THE SPICE GARDEN
By Michael Vatikiotis

In a remote corner of Indonesia’s fabled Spice Islands, Muslims and Christians have lived peacefully together for centuries. But for all their isolation and tranquility, the islanders are threatened by a gathering storm; as Indonesia is wracked by violent change, long-maintained religious harmony is unravelling and on nearby islands, Christians and Muslims fall upon one another in horrific bouts of killing and forced conversions. The burden falls on a priest and a wealthy Muslim merchant to save the community from a cycle of violence that threatens the pillars of their respective faith and customs.

This tale, based on true accounts of the religious violence that has erupted in the Maluku archipelago since 1999, explores the motives and effects of Islamic militancy as it clashes with a strong Christian community in a new era of religious conflict that afflicts the world today.

Garden of Terror
Journalist Michael Vatikiotis creates a fictional island to explain Indonesia's violent past.
By Jamie James

CHARLES DHARAPAK/AP
Paradise Lost: In 1999, mob violence wrecked Ambon

It is axiomatic that good journalists make lousy novelists. When they turn their writerly talents toward fiction, most reporters—particularly foreign correspondents—are undermined by the very expertise that lends authority to their dispatches. Rather than creating flesh-and-blood This issue: Table of Contents characters, they often produce stick figures representing various factions and points of view, who old forth in preachy, predictable allegories. Yet in The Spice Garden, his debut novel, Michael Vatikiotis, editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, has constructed an engrossing narrative of mass hysteria and mob violence set in the Maluku archipelago, Indonesia's spice islands, during the horrific bloodbath hat swept across the area in 1999-2000.

The Spice Garden Far Eastern Economic Review should be notable, if for no other reason, as the first serious novel in English about the sectarian violence in Indonesia after the fall of Suharto. Vatikiotis solves one of the main problems facing the journalist-novelist by cutting himself free from actual events and creating an imaginary spice island he names Noli. He even invents for it a spice—"a hairy nut the size of a plum that stubbornly refused to grow anywhere else."

Vatikiotis' Noli is a scantly fictionalized version of the Bandas, a tiny cluster of some of the most beautiful and remote islands in a region where remote, beautiful islands are the norm. Like the Bandas, Noli is separated from the other islands in the Maluku archipelago by a wide expanse of sea, and has a population nearly evenly composed of Christians and Muslims. And the Noli nut is obviously a variation on nutmeg, which made the Bandas a geopolitical prize in the age of discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries.

The plot of The Spice Garden revolves around the friendship between the leaders of the island's two communities: Father Xavier Lunas, a Catholic priest, and Ghani, a Falstaffian hotelier and fish merchant. At the beginning of the novel, a wedding is being planned between a Muslim boy and a Christian girl. The social cataclysms that have begun to rack Indonesia are felt here only as faraway echoes, until a oatload of survivors of gruesome atrocities in strife-torn Ambon, the capital of Maluku, washes up on Noli's shores. Soon afterward, a gang of jihadist rabble-rousers arrives, with a mandate from sinister elements in the army to create chaos as part of an ongoing plot to destabilize the nation in the aftermath of Suharto's fall. Within days the island's idyll is shattered, and neighbors who had long lived peacefully side by side literally hack each other to bits. The alliance between Father Xavier and Ghani ultimately proves to be Noli's salvation by appealing to the islanders' better angels.

Vatikiotis, whose collection of short stories with Asian settings called Debatable Land was published in 2001, has a remarkable gift for evoking the sights and scents of the Tropics. Unsparing in his portrayal of the violence of the era, Vatikiotis is admirably evenhanded in his attempts to elucidate the social forces that underlay it. For the most part,The Spice Garden avoids the usual plague of the journalistic novel of crudely putting exposition and argument in the mouths of its characters. The friendship between Father Xavier and Ghani is well rendered and has the ring of truth. Vatikiotis' writing style is polished and evocative, despite occasional patches of purple that could have been pruned. The novel's Romeo-and-Juliet subplot is sugary and painfully predictable, with lovemaking scenes that the judges of the Bad Sex in Fiction Award could take under consideration.

Yet the book ends on a strong note, with the island and the young lovers reunited by a shaman, representative of the animist belief system that dominated the islands of Indonesia long before the arrival of colonizing religions and which still commands a wide following. Since Joseph Conrad's early 20th century tales of the tropical seas, very few foreign, competent storytellers have taken Indonesia for their subject. With this interesting novel, Vatikiotis makes a valuable contribution to the literature of the archipelago.

Taken from Time Asia

The Spice Garden: A proxy clash of civilizations
by Michael Vatikiotis
(Equinox Publishing, Jakarta, 2003 253 pp)

Not too long ago (about four years, to be exact) and not too far away, there was an idyllic tropical isle called Noli, where the gentle fisher folk lived in almost perfect harmony and peace, with nature and themselves.

