Crosscultural couples find common ground<\/p>\n
Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
The cluster of small streets in a South Jakarta suburb is a
\nsafe haven from many of Jakarta's ills.<\/p>\n
Aside from the sounds of the steady stream of street vendors
\nor the chatter of housemaids gathered near the narrow stretch of
\ngrass doubling as a park, little goes on in the neighborhood once
\nthe morning rush to work is over.<\/p>\n
Within walking distance to a pizza parlor, coffee shops,
\nbeauty centers and local food restaurants hugging the main
\nstreet, its homes -- mostly spacious, comfortable one-story
\nstructures whose architecture attests to an emphasis on
\npracticality before esthetic concerns -- are just far enough away
\nto be soundproofed from the noise of main-street traffic.<\/p>\n
Australian Eilish Kidd, her Indonesian husband Miskad and
\ntheir young daughter Aline have lived here for the past 18
\nmonths.<\/p>\n
Home is a simple pavilion they rent from their next-door
\nneighbor. The long front room, with a wooden dining table and
\nchairs, and a king-size mattress in the center, is a dining room-
\ncum-bedroom; at night, when Eilish returns from her job as a
\nnewspaper subeditor, she often has to move a dozing Aline, who
\nhas taken to sprawling herself across the mattress.<\/p>\n
There is a bookcase, its shelves filled with storybooks for
\ntwo-and-a-half-year-old Aline, whose baby talk is a mix of
\nEnglish and Indonesian.<\/p>\n
A small adjoining room has a computer and a TV set, now
\nreplete with cable selections. Still at the starting out stage in
\ntheir marriage, the couple debated the additional expense of the
\ncable service. Miskad persuaded his wife that it would provide
\nher and Aline with more English-language programs to watch.<\/p>\n
\"Everything has been a big thing for us,\" Eilish, 29, said of
\nthe early days of setting up their household. \"Just buying a
\ntable is a big thing for us.\"<\/p>\n
Their crosscultural union has been a difficult albeit
\nrewarding experience, taking sacrifices and adjustment on both
\ntheir parts.<\/p>\n
For Miskad, a 34-year-old fitness center consultant who hails
\nfrom a village near Cirebon, West Java, there was initial
\ntrepidation at marrying a foreigner, especially with the concern
\nto fulfill her \"expectations\" for their home life, even if they
\nare of his own making.<\/p>\n
Eilish has become used to living in the predominantly
\nIndonesian suburb (a fellow Australian colleague does live a
\nstreet away), but there have been awkward moments.<\/p>\n
Tall, slender and russet-haired, Eilish inevitably stands out
\nin the crowd, especially with a small, cute child in tow.<\/p>\n
When she first moved into the area, there was a driver for a
\nneighborhood family who would comment whenever she passed by with
\nher daughter. Although she speaks little Indonesian, Eilish knew
\nenough to understand his asides.<\/p>\n
There was always something: \"The baby is going to catch cold\",
\nhe would say if Aline was not bundled up to his liking, or \"that
\numbrella's too small\", or the stating-the-obvious \"been
\nshopping?\" as Eilish struggled home with shopping bags in hand.<\/p>\n
Fed up with what she took to be needless prying, she asked
\nMiskad to speak to her neighborhood annoyance.<\/p>\n
In English -- a third language for him after Javanese and
\nIndonesian but his means of communication with his wife -- Miskad
\ntried to explain that the man was someone with too much time on
\nhis hands who was trying to make a connection, to make himself
\nuseful in whatever way he could.<\/p>\n
\"I knew he didn't mean it the way she took it,\" he said. \"I
\ntold her to be quiet when she went by, and he would get the
\nmessage.\"<\/p>\n
Eventually, however, Miskad, remembering his wife's unease,
\nalso felt uncomfortable when he spotted the man.<\/p>\n
\"I also stopped acknowledging him, too, and now he's quiet
\nwhen I go past as well.\"<\/p>\n
Idyllic childhood<\/p>\n
Eilish was born the eldest daughter of teachers in Carrick, a
\nhistoric village near the city of Launceston in northern
\nTasmania. Her first home was a brick house with a church at the
\nend of the yard; she remembers how the vicar would come over and
\ntake her on strolls.<\/p>\n
Two younger sisters came in quick succession, and a mere three
\nyears separates her from her youngest sister.<\/p>\n
It was, she says, a \"well-planned, idyllic\" childhood in a
\nrustic corner of the island. Her mother, who studied child
\npsychology, carefully screened the influences on the children,
\nlimiting their television viewing and making her own bread,
\nbutter and even toothpaste.<\/p>\n
The daughter of a well-known Tasmanian architect, Eilish's
\nmother also instilled her children with a love of art and
\nliterature.<\/p>\n
\"We had everything we needed,\" she said. \"Our parents spent a
\nlot of time reading to us, giving us an appreciation of books and
\nart. We had a view that we had values that everybody had ...\"<\/p>\n
