Ombre explores identity in work, life

Chisato Hara, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Moving with the still grace of a Balinese dancer, Ellen Louise Ombre settles without sound into a lounge chair at the Cemara Hotel in Menteng, Central Jakarta.

While the Surinamese writer can be spotted easily among a crowd by her statuesque figure, it is her round, slightly almond- shaped eyes that capture and captivate, along with her melodic, measured speech.

"I love to observe everything. As a child, I was always watching people," Ombre said during an interview with The Jakarta Post on Sept. 5, following a whirlwind tour to Bandung, Lampung and Jakarta in the Utan Kayu Literary Biennale 2005, which concluded on Sept. 3

Ombre was born in 1948 in Paramaribo, the capital of then Dutch Guiana, and moved to the Netherlands when she was 12 years old. Her father, a high-ranking civil servant, had taken the family on a long holiday, at the end of which he decided they would not go back to their homeland, to seek a better life -- in particular, to provide a solid education for his sons.

"It was the early sixties, so more focus was on my brothers then," she said. "I loved the freedom of the sixties ... so decided to go my own way."

Rejecting a possible future as a mere secretary, Ombre struck out on her own at the age of 16 and enrolled in the School for Social Work in Amsterdam, majoring in medical social work. Opting to specialize, she pursued further studies in psychosomatic illnesses and worked in her chosen field for 12 years.

Her transition to becoming a professional writer was both gradual and sudden, having written and published prolifically for most of her adult life, such as travel and literary pieces for the now-defunct Intermagazine -- which was known as The New Yorker of Holland.

Ombre writes in Dutch: "I love the language. It is my language."

"I was always writing, but I didn't have the ambition to become a professional writer. I had a job, a family."

On her return from a trip in 1989 to Benin, Nigeria, she arrived home to find book contracts from two publishers.

"I preferred the freedom. And it was also a great opportunity," Ombre said of choosing to become a full-time writer.

Her first book was Maalstrom (maelstrom), a short story anthology published in 1992 by Arbeiderspers.

"As a child, I was surprised by the movement of water (in a whirlpool). (As in nature) Some people can come to a maelstrom in their lives and it sucks them in."

Kinder Hinder (child trouble/problem child), for example, is a short story about a seven-year-old girl who takes after her "dark-skinned" father of African descent, and is in constant friction with her "almost-white" Creole mother.

"Sometimes in families, children can become confused, (when) faced with different identities," she said. "The most dramatic things happen in families."

Ombre's interest in issues of identity extends beyond the bounds of family into race, history, religion, generation and gender, and permutations thereof.

In the biennale's Living Together, a collection of works by participating writers, for example, is an extract from her first novel, Negerjood in Moederland (Blackjew in the Motherland), published last September.

At its center is Hannah, a 14-year-old of African descent who decides to volunteer at a kibbutz in Israel, having fallen in love with a young man at a Zionist youth movement. The complex tale is interwoven with themes of cultural, racial, religious and hidden identity, and is at once one of a young woman's coming of age.

Ombre's creating a "black Jew" protagonist is not arbitrary, and is tied directly to Suriname's ethnic heritage: Jews and Africans were the first "imported groups" to Suriname: the Sephardic Jews as a result of the Spanish Inquisition and the latter, imported by the former as slaves via the Dutch West India Company to work their sugar plantations.

"This is a key event in the history of transatlantic slavery," she said. And as was commonly the case, many plantation owners took advantage of their women slaves.

"But in Suriname, it is a paternalistic Jewish culture, because of the racial laws of the time." It was while in Suriname on research that Ombre unearthed records of an 18th-century synagogue for black Jews: evidence of segregation within a marginalized community.

Ombre is currently writing an epic spanning several generations of a family of black Jews, for which she will be moving back to Suriname at the end of this month.

"It is not a going back," she corrects. "It is a going forward."

"I am divorced... My (only) son is grown up. ...I can travel light, without burdens."

Her main worry is that, with the rush to pack and move immediately following the literary festival -- and unpacking and settling in -- she will not be able to write for about a month.

Even so, she has found her experience in Indonesia to be rewarding, meeting people she would not have met otherwise, sharing ideas with writers of a "shared heritage".

"The people here are very aware of themselves. The are civilized -- no, they are clean inside," she said. "They will not ask questions that embarrass you. They are gentle, not loud... And I am glad to be in a country where everyone is colored, and I am not a minority." Later, she added, "Europeans can learn much from their courtesy, their behavior."

Earlier in the day, she and fellow members of the Winternachten literary group, based in The Hague, visited the University of Indonesia Depok campus to present a special reading and discussion for about 150 students of the Dutch studies faculty.

"I was amazed, because the students read the stories in Dutch and read deeply, and spoke fluently, without an accent."

One student commented on Ombre's "compact writing style", pointing out a sentence she found particularly beautiful. Another approached Ombre and said she had always "thought Suriname was very close to us ... that it was part of Indonesia", referring to a family of former Javanese contract workers in Suriname that had returned to her neighborhood after Indonesian independence.

"I am sure I was tired also," Ombre said, "but I almost cried. I was touched."

As for herself, Ombre feels "at home here, but also confused. It is so familiar -- a tropical city, all the smells, the fruits ... at the same time, it is totally different."

Asked whether she would visit again, she replied, "Oh, yes. For sure. I will definitely come back. I am interested in the history here. There is much, much more to discover."