Crosscultural couples find common ground

Crosscultural couples find common ground

Bruce Emond, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The cluster of small streets in a South Jakarta suburb is a safe haven from many of Jakarta's ills.

Aside from the sounds of the steady stream of street vendors or the chatter of housemaids gathered near the narrow stretch of grass doubling as a park, little goes on in the neighborhood once the morning rush to work is over.

Within walking distance to a pizza parlor, coffee shops, beauty centers and local food restaurants hugging the main street, its homes -- mostly spacious, comfortable one-story structures whose architecture attests to an emphasis on practicality before esthetic concerns -- are just far enough away to be soundproofed from the noise of main-street traffic.

Australian Eilish Kidd, her Indonesian husband Miskad and their young daughter Aline have lived here for the past 18 months.

Home is a simple pavilion they rent from their next-door neighbor. The long front room, with a wooden dining table and chairs, and a king-size mattress in the center, is a dining room- cum-bedroom; at night, when Eilish returns from her job as a newspaper subeditor, she often has to move a dozing Aline, who has taken to sprawling herself across the mattress.

There is a bookcase, its shelves filled with storybooks for two-and-a-half-year-old Aline, whose baby talk is a mix of English and Indonesian.

A small adjoining room has a computer and a TV set, now replete with cable selections. Still at the starting out stage in their marriage, the couple debated the additional expense of the cable service. Miskad persuaded his wife that it would provide her and Aline with more English-language programs to watch.

"Everything has been a big thing for us," Eilish, 29, said of the early days of setting up their household. "Just buying a table is a big thing for us."

Their crosscultural union has been a difficult albeit rewarding experience, taking sacrifices and adjustment on both their parts.

For Miskad, a 34-year-old fitness center consultant who hails from a village near Cirebon, West Java, there was initial trepidation at marrying a foreigner, especially with the concern to fulfill her "expectations" for their home life, even if they are of his own making.

Eilish has become used to living in the predominantly Indonesian suburb (a fellow Australian colleague does live a street away), but there have been awkward moments.

Tall, slender and russet-haired, Eilish inevitably stands out in the crowd, especially with a small, cute child in tow.

When she first moved into the area, there was a driver for a neighborhood family who would comment whenever she passed by with her daughter. Although she speaks little Indonesian, Eilish knew enough to understand his asides.

There was always something: "The baby is going to catch cold", he would say if Aline was not bundled up to his liking, or "that umbrella's too small", or the stating-the-obvious "been shopping?" as Eilish struggled home with shopping bags in hand.

Fed up with what she took to be needless prying, she asked Miskad to speak to her neighborhood annoyance.

In English -- a third language for him after Javanese and Indonesian but his means of communication with his wife -- Miskad tried to explain that the man was someone with too much time on his hands who was trying to make a connection, to make himself useful in whatever way he could.

"I knew he didn't mean it the way she took it," he said. "I told her to be quiet when she went by, and he would get the message."

Eventually, however, Miskad, remembering his wife's unease, also felt uncomfortable when he spotted the man.

"I also stopped acknowledging him, too, and now he's quiet when I go past as well."

Idyllic childhood

Eilish was born the eldest daughter of teachers in Carrick, a historic village near the city of Launceston in northern Tasmania. Her first home was a brick house with a church at the end of the yard; she remembers how the vicar would come over and take her on strolls.

Two younger sisters came in quick succession, and a mere three years separates her from her youngest sister.

It was, she says, a "well-planned, idyllic" childhood in a rustic corner of the island. Her mother, who studied child psychology, carefully screened the influences on the children, limiting their television viewing and making her own bread, butter and even toothpaste.

The daughter of a well-known Tasmanian architect, Eilish's mother also instilled her children with a love of art and literature.

"We had everything we needed," she said. "Our parents spent a lot of time reading to us, giving us an appreciation of books and art. We had a view that we had values that everybody had ..."

They later moved to Launceston and Hobart; when Eilish was a 15-year-old student at an all-girls school, her mother, she says, became tired of running a household and her parents divorced. Her mother moved to Canberra for a time before taking a job in Indonesia, where she remains.

As the eldest daughter, Eilish took on most of the responsibilities of looking after the home with her father. "It wasn't so disruptive, but then it also wasn't the best timing for me with school," she said of the divorce.

The artistic influences of her childhood led to art school in Melbourne (her younger sister also studied art, while the middle sister went to film school).

Her dating experience included two serious relationships, with a singer and a drummer, and she says that she imagined that she would marry someone from her circle of friends, an artist or a writer.

"When I first came here, friends would say to me, 'how about going out with an Indonesian?'," Eilish said of her first trip to Jakarta when she was about 16. "And I don't remember saying this, but my friend reminded me that I said no, there were too many differences, it would be too complicated."

Fitness Center

Square shouldered and with glistening eyes, Miskad leads a tour of the fitness center he manages on the top floor of a North Jakarta mall. It's a spacious one-stop facility, with equipment on sale in the lobby area and a high-windowed workout area, but it's undeniably stuffy.

