Living life on his own terms

Living life on his own terms

Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

To his utter relief, Martin Aleida was able to keep from disclosing the pivotal name of the river until the last paragraph of Jamangilak Tak Pernah Menangis (Jamangilak Never Cries).

"I felt tremendous relief and excitement as I finished this novel because I've been playing around with thousands of words and went through the strong temptation to name the river, Asahan. I just love that," Martin said.

Like most of his works in the anthology Leontin Dewangga (Dewangga's pendant) and other stories, the novel centers on a woman figure with a complicated life.

The heroine, Molek, develops from a fragile figure into a strong, rebellious and daring woman.

Martin's admiration for women comes from his own life; the youngest in his family, he was very close to his mother, whose traits are represented in Molek.

"She is very much like my mother. She climbed and fixed the house roof, just like men did," he said.

Born on Dec. 31, 1943, in Tanjung Balai, a small riverine city on the northeast coast of Sumatra, Martin was brought up in a conservative Muslim family. His father was a leader in Masyumi, an Islamic political party particularly active in the 1950s.

Young Martin developed his own leftist ideals, for he was exposed to social inequality, seeing for himself the hard lives of fishermen and laborers in his small town.

Bitter, difficult lives of making ends meet -- along with his love for his mother, his dreams, ordeals, living in a small town -- have remained the constants in his stories.

In 1966 he was unlawfully detained for a year in the Boedi Kemuliaan area in Central Jakarta for his involvement in LEKRA, a left-wing literary and cultural organization of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

It was during the repressive sweep for communists following the abortive coup blamed on the PKI.

Martin's imprisonment took place only three years after he moved to Jakarta from Tanjung Balai. He left his study of law at the University of Indonesia following an offer to study at Multatuli Academy of Letters, which was founded by writers Pramoedya Ananta Toer and Bakri Siregar.

"LEKRA was actually not a threat because many of us working in the forum were there for the sake of literature. It had been falling out of PKI's favor, too, at that time," said Martin who is now active in promoting literature and writing through the H.B. Jassin Documentation Center at Taman Ismail Marzuki in Central Jakarta.

"Thank God I survived the phase. I saw people, my friends, tortured and we really lived in a concentration camp. So inhumane. What saved me, probably, were the letters in my pocket when I was arrested. One was from my girlfriend and the other from my father, a wasiat (testimonial) before he went on the haj pilgrimage."

His girlfriend Sri Sulasmi -- now his wife and the mother of his three children -- was detained too.

The ordeal continued with the sometimes outright, other times veiled discrimination for those who had been detained. Changing jobs and even changing his name -- his real name is Nurlan -- were his way to survive during the New Order administration, always quick to point fingers at the "subversive", underlying leftist threat.

Martin took his name from civil rights activist Martin Luther King, whom his father deeply respected, while Aleida means admiration. As well as writing, he worked as a journalist for Tempo newsmagazine and with the United Nations.

Jamangilak Tak Pernah Menangis tells that one of Molek's sons, Hurlang, was having an illicit affair with a married woman who is a victim of abuse. Ashamed and confused, Molek takes the law into her own hands and punishes her sinful son, setting him on fire. He survives.

Martin often touches on religion in his works, but he does not single out any particular one for condemnation: The Muslim mother who tries to "cleanse" her sinful son by setting fire on him, a Catholic school used to torture people; adultery in the church.

The message is that religion is an institution but its practitioners are all too human.

As a historical romance, Jamangilak Tak Pernah Menangis is nearly as beautiful as Pramoedya Ananta Toer's Gadis Pantai (The girl from the coast).

Martin uses a Batak (North Sumatra) setting, while Pramoedya's work centers on the Javanese culture. But novels have flowing literary elements which make them pleasant reads.

But his past resentment and his profound concern over the Asahan, now woefully polluted by industrial waste, can sometimes be jarring.

Now that he has retired from his nine-to-five job, he said he would have more time to write.

"I am not a productive writer, so one thing I bought after my retirement is a notebook. I can write whenever I feel like writing," said Martin, who confessed most of his most recent novel was written in bed.

"Pillows and the curls of blanket are my inspiration to make metaphor for the flowing water and mountains," he giggled.

For a man who has lived a difficult live, seen injustice and experienced it first hand, he is surprisingly magnanimous about the world.

"My past enriches me. I think that's why I have to let it go and take the best out of it," he said as way of explanation.

Jamangilak Tak Pernah Menangis is published by PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama.