This Java is Not Bitter Enough

Dhume tries to delineate — and nuance — that story by writing a straightforward travelogue,in which he goes from his apartment in Puri Casablanca in Jakarta to the shrine of Yogyakarta in Java,where people come to have black magic removed,to a jail that houses Abu Bakar Bashir,accused of being the spiritual head of the organisation that conducted the Bali discotheque bombings. (Nurdy’s newspaper named him their “Man of the Year” after the attacks.)

Through this we are treated to Dhume’s wonderful reporter’s eye: as at Daarut Tauhiid Super Mini Market,a representative effort at “religious commerce”,where women’s kurtas are called the Quraesi Collection and pantyhose named “Annija”. The formula,Dhume points out,is simple: the profane becomes the sacred simply by giving it an Arab name and “slapping on a picture of a mosque”.

And,of course,the kurtas and the pantyhose section are the most likely to be renamed thus. Dhume is not an exception to the First Law of Talking About Islamisation: go on and on about what women are wearing,about midriffs,hair and shapelessness. (Sometimes the border between the average travelogue about Islam and any fashion magazine becomes dangerously thin.) The First Law leads us inexorably to the most startling sentence that I have read for a while: “It was mesmerising as only a silver bottom rotating at high speed can be.” Nurdy should be pleased. His friend the atheist has written a book that is un-Naipaul-like in being fair; un-Naipaul-like in being readable without wanting to telephone the author and hurl horrific abuse at him; and also,unfortunately,un-Naipaul-like in giving off,ever so slightly,an over-sanitised smell. For an atheist,Dhume doesn’t get angry in Indonesia anywhere near often enough.