Digul

There in that former internment camp, I stepped into the yard of the old prison that the colonial government built for political prisoners in the 1920s: it was narrow, barbed wire on the walls, and with underground cells where the most difficult prisoners used to be locked up. Under the hot sun and in the stifling heat of Boven Digul, which in no way resembled a 'pretty village', how did those prisoners manage to survive?

I trembled, for a moment. Was my father once locked in this very prison? I could not imagine it. I never heard his story. He was exiled to this godforsaken place along with my mother having been imprisoned and held under house arrest after the 1927 rebellion. I was born nine years after they were sent back to Java. Father never got a chance to talk much to me about his past: he was executed by Dutch soldiers when I was only five. Mother was too busy bringing us up. What stuck from Digul in our family was something wordless: one of my older brothers was born in that place of exile.

August 26, 2014