|
The Admiral's Isles
Phil Zabriskie explores the jostling peoples, religions and cultures that define Indonesia
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
 |
 |
|
JOHN STANMEYER/VII FOR TIME
|
Traders journey daily between bustling Surabaya and dirt-poor Madura
|
Saharudin sits on his boat and smokes, waiting to get paid. it's hot—a given, even at mid-morning in the Malaysian town of Melaka. The river is rust-colored and lifeless, speckled with an array of plastic bottles and wrappers. Other vessels float by, some impressive, but most as weather-beaten and rickety as this 9-m wooden craft. Saharudin rents it from a man in Dumai, Sumatra, not far from his home village. Next to the massive logs being unloaded across the way, his cargo of thin mangrove trees looks like a pile of matchsticks in a lumberyard.
He describes himself as Melayu Indonesia, an Indonesian of Malay descent. His hair is short and black, as is his mustache. He has milky eyes and teeth that tobacco has helped pattern like a leopard's coat. He is shirtless and shoeless, his small belly peeking over the waistline of his faded, brown pants, his sandals resting not far from his feet. He looks a bit ragged, understandably; getting here was an ordeal. Usually it takes about 12 hours to cross the Strait of Malacca, six more in lousy weather. On this trip, however, a storm struck. To stay afloat, the crew—Saharudin, his brother and his cousin—jettisoned 200 mangroves, one-fifth of their load, which means one-fifth of their payoff. Then the 16-h.p. engine gave out. They drifted, frightened, until another boat towed them in. They were on the water for two days and two nights.
 |
 |
MORE STORIES
Disunited Nations
Once a patchwork of sultanates and kingdoms, this teeming region now struggles to tame its multiple—and often conflicting—identities
|
 |
|
|
|
And their work still isn't complete, not until the Chinese businessman who ordered the load shows up with their money. The crew isn't allowed out of the harbor, Saharudin says, so he can't walk the charming old streets of Melaka, where Buddhist temples adjoin Muslim tombs and the signs, sounds and skin tones drift from Malay to Chinese to Indian and back again within a few blocks, offering a quietly stirring rebuke to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's pet concept of a single Malay identity. From Saharudin's perspective, Melaka is just expensive. That's why he brings extra food and fuel.
Every month, he makes one or two trips to the city, depending on demand. In the best months, after paying the boat's owners, the crew and Indonesia's sticky-fingered coast guard, he takes home between $52 and $60. Often, it's half that—or less. He naturally thinks he should make more since he takes all the risks. These boats sink. People die, especially during the extended stormy season from November to April. "But there's nothing I can I do," he says. "I'm only a small sea boat." He has a wife and he has children, six of them, and he prays they don't follow him to the sea. "Even farming would be better than this," he says, staring out at the water to which he must return. A big ash falls from his cigarette onto his pants. He flicks most of it away and rubs in the rest with his thumb.
Before long, the buyer steers a motorbike onto the banks. Saharudin dances quickly across a thin makeshift gangplank and strides up to the Chinese man—pressed pants, a gaudy yellow and black short-sleeved button-down—who remains seated on the scooter as he reaches for his wallet.
Chinese Admiral Zheng He and his fleet sailed in these same waters more than 500 years ago. He's the reason I'm here talking to Saharudin. Zheng He crisscrossed this region—Melaka, and then Java and Sumatra—on his epic journeys through Southeast Asia and is now immortalized in memory and monument along the way. In Melaka alone, a temple, a street and a statue bear Zheng He's name. Saharudin is forbidden to visit all of them.
It's a shame because Saharudin and Zheng He have a few things in common. The admiral and the captain are both seafarers and Muslims. More importantly, however, both men are travelers, which is to say their lives feature repeated encounters with the foreign. They cross, or crossed, borders and engage with the unfamiliar on a small scale—a Sumatran doing business with a Chinese Malay in Melaka, for instance—or a much larger one: a Chinese Muslim eunuch exacting tribute and enforcing the imperial order of things throughout Asia.
When Zheng He passed through these parts, the lands were carved up into kingdoms, sultanates, pirate enclaves. Fueled even then by thriving international trade, societies, religions and traditions flourished, abutting and overlapping, sometimes fluidly, sometimes violently. Today, the cultural parameters in Southeast Asia remain as expansive as ever, but they've been stitched roughly together into the patchwork of nationhood. Crammed inside borders, assigned a nationality, a flag, a currency and at least a theoretical political system, people living along the Zheng He trail are still defined by their interactions with the foreign: newly arrived migrant workers live next to eighth-generation neighbors; a roadside nasi goreng vendor tries to compete with multinational fast-food chains; villagers train roosters for singing competitions in the yard behind an Internet cafE; Muslims pray at mosques a short stroll away from a Christian church or a Buddhist temple or a shopping mall. The clash of peoples and cultures is why young men in Banda Aceh tote machine guns and use huge knives to scrape pro-independence decals off car doors. It's why profanity-laced action movies blare on the Melaka-to-Dumai ferry between Malaysia and Indonesia, two Islamic countries; why a still-fiery 92-year-old Chinese teacher in Bangka hasn't taught a class since 1965 when Suharto banned Chinese schools. It's a constant confluence of others; even those who go nowhere—and most can't afford to—are interacting with entities as new and foreign to their lives as those Zheng He encountered. Now, as then, people, traditions, institutions, are blending and colliding, cohering and exploding. It can be beautiful and revelatory. It can be brutal and tragic. It can be everything all at once.
|
|
|
China
Photographer Fritz Hoffmann finds a country on the move
Indonesia
John Stanmeyer explores the jostling peoples, religions and cultures that define the country
India
The grandeur of Cochin and Calicut has long disappeared
Middle East
The cities that were once the center of the world now hover at its remotest margins -- but a few traces of their glory days linger on
Africa
In the 15th century, Zheng He's fleet went to Africa seeking exotic treasures. The Chinese still do
|
|
CHINA: In the Wake of the Admiral
SOUTHEAST ASIA: Disunited Nations
INDIA: Misplaced Majesty
THE MIDDLE EAST: Arabian Twilight