They were Nolians before anything else, even though they were also nominally followers of a pair of giant world religions (a legacy of the spice trade which began some 400 years ago involving European and Arab traders).

They were Nolians before they became part of the giant Republic, which had sent one slothful, bored police officer from the main island. However, through machinations, scheming and deceit, wicked men from the main island managed to tap into the animal instincts that lie within the soul of every man to generate some of the wildest, most bizarre and sadistic mayhem ever seen on earth.

Neighbors began hacking the heads off people they lived next door to for years. Boys who grew up together, played with each other and battled together on the high seas to bring in a load of Nolian tuna were suddenly swept into a bloodthirsty frenzy of murderous rage against each other.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the story you're about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." That was the opening line from the hit U.S TV show Dragnet, but it could easily be adapted for this chillingly accurate piece of historical fiction by Michael Vatikiotis, who has been a writer in Southeast Asia for 20 years.

For the story of Noli and its people, the opening could go something like this: "The story you are about to experience is true, the names have been changed to protect the innocent ... and perhaps to revent a major upheaval against the state institutions that perpetrated this mayhem in pursuit of dubious ideological goals."

Many readers may have heard the news of this tragedy via the BBC, newspapers or the Internet, but rarely if ever in those news oundbites or articles, which talked about death tolls and fresh clashes, is one painfully aware of the very real personal, human tragedy that took place on the ground.

This story is in-depth, with well-constructed, true-to-life characters: villains, duped pious fanatics, heroes and tragic victims.

Throughout the story, there are the antagonistic forces of the two major world religions in open war, religion versus traditional forms of communal harmony, the perfection of nature against the imperfection of humankind, the state apparatus versus the people, but most of all the men and women striving to be civilized and good as they battle the barbarian that lies dormant within us all.

It is by no means all tragedy and grief, however. There is the underlying theme of a passionate romance between a young boy and an exquisitely beautiful girl, from either side of the religious divide, bringing to mind Maria and Tony of West Side Story or Romeo and Juliet.

Their undying love for each other survives and eventually becomes the catalyst for renewal on Noli, defeating the forces of evil.

The reader comes away breathless, but with a profound nderstanding of the events that caused so much pain that the world hardly knew about, and also enriched by the power of love and goodness that eventually wins out over barbarism.
By Rich Simons

Taken from The Jakarta Post.com

Trouble in paradise
By Michael Vatikiotis
(Equinox Publishing, Jakarta, 2003 253 pp)

On the remote Indonesian island of Noli, too small even to appear on the map, a mixture of Christians and Muslims, together with ethnic Chinese and a few others, have managed to get along together in their little part of paradise for centuries. They live in the same villages, respect each others' traditions and think more about what unites them than what differentiates them.

Yet when religious conflict breaks out on the nearby island of Ambon and refugees arrive, together with outside agents, the contagion of violence and hatred explodes and dozens are hacked to pieces. The veil of civilization and tolerance is not just brutally set aside but seems to have been an illusion all along. In the face of provocation and oppression, brutality gains many willing converts. Is this a fatal flaw in the islanders' own characters, the effect of outsiders uninterested in island traditions or some more complex phenomenon?

This is the background of THE SPICE GARDEN, the new novel by MICHAEL VATIKIOTIS, who is well-known in East Asia as a writer on social and political issues and for his editorship of the inestimable Far Eastern Economic Review. He has drawn upon real-life events that took place in the Maluku archipelago in 1999 and, indeed, in numerous other places at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

In a world in which migration will be an increasingly important phenomenon and in which religious fundamentalism is associated with the desire to create monocultural societies, the need to establish enduring and stable diverse communities is one of the most vital facing us. Vatikiotis's recreation of modern Indonesian history suggests that this will be extremely difficult to achieve. However, small gestures of reconciliation and unity are possible.

Thematically and, in some cases stylistically, this book brings to mind Graham Greene. The central figures are a young priest, Father Xavier, who is struggling with his faith in the presence of evil and an irreligious Muslim hotelier, Ghani, whose hotel provides a centerpiece to the action and a meeting place for the priest and the trader where they can drink beer and ponder island issues, as well as weightier affairs.

Other characters include the ineffectual government bureaucrat and police officer and the ethnic Chinese shopkeeper and his unhappy wife. Each is affected by the weight of the past and of heritage. Bringing these characters to life as they struggle against violence and fear and are subjected to the machinations of politicians from far away without resorting to stereotype is a difficult and complex task. However, it is one which the author, assisted by his sense of place, is just about able to keep under control. We are reminded regularly of the reality of life on the island, with the sights and smells of the once invaluable noli trees, the importance of fishing and the smells of charcoal fires. These images of everyday life are distorted by the light of terror and come to appear strange and unnatural.