They later moved to Launceston and Hobart; when Eilish was a
\n15-year-old student at an all-girls school, her mother, she says,
\nbecame tired of running a household and her parents divorced. Her
\nmother moved to Canberra for a time before taking a job in
\nIndonesia, where she remains.<\/p>\n
As the eldest daughter, Eilish took on most of the
\nresponsibilities of looking after the home with her father. \"It
\nwasn't so disruptive, but then it also wasn't the best timing for
\nme with school,\" she said of the divorce.<\/p>\n
The artistic influences of her childhood led to art school in
\nMelbourne (her younger sister also studied art, while the middle
\nsister went to film school).<\/p>\n
Her dating experience included two serious relationships, with
\na singer and a drummer, and she says that she imagined that she
\nwould marry someone from her circle of friends, an artist or a
\nwriter.<\/p>\n
\"When I first came here, friends would say to me, 'how about
\ngoing out with an Indonesian?',\" Eilish said of her first trip to
\nJakarta when she was about 16. \"And I don't remember saying this,
\nbut my friend reminded me that I said no, there were too many
\ndifferences, it would be too complicated.\"<\/p>\n
Fitness Center<\/p>\n
Square shouldered and with glistening eyes, Miskad leads a
\ntour of the fitness center he manages on the top floor of a North
\nJakarta mall. It's a spacious one-stop facility, with equipment
\non sale in the lobby area and a high-windowed workout area, but
\nit's undeniably stuffy.<\/p>\n
Before anything can be said, he acknowledges the problem,
\nsaying the building management has owned up that the air
\nconditioning cannot reach throughout the area. An 11-year veteran
\nof the fitness industry, having worked his way up from an
\ninstructor in an international franchise to managing five-star
\nhotel spas, it's clear that he knows what it takes to
\nidentify and head off potential grievances.<\/p>\n
His life today is a long way from his roots, the third child
\nof nine of a small-scale rice farmer from West Java. Marikangen
\nis one of the tiny blink-and-you-miss-it villages on the road
\nfrom Bandung to Cirebon, the latter area a famous crossroads of
\nSundanese and Javanese cultures.<\/p>\n
Miskad is ethnic Javanese; he proudly remembers his father,
\nwho had a second-grade education and farmed half a hectare of
\nland, teaching him kromo inggil, the high Javanese language, to
\nensure he would not be at a loss for words when communicating
\nwith those of higher status.<\/p>\n
Except for farming and the rattan furniture businesses that
\nhave grown up in the last few years, there is little to do in
\nMarikangen. There is the established pattern of migration: an
\nelder child will move away to the big city, establish himself and
\nthen bring along his younger siblings to make their living.<\/p>\n
Despite the family's limited resources, Miskad's father sent
\nhim to Jakarta to study at the Teacher Training Institute, then
\nknown as IKIP, in Jakarta.<\/p>\n
\"My father insisted that I shouldn't think about paying for
\nschool, he told me, 'it's your duty to study, it's up to dad to
\nfind the money'. When my father said that, I replied, 'If that's
\nwhat dad wants, then I also have a goal. In my third year of
\nuniversity, I will be able to support myself'.\"<\/p>\n
He chose to study in the sports department, because there
\nwould be more opportunities for down time and to earn extra money
\nif he took up low-paid teaching. In his second year of college,
\nhe sized up the opportunities for work, eventually settling on
\naerobics and fitness instruction.<\/p>\n
He began working full-time in 1994, moving to different jobs
\nin the close-knit, transitory world of fitness centers in the
\ncapital. Four years later, he married an ethnic Javanese woman
\nfrom a transmigrant's family in Medan who returned to find work
\nin Jakarta.<\/p>\n
They had a son but he says their marriage was already in
\ndifficulty when he met Eilish in 2002.<\/p>\n
\"Like most Indonesians, I was quiet when there was a problem.
\nI would say, 'don't do this, don't do that', and she would 'yeah,
\nyeah' me all the time .. Maybe I wanted to be too controlling .
\nI'm a quiet man, but I can be hard.<\/p>\n
\"I get to a point where I decide that's enough already.\"<\/p>\n
Eilish had taken a fitness instruction course in Melbourne as
\nsomething to fall back on from her painting; much to her
\nembarrassment, it was mentioned to the fitness center management
\nat the hotel-apartment where her mother lived and she was asked
\nto give a talk to the instructors.<\/p>\n
\"I suppose he stood out,\" Eilish said of meeting Miskad among
\nthe assembled group of instructors. \"He had more to say than
\nother people, there was a quicker understanding than with the
\nother guys in the group.\"<\/p>\n
They \"clicked\", she says, and she offered to give him English
\nlessons.<\/p>\n
\"We started talking a lot about his background, his childhood
\nand when he starts to talk about things he is a good storyteller.
