Bahasa or English, 'Saman' an addictive, powerful read
A. Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Saman
Ayu Utami
Pamela Allen, trans.
Equinox Publishing, August 2005
180 pp
Although it has been seven years since its debut publication in Bahasa Indonesia, Ayu Utami's novel Saman -- now available for the first time in English from local boutique publisher Equinox Publishing -- is difficult to put down.
Credit is due Pamela Allen for her successful translation of the novel, retaining the original richness of the author's language -- which has been praised greatly by many literary critics.
Phrases, proverbs and metaphors in Ayu's distinct prose have been interpreted without losing their cultural and political allusions. For example, the local metaphor tanak seperti nasi -- which would be transliterated as "cooked like rice" -- has been elucidated correctly as "bread fresh from the oven".
Cultural and political freedom is the central theme of this work, which won the Jakarta Arts Council award for fiction in 1998, the year it emerged as a breakthrough novel and heralded a new generation of contemporary Indonesian literature.
Saman follows the friendship of four young women -- Laila, a writer, Yasmin, a lawyer, Shakuntala, a dancer, and Cok, a businesswoman -- and its title protagonist Saman, a Catholic priest-turned-human right activist.
Set within the social conditions of the 1990s under the iron- fisted regime of President Soeharto, the story tells of Saman's efforts at helping villagers in their fight against a big plantation company in Prabumulih, South Sumatra.
Backed by the military, the company crushes the villagers and arrests the village leaders and its top activists. With the assistance of the four young women, Saman manages to escape to New York through a long and complicated journey.
The political context of Saman is as relevant today as it was then, although Indonesia held its historic direct presidential election last year in a substantial transition toward democracy; last year's murder of human rights champion Munir has shown that activists still face formidable pressures and challenges.
Thus, the nuances, the political pressure and the villagers' movement, and also the settings of Saman are clearly representative of reality, even if the story, action and people in the novel are fictitious.
For a linear reader, however, the novel might be confusing due to its plot, which jumps from one location to another and from one time to another.
Ayu, a former journalist of Forum Keadilan biweekly magazine and a founding member of the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), conducted in-depth research in creating her novel -- something new in Indonesian fiction -- and Saman reads like a narrative article in a news magazine.
Besides revealing the brutality of the regime, Saman provides factual information, such as through Laila's affair with the married Sihar, who works for an oil exploration company. Ayu displays her passion for detail in her description of an oil rig in the Natuna Sea, where the lovers first met.
The novelist also confronts cultural taboos, specifically sexual attitudes and "rules" that relegate women to a position of inequality against men.
Unabashedly and unapologetically, she also discusses sexual intercourse, extramarital relations, orgasms and other topics still considered taboo from a hitherto unexplored and prohibited perspective -- a woman's.
Established, traditionally oriented critics viewed Ayu's work as vulgar due to the use of many "indecent" words, such as penis, vagina and orgasm, and claimed Saman exploited sexuality. However, the exploration and treatment of this subject is one of the novel's strengths amid the patriarchal, Indonesian literary world.
Ayu also raises contemporary feminist issues, for example, why a woman should bear her father's or husband's names: Shakuntala, in changing her single name into Shakun and Tala when applying for a visa to study abroad, essentially maintains her identity.
Other issues include gender equality, justice, and celebration of sexuality -- all unpopular subjects of discourse during the Soeharto era.
And in light of the religious and ethic conflicts that have erupted throughout the nation's history, the novel also urges multiculturalism and tolerance through its characters of Javanese, Minangkabau, Batak and Chinese descent, who develop harmonious relationships among themselves.
Unfortunately, the English version does not really show the beautiful and touching relationship that is formed between the Catholic Saman and Islamic villagers.
Religious intolerance is still a current concern of many people here, and Saman provides a possible response to a certain institution which, until recently, forbade pluralism, liberalism and inter-faiths praying.
The novel also reminds us of the nation's unfinished political and cultural problems that need addressing.
Perhaps the very real issues broached in the novel will never be settled completely, but through reading this "real" and "true" fiction, people might be better able to understand these problems and try to seek solutions -- a possible impact that illustrates the value of Saman.
As a note to the translator and publisher, after reading Saman, loyal readers of Ayu Utami will await, impatiently, the English version of its sequel, Larung.