The Fifth Season (6 page)

‘Then you may inform your son that when the time arrives, he may count
on both the Ulama Akbar and the Mufti Muharam
,' Malik declared, his statement accompanied by confirmatory nods from the others. The Haji rose slowly and held her hand warmly, signaling that he understood the sacrifice she had agreed to make, a sacrifice which would guarantee their support for her ambitious son.

Satisfied, General Praboyo's mother departed their company, saddened by the knowledge that she must fulfill her pledge to abandon her own faith, and embrace the teachings of Islam in order to secure the support of the country's powerful Moslem parties.

As her Mercedes drove slowly away, she stoically accepted that her actions that day could easily precipitate the beginning of the end of the current Indonesian leadership.

She sighed, dabbing at the dry corners of her eyes, wondering why it was so difficult for an old woman to cry. She dismissed the cloud of depression which threatened, closing her weary eyes to again consider the consequences of the new alliance.

With frail, shaking hands, she opened her well-worn purse and retrieved the delicate cross hidden there. General Praboyo's mother then lowered her head, and prayed for forgiveness; and for what she knew in her heart, would most surely now transpire.

* * * *

East Java - Situbondo – December, 1997

Second-corporal Suparman waited impatiently for the signal to move. His hands moved nervously in the darkness and found the haversack containing the deadly cocktails. Reassured, he continued to listen for the others' voices as he lay hidden at the edge of the field. Rain filled clouds moved silently across the evening sky blanketing the moonlight and Suparman sensed that the attack was imminent, as darkness enveloped their surrounds. Habit forced his hands to check the lower leg pockets of his battle-dress, but then he remembered that they had changed out of their uniforms as the mission directives required.

This would be a civilian raid.

‘Let's go!'
his Sergeant hissed, sending eight half-crouched men running along the soggy rain-water drain towards a number of barely visible buildings, the structures' silhouettes confused to the marauders' eyes, in the absence of light. They had covered more than a hundred meters when their leader's voice snapped again.

‘Get down!'
Suparman heard the NCO's command and the team threw themselves against the embankment, waiting for whatever it was that moved towards them along the narrow, bitumen road. Moments passed before they continued cautiously towards their target in file, listening for sounds which might be out of place here in the dark. Frogs croaked, a worrying sign that rain might interfere with their mission, but Suparman was more concerned with the filthy, slimy, colorfully ringed, deadly poisonous snakes which slid around in the night, preying on the noisy creatures.

The soldiers hurried across the road and came to rest less than fifty meters from the buildings, where they spent several more minutes determining where the civilian security guards slept.

‘To the left of the smaller building,'
a corporal indicated, pointing to where a soft, fifteen watt globe burned inside what they knew to be the sleeping quarters. Sergeant Subandi squinted, concentrating on the buildings, then cursed silently, swatting whatever insect had attached itself to his face.

‘Suparman,'
the NCO whispered for all to hear,
‘take Dedi and two
others, and hit the church from there.'
He pointed to the walls farthest from where the tenants slept.
‘You,'
he ordered, placing his hand on the corporal's shoulder,
‘take the others and approach from behind.'
The corporal raised his eyebrows questioningly, but this went unseen in the dark.

‘What about them?'
he asked, moving his free hand closer to the sergeant's face while pointing at the dim light. Over the past month, they had razed almost a dozen other churches and not once targeted those inside.

During those operations, the inhabitants had fled in terror, encouraged by their attackers to do so. He sensed that the sergeant had moved outside the operation's parameters, and wanted confirmation that this time, they were to kill. He could not see the cruel grin which marked the team leader's face.

‘Burn them,'
he ordered, and rose to his feet clasping one of the Molotov cocktails in his right hand, simultaneously extracting a lighter from his jacket pocket with the other. The men followed suit, opening their own sacks containing the highly inflammable contents, and taking their positions as instructed.

Within minutes the church was ablaze. Tall dancing flames licked at the sky, casting light for hundreds of meters. Then the soldiers turned their attention to the adjoining buildings, hurling their deadly gifts into the air to smash against the buildings' roofs, releasing burning fuel which spread through the ceiling and into the meager quarters where the minister and his wife remained, clutching each other in terror.

They cried out for assistance, and were dismayed when none came to their rescue. The ceiling above burst into flames, the heat and smoke unbearable. Finally, overcome by asphyxiation, the couple died, only minutes before the arsonists' deadly fires could engulf their bodies.

The soldiers regrouped, then disappeared silently back through the fields to where their vehicle waited. By the time any of the local population had found the courage to investigate the carnage, the entire American-trained squad had driven more than fifty kilometers back to their station, where they changed back into uniforms bearing the insignia of the 21st Battalion, before returning to their provincial
Kopassus
headquarters in Surakata, Central Java.

Other non-Christian townspeople had demonstrated their deep-rooted apathy, electing to ignore the significance of the attack, silently pleased that the Chinese community had been punished for their apparent greed and commercial successes. Overwhelmingly, it seemed, even Christians not of Chinese extraction had elected not to attend their churches. They all now lived in a world filled with fear.

The church's destruction had been the twelfth in a series of mysterious events which had, until the evening before, not claimed casualties. With the death of the two whose bodies now lay before them, these provincial Chinese had legitimate reasons to become even more deeply concerned with the escalation in violence, which they believed to be part of some concentrated campaign to further intimidate their race. Although there was no evidence to support the wide-spread rumors, the Christian community feared that the provocation had been initiated by Moslem elements, and that the orders had come from those in Jakarta who wished to create civil unrest to support their own secret agendas.

