Sorha - 1 December

Sometimes the sublime and the ridiculous are the same thing. We finally found our sorha. And then not just one, but two. The story is as crazy as it is unexpected.

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We left Muara to go to Berastagi with the plan of stopping in the Porsea area. It was market day on Wednesday in Porsea, and the team from YPBB that we were travelling with would be able to find information about ulos in that market. They would set out from there to find weavers who would be able to answer their questions. MJA Nashir and I would use the opportunity to make a quick visit to Ompu Okta. We needed our narrator, Ompu Okta doli, to say a few words about the busur (cotton bow/fluffer) that we had with us and also the luli pinale (the rolls of cotton prepared for spinning) so that his presence as narrator would continue to bind all parts of the film. We needed to film him holding the respective objects when it came to that part of the text.

Coming back into Ompu Okta’s village was like homecoming. The van dropped us off and went straight back to meet the YPBB crew at the market. We entered the little home that had been ours during the early days of filming and told our tales of Sianjur Mulamula, finding the Palembang cotton growing there and the elderly weaver who was able to make luli pinale (the little bundles of cotton prepared for spinning), of traveling throughout Samosir even to the isolated northwest shore and ending up in Muara. We told of our frustration over and over again at not being able to find a sorha (spinning wheel) at any of these locations. In the end, our generous host in Muara, Restuala Namora, offered to make it for us, but he needed an example to work from and he only had the photograph in my book. Furthermore, we didn’t know anybody who would be able to use it in an expert way. He had been successful in making the busur (bow to fluff the cotton) and iraniran (frame to wind the cotton) though, and we carried them proudly with us.

We sipped tea as we chatted, occasionally running outside to look at a weaving instrument or to care for the busy little granddaughter, Dina, until Ompu Okta doli, in an off-hand manner, standing in the doorway of his house, announced that he was looking at a spinning wheel as he spoke. It was on the veranda of the Batak house across the village square.  He made his announcement in such a low-key way, that it didn’t initially quite register. Could this highlight possibly be conveyed in such a matter of fact way? I couldn’t believe my ears. But looking across the village square, I also saw it poking up, a hunk of wood that I would never have recognized. Ompu Okta said that he had always known that it was there. Perhaps he had always known that it was broken and parts were missing and perhaps that is why he had not mentioned it earlier to us.

He called across to his neighbour who brought it down for us to inspect. And then he went out to the back kitchen of his own house and found the even more meager remains of yet another spinning wheel. How strange it is when you search everywhere only to find what you are looking for in the place where you originally began the search.

Where the sorha was found.

The neighbour with her sorha.

The spinning wheels need some repair and our time is now terribly short. We have to repair the rattan on the wheel and find straight metal to serve as a spindle. Will we find someone who can actually use the wheel? Can we bring it back to Ompu Okta boru? I don’t have that kind of time available. Will Mas Nashir be able to do that? Ompu Okta now says that she is able to spin. This is not only the 11th hour, but 5 before 12. Ridiculous, really, after our month of travels. So close and yet still so far.

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Ompu Okta doli was immediately willing to speak more text as film narration and pulled on his adat clothing. We squeezed it in before the rain pelted down. Timing seemed to be on our side in this instance.

And then Ompu Okta boru expressed her willingness to try to work with the cotton fluffing bow. We had some film of it taken in Muara, but for the sake of continuity in the final film product, it wouldn’t hurt if Ompu Okta also performed this technique, so we filmed it again.

Ompu Okta fluffs cotton using the bosur

It was a satisfying homecoming. The van pulled up when we were finishing off, and we were soon in it again, heading for Berastagi to introduce our YPBB crew to indigo in the Karo area. But now we had two rickety old spinning wheels in the back.

The sky, the earth and the lake

This afternoon (Nov. 22), we filmed Mas Nashir’s vision of soft, fluffy cotton dropping out of the sky as though the clouds themselves were dropping down into the lens. The Rangsa ni Tonun text that we are filming is all about the connection between Batak weaving and its powerful spiritual origins. Nashir has been excited about this idea for months. I don’t think that he can see a cloud without thinking of cotton. Luckily, the day offered us lovely, white clouds piled dreamily atop each other.

