Ombre explores identity in work, life

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."