Indonesian Gold (40 page)

‘That is not transferring ownership.'
The statement was made with a yawn.
‘Indigenous Indonesians who have the
capacity to acquire shareholding should be given the opportunity to do so.After all, it is our
gold!'

None there really wished to engage the young man in
debate; to do so would be to invite the collective anger of not only the Palace, but all
associated with the billion-dollar powerhouse. The Minister coughed nervously and turned to
Brigadier General Sukirno, a senior member of President Suharto's rubber-stamp parliament who
chaired the ruling political party, Golkar's, mining committee.

‘Can we have this issue raised in Parliament
first?'
He was looking for support, his old friend's eyes darting
immediately to the President's son before answering.

‘That might be the best way to go,'
Sukirno answered, hesitatingly.

‘Okay, it's settled then,'
the brash youngster announced, rising to his feet.
‘I'll tell Bapak that you have all
been most supportive.'
He did not extend his hand, waiting for the others to clasp theirs in
supplication and bow in respect. Satisfied, he swept out of the timber-clad office, leaving
behind an air of concern as how this latest request from the
Jalan Cendana
heirs could
most appropriately be finessed.

‘It's going to raise many concerns,'
General Sukirno suggested, his voice a whisper. Even with his rank and
position, one had to be circumspect about what one said.

‘I agree,'
Doctor Sugit
shook his head, loading a hand-carved pipe, the Savinelli a gift from his brother who had served
as Ambassador to Italy.
‘Is there any way we can head him off?'
He played with the pipe,
placing it in his mouth where it would remain, unlit.

‘Your suggestion to run it through a Parliamentary
committee would cause an appropriate delay,'
the Minister said;
Sukirno not surprised that he had somehow been credited with the idea. Later, he would clarify
everything with the Party Chairman, to ensure that his own motives did not come under
question.

‘Yes, I believe this would be the best way to resolve
the situation,'
General Sukirno concurred, wondering how long the
Minister and his faithful Doctor Sugit would retain their positions once the Palace became aware
of their unwillingness to accommodate recent requests. He felt saddened with the weight of this
responsibility, particularly because of the timing. It was the month of
Ramadan
, when
tempers frayed by the demands of fasting tested relationships to their full, those resident
within the Palace no exception.

****

Longhouse
Dayak Village
–
Longdamai
Upper Mahakam

Jonathan folded Angela's letter carefully and placed this
with the others, the collection started when she first left for Java, more than four years
before. He sat, quietly, contemplating his daughter's achievements, proud as any father could be,
the framed photograph sitting on his desk a constant reminder that Angela had graduated with
honors, topping her class. The village chief reached with outstretched fingers, touching her
portrait gently, uttering a familiar chant to see her safely through her time in Jakarta. Then,
as was his habit, he went into the community hall where the longhouse children waited eagerly,
knowing that it was their chief's custom to select one of their number, to accompany him into the
forest for the day. When he entered, children sprang to his side, Jonathan taking the time to
speak to each individually, addressing them by name. Occasionally, he would stop and reward a
child with a touch, the aura of love he carried through the village longhouse, lighting their
day.

With his tiny companion in hand, Jonathan ventured into
the forest in search of rare fungi, essential to the production of a number of compounds used in
traditional cures – and one which he knew would regenerate at this time. Within the hour, having
located the poisonous
polypores,
Jonathan carefully removed the caps and placed these in a
specially prepared pouch, explaining to the child that these mushroom-shaped growths were
extremely poisonous. The chief's eyes then scanned the forest canopy in search of wild fowl, the
young boy quietly observing in awe as Jonathan withdrew a finely carved shaft from one of his two
quivers, then, from the other, a poisonous dart head. The boy watched, fascinated, as his chief
attached the two sections, placing the deadly dart in a long, hollow, hardwood tube. The child
knew to be quiet – and still, his eyes now following the direction in which the dart would fly.
There, high up in the branches where light trickled through the dense leaf cover, a wild fowl
perched, its natural colors blending against the backdrop, providing near perfect camouflage.
Jonathan inhaled deeply, the child at his side flinching at the familiar sound of escaping air,
propelling the miniature dart to its target.

The bird fell dead at their feet; the child old enough to
know not to touch the kill until the hunter had extracted the poisonous dart head, the shaft
having sheered away upon impact. Jonathan's knife flashed, and the dart fell to the ground –
later, the flesh around the killing wound would be cut away, the rest eaten. The chief smiled
down at the seven-year old, the boy's eyes opening wide when Jonathan surrendered the prize for
him to carry.

Their return journey took the pair along a course that
touched fallow fields, Jonathan explaining to the child why the ground had been left to recover,
that within ten to twenty years the
ladang
which once bore harvest, would revert to
forest. The chief always took his charges along this, or similar paths, instilling into the
children the Dayak custom of shifting cultivation, a practice that observed the need for forest
regeneration.

Not far from their longhouse, Jonathan suddenly stopped,
looked towards the heavens, and gripped the child's shoulder, pointing towards the
sky.

‘Can you see that bird?'
he asked, the young boy shielding his eyes against the afternoon sun could barely make
out the disappearing shape.
‘Look closely,'
the chief encouraged.

‘What is it doing, Bapak?'
the child asked, respectfully.

‘It is sending us a sign – an omen,'
Jonathan whispered, his eyes locked on the striped kingfisher.

‘What is it saying?'
the boy could now see the bird with its elongated, brilliant orange bill, and teal-blue
crested coat, and sea-green tipped wings.

