August 19, 2011
Trungtum, West Java. Darsem binti Dawud Tawar is just 22 years old but she has already experienced enough hardship to last most people several lifetimes.
Though the traumatic days she spent locked up in a Saudi Arabian prison waiting to be executed are now behind her, she came home to a son who barely knows her and a marriage in ruins.
But the biggest cause of her stress these days is the Rp 1 billion ($117,000) she has in the bank. The money has earned her much unwanted attention, first from neighbors and then from the media, which amplified to the rest of the country criticism of how she is spending the donated funds.
“I don’t feel at home in my village anymore. I feel like running away. People are talking behind my back. I can’t stand it,” a frustrated Darsem told the Jakarta Globe as she stared across the living room of her modest house in the fishing village of Trungtum in West Java’s Subang district.
Throughout the interview she avoided eye-contact, apparently worried that the visiting journalist was like the previous ones who had vilified her in their reports.
“It is not like I’m now living in a two-story marble home and driving a luxurious car everywhere,” she said.
“I still take an ojek [motorcycle taxi] to get around. Yes, I did buy some gold jewelry, but only five grams. I don’t understand why I am portrayed as losing my head and living a lavish lifestyle.”
Talk of a Small Town
It is clear that Darsem is the talk of the small fishing community, a bumpy half-hour drive from the nearest town, Pusakanagara.
But there’s hardly a smile among residents when her name is mentioned. Locals describe her as an arrogant celebrity making a big deal about home refurbishments.
The house Darsem’s family now lives in is no bigger than other homes in the area. It is located along a narrow alley near the end of an asphalt road. Sand carried in by fishermen using the alley to bring their catch to a nearby auction house covers the pathway.
Even now, Darsem’s father, Dawud Tawar, wears old shirts and trousers covered in sand and walks around barefoot. An old watch hangs from his wrist, contrasting with his sunburned skin. There’s nothing to suggest he is the father of a newly minted rupiah billionaire.
“The neighbors are jealous. All of them are trying to take advantage of us and our money,” Dawud said. “We are just selective about who we donate to. We give money to orphans and the elderly who no longer can work. It’s not a lot but we feel it’s enough for them.”
Although the media hype about her lavish lifestyle proved untrue, words about her refusal to help others with her newfound wealth were not. But Darsem offers no apologies.
“I don’t want to help people in this village,” she said. “When I was in trouble, when my family was suffering, what did they do? Nothing.”
Dawud said that when his daughter was in prison, the community was reluctant to help the family. He even found it hard to get people to lend him money when his wooden home was ravaged by winds two years ago.
“When my daughter was in jail, it was the hardest time for me,” he said. “It meant that she couldn’t send money back home and we had to find ways to save her. I had to sell my possession to talk to government officials and lawmakers, and no one in this community helped.”
The ordeals she went through — a 17-year-old leaving a 1-year-old son to work in a foreign land, killing the son of her employer when he attempted to rape her, spending years in prison waiting to be executed — had changed his daughter, Dawud said. They forced her to toughen up.
“Now she is also tough on her husband, questioning why he did so little to help her parents and son,” he said. “They are now separated, not legally divorced though, but they both signed statements. It is the right decision to separate, I think.”
If her resentment toward her neighbors was understandable, some critics said Darsem should have at least used the money she received to help more than 200 other Indonesian migrant workers still on death row abroad.
But Darsem makes no excuses for her decisions: she has spent about Rp 100 million to pay the debt her family accumulated during her time in prison and another Rp 100 million to buy a new house for her and her son near her parents’ home.
She said she planned to use the remaining Rp 1 billion to open up a business and pay for her parents to go on the hajj.
Camaraderie for others still suffering in foreign jails was absent from Darsem’s mind and she was unapologetic about it.
“I don’t care about other workers on death row. Why should I? I don’t know them and they don’t know me,” she said.
Ironically, it was the June 18 beheading of Ruyati binti Sapubi, another Indonesian maid in Saudi Arabia, that opened a floodgate of condemnation over the government’s failure to protect workers on death row.
Darsem was fortunate to have the victim’s family seeking blood money instead of her head for the killing, which she said was committed in self-defense.
Under pressure, the Indonesian government agreed to pay the Rp 4.7 billion the victim’s family was seeking, but sympathetic members of the public had already raised Rp 1.2 billion for the cause through tvOne’s One for the Country Foundation (SUN).
The cash tvOne raised was later presented to Darsem as a gift, handed over in an elaborate ceremony during the program “Jakarta Lawyers Club.” Present at the event was the family of Ruyati.
Ruyati’s son-in-law Yus just shook his head and smirked when asked about Darsem.
“I don’t know if she has any humanity left. I am sorry to say this, but if it weren’t for my late mother-in-law, [Darsem’s] life might not have been spared,” Yus told the Globe at his home in Sukadarma village in Bekasi, about a four-hour drive from Darsem’s house.
Yus said there was awkwardness during the ceremony. Ruyati’s family watched as tvOne personality Karni Ilyas presented the donated money to Darsem.
“I don’t quite know how to describe how we felt,” he said. “It was disbelief and disappointment rolled into one. We felt humiliated to be at the event as Darsem looked at us suspiciously as if we were trying to steal the money from her.
“I don’t know if it was just to ease the awkwardness that everyone felt, but Karni told us, ‘Our donation for Darsem includes some for Ruyati’s family, so in the future you guys can contact Darsem personally.’ ”
Days later Yus and his wife, Nuraeni, Ruyati’s eldest daughter, contacted Darsem who told them to drive to her village to receive the promised share.
“When we got there she treated us like we were beggars who were asking for her kindness and pity. We left feeling insulted,” Yus said.
Whose Money Is It?
That is not how Darsem sees it. “It is my money, all of it. I gave Ruyati’s family Rp 20 million and that’s all I am willing to give away, and I think that is enough. Rp 20 million is a lot for a poor family,” she said.
Toto Suryanto, tvOne’s general manager for internal affairs, admitted there had been a “misunderstanding” between Darsem and Ruyati’s family.
“It was Darsem who promised Ruyati’s family a portion of the money. There was nothing we can do about this matte. We can only hope that she will spend it wisely,” he said.
The station has been criticized for giving the entire amount to the 22-year-old school dropout. But Toto said that since the money was raised for Darsem, even though the government ended up paying the blood money, “we had no choice but to give it to her.”
Dadang Rahmat Hidayat, chairman of the Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI), has criticized tvOne for failing to ensure that the donated money was properly spent.
“If we look at the results, it is actually a positive thing, as it shows the public’s high sense of solidarity, but this needs to be followed by transparency and accountability in the management of the funds,” he said. “Otherwise the public will lose its trust in such fund-raisers.”
Despite causing angst for her family, Darsem said she had no plans to return the money. But as hard as she tries to ignore the criticism, neighbors are alienating her from the community and making her life more difficult.
“My son is being circumcised soon and we plan a celebration just after the end of Ramadan,” she said.
“We’re planning to have live music entertainment for the community in an empty field in front of the house. But the neighbors say that I have to rent the space and compensate them for the noise I’ll be making.
“I’m so angry right now. They want to mess with me? Fine. I can be a thousand times crueler.”
(x the JG)
vr 19 aug 2011 - 18:13