As Darma tells Sam, mengeti is Javanese for “this writing of history” or “history as prophesy.” Official Indonesian history remembers the war of independence in nationalistic language, while in the Netherlands it was dood zwigen, silenced to death. This novel, then, is my interpretation of a somewhat limited historical record, and I’ve tried to navigate the space between nationalism and silence to reach the kind of middling truth fiction allows us to consider, while recognizing that no absolute truth exists.
Beyond documented political and military figures and events, and those events my dad actually experienced under occupation, the characters and events of this story are entirely fictional. Sam is a composite of those vets I read about and my imagination. The character of Marcel Bakker is based on Poncke Princen, the White Guerrilla, a Dutch conscript who deserted to join the independence forces because he believed Indonesians should determine their own future. Most of the story’s characters are Dutch or Eurasian with the exception of Amir, Fatil and Sari, who are, I hope, representative of those Javanese caught in the middle of the conflict and forced to make impossible choices. Otherwise, I felt it was not my place to tell the story of the revolutionaries who fought colonial oppression, except to include known historical events such as the Bersiap period in Surabaya and instances in which some independence forces victimized those who supported the Dutch.
A note about language. I recognize the racist roots of colonialism and, as a descendant of the oppressors, it is my fervent wish to avoid further harm. In that spirit, I’ve used what we know to be offensive colonial terms and language only as necessary to place this story in the context of the history in which it happened. The language used by the Javanese characters in the novel is a mix of pre-independence Javanese and Bahasa Indonesia, the national language of the entire archipelago post-independence. And finally, as many would know, the Catholic Mass was said in Latin until the 1960s, but for ease of understanding I’ve used English.
Mengeti, this writing of history, will not be perfect, and any mistakes are entirely mine.