Merdeka

Laine Berman   |  Sun, 11/16/2008 10:26 AM  |  Bookmark

Ever since the front room of our small kost boarding house became available and was taken over by Kangmas and Dhimas, the two sons of the house, a demon took over with shocking speed and accuracy.

While freedom, or merdeka, now meant being only some 10 feet away from the main house, the physical distance was compounded by a complete social transformation.

Each night, the boys gathered in the room to play guitar.

Later, they installed a cassette player and folk music slowly transformed into Metallica.

Soon after, innocent chatter became vulgar storytelling and guitar-picking became gambling. Eventually, the gambling was accompanied by alcohol and the gatherings got louder and continued far into the night, sometimes even accompanied by women.

***

Only about a month into their celebration of merdeka, Dhimas stumbled into the house, where I was talking with his mother and sister.

He walked past on unsteady, rubbery legs, drooling down his coffee stained tee shirt. His language was extremely slurred and his eyes unable to focus much on anything.

His mother furiously chastised him for looking so sloppy. "How could you walk in the streets wearing clothes like that? Have you no respect for your family name??" Jeez. Should I tell her?

A week later on Saturday morning, after an extremely loud, long gathering, mother went to the room to see if Kangmas was up and getting ready for his classes.

What she found were six boys in various stages of dress unconscious on the floor amidst heaps of garbage, cigarette butts, bottles, food, and worse.

In a fit of rage, she ran into the kitchen to fetch a gas tank and threw it onto her son's mattress, where he lay slowly gathering consciousness. Screaming and kicking, she raved, "I'll burn this room and all the evil in it!!" Kangmas obliged and turned his lighter on the mattress.

His friends, by now well aware of what was going on, slowly walked out while Kangmas spread the gas around the evil room.

The room was destroyed, but the demons it harbored were not. In fact, they were barely singed.

While both brothers did not come home for a few days, lots of young men stopped by looking for them and the pills they had apparently been selling from this evil room. The demons came back in full force, however, when mother left for Jakarta and father left town on business.

The notorious six took over the house, wielding knives and threatening anyone who questioned them. Occupying the kost behind the main house, we all became refugees in the night, running off to our various safe havens.

For over a month my kost was taken over by children going insane over merdeka.

The physical distance from their authority figures was small but the symbolic distance permitted them the freedom to do anything they liked with no intervention. The pills they were taking could be anything.

The point was to swallow 20-25 of them. The high lasted for two to three days and could be controlled by milk, which lessened the effect, or caffeine and sugar, which strengthened it.

In most cases, they had no control over their memory or actions.

After about two weeks of this obscene possession, the withdrawal was into several hours of excruciating pain.

***

Yesterday afternoon, I watched Kangmas writhing on the floor punching himself in the head, screaming and crying, begging for someone to get him some more pills. His friends were too stoned to care. His sister and I decided it was probably best to ignore the pleas as best we could.

A few hours later while the others were sleeping, Kangmas freed himself from the demon's grip.

Amid his foggy memory we helped him piece together the activities of the previous three days; the threats of violence and terror, the knife gashes in the doors as crazed young men threatened those of us foolish enough to stay at home, the immense silence within the kampong as fearful neighbors locked themselves away, and the monstrous spectacle of demonically possessed boys.

Kangmas swore he'd never take pills again and that he would free us all and himself from his demon-bound friends.

Just as we were about to celebrate the calm over dinner together, the Indonesian military burst into our home pointing rifles and screaming loudly and profanely.

Upon seeing me, their speech immediately changed to soft, polite, formal Javanese. Their tone of inquiry became gentle and adopted the friendly, big-brother approach. There was no need for a show of force. There was a foreigner present and the demonic children were all sound asleep. As all the *evidence' had been consumed, the boys could be charged with nothing.

***

This morning, as I came out onto the path of my kampong, I was summoned by a group of neighbors wanting to know what happened the previous evening.

I told them what I thought would make them happy, and then asked if there were other drug problems in this area.

They said only the rich families had such problems. We laughed in agreement as I left. And then I realized, they too did not know their own children.

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