BOOK
REVIEW Barefoot with a blunt crayon in the
ruins Who Did This to Our
Bali? by Dewi Anggraeni
Review by
Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - Perhaps no one is
in a better position to tell the story of the Bali
bombings of 2002 than Dewi Anggraeni. An Indonesian
living for many years in Australia, she's tied to the
two countries at the center of the tragedy. An ethnic
Chinese, Anggraeni was born in Indonesia but not really
part of it, as it is with Bali, a Hindu enclave within
the nation with the world's largest Muslim population that
became the target of a terror attack by Islamic
radicals. As a veteran journalist and novelist, she has
the right credentials to tell the story of paradise
bombed with unmatched perspective, feeling and
insight.
Anggraeni's unique qualifications for
the task make Who Did This to Our Bali? such a
blowout disappointment. The book presents a stale
chronicle of the facts of the case gleaned mainly and
haphazardly from secondary sources with little insight,
odd narrative decisions, and even odder choices for its
scant original reporting.
As rationale for
writing the book, Anggraeni cites the bombings' impact
on the stability of Indonesian and Australian society,
regional and global peace, and Bali's unique niche in
Indonesia's galaxy of islands. She then barely examines
any of those issues, opting instead of a sketchy recount
of the now-familiar particulars of the attack.
Anggraeni's account reads like an unfinished sketch of a
famous, richly detailed color photograph rendered with a
blunt, black crayon.
Tale of a
wail Once you wade through 20 pages of
introductions, the book gets off to a promising start
with narratives of the night of bombings of two of
Bali's most popular nightspots for tourists plus the US
Consulate from a number of different perspectives
(though not any Balinese ones). The book's title comes
from the wail of a veteran journalist after seeing the
devastation. Once the dust settles, though, Anggraeni
promptly drops this effective storytelling technique and
goes off in a number of unhelpful directions.
For example, the book surveys Australian media
opinion in the days immediately following the bombing,
including grave fears of a backlash against Muslims,
before the crime was solved. But there's no follow-up on
how reactions and opinions have developed and evolved as
the facts became known.
In fact, after the smoke
clears, the Australian dimension virtually disappears
from the book. That's especially odd since Anggraeni
features the trials of four principal actors in the
tragedy, alleged mastermind Imam Samudra and the trio of
brothers from East Java, Amrozi, Ali Imron and Ali
Gufron. Choosing to chronicle the trials means the
reader get pieces of the story via their recitation in a
courtroom in 2003, as prosecutors called for them to be
told, rather than Anggraeni herself constructing the
narrative. While courtroom testimony can be dramatic,
it's not in this case. But that's a side issue.
Embracing 'our September 11' Anggraeni
apparently didn't attend the trials in Denpasar, but
many Australians did, including survivors of the bombing
and families that lost loved ones. The Australian
government paid for those visits, supposedly as part of
the psychological healing process. Some of those
Australians cheered when judges announced death
penalties for Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Gufron, even
though such sentences that would not be permitted in
Australia.
That's a rich vein to mine regarding
how the bombings impacted Australia, but Anggraeni
doesn't even acknowledge it, let alone dig in. Nor does
she examine other aspects of Bali in the Australian
national consciousness, such as how Prime Minister John
Howard's government has exploited the tragedy and what
seems to this outsider as a twisted desire to embrace
Bali as "our September 11" (every country needs one) to
prove Australia is in the big leagues.
To assess
the impact on Bali, Anggraeni highlights in-depth
interviews with only two Balinese, a pair of female
academics, odd selections as "community leaders" for
insights about a place known as "the island of 1,000
temples", particularly in the context of violence by
religious fanatics. Ida Ayu Agung Mas is a respected
advocate of sustainable tourism, including greater
community involvement - Jakarta, not the Balinese,
guided the development of mass tourism on the island.
But she was nowhere near Kuta on October 12, 2002 - much
of what Anggraeni reports appears drawn from articles
Mas has published elsewhere, and, in any case, Mas'
professional insights are as relevant to the Bali blasts
as those of a Boston investment banker would be to a
discussion of the World Trade Center collapse in New
York.
Cracker barrel or crackpot? Luh
Ketut Suryani did have direct involvement with the
October 12 tragedy. The head psychiatrist on the faculty
of Bali's Udayana University, Suryani organized
psychological treatment for survivors and families of
victims. But Anggraeni's account of their interview
barely touches on that work. It centers instead on
Suryani's locally famed cracker-barrel, if not crackpot,
sermonizing, starting with her declaration that the
attack was punishment from the gods. Suryani also offers
advice on tourism development as one of the tiny
minority of Balinese who don't depend on that industry
for a living, and a recap of politics over the past four
decades, including the massacre of hundreds of thousands
of alleged communists in 1965, which Suryani dates to
1967.
When Suryani finally talks about her work
with bombing victims, she concentrates on accusing
Western assistance teams of not adequately sharing their
funding with her group and treating victims with
"drugs". Anggraeni not only fails to examine these
charges - were the drugs aspirin or LSD? - but
misidentifies the intended target of Suryani's smears as
"International Media Corps". Perhaps International
Medical Corps, the US-based group that put medical
volunteers on the ground in Bali within hours of the
blasts and whose psychiatric assistance teams stayed for
weeks, receiving generally favorable reviews, should be
pleased that Anggraeni got its name wrong.
In
closing, Anggraeni says she became convinced while
writing the book that the alleged terrorist group Jemaah
Islamiya exists, a controversial notion in Indonesia and
a relevant one as its alleged spiritual leader Abu Bakar
Ba'asyir is again in the spotlight as a terrorism
suspect. But Anggraeni doesn't tell us, and hasn't shown
us, what convinced her. She seems to have been swayed by
the testimony of Faiz bin Aku Bakar Bafana, but doesn't
explain why the court hearing the case against Ba'asyir
and the Indonesian public at large didn't find Bafana
convincing.
Anggraeni then philosophizes about
perpetrators of terror in the name of Islam:
"... If the region, and the world, are
serious about wanting to address their propensity to
violence, it is necessary to stand in their shoes, and
see how the world looks from their
perspective."
Anggraeni is right, and her
background makes her the perfect choice to wear those
shoes and tell us how things look. Unfortunately, her
insight comes after she's spent 200 pages fruitlessly
hopping around barefoot.
Who Did This to Our
Bali? by Dewi Anggraeni. Indra Publishing: Victoria,
December 2003. ISBN 1-920787-08-9. Price: A$24.95, 200
pages.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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Muslim population that
became the target of a terror attack by Islamic
radicals. As a veteran journalist and novelist, she has
the right credentials to tell the story of paradise
bombed with unmatched perspective, feeling and
insight.