We found a spot north of Tuktuk where there was quite a rapid decline down to the lake. Sprawling on the ground, Nashir oriented his lens so that the clouds were swirling close to the earth and the lake. It was the job of Mas Jerry, our chauffeur, and myself to toss wisps of cotton into the air, to be carried on the breeze into the view of the camera. We had to rehearse because the breeze was not constant and so that we didn’t get our hands in the picture. We tried all kinds of things, but eventually stood just below the crest of the hill and as one of us tossed out the cotton bits, the other fanned them upwards with a piece of cardboard. By the time we were done, the grass was littered with clouds, and our noses and mouths and eyes were filled with them as well. Through the camera, it looked like the clouds were scudding right into the lens.

didn’t accomplish much today by way of finding our pipisan, bosur, sorha and iraniran, but nature was kind to us because the skies were just right, the lake was gorgeous and the wind was light and he day was crowned by a rainbow that Mas Nashir compared to our missing bosur (it is bow-shaped). It arched over Samosir Island etched luminously against an iron-grey sky. They say that a pot of gold is buried at the end of the rainbow. This rainbow cascaded with intense light right to the place where the sky, the earth and the lake met.

The man and the museum (21 and 22 November)

Near the northern tip of Samosir Island there is a museum. Not the Simanindo Museum, but the Gok Asih museum. We spied it from the road, a big sign saying MUSEUM in front of a Batak house. We didn't want to leave a single rock unturned. It seemed that what we were looking for (the pipisan, busur, sorha and iraniran) were simply too old, and of no use for far too long, to be likely to be found in some shed or still stored in someone’s attic. Our chances seemed greater if we looked to a museum for help or some facility that consciously wanted to preserve old Batak objects.

The museum did not seem well cared-for. The path beyond the house was overgrown with the weeds testament to the fact that few people had walked on it recently. It was even difficult to know exactly where one should walk.  Suddenly, I caught sight of a man washing his face in a full rain barrel and I called out to him. His reaction was warm and enthusiastic; he came straight over to me and as we walked over to the Batak house cum-museum together, he asked me if I had lived in Balige and been associated with the hospital. I said that I had lived in the nurses’ residence some 30 years ago but that I had had nothing to do with the hospital. And then he amazed me by recounting our meetings 30 years ago. He had provided the entertainment at Carolina Hotel (on Samosir Island) when I had stayed there, and he had joined us when I was with the man, Sidauruk, whose vision had created the Simanindo Museum. He explained that he had brought his Batak house (to serve as a museum) down from the higher land of Samosir (by deconstructing it and then reconstructing it here) and had filled it with objects that he had found and purchased here and there.

By the time we had climbed the steps into the house, he was tearfully explaining that because tourism had slowed down dramatically and he had no land, he had been forced to sell his collection bit by bit. The objects that we were looking for were no longer there. The spinning wheel (sorha), he recalled, had been purchased by an Italian museum but he didn’t know in which city. He could get a job as a driver in the city, he pointed out, but then he would have to leave the house and it would fall into decay. His sad fate seemed to me to tell the quintessential story of the decline of culture in the Batak area. Even the best of intentions are fruitless in the face of economic conditions that force one to destroy even one’s own culture to stay alive. I could understand his emotion and wished that there could be some way to help him. It seemed so utterly tragic and the tragedy was so much greater than what was happening with this man’s life and possessions. It was the story of his culture.

After reviewing what was left of his museum collection, I told him about our textile project. He was convinced that he would be able to find the missing instruments so that we could get on with things. One would have to search in the hills, he said, far away from where the tourists had purchased everything of value. I gave him some money to compensate him for his efforts and he promised he would call later that evening. He did not, but he called this morning and said that he had had success and that we could meet to see the objects at 2 p.m.. The owner was working in the fields until 4 p.m. but we could take the longish journey and meet them there.

When we finally managed to reconnoiter, it turned out that the owners of the instruments were in Jakarta and he had sought an alternative source for the objects. The people whose help he had marshalled were bringing us right back to the museum in Tomok where we had had our first disappointment upon arrival in Samosir two days earlier. Once again, there had been a confusion between weaving equipment and yarn-making equipment. Obviously, few people anymore know what yarn-making involves, let alone the instruments needed. We had no more time to search further and as we turned our vehicle around and headed towards the ferry from the island to the mainland, I saw the very sad face of our one-hopeful helper and host. The regular wall (the disappearance of culture) that we had stumbled up against again and again on this journey had been a painful experience for him. I know that he really had wanted to help me. I had paid him well, in advance, and he had let me down. I could not help but think that given the painful circumstances surrounding his museum, it was a misfortune that he should not have had to endure on top of everything else.

