On returning

I left Jakarta on a Tuesday in early June. It was the Islamic fasting month, Ramadan, and my final evening in the city I sat in my fourth-floor apartment listening to the call to prayer from the mosque around the corner. Our building was small and intimate. I likened it to Melrose Place since I was friends with all the tenants (had been even before I moved in). Flo, who lived on the second floor, came up bearing cookies her mom started baking for the holy month. “Maybe you’ve noticed that we started a factory,” she said laughting.

A few other friends dropped by to see me off. We ordered pizza and drank wine and I asked what each of them was most looking forward to in the next three months: travel, a new job, becoming a father. I hugged each one tightly before getting in the taxi and then I stared out the back window as the car drove down our narrow alley until it turned the corner. A day later I was in Arizona, going out for walks around my parent’s perfectly planned desert development when jet lag pulled me out of bed at 5am. Three days later I was dropped down in New Haven, trying to get my head around how it felt to be back in America.

Weird. Alienating. 

I lived in Indonesia for nearly eight years. It had become so normal, so familiar that home became Jakarta. Now I was looking for a new place to settle. Connecticut, New York, Arizona should all have felt comfortable. There were farmers markets and sidewalks. In the airport, when I landed, I could understand everything everyone around me was saying. But it felt overwhelming. 

Even a simple decision like choosing a sandwich made me anxious. Convenience stores stocked seven different varieties of peanut butter cups. The water that came out of the sink was potable. 

I missed the roar of motorbike engines, the ting-tinge, hoots and other calls from mobile food vendors. The silence on the streets at night felt deafening. 

I’ve decided to chronicle my journey across the U.S. as I learn what it means to be back again, as I explore an America that has changed a lot since I left and determine how much I have changed too. The lessons, I believe, might be lessons for us all.