Before anything can be said, he acknowledges the problem, saying the building management has owned up that the air conditioning cannot reach throughout the area. An 11-year veteran of the fitness industry, having worked his way up from an instructor in an international franchise to managing five-star hotel spas, it's clear that he knows what it takes to identify and head off potential grievances.

His life today is a long way from his roots, the third child of nine of a small-scale rice farmer from West Java. Marikangen is one of the tiny blink-and-you-miss-it villages on the road from Bandung to Cirebon, the latter area a famous crossroads of Sundanese and Javanese cultures.

Miskad is ethnic Javanese; he proudly remembers his father, who had a second-grade education and farmed half a hectare of land, teaching him kromo inggil, the high Javanese language, to ensure he would not be at a loss for words when communicating with those of higher status.

Except for farming and the rattan furniture businesses that have grown up in the last few years, there is little to do in Marikangen. There is the established pattern of migration: an elder child will move away to the big city, establish himself and then bring along his younger siblings to make their living.

Despite the family's limited resources, Miskad's father sent him to Jakarta to study at the Teacher Training Institute, then known as IKIP, in Jakarta.

"My father insisted that I shouldn't think about paying for school, he told me, 'it's your duty to study, it's up to dad to find the money'. When my father said that, I replied, 'If that's what dad wants, then I also have a goal. In my third year of university, I will be able to support myself'."

He chose to study in the sports department, because there would be more opportunities for down time and to earn extra money if he took up low-paid teaching. In his second year of college, he sized up the opportunities for work, eventually settling on aerobics and fitness instruction.

He began working full-time in 1994, moving to different jobs in the close-knit, transitory world of fitness centers in the capital. Four years later, he married an ethnic Javanese woman from a transmigrant's family in Medan who returned to find work in Jakarta.

They had a son but he says their marriage was already in difficulty when he met Eilish in 2002.

"Like most Indonesians, I was quiet when there was a problem. I would say, 'don't do this, don't do that', and she would 'yeah, yeah' me all the time .. Maybe I wanted to be too controlling . I'm a quiet man, but I can be hard.

"I get to a point where I decide that's enough already."

Eilish had taken a fitness instruction course in Melbourne as something to fall back on from her painting; much to her embarrassment, it was mentioned to the fitness center management at the hotel-apartment where her mother lived and she was asked to give a talk to the instructors.

"I suppose he stood out," Eilish said of meeting Miskad among the assembled group of instructors. "He had more to say than other people, there was a quicker understanding than with the other guys in the group."

They "clicked", she says, and she offered to give him English lessons.

"We started talking a lot about his background, his childhood and when he starts to talk about things he is a good storyteller. I found it was almost like my art school training. I was involved in images -- you have to think about what is beautiful, what is symbolic -- and he has that quality.

"He talks about something in his childhood and makes you see the significance of it."

Miskad was attracted to Eilish -- "for me she is beautiful, and it's rare to meet a young, beautiful expatriate woman here" -- but he initially dismissed thoughts of having a relationship.

For one, he was still married, with a son to think about; there were also the bigger issues of her being a foreigner, from a different culture and religion.

"As the man of the house, I also thought about if I would be able to take care of her."

But one day -- Eilish remembers they were reading a story by Graham Greene -- Miskad blurted out that they should stop their lessons, that it was pointless for them to continue because their relationship could not go any further.

"I hadn't really been aware of all this tension building until he said it," she said.

Staying in Indonesia and finding a husband had not been in her plans. She was fascinated by everything to do with Iceland -- the culture, its climate, art -- and was studying the language with an Icelandic woman in Jakarta with a plan to go to Scandinavia.

That plan was shelved, and the two began a relationship. Each had their own conditions; Eilish did not want to be the "other woman", while Miskad asked her to become a Muslim.

"When we became serious, I told her, 'Why don't you convert to Islam?' I'm not a fanatical Muslim but in my heart, I thought whoever I marry has to be a Muslim ...".

There was also the delicate matter of extricating himself from his marriage and, for both of them, embarking on a new journey full of uncertainties. Eilish calls it a "terrible time".

Her mother, who became a Muslim several years ago and has made Indonesia her home, was supportive -- "she once told me that one Indonesian man is worth 100 Australian men".

Miskad's family also viewed their relationship as his choice to make, but some of his friends were not supportive. They would nod their heads knowingly and tell him, "Ah, Miskad, she'll leave you in a while. You'll just be a victim of her fun and games".

Their early relationship hurtled along, unplanned. They married on Aug. 30, 2002, when she was three months pregnant.

They found a small, rat-filled house in a Central Jakarta neighborhood, but it was decided that she should give birth, alone, in Australia in case there were complications.

From the delivery room, Eilish called her husband in Jakarta, so he could recite the Islamic prayer for a newborn. In honor of their relationship, he named her Aline, combining the letters of their two countries.

