampede of people funneled inside. I took my cue. Getting swept along in the flow, I passed right through the building to the dock itself on the other side where, through tired eyes, I stared out across a foggy quay accentuated by murky yellow lighting of several lamps, at a huge rusting heap of a ferry.
No apparent logic led to the boarding or departure, with everyone just pushing and shoving, dragging themselves and their luggage on and off the ferry. I headed up a giant gangplank enclosed on either side by a safety net constructed out of oily knotted rope, and entered the ferry proper. It was in a terrible state. Rust, dirt and trash were everywhere. The vessel was probably older than I was. Accommodation consisted of several floors of sweat-reeking windowless open barracks, lined with long communal wooden platforms, where super-thin plastic-coated mattresses were placed—the sort of thing you might use for judo or wrestling. Throwing my pack down, I claimed a space by the wall so that I slept next to one person, not sandwiched between two. In minutes the place was full to the brim with hundreds of people, all crammed in here together side by side, trying to organize their tiny bit of platform space. Cockroaches outnumbered the human passengers. Many people lit up cigarettes, then casually discarded them on the floor, all but inviting a repeat of yesterday’s ferry inferno. I familiarized myself with the e
xits in case I needed to make a run for it. Departure arrived at 1 a.m., and with it I decided to get my head down. Before doing so I tactically tied up my backpack to prevent any pilfering when asleep, then slipped into my thin bivvy to use as a sleeping bag—it was far too hot to use the bag itself.
* * *
Time dragged by on board, broken only by periodic games of cards with those surrounding, none of whom spoke any English, and at the thrice-daily food handouts. These consisted of three meals: rice and a limp pancake; rice and a sliver of shoe-leather meat; and rice and a mouthful of rehydrated fish. Others, wisely, had brought their own sustenance.
In the end the voyage encompassed two full miserable nights on board, arriving on the tiny green island of Bintan at about eight in the morning.
Passing through customs was a painless experience. It was satisfying to be on the brink of another country. Right on time a nifty catamaran ferry arrived that looked capable of holding about a hundred people. It was a quick but bumpy ride across the windswept waters of the Singapore Strait that separated Bintan from the coast of Malaysia. In the distance, swaddled by an uninspiring cloudy sky of gray, appeared Malaysia. From here on in it would be overland for a seriously long way. The next oceanic body of water I would meet would be the English Channel.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Meat Cleaver Madness
I waited on the outskirts of clean Malaysian city, Johor Bahru, about a hundred yards up the road from a gas station forecourt on a wide gravelly area that was tailor made for passing motorists to stop, having arrived here minutes earlier on the back of a motorbike. As it was a small country with a good road system and modern infrastructure, my stay in Malaysia seemed likely to be a short one.