Entrok - The Year of Voiceless

“anakku sekolah tinggi sekali, pintar, tapi kok bodoh. Bagaimana ibunya yang tidak pernah sekolah ini tahu tentang Gusti Allah, hafal  doa-doa arab itu, lha wong tahu saja tidak? Masa aku yang sejak kecil diajari nyuwun pada Mbah Ibu Bumi Bapa Kuasa tiba-tiba harus menghentikan semuanya. Ealah… nduk, sekolah kok malah membuatmu tidak menjadi manusia.”

 Entrok

Okky madasaari’s novel “Entrok,” translated into English by Nurhayat Indrayanto Muhamed as “The Year of Voiceless,” takes a particularly jaundiced view of the rule of Soeharto and his cronies.

There are two narrators: Sumarni, a girl who grows into puberty in a village near the East Java city of Madiun in the early period of Indonesian independence, and her daughter Rahayu.

Sumarni’s greatest wish is to own a bra or entrok in colloquial Javanese. And her discovery of a way to get one and much more, only to become a victim in the end of modern competition, forms one major plank of the story.

Instead of just cleaning cassava roots in return for food, as her mother has done to survive for many years. She becomes a market porter, then a trader and finally a money lender. She amasses enough wealth to build a sturdy house, own a car and a couple of hectares of sugar cane fields, and sand Rahayu to school and university.

Material success does not automatically translated into happiness, however. With success come those who demand a share of the spoils. “Powerful people with their uniforms and their boots, people who were strong because of their guns, people who were always right because they worked for the state.” The Soeharto era has arrived.

Sumarni’s life is fatally marred by her daughter’s refusal to accept her own animist ways, praying to the gods of the soil success every evening. Immersed in the formal education system, Rahayu is convinced by her teachers that her mother’s faith in the old beliefs of Java is heresy.

The story of Rahayu is the second major plank in the work. Seduced by orthodox Islam, Rahayu achieves her mother’s dream of entering a state university in Yogyakarta, but after two years of study she spends more time with Koran recital group than in class. Coming face to face with the arbitrary power of people with boots and guns, Rahayu and other member of her group attempt to expose this abuse of power. For their trouble they are thrown out of the university and take refuge within a religious community. After becoming the second wife of an Islamic teacher, she appears to have forgotten her parents.

Jump from 1950 to 1999, the novel end with Sumarni discovering that Rahayu is in jail in Semarang, Central Java. For opposing the state at Kedung Ombo, the major dam development that was a subject of controversy from 1985 until 1991.

One group of residents refused to move, prompting Soeharto to brand them mbalelo or renegades. In the end, those who opposed the will of state were declared nonpersons and their identity cards stamped “Eks Tapol” the mark of former members of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). In the novel, Rahayu shares this fate.

source: okkymadasari.net/news-review/the-victims-speak/#more-971