A hot day in December, 1965. I was nine years old, a blond, sun-crisped Bali bulé boy, and a Balinese man I’d never seen before hunched on the parlor sofa of my parent’s house in Klungkung, east Bali. He reeked of fright: acrid, bitter, biting. He was silent, hands clasped between his knees. A former member of a Communist party’s community organization, he was helpless, hopeless, marked for death, a marking that painted not by gray-skinned pallor but by stink. I’ll never forget that smell.
Outside on the street in front of our house marched squads of Balinese men in black with machetes and spears, some with guns. The taming–the killing teams. Efficient. Deadly.
They were the victorious nationalists, rampant and on the hunt for Communists, who only a year previously were poised for political power and the control of the country’s future. In those black, brutal months, with a madness sweeping over the island, an estimated 50000 Balinese were slaughtered by other Balinese, killed for being Communists and for being leftist and for having said the wrong thing, even (in one recorded case) for having provided a pressure lantern for a Communist mass rally.
Klungkung had a large PKI presence, with many of the high caste Brahman families being party members. Kids I’d played with on the streets and fields and banyan trees simply disappeared. Thousands of corpses were tossed into estuary ravines by the seashore, and into the ocean itself. A journalist staying with us told of seeing a raft of bodies floating in the surf, sharks leisurely feeding.
selengkapnya
Bali’s mass killiBali’s mass killings of 1965, or why I don’t like surfing the east coast — Part I – Richard E. Lewis
Bali’s mass killings of 1965, or why I don’t like surfing the East coast — Part 2 — what happened exactly anyhow? – Richard E. Lewis
Growing Up in Bali by Richard Lewis
On January 28, 2008, the Smiling General died.
A few weeks later, I read newspaper reports about mass graves being uncovered in Java.
In Bali, there is a memorial to the victims of the Sari Club bombing, erected on the site, and each time I drive past it, there is always a fresh wreath placed in front of the granite etched with names, or somebody quietly perusing the list.
But still, to this day, not one Balinese I know of has stepped forward to point out that there, there, and there, you will find evidence of a massacre. Not one Balinese I know of will talk about the dark, dark days of 1965.
Novel Bones of the Dark Moon – Richard E. Lewis
If you are looking for a new controversial novel about Indonesia, try reading Richard E Lewis’ BONES OF THE DARK MOON. A long-time resident of Bali, he was living there as a boy during the 1965 massacres which form the background for this novel. Like any fiction based upon such contested history, this is bound to be controversial. But I found it fascinating and highly readable. It weaves the present with the past in a very confronting manner. (dari status facebook David T. Hill)
synopsis Novel Bones of the Dark Moon – Richard E. Lewis
sumber goodreads.com
During construction of a villa on an idyllic Bali seashore, workers uncover long-buried skeletons, their shattered skulls evidence of brutal mass murder. The discovery sets the village of Batu Gede astir. The life of Made “Nol” Ziro, a stalwart member of the community with a little gambling problem, is turned upside down. Could one of those skeletons be that of his schoolteacher father, who disappeared during the political upheaval and massacres of 1965?
As Nol sets out to find the truth of what happened, his path crosses that of American anthropologist Tina Briddle, who has secrets of her own, and who is determined to give a voice to the unknown bones. She suspects that the key to their mystery lies with Reed Davis, an enigmatic retiree dwelling among the Ubud expat community and rumored to have been a CIA spy.
Drawing them together is the mysterious Luhde Srikandi, who fifty years ago whispered her enchantments from deep in the shadows of conspiracy, and who begins to whisper again. Who is she? For what happened on that sleepy beach all those decades ago isn’t dusty memory. Secrets are revealed, vengeance is unleashed, and a forbidden love flares to life.
Arguably the most traumatic cataclysm of Bali’s rich and fascinating history, the massacres of 1965 remain mostly unknown to the island’s visitors. Interweaving historical drama with contemporary Bali life, Bones of the New Moon is compulsively readable, a page-turner with unexpected twists leavened with dashes of humor, laying bare the love and hatred, the tragedy and irony, and the joy and despair of our common human predicament.
The novel is getting rave reviews:
“Deftly weaving the memories and legacies of this grim past into the tensions of modern-day life in Bali, Richard Lewis plots a tangled web of circumstance, shadow and human tragedy. This is a powerful novel about Balinese memories of a terrible time.”
— Robert Cribb, Professor of Asian Politics and History, School of Culture, History and Language, Research School of Asia and the Pacific, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University. Author of “Indonesian Killings 1965”
“Composed in a flowing and plain prose, Lewis’s novel navigates between the familiar and the unfamiliar. His portrayal of Nol, one of the leading characters—of Nol’s traumatic history and marginal geography—exhibits his intimacy with the daily life of an ordinary Balinese. The novel moves effortlessly from the outside to the inside, and vice versa—which is to me very appealing. Bones of the Dark Moon … is rich with close-ups of regrets, fear, sadness, and moments of happiness. It allows the quiet force of ambiguity to play. At the end, the human survives the crushing strides of political history.”
— Goenawan Mohamad, founder and editor of Indonesia’s Tempo Magazine, International Editor of the Year 1999, recipient of the Dan David Prize award, 2006.
“A captivating novel that highlights a dark but fascinating history in Bali during the cold war. It also offers an interesting and educational glimpse into the culture and complicated relationships of this part of the world. It accomplishes all of this while providing a suspenseful mystery.”
—Kevin Holtsberry, Collected Miscellany
disalin Bones of the Dark Moon
Jejak Genosida Bali 1965-1966 : Dalam Kajian Ilmiah (Buku), Film Dokumenter, Lagu Dari Penjara (Prison Song), Memorabilia, Novel, dan Lukisan
