by David Nesbit
Up until 1942, when they were pushed out by the invading Japanese, the Dutch had colonized Indonesia for more than three hundred and fifty years, and in 1945, at the end of the war following Japan’s recapitulation and retreat, the locals wanted independence.
The British came from Singapore in order to try and facilitate a handover of power to the indigenous people, but for some unknown reason someone killed the brigadier in charge. The British were not amused and gave the locals twenty-four hours in which to give up those responsible or else the whole city would pay the consequences.
Twenty-four hours later, with nobody coming forward or being given up by others, that is exactly what happened. The British went a tad over the top, it must be said, and proceeded to bomb the hell out of the city, killing tens of thousands of people. A particularly brutal battle took place on a bridge over the city’s river and was fought with such ferocity that it was said blood could be seen dripping into the river from the bridge for days afterwards: hence the rechristening of the bridge ‘Jembatan Merah’.
Surabaya is hardly a cosmopolitan city now, and back in 1993 when I came to live there it was even less of one. It was relatively strange to see an expatriate in the city’s malls or cinemas, and so whenever Yossy and I ventured out at the weekend we would be accosted by groups of people staring at us. This didn’t really bother me much, in fact I found the novelty of it slightly amusing if anything. Yossy, however, was usually far from amused!
We spoke about this phenomenon on occasion and Yoss told me that the reasons people paid us so much attention when we were out together were mixed. Some, she said, were genuinely interested because they had not seen a real-life westerner; others were jealous because for some a ‘white boyfriend’ was a status symbol; while yet more were judging us.
Yossy reckoned that some people, especially older ones, were probably thinking that I was just like those mean white guys on TV shows like ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ and was almost certainly a playboy, while others would be judging her as a ‘gadis nakal’, a naughty or promiscuous girl.
I told her to just ignore the stares and the whispers, as it wasn’t worth getting upset by them. In return she told me that I might enjoy all the attention now but I had to be careful because not only would being stared at and being talked about get old quickly, but it also had the potential to cause problems further down the line.
‘You’ll see, Neil,’ she told me. ‘Everyone is talking about you now and you’re their favourite, but just wait and see how quickly people here can turn on you if you give them the slightest chance.’
I worked as an English teacher in a small institution of further education in the west of Surabaya. It was ostensibly a secretarial academy, whereby young ladies who’d just left school would come and spend six months training to be secretaries, but in reality it was little more than a ‘time-fill’ course which did little if anything to educate or prepare them for any possible employment. The students were taught typing as well as basic computer skills and other bits and bobs that were supposedly going to help them get jobs in offices, and it was my job to ‘teach’ them English.
You will note the usage of inverted commas there as in actuality my teaching comprised of little more than providing bits and pieces of English vocabulary and then encouraging discussions or role-plays in English. Although the job itself paid peanuts, the school provided me with a work visa and other related documents, and didn’t take up too much of my time, so I was able to supplement my meagre income by offering private English lessons to individuals and, more lucratively, to companies and businesses.
This private work, although technically illegal by the terms of my work visa, necessitated I travel around the city going from place to place. As money was tight, the preferred mode of travel was almost always public transportation, and, boy, this was an eye-opener for someone used to a provincial British transport system.
Buses were antiquated converted trucks. If you were ever unfortunate enough to go to a First Division football match in England in the 1970s you’ll be familiar with the experience. These buses were full to overflowing. People were squashed into every available cavity and if you had to stand you would often find your feet would be off the ground. There were no timetables or schedules, and a bus would simply leave the terminal when it was full to the rafters and not before. This meant if you wanted to get on the bus en-route it was almost impossible and so the only bearable way of travelling by bus was to go to the terminal first. People would actually choose to travel ten miles in the opposite direction so they could arrive at the terminal and at least try and start the journey in some semblance of comfort.
The bus would then leave the terminal at a healthy lick, and gradually get faster and faster throughout the journey. The doors would be wedged open, meaning those standing at the front and back of the vehicle would be holding on for dear life. (I’m not joking either, as on more than one occasion I saw people lose their grip and go flying off the bus as it rounded a corner too fast.) On every journey, approximately ten minutes after leaving the terminal, a conductor would come round to take the fare. How, you might wonder, could anyone possibly make their way through such a solid mass of humanity and collect money. Well, amazingly, it somehow proved possible each time. The conductor was usually a small and lithe guy who would slide between passengers, past them, by them, over them, under them and seemingly through them and manage to collect his fares before the bus reached the city and passengers started to disembark.
Back to my job, and even in the private sector, teaching was really pretty simple and straightforward as long as adequate preparation was done, although the hours were long. I usually left home early in the morning and didn’t get back until late at night. This meant I was usually in a state of permanent exhaustion, and to tell the truth I soon found I could lie down and go to sleep at any point of the day, given the chance. That couldn’t have been too good for my health.