Origins and Endings (20 – 21 November)

Another golden day. It started out with that hopeless feeling that throws one back onto one’s intuition and grim trust that things will go well. Sometimes one must sail without a compass. One shrugs one’s shoulders. One sets out with a brave smile and leaves logic and fear behind. One simply sets out on blind trust. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

It was fairly late in the day to “just set out”. 2 pm and we still hadn’t found any of the yarn-making equipment that we were looking for to demonstrate the ancient textile techniques that haven’t been practiced in many places for more than a century. We were getting no luck. There were so many people who said that they had the equipment, but they were people who didn’t know the difference between weaving and yarn-making and we were led again and again to looms rather than spinning wheels. Museums didn’t have it in their collections or their collections were inaccessible. Some remembered having had the equipment, but when they searched for it, they came up empty-handed. Some had burned it as firewood because it no longer had any use. We could have found the items if we had been looking 30 years ago. That was when Ompu Sihol had showed me her equipment. And I remember that the spinning wheels were hard to come by even then. We need a pipisan to squeeze the pits out of the cotton, a busur to fluff it, a sorha to spin the fibres, and an iraniran to wrap the spun yarn.

Where to go next? What to do? Where to turn? Like looking for a needle in a haystack. Every house that we pass as we drive down the Samosir roads may have a piece of the equipment stored there somewhere. How many have we passed without knowing it? Or have we reached the stage when there really is not a single one left in the Batak area?

And now we were heading for Sianjur Mulamula, the village, as its name says, where the Batak people originate. Si Boru Deak Parujar, the goddess of weaving, the Earth Mother, came down there from the upper world on her spun yarn. This was her village on the edge of Pusuk Buhit, navel mountain. If I could name a place where I would most like to find this equipment and see it demonstrated, it would be Sianjur Mulamula, the village of origins. It was late to head in that direction and it was a long shot. I didn’t know anybody there, but I had a longing to go there again (especially since I didn’t go there in June) . I have only been there twice, very briefly, before.  So we tossed caution to the wind and simply set out. Pak Jerry, thankfully, was, as always, up for the adventure.

Jerry and Nashir and I pretending to be relaxed, but we were sitting

on the edge of a precipice. Nashir used the self-timer on the camera.

Limbong was the first village where we stopped. We pulled up beside an enormous mausoleum being constructed by a ragged crew. I called out in Batak to one of the workers and he came over to talk with us.  He had a beautiful face and was friendly, but he tried to discourage us. Our search would be fruitless, he said. The ancient houses had been renovated and in the process they had been cleaned out. Besides, most things had been sold in the 1980s. I couldn’t tell if he was being realistic or a good gate-keeper. In any case, we could not afford to be discouraged, so we pressed on, back to the main road. At Sianjur Mulamula, I saw a road leading to the right and asked Pak Jerry to back up and turn into it. It took us to another village.

The area is spectacular: rocks and boulders strewn everywhere, or nicely arranged into formidable walls. Many traditional-looking villages with ancient Batak houses are made of pillars and planks so huge that one is left gasping at the knowledge that the forests of old-growth trees that once grew here must have  been spectacular giants. The villages are now modest brown blotches nestled against the sides of the mountains. The open stretches are desolately beautiful, or deliciously fertile patchworks generously supplied with water from laughing, gurgling streams originating in the hills. This area even feels more ancient than any other area in Batak country. The magical origins are almost tangible.

In that next village, we were greeted by a man who seemed unperturbed by our visit and quite open to whatever our plans might be. I always worry about disturbing the peace and privacy of the inhabitants of a village knowing that in the past a visitor was required to request permission from the village leader in order to enter legitimately. I put my question about yarn-making equipment to this easy-going man and he pointed to an elderly woman who had difficulties straightening her back and walked bent over. Later, I would learn that she was Ompu Sabar, the Grandmother of Sabar. She set off to look for her spinning wheel (sorha) and disappeared into a Batak house on stilts behind us. A while later, a younger man followed her with a bleached, wooden ladder, wider at the base and narrower at the top. Then we saw them on the veranda of the house where musical instruments used to be installed during Batak rituals. Eventually both re-emerged on the village plain. Once again, no luck.