‘Shh!'
Jonathan's
powerful hand continued to hold the child's shoulder with gentle grip, the two an odd couple as
their heads moved in tandem, observing the kingfisher's erratic flight.

‘Bapak,'
the boy now
engrossed in the bird's aerial display,
‘can you catch the bird for me?'

Jonathan bent down effortlessly, his face alongside the
child's.
‘To do so would be like stealing the sun's rays, the moonlight, or evening stars.
What you see is a message; to capture the bird would be to interfere with the sign – the
omen.'

‘Is it talking to you, Bapak?'
the boy moved inside the safety of Jonathan's crouched body, unsure if he should be
afraid.

‘Yes,'
the chieftain
answered, placing a comforting arm around the youngster's shoulders,
‘but it is also sending a
message to you.'

The boy's eyes opened in wonder.
‘To
me?'

‘Yes, to you,'
Jonathan
assured,
‘and to everyone in the longhouse.'

The child was impressed, pumped now with import and
already visualizing the tale he would impart to his parents and friends.
‘What has the bird
said, Bapak?'

Jonathan rose slowly, conscious of the unkindly noise his
knee joints made as he did so.
‘The kingfisher has told us that one cycle has been completed,
and that another is about to start.'
Jonathan knew that this would be too much for the boy to
understand, and went on to provide an explanation more suited to the youngster's age.
‘The
kingfisher is a messenger and brings hope,to make us ready to plant seed.He understands when it
is time for the rain to fall and, by observing the direction in which he flies or how he twists
and turns, we can predict when it is best to prepare the soil for the new season.When you are
older, you will be able to tell what he is trying to say to you by observing whether he flies
from left to right, or right to left, or if he flies away or towards you, and even if he dives
suddenly while you have him in sight.We are part of all life, the kingfisher but one of many in
our family.'
Jonathan noticed that the child was tiring, the wild fowl now resting on the
ground, held by weary hands.
‘Give me the kill; I will carry it for you until we reach the
village. Then you can carry it into the longhouse and give it to your mother.'

The boy willingly returned the prize, tired from the
outing. Jonathan bent down and scooped the child up with one hand, and carried him
piggyback.

****

Transmigration
Village

One hundred kilometers further down the Mahakam River, in
the newly created village of Pamekasan Baru, machete-wielding Modang Dayaks beheaded forty-three
Madurese villagers, and threw their bloodied corpses into the migrants' temporary
mosque.

Earlier, tempers had flared when a Dayak farmer had
inadvertently permitted a piglet to escape its bamboo cage, the terrified animal running
helter-skelter through the predominantly Moslem community, before being slain by one of the
migrants. A fierce argument had ensued and, in the absence of any real police or military
presence the Dayaks unsheathed their deadly goloks, and proceeded to decapitate those embroiled
in the dispute. Within the hour, many of the Madurese dwellings had been razed to the ground, the
air filled with blood-curdling screams as Modang youths wearing red head and arm bands and waving
traditional mandau swords sought revenge against the outsiders, who had forcibly occupied their
traditional Dayak lands.

The terrified Madurese knew that once a Dayak placed a red
headband around his forehead, tradition demanded that he kill, and drink his enemy's blood.
Migrant families, many of which having lived in the area for more than twenty years, fled in
terror as their worldly possessions were torched, the weak, infirm and those too young to flee in
time, butchered in their tracks. Armed with bottles of magical oil to protect them, the Dayaks
ran amok. By sundown, Pamekasan Baru's entire migrant population of six hundred had fled into the
forest, the black pall of smoke evidencing the day's horror, visible from other villages along
the Mahakam River. That evening, the air filled with the porky stench of burning human flesh, the
Dayak youths sat around fires boasting of the day's events eating their victims' livers,
believing that these, the head and heart, contained magical properties. When the festivities were
over, the heads would be secretly ‘warehoused', brought out in years to come when arakfilled
stomachs afforded the inebriated the opportunity to display their gruesome treasures.

News of the slaughter spread faster than fire, the ethnic
confrontation in Pamekasan Baru becoming the catalyst for provincial-wide action. Within days,
smoke billowed into the air along the Mahakam reaches as migrant villages were torched in rapid
succession, the death toll exceeding one thousand. In the provincial capital, Samarinda, the
military commander received instructions to move swiftly against the Dayaks after Jakarta-based
timber tycoons spoke with the President, voicing their concerns that production schedules would
be disrupted with the loss of migrant labor. One of the TNI's Army Strategic Reserve
(
Kostrad)
three, airborne infantry battalions stationed in Ujung Pandang, Sulawesi, was
placed on standby – the troops arriving in the area within days to bolster territorial defence
commands responsible for the areas north, and south of the Mahakam River. By then, more than five
thousand migrant dwellings had been destroyed, a number of timber companies taking advantage of
the confusion to commence wide scale burn-offs, later accusing the fleeing Madurese of starting
the fires. The bloodshed was reported by State controlled media, Indonesia's
Antara
news
service mentioning only that tourist permits to travel along the Mahakam had been temporarily
withdrawn, due to government concerns that foreign tourists' lives may be endangered by the
raging brush fires in that area.

For Jonathan Dau, the proximity of the fires was of great
concern, and he watched with dismay as the surrounding forests became thick with haze, smoke
carrying more than fifteen hundred kilometers across Borneo, into Malaysia and Singapore, where
Changi Airport shut down for an entire day due to the pall. And, even with the deluge of rain
that followed, the jungle continued to burn, Longdamai spared when winds finally died, and the
great wall of fire fell away, the longhouse only thirty kilometers upstream from its
path.