An Indonesia of Their Dreams
“That morning I left the house, just when the general elections began, and Surabaya was engulfed in silence, deep and strange, very much coloring the day of voting….Walking along Tunjungan, we found ourselves alone shuffling in the large street usually noisy with traffic at 8 o’clock. That day there were no tricycles, no automobiles, nobody doing any activity. Shops were closed and left behind by the owners…”
August 14, 2007
THIS is not a melancholic wish. At that time, in 1955, an American researcher, Boyd R. Compton, 30, wrote his diary in Mojokerto after witnessing the general elections that would later be historical in Surabaya. Back then, Compton tried to understand the course that this country would take.
Now Boyd Compton is 82 years old. He left Indonesia long ago. He was last here in 1956. Then, he disappeared, as if without trace. Not many know his where
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