Titania Veda
Raising The Dead
A man climbs quietly from a grave and closes a white burial cloth that shrouds a skeleton. The bones are the color of burned earth and in pieces. A maggot scuttles to hide behind the empty eye socket of the skull. After more than 30 years of interment, all that is left of a once middle-aged adult now fits into a small bundle.
A weathered, wooden plaque with jagged edges bears the name the skeleton once answered to.
At Menteng Pulo Public Cemetery in South Jakarta, the air is fresh with the scent of blossoming trees and rich earth. A lone mottled mutt threads cautiously among the graves, its skin matted and reddish from the rain and earth. She sits on top of a grave, observing as 50 gravediggers calmly go about their work. They are not burying the dead but raising them, literally, from their graves.
Along a large strip of land near the Cideng River, 10,600 square meters to be exact, emptied graves with ragged edges line the cemetery. The workers have been commissioned by the city administration to unearth about 3,500 plots to make way for a highway linking Jalan Soepomo and Jalan Rasuna Said.
“Traditionally, you cannot disturb the dead,” sayd Entong, the head gravedigger. “But this is a city that is developing, and they need to expand the road.”
Inside an open grave, Entong breaks up the damp soil with a rusty hoe. His black jeans and feet are encrusted with red earth. He hands the last of the unearthed bones to his assistant to wrap in cloth and take to another burial plot that has been allocated for the exhumed bodies.
“This one was buried in 1962, so there are very few bones left,” Entong says, pointing to the decomposed bundle of bones about the size of an infant.
Entong climbs out of the grave and begins to break the gray headstone with his hoe. Pieces of stone fly around him. He has to remove the name plaque embedded in the stone so it can be placed with the remains for identification. His skin is burnished from the 32 years he has worked outdoors as a gravedigger.
“People call me first when they want to bury someone,” Entong says.
On this overcast morning, no weeping or hushed prayers for the displaced dead are heard, only the thud of hoes hitting the soil. Entong says it has been two months since the excavation of the graves commenced and it is scheduled to end next week.
“At the beginning there were more relatives,” Entong says. “Now it is rare for families to come even though we have informed them we will be digging up the graves. Maybe they have moved. Maybe they can’t bear the process.”
The majority of the graves are Muslim but Entong estimates 800 Buddhist graves will also be uncovered this week.
The remains are being moved to new burial plots further down the road. Unclaimed remains are moved to a cemetery at Kampung Kandang in Cilandak or to Srengseng Sawah Cemetery in South Jakarta, Entong says.
The ground is soft as paste from the ongoing Jakarta showers and he flings it around him as he hoes. An errant and persistent fly flits around his bare feet.
“We take the remains out, wrap them up and then knock down the gravestone,” explains Suroh, a caretaker at Menteng Pulo since the ’70s. Wearing a red shirt, a large mole jutting from his chin, he watches Entong work in the distance.
“I do not cry at anyone’s funeral,” Suroh says. “I am used to them.
“We are here to fix their homes, their final resting place.”
It is noon when Entong rests inside a makeshift wooden hut in the middle of the cemetery. The soiled clothes of the caretakers hang to dry nearby on headstones and from overhanging trees.
A caretaker chugs on a motorcycle down the narrow dirt road that runs through the cemetery, ferrying four white bundles to an ambulance for relocation.
“It is funny. Kaplok, kaplok, kaplok is the sound of the bodies flapping,” says Suroh as he watches.
“We are all the same. In the end we will die,” he adds as he deeply inhales from a clove cigarette.
Under the cool shade of the hut, the men sit in their mud-caked clothes, sipping hot, milky coffee and talk lightheartedly about death. Entong recounts a time when he had to break the legs of a corpse.
“If I didn’t, they wouldn’t fit into the cloth,” he says.
The kain kapan, or burial cloths, are rough pieces of white cloth two meters in length. “These ones cost Rp 12,000 [about $1],” Entong says, pointing to a pile of fabric in a cupboard. “Cheap ones.”