Mas Nashir sitting at the corner of the house where

Ompu Sabar looked for her old spinning wheel.

Then she climbed the ancient, wooden staircase to the sopo (rice barn) where she used to weave. I clambered up after her and she showed me the equipment that she had used to weave the great sibolang textile, the central, majestic textile of the repertory in this region. Then she fetched her textiles to show me. Surely her sibolang was the most beautiful one I had ever seen. She had been a brilliant weaver. This was “boanonna”, the textile that she wished to be buried in.

A crowd of elderly women had gathered at the base of the sopo. When I explained our desire to document ancient weaving techniques, they all turned out to be former weavers who remembered the techniques and began to pantomime them, complete with sound-effects and outbursts of laughter and enjoyment. The mood was warming up and becoming festive. In this village of origins, we had found women who knew the first steps in the weaving process: the production of yarn. But they were also the last of their kind and represented the end of the tradition. All of them elderly grandmothers.

One of them, especially, was a ham and most detailed in her representation of the making of yarn. Suddenly she called across to the young woman living in the house on stilts next door, asking her to bring over the hapas Palembang. I couldn’t believe my ears? Hapas Palembang? Suddenly, in this village of origins, we had stumbled across the very origins of textile-making: the fibre. After we had gone to so much trouble to ship some cotton here from Bali? What was this Palembang cotton used for?  I braced myself against all reason to hear that they were still making yarn, but that was silly. They had one little shrub, less than 1 year old, and the little bit of cotton that it had managed to yield they were going to stuff into a cushion. But our elderly former weaver was able to show us how she extracted pits from it and roll it up to make bundles ready for weaving.

The film project had perhaps switched to Plan B. If it was no longer possible to demonstrate the old techniques because too much time had elapsed, it would be possible to show how it was remembered, in pantomime, by older women. The film would be about the last remaining memories of the last weavers.

The elderly weavers were uncomfortable using Indonesian and spoke a pure Batak. Many, though not all, were illiterate. Their way of speaking reminded me of Ompu Sihol, although their weaving vocabulary was closer to what is used in the northern regions of Lake Toba and not the Samosir Island region to the south. We passed the time in silly hilarity, not yet having time to let our discoveries sink in. But I still had hope that they might be inspired by our generosity and the good mood that prevailed and may begin to expand the search for the missing equipment. We exchanged mobile phone numbers with members of the younger generation in the village.

The next day it occurred to me that, given the memory of one weaver and the presence of her cotton, we could go back and at the very least film, in a detailed fashion, the making of luli pinale, the rolags or rolls prepared for spinning. The only equipment required was a plank and a couple of joints of narrow bamboo. So we went back to do this, carefully, in the sopo, the rice barn where weaving traditionally took place. We didn’t have a plank especially for the job, but used the lovely planks of the floor of the sopo. Ompu Sabar handed several of her hasoli (bamboo joints used for wrapping weft) up to us, so we were set to make luli pinale.

We are now carrying around our little bundles of carefully rolled cotton, still in the hopes that we will stumble across a spinning wheel. They said that they had located an iran2 or reel in the meantime, but none of the other required pieces of equipment.

Our search continues, but we have the origins down pat: the cotton plant, the plucking of the cotton, the de-pitting of it by hand, the fluffing of it by hand and the making of the rolls or rolags to prepare it for spinning.

Back to Boru Panjaitan’s Village (17 November)

Boru Panjaitan is depicted in Legacy on page 461. She is weaving a tumtuman textile. I knew that she lived in the then Kecamatan Lumban Julu (a political division), one of my favourite regions for spectacular cloths rarely found in museums. I recalled how much I had enjoyed visiting her and how amazed I was at her capacity to weave in her old age. During the Back to the Villages project last June, I had her plasticized photograph in hand and we stopped here and there along the road looking for someone who could tell me where her village was, but we could find nobody who recognized her.

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Ompu Okta’s village in Lumban Julu has been the most important site for filming our Rangsa ni Tonun text about Batak weaving techniques. Ompu Okta boruboru (Okta’s grandmother) is our weaving star Ompu Okta doli (Okta’s grandfather) turns out to be our narrator because of his wonderful voice and his affinity to our project. In the evening, he likes to go to the local café – a little wooden structure at the edge of the padi fields where he purchases a glass of tuak (local palm wine) and exchanges the news. Early on in our project, he explained to me that he often met up there with the son of someone depicted in my book. “The first time I opened the book, it was to that page,” he explained. “The weaver is a member of my family”.