Whispered innuendo suggesting that men sporting typically military style haircuts had been seen at several of the churches before these were torched, had added to their fear. Such rumors were of great concern to the Chinese who suspected what this might mean to them, as it was common knowledge that the Indonesian army had often been deployed in the past, when the need arose to terrorize specific ethnic groups, for political gain.

But the Chinese were confused as to why suddenly churches had become the target of marauding bands of arsonists. Could it be, they asked each other, that the attacks were really the responsibility of militant Moslem groups?

After all, the Chinese communities only accounted for a small percentage of the Christian population. Surely, then, some argued, it was not the Chinese who were being specifically targeted, but Christians in general?

Although graffiti found at the scene of each desecration indicated that this sectarian violence had been instigated by Moslem raiders, the Christian communities questioned these attempts to fuel existing animosities between the rival groups. Bewildered by the escalating violence, the general consensus grew to support the belief that Jakarta elements were behind the civil unrest in the area. And now these subversive actions had resulted in the loss of the minister and his wife to the small Christian community.

* * * *

When the alarm was first given signaling that the Church and its adjoining accommodations were burning, not one from the congregation went to the scene, fearing that the gang responsible might still be present, and would confront any foolish enough to intervene. Besides, they had justified, those inside would surely have already fled to safety.

It was not until the following morning that evidence of the evening's horrors became evident to all. The minister and his wife had perished, their remains found clutched together in scorched embrace. Too terrified to leave their premises, they had been overwhelmed by the heat and smoke and died. Their partly-charred bodies had been discovered amongst the smoldering ruins and taken to the rear section of the
Apotik
, the local, Chinese-owned pharmacy, until the authorities would agree to their burial. There, a number of local female parishioners had gathered, to prepare the bodies for burial.

Lily's mother had been amongst the volunteers, and had insisted that her daughter accompany the women whilst they carried out their traditional preparations. The corpses were washed and cleaned where practical, injected and painted with formaldehyde, then dressed in cloth. When Lily first entered the chemist's storage room she avoided looking at the bodies. The acrid smell of chemicals assailed her nostrils, but she resisted the temptation to flee. As the minutes dragged by, her stomach settled and Lily reluctantly went about assisting her mother, surprised with herself that she had found the strength to remain. Within the hour, the experienced women had managed to complete their tasks and stood by the corpses, admiring the results of their labors.

Lily wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist and, glancing across the room at her mother, she sighed. Lily desperately wished that her parents would now leave this hostile environment and travel with her to Jakarta, where she lived with her uncle while preparing for university.

Sadly, she realized, they would not leave their community, unwelcome as they might be. Generations of their family had lived in East Java since fleeing China more than two hundred years before and had developed strong ancestral ties with their new land.

* * * *

Originally, Lily's family name was Ong. They had been obliged to adopt an Indonesian name as part of the assimilation process required by the New Order regime, which had come to power in 1966. Although born more than ten years after the holocaust, Lily knew that some half a million people had died during the two years following the abortive coup. She also knew that her race had been cruelly targeted by the indigenous people, who accused the ethnic Chinese of involvement in the communists' attempt to take control of the government.

Vicious rumors had spread claiming that her people were responsible, at least in part, for the kidnap, mutilation and murder of the nation's leading generals. The resulting cleansing campaign spread through the archipelago, striking fear in the hearts of all who were of Chinese extraction. Eventually, once the new President had been firmly ensconced at the nation's helm and the blood-letting ceased, many of the Chinese who had fled the horrors of the Sixties returned, bringing with them capital the new government so desperately needed.

Lily accepted that the Chinese had prospered under the New Order and, softened by time, there were occasions when stories relating to events of more than thirty years ago often seemed exaggerated; almost fabrications. Having moved from the rural community to the exciting, sprawling metropolis of Jakarta to further her studies, she could see no evidence anywhere to support such stories. There, she discovered, the Chinese were influential, and extremely successful. She was delighted to learn that even the First Family had developed close ties with her race, and Lily, as did her peers, believed that this relationship virtually guaranteed all Indonesian Chinese their ongoing safety.

In Jakarta, Lily discovered that racial discrimination, although evident, was generally ignored due to the realities of commerce, and she had eagerly assimilated to the exciting conditions, captivated by city life and the metropolis' amazing entertainment facilities. Pleased to have left her provincial surrounds of Situbondo, and the growing ethnic tensions now prevalent throughout the countryside, she undertook to work diligently, hoping, that upon graduation, her uncle would provide the opportunity for her to remain in the capital.

Now, she regretted having returned home for the Christmas holidays.

Memories of her childhood and school, when she had been subjected to fear and humiliation at the hands of discriminatory groups came flooding back the moment she had stepped down from the train. On those all too frequent occasions, she would return home from school, her face wet with evidence of tears. It had been difficult and demeaning to follow her mother's advice, to ignore the insults. Lily found it impossible for the hurtful racial slurs and intimidating language so often encountered in this small, isolated community in East Java, not to leave some scars.

For Lily, shocked by the minister's death, the evidence before her only reaffirmed her belief that racial hatred for the Chinese was more than a passing phenomenon. This perilous culture of envy had spread over the centuries, its origins dating back in Indonesian history to a time when her people had been given special status over the indigenous by the Colonial Dutch. Now, that legacy had all but disappeared, displaced by deep-rooted tribal animosities which lurked dangerously close to the Indonesian society's fragile surface. It would seem, she felt disconsolately, that contrary to what the nation's leaders would have the international community believe, there was, in fact, no unity in diversity; at least, not in this nation of more than three hundred ethnic groups, each clamoring for recognition and autonomy from the Javanese.