Feeling caught in the middle in Jakarta

Feeling caught in the middle in Jakarta

How do you feel as an expatriate in Jakarta? Are you
frightened yet? Does your heart skip an extra beat when you hear
a firecracker go off in the dead of night?

Does the call to prayer now sound haunting for all the wrong
reasons? Are they talking about you behind your back? Did the
guy in the warung (sidewalk food stall) you just passed say bule
(whitey) or boleh (may)?

It's hard to tell.

Your two weeks of language training now feels pathetically
inadequate. Suddenly you wished you'd paid more attention in
class. You might be able to ask for directions to Pasar Raya, but
how do you say, "I sympathize with the people of Afghanistan", or
tell someone that you "respect the tenets of the Muslim faith"?

The embassy instructs you to stay at home. They always do
this, you tell yourself. They're just covering themselves in case
something goes wrong. If you stay at home you feel like a fool.
If you venture out you suddenly wish you'd stayed at home. A
colleague of mine says that once-friendly ojek (motorcycle taxi
drivers) now refuse to take her. Salespeople in department stores
express surprise that you're out of the house. "Aren't you
frightened?" a friend of mine was asked while shopping in a mall
recently.

You want to shake people and tell them that you're still a
friend of Indonesia. That you still love their smiling faces, the
balmy weather, the wonders of the local culture. That you
actually went out and bought all three volumes of the trilogy
written by that Pramoedya guy (Better not tell them you haven't
started reading it yet).

People everywhere remember where they were when the planes hit
the World Trade Center. But for expats in Jakarta the night of
Sunday Oct. 7 is just as memorable. I was at a dinner party.
Cocktails, music, wine and laughter. The problems of the world,
if we thought of them at all, seemed far away. Then a phone call.
A muffled conversation in the next room. Our host reappeared and
said, "I guess it's started." None of us had to ask what he
meant.

We immediately crowded around the television set, and there
they were again, those grainy night-vision pictures which CNN
announcers inevitably describe as "dramatic". We've seen them so
many times before, in Iraq, Serbia, Kosovo, and always the same
-- a pinprick of light moves slowly across the screen, followed
by an explosion and the futile tracers of anti-aircraft fire.

New world order? The end of history? I don't think so. This
looked very much like history repeating itself. We hurriedly
ordered taxis, our heads crowded with apocalyptic visions of what
tomorrow might bring.

But what exactly are we afraid of? Aren't we just falling back
on our old prejudices about "fanatical" Muslims? So far, reports
of expats being menaced have been few and far between, and we're
yet to hear of actual physical attacks by the Islamic groups that
daily threaten "sweepings" and holy war. Which isn't to say there
won't be trouble in the coming days and weeks.

But let's not forget that in the aftermath of the attacks in
the U.S. hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent Muslims living
in the West reported being harassed, spat on and assaulted. Some
were even killed. In Australia, a mosque was set on fire and a
bus carrying children from an Islamic school was stoned by angry
locals.

So who would you rather be -- "a person of Middle Eastern
appearance" nervously walking the streets of New York, London or
Sydney, or an expat in Jakarta, sitting cocooned behind the
tinted glass of a Silverbird taxi?

-- Joshua Macati