Gone with the fires

I just stood there, speechless. Right at the entrance of Harco Electronik, Mangga Dua. To my left, the glass wall, against which boxes of Intel Pentium processors were once stacked up, was gone, the boxes were gone, too, of course. Black ash was piled up everywhere and I could still smell the burned plastic and other materials. Gone were the businesses owned by my close friends. Gone were the shops run by my young entrepreneur friends Romli, Bono and Rita, just when their businesses were starting to pick up.

I drove on to Glodok Plaza in Pinangsia. It also had been turned into a black structure without walls. The same fate had also struck the adjacent Plaza 21, Orion Plaza, on the corner and the Old Glodok Building across the street.

Tell me, where do we go to find spare parts for our computers? Where should we go when we need to have our PCs repaired? Where should we go when we need to buy a fax machine, a new CD-ROM drive, a modem, a new mouse? Where should we go if we need spare parts for our refrigerator?

Before May 14, Glodok Building housed the most complete range of retail stores for medicines and medical equipment. Where should we go now if we need a crutch or a wheelchair?

Is it too "blue-sky" to expect those who benefited immensely from the past kleptocratic regime to return a small portion of their wealth for the rebuilding of Glodok?

ZATNI ARBI

Jakarta