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Love in the time of the golden fruit |
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 Mirah of Banda
Author: Hanna Rambe Modern Library of Indonesia Series
Published: The Lontar Foundation
Mirah of Banda is simultaneously set in two periods: modern-day Banda Islands and the demise of the Dutch colonial era, in the early to mid 1900s. Our heroines are two women, who are as different as they come. Wendy is very much a contemporary woman, an Australian of Japanese and Dutch-Indonesian descent married to a successful man in the oil industry. Mirah is a Javanese, kidnapped as a child and turned into a contract worker on the conflict-riddled Banda Islands. One begins to wonder: What could the two possibly have in common?
Wendy is adopted, and all she knows of her parents are that her father was a "good Japanese" and her mother was a Dutch-Indonesian who died shortly after giving birth. Mirah has lived much of her life without a say in her fate, first taken to the Banda islands to pick nutmeg and then forced to live a lonely life as a Dutch man's nyai. The beautiful Wendy is also, in a sense, a displaced person, struggling with her lost identity and roots. Although she has lived a relatively happy life, a hollow space remains in her heart, a dark hole dedicated to her other life the life she never had the option to lead.
Wendy's immediate rapport with Mirah propelled her curiosity about the elderly cook's fate. How did an elegant and attractive woman such as Mirah end up as a mere household worker? One quiet night, Mirah begins recounting her tale. The rest is a too-familiar story of displacement, servitude, and lost loves, found in many postcolonial writings.
Jack, Wendy's host and guide in Neira, provides the reader with historical insight into Banda's dark past. The cluster of islands in the Indonesian province of Maluku, were once much sought after due to its abundance of nutmeg trees whose fragrant fruits, for a large chunk of the second millennium, were as precious as gold. However, Banda's gifts became its curse. The Banda chiefs were tricked into giving the Dutch monopoly over spice trades on the region, and the enmity that existed between the two groups and, later, the rivalry between the Dutch and the British, resulted in many instances of blood-coiling violence. There are many intriguing facts to be learned from Jack's occasional monologues: For example, most of us are probably unaware that the tiny island of Run (also, Rhun) was exchanged with New York City's Manhattan in a treaty between the British and the Dutch, or that the Dutch, in their efforts to squash the rebellious Bandanese, received help from Japanese mercenaries.
No doubt, the Banda Islands harbor a long and colorful history, and the world's once most valuable commodity ultimately brought on centuries of oppression not only to the Banda people, but to many others who were severed from their homeland and loved ones to serve as cheap labor.
A friend once told me that often people read novels to be transported into another world, a world that has to be both believable and whole, and one that is a fusion between the unfamiliar and the familiar. In a sense, because it is very likely that people everywhere experience the same range of emotions, these emotions often provide readers with the familiar; but a work of fiction has to do a little more: It has to surprise us and also make us aware of emotions that lay dormant in our ordinary existence. Although it's important that we can relate, it is equally important that we learn something new, not only about the world, but also about ourselves.
Mirah of Banda, right from the beginning, is a journey into the unfamiliar: the enchanting and mysterious land littered with abandoned forts, volcanoes, and luscious coral reefs. Consequently, as a reader, we are often faced with the question: What if? What if the Banda islands did not have nutmeg? What if the Europeans never discovered the origin of nutmeg? Would this land of displaced peoples have experienced a happier history?
We can also draw parallels between the much exploited land and the tragic female characters of the novel (not to mention the real-life characters whose stories we may never come to know): If Mirah, Karsih, and Mirah's daughter, Lili, hadn't been pretty, would they have had to endure sexual servitude? Would they have suffered so much? The glimpse into Banda's history warrants a mournful respect towards its people, whose lives stem from so much sadness and loss. Is there a single person on the islands whose history isn't special, isn't worth writing about? It is the questions that the novel begs the reader to ask that make it impossible to put down.
Jack and his wife, Ratna may not be particularly interesting characters and often do not feel very real. One gets the feeling that Jack is simply put in the story to relate Banda facts, but then again, a novel does not necessarily need to be perfect (is there even such a thing as the perfect novel?) to be interesting and thoroughly worth reading. Some of the characters from the all-knowing Jack to the enigmatic Captain Sutrisno in Hanna Rambe's charming novel serve as important windows to many exquisitely insightful details: How to properly pick nutmeg, how to make the ambrosial munggae fish soup, all of which are necessary to create a tangible landscape.
While the reader may find details of contemporary life in the Banda Islands as well as the region's historical backdrop particularly interesting, the underlying tension of the novel lies in Wendy's desire to salvage her lost past and Mirah's convoluted journey to happiness. The reader is compelled to wonder about the thread linking the two women, and if one does exist, but like Wendy and Mirah, we may have to be content with conjectures. If anything, this thought-provoking novel may end up leaving us with more questions than answers, namely: Will we ever learn from our past?
By Kendisan Kusumaatmadja
Tempo
No. 34/12, April 18, 2012
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