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."