The homecoming

Miskad admits there was a feeling of pride for him and his family when he married Eilish, the small-town boy returning home with a Western wife and child.

When they first took Aline back to the village, Eilish realized after a few moments that her daughter was nowhere to be found. A quick search revealed that her grandfather was going from door to door showing off his pretty grandchild.

But most meaningful in their relationship, Miskad says, is that Eilish understands his family and where he came from.

"He considers his family to be poorer, and that it should be an issue for me," Eilish said. "It never has been. It some ways, a Western education teaches us that there should be no differences between us, between poor and rich, whether you grow up believing that or not."

His younger brothers, most of whom have followed their brother to Jakarta to work in the fitness business, have learned to respect their privacy, including calling first to find out if it's OK to visit.

"His brothers are very polite like him, they'll come over here and start doing the housework, so it's not difficult to have them around. They're very careful about intruding (on our space) because I'm a Westerner," Eilish said.

"They don't understand 100 percent," said Miskad. "They would stay with me and my first wife when they came to Jakarta to find jobs. Now there is no room in the pavilion, anyway."

Family and friends may make assumptions about their marriage; behind closed doors, it's the two of them trying to work out their differences for their relationship to work.

Finding a comfortable meeting point for two individuals is never easy, but there are inevitably more rough spots when one of the partners is also making an adjustment to a new culture.

Both Eilish and Miskad acknowledge that a lot of their arguments stemmed from the frustration she experienced in adjusting to life in the city.

The trigger may have been her encounter with her neighborhood busybody or living dangerously in a three-wheeled bajai, so simply not being able to make herself understood in Indonesian.

"Those were the things that were going through my head, although perhaps they weren't actually happening," she acknowledged.

The way they argued was also different.

Eilish, a high school debating champion from a family of sisters where words were always important, was used to picking apart an argument and offering a rejoinder. Her family, she says, "enjoys" an argument.

For Miskad, it was enough to acknowledge a mistake; he would feel cornered when the argument dragged on as he tried to make himself understood in a foreign language. Sometimes, he would use the wrong word, causing their bickering to escalate.

He would throw something against the wall or slam his hand down on the table to try to bring it to an end.

"He said to me, 'whatever I say, you can always argue better', Eilish said. "But I didn't want it to continue in front of Aline."

The all-out arguments have stopped and the couple has reached a middle ground, with Miskad helping his wife adjust to their circumstances.

"If she came home complaining about the taxi driver not having change for her, I would ask her how much she needed and then give it to her," Miskad said. "I told her that it wasn't worth it to get angry at them, especially in her own language, because it won't change them. They're set in their ways."

They traveled to Australia earlier this year, Miskad's first visit to his wife's homeland. After seeing Eilish argue with her father, Miskad, brought up believing that one should never confront one's parents, took her into a room and asked her to apologize.

"I probably would have done it anyway the next day, but he persuaded me that there was no point in letting it wait, that I needed to apologize to my father," Eilish said.

Acceptance

With their third anniversary coming up on Aug. 30, the couple is making plans for the future. Aline's future figures as a big factor in their plans, with concerns for her education foremost in their agreement to eventually relocate to Australia.

Miskad enjoyed the trip to Australia, especially the green areas and the order, but he prefers what he calls the "dynamics" of life here. On a trip to a Melbourne park, a wild bird wandered over to where the family was picnicking.

"I looked at it and thought, 'wow, we could kill it and eat it'. That was the Indonesian in me coming out," he laughed.

His perspective on marriage has changed; instead of considering himself the omnipotent head of the household, as was the case with his first marriage, he now views it as a relationship of equals.

"For Indonesian men, we want to control everything, to say, 'these are the rules'. In my marriage to Eilish, we have the same objective of building a family, but it's not the man's rules, it's our rules."

They make decisions today based on discussion and consensus. When Eilish was about to give birth, he mentioned that a daughter would also have to be circumcised. After Eilish objected, he looked into the subject of female circumcision and decided it was not obligatory.

He also no longer feels that he has to be the sole or main breadwinner; every month, he hands his salary over to Eilish to control the family's finances.

"My view is that I am with her, I can help her out on this front, and I would like to take total responsibility but I can't right now. I can accept the situation," he said of his wife earning more than him.

"This is a partnership, not based on this," he said, rubbing his fingers together. "Eilish accepts me as a person; it's not about my job or how much I earn."

For Eilish, marriage to Miskad keeps her centered.

"He is a healthy person, not caught up in depression or anxiety. I think that living here, you can't afford to have those sensitivities, those indulgences (of living in the West). He cancels out the sides of my personality that aren't good for me."

Juggling mothering and work responsibilities, Eilish no longer paints although she believes she will one day return to her art.

With different backgrounds and educations, they do not share all of the same interests, yet it's their core bond that matters most to Eilish.

"I can get the other things from other people. Everyone is not perfect. But Miskad is supportive and protective of me. And we love each other."