A foreign view of RI, sans tears or fears

Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor, Melbourne, Australia

Semar's Cave, an Indonesian Journal John Mateer
Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2004, Western Australia
Paperback, 334 pp

In the last decade, readers in Asian countries have come to view travel accounts with an increasingly critical eye. Asians are taking themselves and their cultures more seriously, and realize that a great number of travel journals published in English to date have been written by Western people about their experiences in the "Orient".

Often the fact that a story is told by a Westerner about an Eastern country is enough to make the readers of that country feel defensive.

In the best of times, it is not hard to offend when writing a story about people and events which happen in another culture. Now, it is no longer hectoring or expression of explicit contempt, or explicit condescension, which cause anger in people, but various subtle attitudes of superiority that cause different degrees of irritation.

John Mateer's Semar's Cave, an Indonesian Journal stands out as an exception to the above because, while he observes everything around him, he also observes himself.

To begin with, as a poet who has lived in South Africa and Australia, Mateer has the sensibility and vulnerability which lend the kind of pull and magic to his book that novels usually have.

Unlike most travel accounts, memoirs or journals, Semar's Cave contains no photographic images. The lack of these images is hugely compensated by Mateer's style of story-telling. He draws detailed and intricate images with his words, seeming to have his mental eyes always on alert.

The story, as a journal, is told in a linear fashion, and in the narrative present, which gives the reader the sensation of participating in the experience.

Semar's Cave tells as much about Mateer as about the people he encounters. He does not step on Indonesian soil completely unaware of its historical background, neither does he feel he knows so much -- and so much more -- that he could teach the local people a thing or two.

There is an inherent humility which hovers in the now conscious, now subconscious level, which readers born and bred in Indonesia, can fully relate. It is a humility we subconsciously carry because we know that not one area in Indonesia has identical mores to another, so wherever we go, we learn something new.

Mateer metaphorically takes one or two steps each day, further into the society, always trying to place himself in political and historical contexts, and wearing his vulnerability on his sleeve.

Semar's Cave is about Mateer's experience during his writing residency in Medan, North Sumatra, which took place just after Soeharto's forced exit as president, when tension still filled the air after the 1998 May riots.

He records the restlessness and fear of those who were politically aware, and the laid-backness of those who were not, or at least, who gave the impression of being unaffected, by the political upheaval. And he does this by recording his own reactions to his surroundings: the people he met, their place in history and the social structure, and their self-perception. Conversely, he also continuously tries to assess people's reactions to him.

The place, the people and the surroundings are not a mere backdrop. Mateer paints them as real as he himself and his own cultural and psychological mores.

Not everybody he meets is beautiful and gorgeous and kind and eager to help, but neither are they all mean and nasty and hostile and opportunistic. The reader learns of all sorts of people in Medan alone. Mateer as a narrator is rarely judgmental about cultural aspects, yet he is consistently personal. He is pleased, he is disappointed, he is impressed and he is angry.

Toward the end of the book, the reader also gets a glimpse of how Indonesia, or rather living in Indonesia, affects some expatriates, from Australia and elsewhere.

Though you may not get any belly laughs from reading the book, you may smile from time to time, from its subtle humor, be it intended or not.

Semar's Cave will be interesting reading for Indonesians as well as those from other countries, because in it John Mateer has painted a wholesome people in a wholesome society. They are not without serious problems, but they are certainly rich in culture and humanity.