On Friday, 21 September 2014, Adi Rukun (the main character in Oppenheimer's movie The Look of Silence), wrote to me via Facebook: ‘How are you, Mbak? I would like to introduce you to a granddaughter of a 1965 victim. She is from the same district as I am in Sumatra. Her Facebook name is Diah Wahyuningsih Naat. She really wants to share her experience with people in the same boat.’ That was how I came to know Dian Wahyuningsih Rahayu, who teaches history at a high school in Batam.

When I was around thirteen or fourteen years old, I asked ibu regarding the strange ceremony they had been performing in mbah's room. Before Eid, ibu and her extended family often visited mbah wedok [grandmother] in her village in Kotasan – Deli Serdang. This is where ibu was born, before she moved to Tanjung Morawa in North Sumatra. There, ibu, her brothers and sisters, and mbah wedok gathered in one of the rooms, carried out a ceremony and read surah yasin from the Quran. My cousins and I were not allowed in. But ibu did not explain much about it. When I asked how mbah died, she just answered that he got sick, of old age.

Only when I was about to go to college in 1993, did ibu talk to me about mbah for the first time. But this was only because she wanted me to study to be a teacher and to major in history, although I was not interested in it. She told me that she really wanted me to do it to continue the aspirations of mbah, who was also a teacher. That was all she said. I obeyed her and went to a teacher-training college.

When I was in my second year at college, ibu told me a little bit about her father. Then, she told me some more a few years later. From my mother's fragmentary stories of my embah, I am able to tell you about him now.

My embah

The name of my grandfather is Djayus Darmosoewirjo. Remembering him is not easy because I never met him at all. I only know about him from scattered stories and conversations amongst our family and relatives. He was a highly respected teacher in his village.