The hush is disturbed by the arrival of Iwan Suwandi and his family. Together with his wife, Suwarti, his sister, sister-in-law and grandson, he has come to rebury his son Rachmad.
“I was shocked to get the notice from the cemetery,” Suwandi says, of being notified of the disinterment. “I found out at Lebaran,” he adds.
A gentle-looking man with glasses and specks of grey through his hair, Suwandi had been ill for the past three months and unable to come to Menteng Pulo earlier.
Wearing a tan fishing hat and checkered shirt, Ali greets Suwandi, whom he knows. The caretaker has been tending Rachmad’s grave since he was buried here four years ago. An old hand, Ali has worked at cemeteries since 1948 and takes care of 100 plots in Menteng Pulo.
Rachmad, Suwandi’s third son, died of liver problems at the age of 24. “I wanted to move him to Bogor but we have no family there,” says Suwandi, who instead asked for his son’s body to be moved nearby within the Menteng Pulo cemetery.
Entong is called upon to dig up the body.
“It is his job to dig. We each have a duty,” explains Suroh, whose own position is caring for the graves, like Ali.
Entong alternates using his hands and the hoe to scoop out the earth. The burial cloth is laid on the ground beside the grave and he begins to place the unearthed chunks of bone on it. Two assistants crouch nearby to lay them out on the burial cloth. Standing above his son’s grave, Suwandi’s face is placid as he calmly inquires about the whereabouts of his son’s skull.
The wooden headstone reads, Rachmad H. bin Iwan Suwandi, etched black upon painted white wood. Slivers of the skeleton’s rib cage are taken out one by one. Entong continues to dig and finds a hipbone. Finally, he finds the skull. Suwandi places his hand over his mouth and lets out a small gasp. The family begins to pray. A sniff escapes Suwandi as he continues to look at Entong in the grave.
“His legs aren’t here yet,” Suwandi says.
Entong clears the mud from his hoe and continues digging.
The air is hushed and the smell of rain is heavy on the breeze. “We forgot to bring an umbrella,” Suwandi says to his wife, who nods agreement. Their 7-year old grandson, dressed in blue, has his hand on his knees and keeps his gaze intently on the open grave. The women look distressed.
When Ali comes over to help wrap the bones, Suwandi asks if the bundle is heavy. Ali says it isn’t. Three men wrap the bundle tightly and hand the bones to Suwandi. With steady steps on the slippery, rain-soaked earth, Suwandi carries his son to a prepared burial site, mouthing a silent prayer.
A little way up the road from where Rachmad was originally buried, a gaping hole six feet deep awaits. The small congregation stops, and Suwandi hands the bundle to a gravedigger as he jumps in the grave. The body is gently returned to him and the gravediggers tell him to open the bundle. “All of it,” says one as the other balls up chunks of soil with his hands. “It is to prop up the body so it does not overturn,” he explains.
Suwandi carefully tucks his son into his resting place and two men start to fill in the grave. An imam in a black velvet skullcap, propping himself up with a multicolored umbrella, asks for the name of the deceased and begins a low chant. Only the boy’s name, Rachmad, rings out as the imam crouches by the grave. All else is quiet save for the sound of hoes hitting the ground.
The mother opens a prayer book, her face partially hidden under her black jilbab as she prays along with the imam. Her grandson stands behind her, holding her arm.
Suwandi straightens his son’s old headstone and turns his palms up to the sky. The imam moves toward him and they pray side by side. The earth atop Rachmad’s new grave is choppy and uneven but Ali explains it will be tidied later. He takes out a clove cigarette, lights it and stands before this new grave he will also care for.
A warm wind blows. From a nearby mosque, the resonant call to prayers rings out, echoed softly by surrounding mosques.
Photo: After more than 30 years of interment, the remains of a man who died aged 49 make up a bundle about the size of an infant. (Yudhi Sukma Wijaya, JG)
