Spicy distinctions in a Betawi-Palembang marriage
Spicy distinctions in a Betawi-Palembang marriage
Emmy Fitri The Jakarta Post/Jakarta
Of all the cross-cultural marriages that are possible, one would think that a couple from Java and Sumatra would have the least difficulty in adjusting to each other. But that is often not the case as we find out with Yulian and Arnita
Dinner was ready, served on the round dining table.
A bowl full of sayur pucung (Betawi-style fish soup), rice, fried gabus (freshwater fish), and a selection of raw vegetables, or lalap. A pot of hot tea stood next to a water jug.
The food was enough for all. There were at least nine adults with five noisy toddlers and children. All related. The family had gathered to recite the Koran that evening.
And while others cheerfully scooped the food onto their glass plates, Yulian Fajri, who had already started eating, suddenly rose from his seat and dashed into the kitchen, not far away from the dining table.
Nisin, the householder, Yulian's father-in-law, started giggling. "He cannot eat without sambal (chili sauce)," he said between his chuckles.
Yulian's wife Arnita just looked at the kitchen for a second and then returned to her food.
A few minutes later, 30-year-old Yulian was back in his seat. He placed a small chili pounder next to his plate.
"Different tastes. Sumatran tastes are so strange. Breakfast, lunch and dinner with sambal," Nisin said.
Sambal, perhaps, may seem a mere triviality but for Yulian it is basic. He grew up with it, and now he swears that he could not swallow rice without it.
The advice of his mother is still clear in his mind: "Hala nyakah bini yang dek tau nyambal" (Don't you marry a woman who cannot make sambal).
Advice which went unheeded by Yulian when he married Arnita.
Love, apparently, conquers all. Including a passion for sambal.
"I was frustrated during our first week of marriage. I rarely ate at home and she often got angry because of that. Then I took the initiative. I taught her how to make sambal," Yulian recalled.
Try though she may, even Arnita's best efforts did not satisfy her husband's passion.
"It was a bit tasteless. It doesn't have to be hot, just tasty," Yulian recalled as his dragged on his cigarette, sated after a tasty sambal-filled dinner.
"Now I make my own sambal. She can cook anything she likes, but I make the sambal."
In his hometown of Baturaja, sambal was a compulsory item on the family dining table. It could be any kind of sambal, from just a plain pounded chili and garlic, to young mango sambal or the typical calok sambal (with shrimp or fish paste mixed in).
Baturaja is a relatively idle town, despite the nearby presence of a cement factory and at least three oil palm plantations. It is the capital of Ogan Komering Ulu Regency, and is located some 120 kilometers north of Palembang.
The son of a tailor father and a kindergarten teacher mother, Yulian left his hometown in 1997 to seek his luck on Java Island. He went to Sukabumi, West Java, where he worked for a timber firm for one year. He left the job following an accident which resulted in his left thumb being severed by a timber cutting machine.
His brothers and sisters -- all married to neighbors and friends -- enjoyed "easy lives" with their parents.
"I just had to get out. Life was too predictable there. If you didn't own land you became a civil servant, or ended up unemployed, waiting for your inheritance," Yulian said.
The second of five siblings, Yulian graduated from a technical high school. His modest education did not deter him from seeking work in Jakarta, which has little mercy for unskilled and inexperienced migrants.
But Yulian took any kind of job he could get, from working as a porter with a loading company to a job on an offshore drilling platform. Not an easy life.
Rude barriers
Arnita believes that her two-year-old marriage remains strong. The friction that occasionally occurs is part of the ups and downs of a balanced union.
But she still doesn't comprehend why her husband is so insistent on her learning to speak his language -- a native dialect of Palembang called 'Ogan'.
Living and working in Jakarta, she sees no point in her and her future children learning such an obscure language.
The dialect, though, remains a catharsis for Yulian.
"When he gets mad or there is something he wants to complain about, he uses his native tongue. I just reply in Bahasa Indonesia, I don't care now," she said.
She has also learnt that only time will allow her husband to make the necessary adjustments to accept the predominantly Betawi-style diets and culture prevailing in her father's home.
At first she found it "rude" for her husband to, for example, leave food untouched on the dinner table and go get something from outside.
Arnita said her husband did not like Betawi cuisine at all, claiming it tasted funny.
"I'm not a bad cook. In fact, I have cooked for my father since I was in junior high school. We do eat sambal, but it is not the kind he wants," said Arnita, whose mother passed away in 1999.
"But I believe he'll get used to it," she said.
The couple had a brief courtship with Yulian proposing only after their second meeting. Although he considered ethnicity important, he initially did not know his future wife's ethnic background.
"Eventually I did ask. I am from Sumatra and make a living in other people's homes. I am a guest here so it is important for me to adjust to the manners commonly practiced here," Yulian claimed.
He said he was compelled to "behave well" especially because Sumatran people were easily associated with negative stereotypes.
The Bataks, he said, were often labeled as being rough, outspoken and short-tempered, while Palembang people were stamped as criminals.
When Yulian and Arnita agreed -- over the telephone -- to begin a relationship, they admitted that they were both excited at the prospect of being paired with someone from a relatively different background.
Eight months later they were married.
Arnita who was then 20 years old said she agreed to marry him because she thought it was about time for her to settle down.
"Girls of my age in my extended family have already got one or two children. I am considered old," she remarked.
She also gave up her job in a garment factory in Cakung, East Jakarta, preferring to become a housewife. Now seven-months pregnant, Arnita is looking forward to a new addition to the family.
Good and bad
From their initial unexpected meeting on a bus, Yulian and Arnita had to deal with serious challenges as their marriage neared.
These problems often centered around the day of the wedding and how it should be held, in the Betawi or Sumatran style.
The Betawi people still believe that there are good and bad days for a wedding. In a Betawi wedding, Yulian would have to provide various seserahan (gifts) for each stage of the ceremony's five stages.
But Yulian believed that the wedding would be much simpler and cheaper if it were held in Baturaja, based on Sumatran customs.
Being the youngest of seven siblings, Arnita however was the favorite of everyone in her family. And her elders were insistent on throwing a special wedding for her -- their way.
A potential impasse was avoided when Arnita's father decided at the last minute to just conduct an Islamic ceremony.
"That basically solved the problem," she said.
The wedding became the most modest reception the family had ever hosted. A moderate-sized tent was erected in front of the house with only neighbors and relatives invited.
The house, an old building with a high ceiling, is located in an alley, some 80 meters from Jl. Raya Bogor. In the late 1970s, it used to be the only building on a 200-square-meter plot.
Little by little the land was sold by Nisin for his children's needs -- education, weddings, etc
What's left are just three small houses on the right-hand side of the main house that are rented out.
Even though many native Betawi have been pushed to the fringes due to the rapid growth of Jakarta, they maintain strong linkages and retain the habit of living in close proximity to one another. Arnita's family is no different.
"I can always find aunts or uncles to talk to here. Or I can invite my nephews or nieces to accompany me at home. They live not far from here," she said.
Despite differing perceptions, she does not believe that marrying a Betawi man would have been any easier.
Arnita's says that she once asked her husband why he did not try to find a Baturaja girl or a Sumatran girl to marry.
"Sumatran girls are hard to handle," she quoted Yulian as saying. "They don't listen to their husbands."
"He said that when fell in love with me, he didn't know what background I came from."
As their marriage matures, both Yulian and Arnita are learning how things like sambal and language are not issues that should cause friction in their marriage. But neither should they be ignored.
The key is to find a compromise.
"I let him make his own sambal as long as he eats at home. He may use his dialect at home or with the children later as long as I am not forced to speak it too."