How amazing that this should be the case, given that I had sought br. Panjaitan and because my search was in vain, I had given a copy of Legacy to Ompu Okta, a weaver that I had never met before, because I wanted to be sure that a copy of Legacy would be left behind in this amazing weaving region. It turns out that Ompu Okta is not only related to Boru Panjaitan, but a close neighbour. Standing on the bridge by the river beside Okta’s village, br. Panjaitan’s house can be seen nestled against the trees scarcely more than a stone’s throw away.

I had two copies of Legacy left over from the Back to the Villages project. I had stored them in Medan and I now had them with me. My friend, Loan Oei in Amsterdam, with whom I have shared my love of textiles as well as the vicissitudes of life for many decades, had given me a text and urged me to donate a book in her name if the occasion ever presented itself during this filming project. I decided to pair her up with br. Panjaitan’s descendants.

At the end of our stay in Ompu Okta’s village, when our favourite driver from the back to the Villages project, Pak Jerry, had come to pick us up and we were loaded and ready to go, Ompu Okta doli climbed into the vehicle too and brought us to br. Panjaitan’s home. Luck was with us because her son had already returned from his work in the padi fields and his wife was there, too.

The house was as I remembered it; a beautiful wooden colonial structure. They had made some changes to the interior by removing a wall and this had only enhanced its airy spaciousness. Br. Panjaitan’s daughter-in-law fetched some coffee and they told me stories about her. She had continued to weave until the end. Her son, my host, had also learned to weave and knew all of the steps in the process, but was so mercilessly teased about being a weaver that he had stopped. Someone had come and claimed her weaving equipment. Only one baliga was left, a heavy, sword-like piece of wood used for beating in weft. Br. Panjaitan’s was very narrow. They fetched it for me from the room where she used to work and gave it to me to remember her by. It was an extraordinary gift to receive on my birthday. I promised that I would oil it as this is how weaving swords are maintained.

Just like many other people in this region, br. Panjaitan’s son knew all of the steps in yarn production, but had none of the instruments that we were looking for: pipisan, busur, sorha and iraniran.

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On our way to the main road, we dropped off Ompu Okta at the bridge leading to his village. We were a threesome once more, back again with our favourite chauffeur, the skilled and indomitable Jerry Hermansyah. While I was talking inside, mas Nashir had been inspired to take a few stunning pictures of him while he waited for us. When he pretended to do a bit of a Moon Walk, I dubbed him Jerry Jackson and the name has stuck. Mas Nashir has even set up a facebook account for him under that name. Our winning team was back together and we were heading off for new adventures.

The Merapi has spoken

Mount Merapi 13 Nov 10. AP

The sky here in Medan, North Sumatra, is grey and heavy. I wonder if it is part of the great Merapi’s speech? The mountain has changed the course of many lives. It gave me cause to waste a day in Jakarta trying to figure out whether or not to go to Yogyakarta as planned. The whole point of coming to Indonesia at the beginning of November was to participate in the WISDOM conference in Yogyakarta. By the time that I became conscious of the fact that I was crazy to be considering entering a disaster zone just when everybody else was leaving it, the airline companies had cancelled their flights anyway and the conference had been postponed “until further notice”. The gods of the Merapi seemed to be saying, “Go to Medan” and so that is what I did.

The fire-spewing mountain generously offered me unexpected time to be with Nia Fliam. She happened to be in Jakarta exhibiting her wonderful batik textiles. Nia and her husband, mas Ismoyo, are the central organizers of the Fiber Face 3 event scheduled to take place in the springtime in Yogyakarta . The WISDOM conference had given me an excellent opportunity to piggy-back so that I could work on the preparations for the exhibition. Nia had asked me to curate the “Batak spotlight” of this Fiber Face 3 event, and I had accepted with alacrity. A special synergy had begun to emerge relative to the Fiber Face 3 event and now it even had the Merapi co-operating. The discussions with Nia were rich and helpful. And now the Merapi was telling me to use the extra time to go to the Batak country and do “the job” properly!

What is the job? It has two aspects: a documentary film about weaving techniques and a specific collection of photographs and textiles for the Fiber Face 3 exhibition..