Still, no major problem there. I was still young, just turned twenty-seven, and together Yossy and I were busy saving like crazy. Our immediate plan was to have enough money to buy a car to help with the tiredness factor so I wouldn’t need to travel everywhere by public transport.
We lived in Sidoarjo, a small hamlet about fifteen miles or so outside of Surabaya city. Our home was a simple three-bedroomed, one-storey place that we were renting while we tried to save up for a mortgage. It was in a clean and tidy housing complex, and although most of the neighbours couldn’t speak English, I was welcomed into the neighbourhood.
Although the norm in Indonesia is for even the most average of middle-class families to hire a full-time maid, or housekeeper, Yossy and I didn’t bother. We were both out working most of the day and so the house didn’t really get untidy, and we would send our clothes to the laundry and do any cleaning at the weekend.
All of this enabled us to live very self-contained lives together and some people might have ventured that we lived too much in each other’s pockets. Neither one of us really had any close friends, although I was probably guiltier of this than she was. Neither Sidoarjo nor even Surabaya had anything of an expatriate community to speak of, and so the only people I came into contact with were those I met through my work. I didn’t mind, though, as most of the time I was working, travelling to work or trying to get what rest I could.
We would normally try and leave the house together at around 6 am and travel into work in Surabaya by public transport. Now, as I said, this was not an experience for the faint-hearted, but once we had negotiated it our day would begin in earnest. Yossy would disembark from the bus on the slip road that led to the airport, and I would continue on into Surabaya proper, arriving at the so-called Secretary Academy in time for a 7:30 start. The early morning starts were no real issue for me as I’d been used to waking up early back in the dark days of working in England, but what I never really got used to was the heat. Even that early in the day I found myself sweating profusely after the slightest exertion, and so I
learnt to wear light clothes to work and to change into more formal teaching attire once I arrived.
At the academy – I use that word loosely – I would invariably only have a couple of lessons in the morning and then I would be free to go off chasing the big(ger) bucks. I would normally hang around at the school for a while and take advantage of the air-conditioning for as long as possible (not to mention the photocopying facilities for the materials I needed for my private lessons) and then head out into the midday sun for the journey to the first in a succession of short hops around the city. I mainly taught in offices, but also had some work to do in people’s houses and even in other schools. This last scenario was a bit risky, as I was only supposed to teach in one school as per immigration rules and regulations, so I didn’t make a habit of it.
After work I would normally leave Surabaya around 9pm and make my way back to Sidoarjo, arriving home around an hour or so later. Sometimes, though, and these really were the best of times, Yossy would come to wherever my final lesson of the day was and pick me up when I finished.
Typically on days such as these I’d be teaching after hours in an office and when I’d finished I would find Yossy in the reception waiting for me. On those days I was so proud of her, and so proud to introduce her to people as my wife. I was always delighted to see her and to be given the chance to show her off to my students. Although not conventionally beautiful, Yoss had a way about her, you see. She had a lovely radiant smile and a charming manner – sweet and welcoming, always friendly, and yet a tiny bit naïve also. She made friends easily and got on well with everyone she met, and yet at times I still couldn’t really reconcile how or why she would want to be with me. This wasn’t me being falsely modest or self-depreciating, it really was something that kept me pondering. I mean, as well as being my wife, soulmate and best friend, Yossy was also the smartest person I knew.
On nights such as these we’d normally head to the cinema or for a simple dinner somewhere and unwind. Despite the hour or so it had taken Yossy to travel into town to meet me on top of a full day’s work, she never once complained of being tired. As for me, well my tiredness would always just melt away upon seeing her and, anyway, a little tiredness was a small price to pay for what I had.
I just couldn’t believe my luck and good fortune with the way things worked out. I knew I was taking a bit of a risk when I came out here to live in May of 1993, and things for the first few months weren’t exactly plain sailing, but after two years or so I really did feel blessed at how life was panning out.
We all have our little foibles and worries, don’t we? And for a long time my fear, if you can call it that, was that I was destined to be a ‘nice guy who’ll make someone a good boyfriend or husband one day’ without ever actually managing to do so. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t unhappy when I lived in England or a loner, or anything. I just had an unexplainable feeling that for some reason I was never going to really fall in love, and in all probability would be one of these unlucky sods that never really ends up with anyone.
Yossy changed all that. She was my world and all I ever dreamt of and certainly far more than I ever dared to hope for. Every minute I was at work and away from her I was thinking of her, or talking about her to someone (usually my long-suffering students or colleagues in the school).
Looking back now, I just can’t really reconcile the person I was then with the man I am today. I can’t believe that I am the same person, or, more importantly, that Yossy is the same woman. Looking back now it seems like those days were all a dream or a film and they bear no similarity to the reality of life. In comparison to what things were to become and are now, I can see that back then we were just playing at life and that everything was just
an illusion.
When things first went wrong, and for a long time afterwards, I would look back on this period of my life and feel immense pain, regret and heartbreak. I felt a pining and a yearning for what I had lost: for what I’d had in my hands and allowed to slip through my fingers. Soon I realized, though, that I had never really had what I thought I had, and that nothing back then was real.
