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Jill Harris: Teenagers in a twisted world

Courtesy of Duncan GrahamA troubling question posed in The Red Suitcase by 14-year-old Ruth Scott to her father, Robert, after his Muslim friend Urip and 20 other academics and students had been torn apart by a female suicide bomber

Duncan Graham (The Jakarta Post)
Wellington
Mon, November 24, 2014

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Jill Harris: Teenagers in a twisted world

Courtesy of Duncan Graham

A troubling question posed in The Red Suitcase by 14-year-old Ruth Scott to her father, Robert, after his Muslim friend Urip and 20 other academics and students had been torn apart by a female suicide bomber.

On that fateful day at a Christian university in Central Java, Robert is scheduled to deliver a lecture. Instead, he'€™d invited Urip to speak in a bid to build religious tolerance and understanding.

The book shows us how Robert is watching from the back of the hall when a Jamaah Islamiyah fanatic struck the podium targeting Westerners but killing Indonesians.

The Scott family flees to New Zealand in deep shock. Ruth mourns the loss of her friends and those she'€™s had to leave, particularly her best mate Ari (Urip'€™s daughter), and her happy life in Indonesia.

Back in her safe and snug homeland Ruth rejects counselling and makes a telling point about the ignorance of Kiwis: '€œNo, I hated it. They had no idea about the bomb. Or Indonesia.'€

Robert blames himself for not realizing militant Islam had grown so fast and penetrated the campus. His daughter'€™s questions scratch the guilt scabs raw.

Fortunately it'€™s fiction.

On the keyboard of a writer hostile to Indonesia, The Red Suitcase could have been a polemic against Islam '€” but prize-winning author Jill Harris turns the brutality of religious intolerance around, to nurture understanding of the complexities of faith and culture.



This is something Harris knows well, having spent a '€œtumultuous'€ three years in the early 1960s teaching English at the Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Central Java, with her journalist husband, Ian.

The couple had been inspired by a Protestant minister in New Zealand who told them their nation'€™s future lay in Asia, not Europe.

At the time most young adventure seekers spent their gap years in Britain.

'€œWe did not have exalted ideas about ourselves and certainly no belief in the superiority of Western values,'€ Harris says forcefully. '€œWe wanted to learn about our neighbors, to get alongside people of another culture. Missionaries? Heavens no, horror, horror.'€

It took almost a year to get visas, time spent learning Indonesian from the only available text in New Zealand.

'€œIt was an incredibly tough time but a life-changing experience,'€ she says. '€œMartial law was in place. on the drive from Jakarta we were stopped by soldiers 10 times.

'€œWe lived on Indonesian wages, but in fact got less than local staff. who took other jobs to survive. We called the local shop Tidak Ada [don'€™t have] because it was almost always empty of stock. Relatives sent us food parcels. Yet we never felt unsafe.

'€œThe economy was collapsing '€” people were eating rats. Rice that sold for Rp 4 (less than 1 US cent) a kilo when we arrived was priced at Rp 95 when we left.

'€œMany, many times I wanted to give up. It was very difficult, but it changed my life in a positive way, though I'€™ve never completely bridged the cultural gap.

'€œBack in Auckland I realized how racism was part of our society. In those days Maori people were hardly recognized. That'€™s no longer the situation.'€

On her return Harris taught Indonesian and gave public lectures on New Zealand'€™s closest Asian neighbour.

The couple also helped establish the NZ-Indonesia Association, a non-government organization dedicated to improving relationships between the two nations and which still exists.

The Red Suitcase maintains the message that New Zealand'€™s future lies in understanding Asia, the same direction given by the minister who first inspired the couple to head to Indonesia.

Fortunately, it does this subtlety: Just because readers are young doesn'€™t mean they can'€™t spot and reject a barrow-pusher.

Later the story moves to another level, as Ruth discovers letters from an airman relative killed in World War II and enters the '€œslippery nature of time'€.

But it'€™s the Indonesian bombing which sets the scene for a girl rushing into womanhood and confronting the great questions: Why is life not always good? Why do people cause grief?

Teenage novels have accelerated far beyond tales of enchanting princesses who find true love and live happily ever after. Kids who get hate and horror served on breakfast TV can'€™t be protected from the great tragedies of the world they'€™re entering.

'€œHush '€” you'€™ll understand when you grow up,'€ is no longer an acceptable response when a child reaches the age of inquiry. A child'€™s book no longer has to be childish.

Harris understands this market, reasoning that modern kids need frank answers in fiction that reflects reality, not tip-toeing around the topics that set adults trembling.

The Red Suitcase is her fourth book, but the first based on her time in Indonesia. The title comes from the real-life discovery of a box holding almost 100 letters from the writer'€™s journalist uncle Colwyn Jones, a bomber navigator who died in Europe.

These facts form the major plot, as the fictional Ruth comes across similar correspondence, entering '€œa sliding time zone'€, that puts her into the aircraft raining death over Germany.

Despite the Scott family'€™s ghastly experience in Indonesia they don'€™t hate the country, peppering their conversations with Indonesian, illustrating the author'€™s '€œaffection'€ for the archipelago.

'€œThe media now offers a softer image of Indonesia,'€ she said. '€œBut Indonesian is no longer taught in NZ schools or universities.'€

Although Ian has been back, leukemia has prevented Harris, now 75, from returning to the land that shaped her thinking.

Her next project is to publish the couple'€™s Salatiga diaries so readers can understand more of life in the Sukarno era.

'€œIndonesia taught me about resilience, tolerance and friendship, and what it means to be really poor,'€ Harris said in her batik-draped home. '€œIt also helped me discover myself.'€

 

'€˜The Red Suitcase'€™
(Makaro Press) by Jill Harris, 2014.

 

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