This is particularly true of the love story between Muslim Adam and Christian Alicia. Their courtship at the beginning of the book seems set to reinforce the diversity and tolerance that is natural on the island. The violence causes the relationship to take on additional and unexpected
connotations. Ultimately, it celebrates the ambiguity and compromise that human frailty requires for society to continuity. The presence of ambiguity and uncertainty is ruthlessly crushed by the fascist army officer Colonel Wahyu who is dispatched to restore order.

The death of ambiguity is a heavy blow for the Nolians to bear. Vatikiotis is to be praised for bringing this episode to greater public attention and presenting it with skill and sensitivity.

By John Walsh
Head of Directed Research
Mahidol University International College
Thailand.

Taken from The Asian Review of Books on The Web

Trouble in paradise
A novel set on a fictitious island, not far from Ambon, at a time far from a fictitious world: the bloodied period in 1999.

A community that has experienced a series of traumas will often turn inward and cover itself, unable to tell others of the hurt. How, when each word would only open the wound, rendering it raw again? Yet tell the members must, if they want to begin a healing process.
The whole community needs to lift the cover and together take a good look at each other, in order to identify the sources of the festering sores.

Very few people can say that they have not heard of the bloody clashes in Maluku since 1999. News about these have, on many occasions dominated the print and electronic media. However in the grand scheme of things, these news items came and went, fleeting past us, as if all that happened to those involved was no more serious than the rough and tumble on the football field. It is almost impossible for outsiders to understand what actually happened.

There are so many issues competing for our attention that each of them tends to stay only temporarily in our consciousness. The situation continues until a particular event drags us in. That is what Michael Vatikiotis is doing; sweeping us with his novel, into the horrific events in Maluku. The novel, The Spice Garden, is set on a fictitious island, not far from Ambon, at a time very far from a fictitious world: the bloodied period in 1999.

Noli, the island, is not only remote from the rest of the country, it has also dropped out of the minds of those in the political elite in Jakarta, maybe because it has ceased to be of pecuniary interest to them. However, this sad state of affairs has its own advantages; its inhabitants, the indigenous majority, the Arab and European descendents, as well as the ethnic Chinese, are shielded from the events of sectarian conflict on the other islands. In Noli, the Muslims and the Christians live peacefully, allowing each other space.

In depicting the social fabric of the Noli community, Vatikiotis has not created perfect human specimens who go around loving and admiring each other. This novelist who is also a senior journalist paints very realistic relationships between imperfect personalities, based on self-interest and pragmatism.

There are a number of protagonists. In the foreground are a Roman Catholic pastor, Father Xavier, and the owner of hotel-restaurant, Hotel Merdeka, Ghani. In the middle ground and the background, we meet various supporting characters, whose roles in the development of the story are no less crucial.

The story opens with rumours that different parts of Maluku have been plagued with violent and bloodied clashes between Muslims and Christians. Being so wrapped up in their own world, the Nolians at first find it very difficult to believe anything like that could happen, until a boat lands one day, carrying a group of refugees who force the Nolians not only to hear their dreadful stories, but also confront the evidence: their horrific injuries, mental and physical. Tension begins to spread, and Noli rapidly slides into the trap of physical violence.

Most prominent in the story is the friendship between Father Xavier and Ghani, a Catholic and a Muslim, whose lives in Noli have instilled in them how important it is to maintain harmony among different communities on the island. Their friendship at first does not stop them from being judgemental of each other's shortcomings, but in crucial times it proves strong enough to rescue Noli from total destruction.

A love story between Adam, a Muslim and Alicia, a Christian, is woven into this human tale of woe. The preparations for their wedding run aground when a group of young men land on Noli, armed with rifles and explosives, and begin to teach the Muslims to hate their Christian co-inhabitants. Fired up to carry out revenge for their fellow-Muslims on other islands, the Muslim young men are eventually incited to kill and maim their Christian neighbours. The Christian young men retaliate, ignoring Father Xavier's warnings. The clashes rapidly turn Noli into a bloodbath.

Vatikiotis makes good use of his wide knowledge of Indonesia's society and politics. He is able to fill the frame of the story with flesh and blood, and cultural ambience, making it alive and credible. His characters are solid and three-dimensional. Even Father Xavier comes across as an ordinary human being, who at certain moments nearly loses the grip on his faith. The political intrigue does not sound too made up, either.

He does not go over the top with the scenes of physical violence, but is able to build up enough tension for the reader to occasionally dread turning the page.

The Spice Garden has dual functions: that of a fictitious story, albeit based very much on real events, and a kind of recognition that what we have read, seen and heard on the media, actually happened, claiming real human victims. Hopefully with his empathy, the book can help the emotional healing of these victims, from both sides of the conflict.

By Dewi Anggraeni
TEMPO correspondent based in Australia
Tempo, No. 27/IV/March 09 - 15, 2004

Taken from Asia Views