Mourning of the Earth

The Bali Bombings Aftermath
By DC Green

I climb off my push bike at Bemo Corner and stare down Jalan Legian. For the first time in the 15 years I've been stumbling to Indonesia, before the full moon rave parties and sealed roads to every wave on the Bukit Peninsula, doubtless since Jim Banks was a wide-eyed teen Bronzed Aussie, there are to be seen no cheeky grommets keen to imitate my accent, no conspiratorially whispering gunja salesmen, no laughing Gudang Garam or Mentos hawkers, no Maduran whores beckoning in shadow, no mothers clasping babies and silently reaching out for coins, no bakso carts with ringing bells, no lurching drunks, or traffic snarls, or honking bikes, or familiar movements of any kind.
It is midnight, the beginning of the seventh day since two terrorist bombs tore a chasm, literally and spiritually, in the heart of this surf-spawned metropolis by the sea. Asia's most famous street, walled shoulder to shoulder with shops, restaurants and bars stretching north through Legian and Seminyak as far as the eye can peer, is desolate; inconceivably desolate. I close my eyes. Yet the only sound is the near imperceptible breeze whispering through the tiga kancuh trees that line the empty footpaths. In more ways than can be measured, Kuta is this night a ghost town.
I begin to walk. The slap of thongs on bitumen echoes back harshly. I bend, and catch movement in my periphery. Beneath a shop awning, several figures sit facing the road, watching me. Some nod, or attempt to smile. By their distinctive front-knotted headpieces and chequered sarongs, I can tell these men are members of the local banjar (council). They are sentinels, armed with walkie talkies and a grimness that such an outrage will not happen again, not on their watch. I nod back, like the banjar, not wishing to disturb the strangely beautiful stillness of this night with the ugly pettiness of words.
Barefoot, I walk on, past the narrow entrance to Poppies Lane I and more groups of squatting banjar, all discreetly, strategically placed, often alternating with similar sized groups of armed polisi. Despite the arse-protective political and media hysteria urging westerners to bunker in their hotels and flee Bali post haste, I have never felt safer in Indonesia than I do now. Or more... loved. Or such stillness.
I walk on, passing boarded windows and ever more buckled roller doors. Glass fragments sparkle in the street and waxing moon light. To my right, polisi and news trucks clog the car park of the New Bounty, all lit up, yet still closed like most of Bali's major night spots. Wreaths weaved with brilliant flowers, handmade and natural, line the gutters and sealed-up storefronts in increasing density. Yellow police tape and 20 metre linen sheets dangle along both footpaths, scrawled with messages of support and condolence. And anger: "Fuck you terroris cunts!" Ahead, the very road itself appears to blaze.
Yet as I pass Poppies Lane II, still clogged high with debris, I realise the fire is no more than several hundred orange candle flowers speckling the road. Several locals kneel and pray in ceremonial garb, or stand with bowed heads before the hill of wreaths and single flowers piled several feet high outside the gutted remnants of The Aloha Shop. Beyond this point, the road is taped off and guarded by an even larger throng of polisi. Ground zero.
The English language contains several hundred thousand words, every one utterly incapable of describing the heinous magnitude of the carnage wrought by the 150 kg ammonium nitrate bomb loaded with fuel oil and packed into a road-blocking bemo amongst such a crush of people. I struggle to reconcile this rubble-strewn vision of Hell with the image of mates' beaming faces psyching for "a huge Saturday night" at legendary Aussie bar, the Sari Club, or perhaps across the road, at the more cosmopolitan Paddies: Asia's social twin towers. They will never be rebuilt; not on this island of spirits.
Two middle-aged westerners approach the polisi line, clutching each other for support. Their eyes roam across the floodlit rubble that was the Sari, across the obscene crater in the road to the melted black skeleton that was Paddies, searching for meaning where there is no meaning. Tears slowly blossom in their eyes, burst, and wend down well-worn lines; and not for the first time, well up in mine as well. From the small crowd, even from the polisi, palpable empathy flows. Emotion in the eyes cannot be faked, nor tears from the soul. Whatever trace of resentment the Balinese Hindus and the local Muslim minority who eke out an existence on the streets may have felt towards Australians over East Timor is now as much rubble as our national fantasies of immune isolation. The tolerant, beautiful Balinese especially, are as much victims of this atrocity as the Aussies, Javanese and partying citizens from a dozen other countries who were torn to shreds, burnt beyond recognition or "fortunate" to survive with injuries that will scar or disable for life. They will never forget; nor must we.

DC Green won the prestigious 'Emap Feature of the Year' Award for this article, which originally appeared in Adrenalin, Tracks, Waves, The Surfer's Path & Surfer's Journal magazines in 2002.
Today, DC writes completely different stuff: zany, imaginative books for children and the child-at-heart. 'Erasmus James and the Galactic Zapp Machine,' published this September, is a funny, warm and action-packed tale of friendship, intergalactic zapping, flatulent horses, environmental havoc and bus-sized chooks (chickens).

Read the first four chapters free - http://dcgreenyarns.blogspot.com/

Book orders - http://www.bookmarkaustralia.com.au/