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“Where's Lintang?”

“She's been out with Alam since morning. They went to Bimo's house. Said it had to do with her documentary.”

“And Dini?”

“Still sleeping. She was up all night working on her thesis,” his wife replied from the kitchen. “I'm making
nasi uduk
, is that all right?”

Aji nodded. While he knew that Retno could not have heard his non-vocal response, it didn't really matter; he wasn't very particular about what he ate for breakfast. Aji guessed that his wife had, if only subconsciously, reverted to being a mother of two children at home in the house.
Nasi uduk
with all the fixings—fried chicken,
chicken livers, and shredded omelet on top of rice that had been cooked in coconut milk—had always been Rama's favorite dish. Andini had never been a picky eater and devoured anything on her plate. She could eat a boiled fence post. But Rama had always been much choosier in his tastes: in his diet and the moods of his heart. This his mother recognized, which is why she tried so hard to make the house a happier place whenever Rama came to visit.

The television was now off and the screen mute and dark gray, yet Aji seemed to see in it an electric flashpoint that expanded into a television series about his family—one episode after another telling the story of how his children had been born and raised in a family always haunted by fear. Despite the fact that his family lived in Jakarta and that the hunt for members of the Communist Party and affiliated organizations had waned in the years after 1965, as had the tracking of families and sympathizers of Party members, this did not mean that the Aji Suryo family had ever been able to live in a state of
loh jinawi
, the kind of complete happiness and harmony that marks the end of every
wayang
tale.

Aji was well aware of the paranoia of the New Order government, which issued decrees whose only purpose was to strengthen the regime's hold on power. Given his own experience, with his family's home in Solo having been frequently raided by the military and the interrogations he had been submitted to during their search for his brother, it was natural that Aji chose to keep his head down in later years, both in his career and in his social life.

Unfortunately, his chosen way of life seemed to have had a negative effect on his son Rama, who grew up with an inferiority complex from thinking there was nothing about his family that
he could be proud of. His parents rarely held parties or convened large gatherings with relatives or neighbors. Unlike in “normal” families, birthdays, graduations, and even Rama's and Andini's achievements in school competitions were never celebrated in any big way. Unlike many of Rama's classmates, his family didn't live in a palatial home or own an expensive car. Never anything flashy, and not because his family was poor. In fact, they were far from it. With Aji holding a degree in the field of industrial technology from the Bandung Institute of Technology and as head of the materials processing laboratory for research and development at a leading tire manufacturing company, he earned a very reasonable income, even if it was not astronomical.

Ever since Rama was a child, Aji observed, his son had always been good with figures. He paid close attention to everything said to him and was diligent in doing his homework. He was serious in undertaking each task assigned to him—and expected the same degree of fastidiousness on the part of the person giving the assignment. With his family choosing to live outside the radar, as it were, Rama often felt stymied; but he forced himself to hide his frustration—at least until he was a teenager, when it began to burst out of him. At that point he began to complain of how his uncle's political “adventures” had caused such discomfort for his own family's life. In Aji's eyes, however, what his family had had to go through was far from, for instance, what the Hananto Prawiro family had experienced, with their entire life spent beneath the microscopic scrutiny of intelligence agents.

When the government launched its so-called “Personal Hygiene” and “Environmental Cleanliness” programs in 1981, it meant that anyone hoping to become a civil servant or to occupy a public service position—like a teacher or journalist—had to first
go through a special background check. Rama, who was in junior high school at the time and beginning to think of his own future, became an ever more tense adolescent. These policies served as a filter and were intended to keep the families of political prisoners from ever playing a significant role in public life. At once, Rama's and Andini's future prospects narrowed.

Rama felt that all his classmates, friends, and neighbors looked down on his family, that they carried a stigma which had best be kept at a safe distance. Rama's paranoia was such that every day he asked his father whether he had been harassed at his office. Rama began to drop his use of the name “Suryo” and, in its place, use his second name instead: “Rama Dahana.”

Andini, unlike her older and anxious brother, was born with an easy-going and carefree nature. Whenever she succeeded at something, she never sought to bask in the attention garnered by her achievement. What she liked best was not the end goal—high marks, a trophy, or whatever—but the process leading to that achievement, whether in her education at school or in the stacks of books her father gave her. Without ever having met her cousin Lintang, she had initiated a correspondence, and the two cousins began to send each other books of literature whenever someone their families knew was going to or coming from Paris. The two cousins were equally avid readers who found untold joy in words and their meanings.

Andini never had problems with her homework and never intentionally would do anything to upset her parents. She didn't make an issue of her family's position, which meant always having to keep their heads down as a result of the political views of an uncle she didn't even know. About the only thing that could make Andini lose her control was when her brother unleashed a torrent
of complaints or began to shout in anger at their parents—which is something that happened all too often when he was a teenager. Andini was a person who believed that all people had in themselves the strength and ability to overcome and settle their own problems. She didn't believe in weakness and she didn't tolerate whining or sniveling behavior.

