Balinese experience intense soul-searching<\/p>\n
Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor, Kuta, Bali<\/p>\n
Against a green corrugated iron sheet blocking off the vacant lot
\nalong Jl. Legian in Kuta, which once had been Sari Club, leaned
\nthree bouquets of flowers. Stuck between the first and second
\nbouquets was a piece of paper inside a protective plastic sleeve,
\nbearing a poem.<\/p>\n
The poem was a heart-rending appeal to God not to abandon
\nBali, and to forgive the Balinese.<\/p>\n
\"... God are you angry with us?\/We know we have been made a
\nlot of mistakes (sic)\/We know we are often misguided\/God please
\nforgive us...\"<\/p>\n
Those who stopped to read the poem, especially the few foreign
\ntourists who still came to this beautiful island, were invariably
\nmoved to mumble, \"Poor people ... they blame themselves ....\"<\/p>\n
This perception of a people who look into themselves when
\nsomething bad happens has never been more emphasized than after
\nthe Oct. 12, 2002, bombing which destroyed the Sari Club, Paddy's
\nBar and seriously damaged many buildings surrounding them. This
\nis reinforced time and time again when you ask people around you,
\nshopkeepers, cafe operators, restaurant waiters or waitresses,
\ntaxi drivers, private security guards and many others, how they
\nperceive the Oct. 12 atrocities, regardless of whether they have
\nbeen directly affected by the terror act or not.<\/p>\n
They usually give you the first -- the public -- face of Bali
\nwith some minor variants.<\/p>\n
Murni, a stallholder whose lodgings were about a hundred
\nmeters behind Sari Club, recounted how she was awakened by an
\nenormous explosion followed by the shattering of windowpanes in
\nthe house. Despite being traumatized to the extent of the
\ninability to sleep for weeks on end, when asked how she regarded
\nthe bombing, she said, \"It was a punishment from God. We must
\nhave neglected our religious duties, so we were warned and
\nreminded to return to the right path.\" No bitterness against
\nanybody else.<\/p>\n
Kadek, a private security guard who suffered burns to his back
\nand right leg from the Sari Club bomb, believed that it was a
\nwarning from God, for Balinese to redress the balance of good and
\nevil. \"We must have strayed too far one way,\" he said.<\/p>\n
Putu, a taxi driver, went further. \"There's no doubt we have
\nbeen punished. And now we are given an extended time to look back
\nand evaluate. Balinese have been too greedy. We've been too busy
\nchasing the dollar, and neglecting our religious and cultural
\nlives. Oh, many of us knew what was happening, but we couldn't
\nstop. It was as if we were trapped in this mad race. So God had
\nto intervene ....\"<\/p>\n
Among these mea culpa outpourings, you will also be
\nentertained -- if you are the sort who likes ghost stories --
\nwith tales of taxi drivers who have picked up passengers near
\nSari Club and Paddy's Bar just to find at the nominated
\ndestinations there was no one in the passenger seat, of locals
\nwho looked out of their houses and saw disembodied legs
\nscrambling along the footpath as if running away from some evil
\nevent, of locals hearing moaning outside their houses and many,
\nmany more.<\/p>\n
In a longer taxi journey, the driver was more forthcoming with
\nwhat he meant by \"straying too far from an honest life\".<\/p>\n
\"Sari Club and Paddy's Bar were the type of place where drugs,
\nescort girls and escort boys abounded. Some of the couples didn't
\neven bother to go anywhere private. They'd just go to the beach.
\nAnd the police were more interested in peeping on them than
\npolicing. So you see, Bali was being contaminated and we were not
\njust doing nothing. We were abetting them. Yes, Bu, I believe we
\nwere punished.\"<\/p>\n
If these musings begin to remind you of the part of the Barong
\n(lion) dance where in a trance, some of the dancers frantically
\ntry to stab themselves, or that there are parts missing in the
\nculture of these people, you should persevere and seek out the
\nmissing piece or pieces of your imaginary jigsaw puzzle.<\/p>\n
Anger is not far from the surface, they just know how to
\nmanage it.<\/p>\n
In conversations over long cool drinks or hot coffee, people
\ntend to open up and you are able to move beyond the public
\nfacade. Cautiously bring up the issues related to the alleged
\nperpetrators of the Oct. 12 bombings, and you may hear their
\nwider thoughts to various degrees.<\/p>\n
\"Of course they upset us. They came here, committed their
\nabominable, atrocious act, causing untold damage to Bali and
\nBalinese, and they thought they could just go away scot-free!\"
\none said with a barely elevated note in his voice.<\/p>\n
\"But they didn't go scot-free. They were caught. You saw them
\nyourselves on TV!\"<\/p>\n
\"Oh that? You think we enjoyed seeing Amrozi grinning around,
\nwaving at the camera like a celebrity, while the journalists
\negged him on?\" Amrozi was the first of the alleged perpetrators
\nto be caught, in November 2002.<\/p>\n
\"I guess not. How did you feel?\"<\/p>\n
\"Ha! Some of us were quite ready to buy him. Did you know
\nthat?\"<\/p>\n
\"Buy him? What for?\"<\/p>\n
\"Well, use your imagination. You're a writer!\" The man laughed
\nnervously. He then added calmly that he had only been joking.
\n\"No. The truth is, we didn't like seeing that on TV. Not at all.
\nIt was like a slap in the face for us.\"<\/p>\n
It is a lot more reassuring when the people you are speaking
\nwith turn out to be human after all.<\/p>\n
Something else also came to the surface in the course of this
\ninformal conversation. An unreal sense of untouchability.<\/p>\n
\"You will find that Balinese would never do anything like
\nthat. Since we begin to understand words we've always been taught
\nthe principles of Karmapala. You get back what you do to other
\npeople,\" one interlocutor explained. \"Or, if for some reason the
\npayback eludes you, your descendants will suffer from it. So when
\nyou hear something bad happening, you can bet your life it is
\nperpetrated by people from outside Bali.\"<\/p>\n
Another added, \"And Balinese have been spared the worst in the
\nbombings. While there were Balinese injured, none were dead.\"<\/p>\n
Unfortunately this claim does not conform with official
\nrecords where there are Balinese in the fatalities.<\/p>\n
In longer interviews, official and unofficial, people went
\ninto deeper soul-searching, where the issue of warning and
\npunishment from God was taken on board, without fudging the anger
\nand resentment toward the perpetrators who, let us face it, are
\nnon-Balinese.<\/p>\n
And the anger is justified too. Bali was regarded as a
\npeaceful place, a place of refuge, by many who had to escape,
\nalbeit temporarily, from the heat of their own troubled homes
\nthroughout Indonesia. Until Oct. 12, 2002, that is.<\/p>",
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