Now I am older, whenever I find my mind drifting back to this stage in my life, I’m able to hold myself in check and pull myself out of my reverie before things get too maudlin.
Now, all these years later, I can honestly say I feel nothing at all one way or another concerning those years – apart from a tinge of sadness because I don’t feel anything, that is.
However, back then Yossy was always there for me.
In the summer of 1995 we took a short holiday to Bali together. This was the first time we’d been back to Bali since we met there five years earlier and in a nod to the past, we decided to stay at the hotel I had stayed in back in 1990 – a place called the Melasti.
Many years later this hotel was to gain notoriety for its role in the story of the ‘Bali Nine’ – a gang of nine young Australians who got involved in a drug smuggling ring. Evidently the Bali police, acting on a tip-off from the Australian Federal Police, became aware of a plot to smuggle heroin through Bali and onto Sydney. As a result the Bali police staked out the Melasti where some of ‘The Nine’ were staying and then arrested the entire gang at the airport as they attempted to depart to Australia with the drugs strapped to their bodies. Ultimately, charges were brought, sentences were handed down and two of the nine were finally executed with the rest being sentenced to between twenty years and life in jail.
However, back on that summer holiday of ours in 1995 drugs were the furthest thing from our minds and Yossy and I were still every bit as much in love as we’d ever been. We woke early most days and then walked around the open-air clothes markets where Yossy would engage in friendly haggling with the proprietors. Whilst I would either pay whatever exorbitant price I was first quoted, or haggle perhaps a five percent discount, Yossy had the ability (and the guile) to be able to secure absolute bargains at rock-bottom prices. She would charm, joke and smile her way into the hearts of the sellers so much that by the time a deal was finally struck she had them practically giving her their goods, and happy to do so to boot. I would be worrying that her stringent haggling was going to end up causing bad feeling, but I needn’t have worried because she had such a way about her back then that all and sundry in her presence couldn’t help but be charmed and feel that they were the most important person in her orbit.
Following breakfast, we would head back to the hotel for a while before setting out on a day-trip somewhere. Unlike my first visit to Bali, this wasn’t a holiday spent lying on the beach. Amongst the places we visited was Ubud, where we went to see the Puri Sareng Agung, a large palace used and owned by the last monarch of Ubud. Ubud itself is the creative and artistic hub of Bali. Previously a totally remote and undiscovered location, it first became popular in the 1930s due to its seclusion and breathtaking beauty. Early visitors to Ubud included such luminaries as Rudolf Bonnet, Noël Coward, Charlie Chaplain and H.G. Wells. Nowadays it is still a relatively quiet and peaceful place, with only a few cafés and simple boarding houses. It is still considered somewhat of a retreat for artists and those wishing to spend time away and rediscover themselves. Indeed, it provided the backdrop for the Balinese section of the book Eat, Pray, Love and the film of the same name.
Well, although I probably didn’t do as much praying as I should have, Yossy and I certainly did our fair share of eating and loving during that week. We spent time cycling in the mountains during the day, and making love during the evenings.
They were the purest, simplest, sweetest, happiest of days.
We were blessed.
When we first got married, Yossy worked at the airport for Mandala Airlines, a local company. It was a good job and rather a prestigious one in local circles. To be accepted one had to undergo a rigorous selection process and then a lengthy training programme. She was often as tired as I was, but still she found time for me.
She worked in the office and at the check-in counter
and it was a job she did for about three years and, although she seemed to enjoy it, she began to get a small case of itchy feet. Although I was no doubt somewhat biased, I did believe Yossy had the intelligence and work ethic to do pretty much whatever she wanted in life, and the world of Mandala Airlines didn’t really seem to offer up that much in the way of long-term possibilities.
After applying for several new jobs, she procured an interview at a company called PT. Bali Party.
Yossy’s interview went well and she was offered the position of trainee sales executive at PT. Bali Party. She started work there and, following a week’s training in Jakarta, spent some time finding her feet in the regional office in Surabaya.
As far as I could tell, it was a kind of timeshare company, selling holidays to customers for a fixed period of time each year. As the name of the business suggested, the properties being rented out were all in Bali, and so having fallen in love with the island, it seemed natural for her to want to have some sort of connection with the place. An additional attraction was the fact that amongst the perks of the job was the opportunity to have an annual, all-expenses paid stay at one of the company’s properties in Bali
It was, of course, somewhat different from her job at the airlines, but she soon got into the swing of things and started enjoying it. It was good to see her full of life again after having become a bit down in her last few months at Mandala Airlines. The colour was back in her cheeks once more, and she was soon bubbling away and in a state of seemingly permanent hyperactivity.
I remember one slight worry I had about her taking on a new job was the selfish one that it might take up more of her time and she might start to leave me behind in life, so to speak. However, I needn’t have worried as if anything her new job and her new zest for life brought us even closer together.