\nI found it was almost like my art school training. I was involved
\nin images -- you have to think about what is beautiful, what is
\nsymbolic -- and he has that quality.<\/p>\n
\"He talks about something in his childhood and makes you see
\nthe significance of it.\"<\/p>\n
Miskad was attracted to Eilish -- \"for me she is beautiful,
\nand it's rare to meet a young, beautiful expatriate woman here\"
\n-- but he initially dismissed thoughts of having a relationship.<\/p>\n
For one, he was still married, with a son to think about;
\nthere were also the bigger issues of her being a foreigner, from
\na different culture and religion.<\/p>\n
\"As the man of the house, I also thought about if I would be
\nable to take care of her.\"<\/p>\n
But one day -- Eilish remembers they were reading a story by
\nGraham Greene -- Miskad blurted out that they should stop their
\nlessons, that it was pointless for them to continue because their
\nrelationship could not go any further.<\/p>\n
\"I hadn't really been aware of all this tension building until
\nhe said it,\" she said.<\/p>\n
Staying in Indonesia and finding a husband had not been in her
\nplans. She was fascinated by everything to do with Iceland -- the
\nculture, its climate, art -- and was studying the language with
\nan Icelandic woman in Jakarta with a plan to go to Scandinavia.<\/p>\n
That plan was shelved, and the two began a relationship. Each
\nhad their own conditions; Eilish did not want to be the \"other
\nwoman\", while Miskad asked her to become a Muslim.<\/p>\n
\"When we became serious, I told her, 'Why don't you convert to
\nIslam?' I'm not a fanatical Muslim but in my heart, I thought
\nwhoever I marry has to be a Muslim ...\".<\/p>\n
There was also the delicate matter of extricating himself from
\nhis marriage and, for both of them, embarking on a new journey
\nfull of uncertainties. Eilish calls it a \"terrible time\".<\/p>\n
Her mother, who became a Muslim several years ago and has made
\nIndonesia her home, was supportive -- \"she once told me that one
\nIndonesian man is worth 100 Australian men\".<\/p>\n
Miskad's family also viewed their relationship as his choice
\nto make, but some of his friends were not supportive. They would
\nnod their heads knowingly and tell him, \"Ah, Miskad, she'll leave
\nyou in a while. You'll just be a victim of her fun and games\".<\/p>\n
Their early relationship hurtled along, unplanned. They
\nmarried on Aug. 30, 2002, when she was three months pregnant.<\/p>\n
They found a small, rat-filled house in a Central Jakarta
\nneighborhood, but it was decided that she should give birth,
\nalone, in Australia in case there were complications.<\/p>\n
From the delivery room, Eilish called her husband in Jakarta,
\nso he could recite the Islamic prayer for a newborn. In honor of
\ntheir relationship, he named her Aline, combining the letters of
\ntheir two countries.<\/p>\n
The homecoming<\/p>\n
Miskad admits there was a feeling of pride for him and his
\nfamily when he married Eilish, the small-town boy returning home
\nwith a Western wife and child.<\/p>\n
When they first took Aline back to the village, Eilish
\nrealized after a few moments that her daughter was nowhere to be
\nfound. A quick search revealed that her grandfather was going
\nfrom door to door showing off his pretty grandchild.<\/p>\n
But most meaningful in their relationship, Miskad says, is
\nthat Eilish understands his family and where he came from.<\/p>\n
\"He considers his family to be poorer, and that it should be
\nan issue for me,\" Eilish said. \"It never has been. It some ways,
\na Western education teaches us that there should be no
\ndifferences between us, between poor and rich, whether you grow
\nup believing that or not.\"<\/p>\n
His younger brothers, most of whom have followed their brother
\nto Jakarta to work in the fitness business, have learned to
\nrespect their privacy, including calling first to find out if
\nit's OK to visit.<\/p>\n
\"His brothers are very polite like him, they'll come over here
\nand start doing the housework, so it's not difficult to have them
\naround. They're very careful about intruding (on our space)
\nbecause I'm a Westerner,\" Eilish said.<\/p>\n
\"They don't understand 100 percent,\" said Miskad. \"They would
\nstay with me and my first wife when they came to Jakarta to find
\njobs. Now there is no room in the pavilion, anyway.\"<\/p>\n
Family and friends may make assumptions about their marriage;
\nbehind closed doors, it's the two of them trying to work out
\ntheir differences for their relationship to work.<\/p>\n
Finding a comfortable meeting point for two individuals is
\nnever easy, but there are inevitably more rough spots when one of
\nthe partners is also making an adjustment to a new culture.<\/p>\n
Both Eilish and Miskad acknowledge that a lot of their
