In my urban visual ethnographic research, Scraps of hope: An urban ethnography of peac, 1 I focused on the gendered lived experiences of both elites and ordinary people (orang kecil) affected by the urban development and governance agenda known as Kota Madani (civilised and Islamic city of Banda Aceh), and the slogan ‘Building Aceh back better’, modelled on the golden age of the Sultanate of Aceh in the 16th century. Whereas the majority of previous studies on Aceh have either focused on emerging subjectivities vis-à-vis their experiences of tsunami or conflict, when approaching the lived and experienced city I practised an openness that I call ethnography of the ‘here and now’ (Jauhola, 2015). This method maintains that, through ethnographic encounters, other historical and personal experiences or material and spatial references may potentially emerge as significant topics or themes of discussion. Central to my approach is the respect for silence. How do we treat and interpret post-conflict silences? As oppressive, as enabling, or as forms of resilience, resistance and survivalism? I do not push for stories of violence or hold expectations of being told of them. Rather, the starting point is the everyday of now, which always consists of layers of experience. How they unfold in a research encounter is a matter of negotiation and, at times, a practice of and respect for silence (Siapno, 2009; Butalia, 2016). Here I narrate one such encounter.

Taking refuge one day from the torrential rain, and with a desire for coffee, I entered a traditional coffee shop run in their home by a man and his wife in their sixties. This became a regular stopover on my daily walks through the city. I introduced myself as a Finnish researcher, who had an interest in discussing and understanding the peace brokered by the former Finnish president, not from the point of view of elite politics or celebratory remembrance days but rather, from the perspective of those written out of the formal narratives of peace (Jauhola, 2016a, b). I never conducted structured interviews; I even hesitated to ask questions.