The film is based on an ancient Batak text, Rangsa ni Tonun, committed to paper in the 19th century by Guru Sinangga ni Adji who lived in the village of Sait ni Huta in the Silindung Valley (south of Lake Toba). It describes the techniques of weaving from the purchase of raw cotton on the market to the completion of the finished textile. The description of these techniques in the flowery and esoteric language of the Batak knowledge specialist lends the text a sacred and mythical air. The text is so technical that it is hard to translate it without an unwieldy quantity of footnotes. I have always loved the text but never really knew what to do with it. I discussed it as early as 1980 with my weaving teacher in Harian Boho, Ompu Sihol and many times afterwards with different weavers. The exhibition in Yogyakarta offers the perfect occasion to “do something with it.” One of the goals of the exhibition is to link the ancient knowledge of the villages with modern know-how. The text represents ancient knowledge. Filmer, MJA Nashir, will transcribe it into the timeless, international language of images through the medium of film and make it accessible to all.

He is sitting in front of me in this fast-food chicken restaurant in Medan with a frown on his face. His hands are moving as he spins and weaves imaginary yarn. Occasionally he jumps out of his seat as he visualizes the succession of scenes that will comprise the film. He is writing the “screen play” and it entails understanding the techniques of weaving. I have given him the original Batak version of the text, called Rangsa ni Tonun, as well as my English translation. He is inspired by the text particularly because of its sacred and mythical qualities and enjoys the challenge of transporting that into the technical component.

All of the techniques related to the preparation and spinning of cotton have disappeared since spun yarn has come onto the local markets. In a few days, we will head off again to the villages to film not only the techniques that are still being practised, but also to reclaim for posterity the last, faded memories of techniques of yarn preparation. I am curious what kind of success we will have. When I did my fieldwork thirty years ago, the memories were already faded.

The organizers of Fiber Face 3 have recognized the importance of building bridges in the textile world between village practitioners and urban fiber artists and between ancient knowledge and modern know-how. Ancient Batak textile knowledge is threatened but this text is an archival jewel that deserves attention.

I am assuming that the Merapi knew that it was important to give us this extra time to devote to the documentary.

Introducing MJA Nashir

I have posted links to the chapters of MJA Nashir’s serial publication of the Back to the Villages project on this blog spot. After the project concluded on the last day of June 2010, his role as photographer also concluded and he decided to pick up, of his own accord, the role of chronicler to document and share his experience of the project. This came as a complete surprise to me, but it is a terribly welcome and gratifying surprise adding a layer that serves the central goal of the project, viz. to make the presentation of Legacy to the Batak as effective as possible. MJA Nashir’s elegant and accurate account is reaching a broad Indonesian and especially Batak public; he is writing for his public as only a fellow Indonesian could do. Back to the Villages touched his life and he, in turn, is touching the lives of others with his memories and reflections on it. Many people crowded around to bear witness to each presentation of Legacy in North Sumatra, but through MJA Nashir’s accounts, many more people will be able to bear witness and for much longer.

I approached my own blog more or less thematically, keeping in mind my English-speaking readers, most of whom have never visited Indonesia, let alone the Batak area of North Sumatra. MJA’s writings document our path day by day, book presentation by book presentation in a very detailed step-by-step fashion. We both indulge in our own reflections on what occurred, how people reacted and the significance of it all. In his writings, these reflections fill the empty hours and empty stretches of road, as it were, while in mine they are the central focus. Our writings are like different layers of a many-layered event. It is now my pleasure to add a layer about the photographer-chronicler (soon to be filmer and film-producer) of the Back to the Villages project.

MJA Nashir sent me a text message this morning from his home in Pekalongan, North Java, to let me know that he had just posted Chapter VII of his chronicles on Facebook. I can barely contain my curiosity. This chapter is about Muara, one of the highlights of our journey, and the weavers depicted in the opening double page spread in Legacy. But I have to swallow my impatience because I am on the road to Oxford and have no access to internet. Of course I know better than anyone else what happened on our journeys, but through his writings I am gradually discovering who that photographer is, that fellow who joined me quite serendipitously on my journey.