\narguments stemmed from the frustration she experienced in
\nadjusting to life in the city.<\/p>\n
The trigger may have been her encounter with her neighborhood
\nbusybody or living dangerously in a three-wheeled bajai, so
\nsimply not being able to make herself understood in Indonesian.<\/p>\n
\"Those were the things that were going through my head,
\nalthough perhaps they weren't actually happening,\" she
\nacknowledged.<\/p>\n
The way they argued was also different.<\/p>\n
Eilish, a high school debating champion from a family of
\nsisters where words were always important, was used to picking
\napart an argument and offering a rejoinder. Her family, she says,
\n\"enjoys\" an argument.<\/p>\n
For Miskad, it was enough to acknowledge a mistake; he would
\nfeel cornered when the argument dragged on as he tried to make
\nhimself understood in a foreign language. Sometimes, he would use
\nthe wrong word, causing their bickering to escalate.<\/p>\n
He would throw something against the wall or slam his hand
\ndown on the table to try to bring it to an end.<\/p>\n
\"He said to me, 'whatever I say, you can always argue better',
\nEilish said. \"But I didn't want it to continue in front of
\nAline.\"<\/p>\n
The all-out arguments have stopped and the couple has reached
\na middle ground, with Miskad helping his wife adjust to their
\ncircumstances.<\/p>\n
\"If she came home complaining about the taxi driver not having
\nchange for her, I would ask her how much she needed and then give
\nit to her,\" Miskad said. \"I told her that it wasn't worth it to
\nget angry at them, especially in her own language, because it
\nwon't change them. They're set in their ways.\"<\/p>\n
They traveled to Australia earlier this year, Miskad's first
\nvisit to his wife's homeland. After seeing Eilish argue with her
\nfather, Miskad, brought up believing that one should never
\nconfront one's parents, took her into a room and asked her to
\napologize.<\/p>\n
\"I probably would have done it anyway the next day, but he
\npersuaded me that there was no point in letting it wait, that I
\nneeded to apologize to my father,\" Eilish said.<\/p>\n
Acceptance<\/p>\n
With their third anniversary coming up on Aug. 30, the couple
\nis making plans for the future. Aline's future figures as a big
\nfactor in their plans, with concerns for her education foremost
\nin their agreement to eventually relocate to Australia.<\/p>\n
Miskad enjoyed the trip to Australia, especially the green
\nareas and the order, but he prefers what he calls the \"dynamics\"
\nof life here. On a trip to a Melbourne park, a wild bird wandered
\nover to where the family was picnicking.<\/p>\n
\"I looked at it and thought, 'wow, we could kill it and eat
\nit'. That was the Indonesian in me coming out,\" he laughed.<\/p>\n
His perspective on marriage has changed; instead of
\nconsidering himself the omnipotent head of the household, as was
\nthe case with his first marriage, he now views it as a
\nrelationship of equals.<\/p>\n
\"For Indonesian men, we want to control everything, to say,
\n'these are the rules'. In my marriage to Eilish, we have the same
\nobjective of building a family, but it's not the man's rules,
\nit's our rules.\"<\/p>\n
They make decisions today based on discussion and consensus.
\nWhen Eilish was about to give birth, he mentioned that a daughter
\nwould also have to be circumcised. After Eilish objected, he
\nlooked into the subject of female circumcision and decided it was
\nnot obligatory.<\/p>\n
He also no longer feels that he has to be the sole or main
\nbreadwinner; every month, he hands his salary over to Eilish to
\ncontrol the family's finances.<\/p>\n
\"My view is that I am with her, I can help her out on this
\nfront, and I would like to take total responsibility but I can't
\nright now. I can accept the situation,\" he said of his wife
\nearning more than him.<\/p>\n
\"This is a partnership, not based on this,\" he said, rubbing
\nhis fingers together. \"Eilish accepts me as a person; it's not
\nabout my job or how much I earn.\"<\/p>\n
For Eilish, marriage to Miskad keeps her centered.<\/p>\n
\"He is a healthy person, not caught up in depression or
\nanxiety. I think that living here, you can't afford to have those
\nsensitivities, those indulgences (of living in the West). He
\ncancels out the sides of my personality that aren't good for me.\"<\/p>\n
Juggling mothering and work responsibilities, Eilish no longer
\npaints although she believes she will one day return to her art.<\/p>\n
With different backgrounds and educations, they do not share
\nall of the same interests, yet it's their core bond that matters
\nmost to Eilish.<\/p>\n
\"I can get the other things from other people. Everyone is not
\nperfect. But Miskad is supportive and protective of me. And we
\nlove each other.\"<\/p>",
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