Given their two distinct personalities, it wouldn't be difficult to guess how the independent-minded Andini dealt with her shamefaced brother. Although Rama was five years older than Andini, it was he who more frequently pouted and moaned. The result was a never-ending civil war at home between older brother and younger sister.

As children, whenever their family got together with the Hananto family, Rama usually kept to himself. But whenever he and Andini got into a fight, it was her “cousin” Alam who always stepped in to intervene. Because Alam was older, taller, and bigger, with a much dominant personality and the holder of a black belt in karate besides, Rama generally chose to slink away and hide inside himself rather than test his own mettle. The gulf between the children—with Alam, Andini, and also Bimo on the one side and Rama on the other—became even wider as they became adults. Alam and Bimo chose the world of activism and idealism, and Andini set her sights on an academic career. But Rama chose a much more pragmatic career path on which he could keep his distance from them. In the end it happened that Alam and Bimo, who could not abide Rama's attitude, became surrogate brothers for Andini at the Aji Suryo home when Rama was absent. And he was often absent, not just in the physical sense but in the spiritual sense as well.

Seeing such a principal divide within the family, Retno
theorized that Andini had somehow inherited the family's entire reserve of fortitude and resistance while Rama had somehow gotten the short end of the stick, receiving only trepidation, fear, and a sense of inferiority. It was in this state that Rama, with fragile and limited strength of heart, had found friendship with boys from families who seemed to have an abundance of wealth from questionable sources. The more closely involved Rama became with these friends of his, the more impervious he became to his parents' guidance and supervision. In Rama's favor, he had also inherited the height and good looks of his father and the uncle he hated, so that people who weren't aware of his personality defects were attracted to him.

Aji and Retno frequently asked themselves what had become of their son's moral bearings. Aji felt that he had failed in instilling in Rama the understanding that what happens in life to a person or his family is not because of some fault at birth. He had failed in making his son understand that they were not victims; they were survivors. In Aji's mind, the real victims of 1965 were those people who had suffered far more than they: the innocent people who had been murdered, interned, exiled, and disappeared. Aji, like his wife and daughter, too, preferred to look at the challenges they faced as a force for becoming stronger and more resilient people.

Aji sighed sadly. Images from the episodes of the Suryo family drama suddenly vanished with the sound of Rama's voice. The voice he heard was real, not just in his imagination.

“Pak…”

Aji turned his head to see Rama, who appeared to be especially well dressed for a Saturday, in a long-sleeve shirt and black trousers. With his son towering over him, Aji suddenly found himself
unable to speak. He felt like he was face to face with a stranger who had no blood relation with him. Or maybe it was because he had buried the hurt he felt so deeply that he felt nothing at all.

Rama looked nervous. Finally, feeling a jolt of pity for his son, standing there anxiously, Aji motioned for Rama to sit down.

“This is a surprise. What's up?” he asked.

“I know it's sudden…”

“Mama made
nasi uduk
for you when she heard that you were coming.” Aji looked for the morning paper which he still hadn't read.

“I know, Pak. Pak… Could I bother you with something?”

How respectful!
Aji put down his paper and asked, “What is it?”

“I'd like to introduce you to this girl I know. Her name is Rininta.”

“Rininta?”

“Yes.”

Aji said nothing, waiting for Rama to utter the next sentence. His son was twenty-eight. Was it already that time? Alam and Bimo, who were both around thirty-three, were still single and reveling in their bachelorhood.

“She's my girlfriend, Pak.”

“Well then, invite her here. Introduce her to Mama and me. That should be easy enough, right? It's not like we've ever told you not to come home.”

Rama said nothing.

Aji felt there was nothing more to be said and he lifted the morning paper to his eyes. He took a sip of his now cold coffee and pretended to immerse himself in the news of the day, even though his ears were twitching to hear what his fickle son would next have to say.

“Actually, I don't want to just introduce you to her, Pak. And she's not just a girlfriend,” Rama said cautiously.

“Is anyone saying she's just a girlfriend?” Aji asked rhetorically as he stared at the paper in front of him. “Obviously, if you want to introduce her to your parents, you must already have some kind of special relationship with her. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, all right then, tell your mother. I'm sure she'll want to meet this Rininta. And don't forget to tell your sister, too, when it is you intend to bring her here.”

Rama looked taken aback. Aji knew that his son wanted to say more, but he was happy to end the conversation and send him off to speak to his mother. Aji concealed a smile. Let Rama know what it feels like, that he can't just come running to his parents when he needs something. If for all this time Rama had been hiding his identity from all those “great” friends of his, then now was the time for Rama to know just how much he had hurt his parents by being ashamed of them.

Aji felt blessed to have been surrounded in his life by good cooks. His mother had been a wonderful cook and she, his brother Dimas who had inherited her culinary skills, and his wife Retno all held the view that well-prepared food, made with good ingredients and careful attention, could be a salve for the soul and even serve as a white flag for the reduction of conflict between two opposing forces. There was no outright war between him and Rama, but there certainly was a degree of conflict that tore at his heart. He was Rama's father, after all.