The filmers who had initially agreed to work with me withdrew at the eleventh hour, leaving me high and dry and wondering what to do. I started to look for a photographer, having given up on the idea of a film, but still needing to meet my obligation of giving donors to the project a photographic record of the presentation of “their” book. I wanted a female photographer, presuming that weavers would be more at ease with a female photographer, and the atmosphere more “female” and relaxed. Weaving is a female activity, I am a female researcher, the book designer was female and the person who had guided the printing process was also female. It appealed to me to have a project for, by and about women. But I had no luck finding this female photographer. Finally, when I had begun to despair and felt quite despondent, I received, out of the blue, one of my first text messages from MJA Nashir asking me how things were going. Having heard, from our mutual friend, Nia Fliam, a batik artist in Java, that I needed a photographer, he had already offered his services, but I had responded in a non-committal way for the reasons given above. This time, however, I immediately invited him to join me; it felt destined. He accepted with alacrity. The invitation was driven by necessity and it was a leap of faith. I didn’t know anything about this person. I only knew Nia’s estimation that he was “very special.” My expectations, by then, had been reduced to the bare minimum: as long as there were the required pictures to give to the project donors, I would be satisfied.

MJA turned out to be quiet, undemanding and easy-going. I had difficulty understanding his Javanese accent and my Indonesian had grown so rusty in the years since my fieldwork that there were few fluent exchanges between us. We relied, more or less out of necessity, on observation. It wasn’t difficult to become aware that I was with someone who not only understood the principle and intentions of the project, but was technically so skilled that I didn’t have to worry about his work. I didn’t even have to give guidance. He was an expert in making photo and film documentations. Conveniently, we both had the same make of camera. His had a different lens and mine had a filming capacity, so he used whatever the occasion demanded. Trusting in his expertise, I just focused on my own role in the project.

With time I noticed that I was increasingly taking account of his reactions to situations, asking his counsel, and relying on his judgment. I had not only a filmer and a photographer who turned out to be a professional of high calibre and standards, but someone who was quietly but actively supporting the project and “thinking with”, never imposing his wishes, but ever-ready to offer his opinion and advice when asked. It began to feel, increasingly, like “our” project.

Words had also begun to replace the muteness that had characterized the beginning of our journey. This visual person turned out to be a wordsmith, too. He sat in the front of the vehicle beside the driver. Charmed by the beauty of Lake Toba he was a fully engaged passenger and occasionally turned around to make a pronouncement. More often than not, it was in the form of an aphorism or a poetic couplet. Sometimes, he expressed anger over the environmental degradation that we came across and then his usually gentle black eyes gleamed so brightly with fury that I would have to turn away.  “Alam” (nature) was an important theme, to him. At one point, he asked whether I would mind if he took some photographs for himself and he indulged his urges to shoot both the beauty and the decline in the landscape. Of course he had my blessing.

He turned out to be quite open and delighted in telling stories about his life, and was patient with me as I did my best to grasp what he was saying, contributing new wear marks to my Indonesian-English dictionary in the process. He told me about the importance of the poet Rendra in his life, and the words hadir (being present in a full and creative way) and mengalir (to flow, adapting oneself to circumstances) that had become axioms for him. He spoke much about a Batak, the late Donald Hutabarat, who had lived in Toraja and had impressed him deeply for his moral fibre. My adoption into the Hutabarat clan had apparently been a factor in his decision to join the project.

When the project came to an end, it was as sudden as it began. We gave away some books in Kaban Jahe in the morning and then drove to Medan. I was in a rush to catch a flight to Aceh, and dropped MJA Nashir off en route. That was that, it seemed. But it felt strange. There had been no debriefing and I missed some quiet moments at the end of the trip to just talk with him as a fellow human being rather than “the project photographer”. While he had shared much and generously, he had only succeeding in generating more questions than he had answered.

Luckily this is the age of internet and MJA Nashir is a writer. As he types chapter upon chapter of his chronicles about the delivery of Legacy to the Batak villagers and posts them on Facebook, my sense of satisfaction grows richer and richer. I am one of his addicted readers waiting for the next installment. Obviously I am different from the other readers because I know “what happens next” and I even help out by providing photographs, my own memories, and names of people.  I have different questions and longings, though, than other readers. MJA Nashir is giving me the privilege of finally discovering who sat in front of me in the vehicle all that time, this person of unusual grace, artistic talent and intelligence, who bestowed a special magic on the journey.

Links to MJA Nashir's Menyusuri Ulos Batak, Berkelana dengan Sandra
Map of Back to the Villages and Menyusuri Ulos Batak, Berkelana dengan Sandra