Can we say 'I am from Indonesia'?

JAKARTA (JP): "Look at that," I said to the friendly swimming pool attendant, "is it mist or smoke?" We were standing on top of Singapore's lush Four Seasons Hotel in the middle of August. He turned around to look at the bluish white shrouds that were slightly obscuring our view of the skyline.

"It must be the smoke from, well, I don't know. They say there are fires somewhere in Indonesia." He gestured in hopelessness, and there was a slight tone of resentment in his voice. "Well, I'm from Indonesia," I said cheerfully and innocently. To my surprise, he smiled at me apologetically and said, "I'm sorry. I didn't know you were from Indonesia. You don't look Indonesian."

Why did he apologize to me? Was it because I was a hotel guest and it was his obligation not to offend any of the guests? Whatever his reason was, what happened should have been the reverse: It was clearly I who should have been apologizing to him and his fellow citizens.

Maybe we don't want to admit it, but the facts ring loud that our reputation as a nation has been depleting like the ozone layer. Proud as I am to be an Indonesian, I couldn't imagine having to attend cocktail parties at this very moment and having to answer questions as to what we had been doing to stop exporting the malady to our neighbors.

I just couldn't help imagining how helpless I would feel when people asked me what we had done to prevent these forest fires in the first place, as this is not the first time we had this problem. I guess I'm just grateful that nobody has invited me to a press gathering in Singapore or Malaysia these days, because I know I would reluctantly choose to reject the invitation.

I still recall a conversation I had with a doorman at the hotel where I stayed in Dublin, Ireland, in January. When I told him I was from Indonesia, he replied, "Oh, your country has a lot of problems. I've seen it on TV".

That was not at all surprising. In this information era, news travels faster than we can construct our own version of reality. There he was, this doorman, half a globe away from where I had come from, and he was able to recount to me a lot of things that had happened here that I wasn't even aware of.

We can continue blaming the international media, the international press, the NGOs and foreign politicians and claim that they have hidden agendas in bad-mouthing our country. But, as demonstrated by the harmful haze in the region originating from our country, we increasingly find ourselves helplessly defenseless in the face of the facts.

Indeed, when traveling abroad these days, it is getting tougher and tougher to sustain our pride as Indonesians, particularly when we happen to have been brought up by our parents not to lie. How can we be proud if, as exemplified by these recurrent forest fires, it has become so clear that we have not learned from our past mistakes?

-- Zatni Arbi