—For Rahman Tolleng, on his 70th birthday.

THE most serious matter in politics these days is hope.

Must we continue the political fight for change, when almost everything has been vented openly and yet Indonesia has budged only a few centimeters? Or is this, indeed, the fate of the world: history is the unconscious repetition of mistakes? Or does history actually have no direction, despite what Hegel and Marx say?

Rahman Tolleng has just tur