To say that Indonesian travel author and photographer Agustinus Wibowo is obsessed with adventure and linguistics can be an understatement – he has spent most of his life travelling to the far corners of the world and currently speaks 16 languages.
In his latest book Zerohis travels bring him home, where he spends time together with his dying mother, a lady who has spent her entire life in a single small village.
For those that have not read it, what’s your latest book? Ground Zero about?
Zero is my story of homecoming. After ten years of wandering the world, I had to return home, to face the fact of my home. My mother was getting ready to death, as cancer ravaged her body. All I could do was sit next to her and skim my travel notes from distant lands – China, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan. Like Scheherazade, who reads a thousand and one stories for as many nights, I needed that every story would lengthen her life by sooner or later. With these stories, my mother finally found a voice to inform her own life journey. This book is a fraction of the lives of a mother and a son, two separate paths spanning time and distance, that converge to turn out to be a story of affection and survival.
Why did you rewrite your book? Zero as a substitute of just translating it into English?
I imagine that translation will not be simply a matter of converting from one language to a different, due to the differences in the way in which ideas are conveyed in numerous languages, and the various contexts of readers who speak different languages or come from different cultural backgrounds. I noticed this after I read the primary draft of a direct translation Zero from Indonesian to English, which was not as readable as I had expected. The translator and I discovered that there have been too many Indonesian expressions that might not be simply translated literally into English, and lots of other details that required further explanation for readers who didn’t know Indonesian. The translator suggested that I make some adjustments. After attempting to read only one chapter, I discovered that the tone of the book had modified, so it was needed to regulate all the book accordingly.
Why do you travel? What first made you desire to travel?
Traveling for me is like trying to find a mirrored image. From the stories of individuals I meet on the road, I find a mirrored image of myself. It is like our eyes and mouth are on our face, but we cannot see them with no mirror. Therefore, the more I travel physically, the more I understand about myself and the more I delve into my inner self. I all the time start my journey with questions, and the journey goals to seek out answers to the questions. In the sooner phase of the journey, which I speak about in Zerothe questions were: Who am I? Where do I belong? My childhood was marked by identity conflict, and I dreamed of finding a spot I could call home.
Do you are feeling just like the more you travel, the more your idea of what and where “home” is changes?
Indeed. At first, I believed that house is where you might be born and raised. But being raised as a Chinese-Indonesian in Indonesia under the anti-China regime of Suharto, it was hard for me to say that Indonesia is my home. Then I believed that the place where your ancestors come from needs to be your property. So I went to China. But I discovered that I didn’t slot in there either. Then I traveled to distant countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the hospitality of the people made me feel at home. At that point, I believed that my home might be anywhere. But when your property is anywhere, it also implies that your property is nowhere. In this phase, I feel that home will not be something external; it starts in your mind. When you come to terms together with your past and future, you might be “home.” Location not matters.
You traveled everywhere in the world while your mother almost never left her village in Java – did you mostly wonder why she never traveled? Did she understand your love of travel?
My mother was a typical Chinese-Indonesian woman who went through difficult years of Indonesian history, and due to this fact spent most of her time caring for our family shop in order that we could survive financially. She believed that one has to work hard to achieve life. She also believed that each penny comes from exertions and due to this fact shouldn’t be wasted in vain. I used to think that my mother simply didn’t wish to travel because she didn’t need to spend money. But after spending my last days along with her, I discovered that she also dreamed of traveling. Her stationary life was actually a sacrifice for her family. My mother understood that I loved traveling and treated it as a priority. During my years of traveling, to my surprise, she even tried to cover all the issues that happened in our family as much as possible because she was apprehensive that they’d disrupt my concentration throughout the trip.
You said you fell in love with Afghanistan at first sight – why?
My initial image of Afghanistan, as I learned from the media, was simply a war zone filled with sorrow and death. But after I first got here to Afghanistan in 2003, I felt as if I had been thrown right into a time machine and had entered a world from centuries ago. The wars had locked Afghanistan in time, but people were still willing to share even their last bread with visitors. I traveled extensively in Afghanistan in 2006 and spent greater than three years within the country, and my love for Afghanistan became admiration for his or her pride of their homeland. Afghans call their land “eat’ – dust. No matter how worthless and destroyed it’s, they’re able to sacrifice their lives to fight for his or her beloved homeland. Their love for the country doesn’t need any reason – and that’s the reason Afghanistan and Afghans have all the time fascinated me.
What other places do you enjoy visiting most?
Until now, the region I even have visited continuously has been Central Asia – particularly along the Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. I’m drawn to the wealthy history of Central Asia, the variety of races and languages, and the hospitable culture.
Indonesia also never ceases to surprise me. Even though I used to be born and raised here, the variety of the islands, races and traditions meant that I all the time discovered something recent during my island hopping – as if I had travelled to several different countries.
In terms of spiritual experiences, I’d select India and Burma, where I learned meditation techniques that opened the strategy to my inner self.
Who are your favourite travel writers?
Ryszard Kapuściński, due to his variety of “literary reportage”. His keen statement and sharp description created vivid images of the places, people and events he encountered. I really like his Checkmate of Checkers AND Empire. I also learned so much from VS Naipaul’s non-fiction, especially for his critical perspective, concise use of words, and funky humor. Most of the travel writers I really like are journalists who’ve been in another country for a very long time and might see beyond the locale. Others include Christina Lamb for her reports from Afghanistan, Colin Thubron for his travels along the Silk Road, and Tony Horwitz for his funny work on troubled Middle Eastern countries.
What is your next project?
I’m currently writing a book of travel stories about my very own country, Indonesia. The country is so vast, diverse and obscure. That is why I’m traveling across the country and to several foreign places to grasp the meaning of Indonesian nationalism. I began in 2014 after I traveled to the border of Papua New Guinea and lived within the camps of the Free Papua Movement to learn why they need to be independent from Indonesia. I even have also traveled to Aceh to see the implementation of Sharia law after the separatist conflict ended and to Toraja to see how local religions have survived under the pressure of contemporary religions. This project took me 18,000 kilometers to Suriname to learn concerning the attachment of the Javanese diaspora to their homeland. To complete this project, I plan to travel to East Timor, the Spice Islands and West Papua.
Source: Perth Festival
