killed 202 people at nightclubs on Bali island on October 12, 2002. During his trial, Ghufron said he was ikan teri (small fry) and that U.S. President George W. Bush and his allies were the big fish who deserved punishment. Authorities blamed the attacks on Jemaah Islamiyah, a Southeast Asian terrorist network linked to al-Qaida.
Ghufron and the two other militants were executed in 2008. Their families said they believed they would be rewarded in heaven.
“Jumping louse” = An opportunist
Someone who bounces from one job or scheme to the next, like a louse that dances in locks of hair.
Mati kutu (dead louse) is a cornered, powerless person.
Kutu buku (book louse) is a bookworm, or nerd. The term is complimentary because book lice are smart and eager to learn. Some Indonesian literacy campaigners hoisted huge posters with a cartoon image of a bespectacled louse, smiling and reading a book.
Lice are a nuisance in rural Indonesia. Farmers sigh with exasperation when they find lice squirming in grain sacks, but take the discovery in stride. Villagers, mostly females, sit on front porches on a lazy afternoon and pluck lice from the heads of friends and relatives in full view of passers-by. Lice-laced hair doesn’t inspire revulsion. Villagers often crunch the lice in their teeth, and eat them. They like the mild, salty taste.
“Released from the crocodile’s mouth, enter the tiger’s mouth” = From the frying pan into the fire
The tiger is a symbol of pride and power in Indonesia. At one time, powerful people were believed to become tigers after death. The symbol of a division in the modern military is the white tiger.
In parts of Central Java, people who walked through jungles to get home once murmured eyang (grandfather or grandmother in Javanese) to any tigers lurking in the undergrowth. They believed the tigers would spare them if they addressed the creatures as respected family members.
Poaching and depletion of habitats slashed the tiger population. For decades, poachers defied conservation laws, hunting tigers for fur, bones, teeth, claws and whiskers. Middlemen sold the body parts across Asia as good luck charms and in traditional treatments for ailments such as arthritis. Some people covet the tiger penis as an aphrodisiac. Tigers disappeared from Bali and the crowded island of Java long ago. Park rangers on Sumatra protect a dwindling number of the big cats, but forests where they dwell are shrinking because developers clear land for palm oil plantations and other industries. Tigers sometimes pad out of the jungle and attack livestock and even villagers.
Crocodiles are better off than tigers. The Sumatran city of Medan has the biggest crocodile farm in Indonesia. But demand for skins is high, and some rearing farms depend on eggs and young crocodiles seized from the wild.
Ancient beliefs held that the crocodile was the ruler of the underworld.
East Timor, a former Indonesian territory, holds the crocodile in high regard. A legend describes how a huge crocodile transformed itself into Timor island: A boy rescued a crocodile that was parched and stranded on land. The grateful reptile escorted the boy around the world for years until it was time for the crocodile to die. It arched its back, and the ridges and scales on its great body formed the hills and contours of the island that became a home for the boy and his descendants.
Jose Alexandre Gusmao, East Timor’s first president and former guerrilla leader, wrote poetry in jungle hideouts and later in a Jakarta jail. One poem describes the legend of how the crocodile’s back formed the mountainous backbone of Timor. The ridge gave shelter to separatist rebels fighting the Indonesian military.
After independence from Indonesia, East Timor adopted two saltwater crocodiles as mascots for its new army. One of the beasts had belonged to Col. Tono Suratman, former commander of the Indonesian military in East Timor.
Lidah buaya (crocodile’s tongue) is the Indonesian name of aloe vera, the plant that yields a gel used in shampoo and cosmetic skin creams, and as a treatment for minor wounds and burns. The leaf of aloe vera is green and its serrated edges are reminiscent of the contours of a crocodile’s body.
There is often more than one theory about the origin of an Indonesian expression or place name. Oral tradition, a dearth of written records, the passage of centuries and a diverse mix of ethnic languages obscure the truth.
Mystery surrounds the spelling and etymology of the volcano Krakatoa, in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. In 1883, the volcano erupted, killing nearly 40,000 people, darkening the sky with ash and sending shock waves around the world. Many victims died in tsunamis generated by the explosion. In his book “Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded,” author Simon Winchester discusses the name:
There is an early and linguistically alluring report by a French Jesuit priest, Guy Tachard, suggesting that it was an onomatopoeia. Tachard passed the island eighty years after the Dutch cartographers, and wrote in his log that “we made many Tacks to double the island of Cacatoua, so-called because of the white Parrots that are upon that Isle, and which incessantly repeat the name.” It sounds improbable, not least because of the difficulty that any mariner might experience trying to hear the call of land-based birds from high on the windy deck of a passing ship.
Others subsequently thought that Krakatoa, of the more common local form Krakatau, derives essentially from one of three words, karta-karkata, karkataka or rakata, which are the Sanskrit and, according to some, the Old Javan words meaning “lobster” or “crab.” Then there is a Malay word, kelekatu, which means “flying white ant.” Since crabs and parrots belong on the island—or since they did, at least, until that dire August morning in 1883—any one of the two last lexical explanations seems reasonably acceptable. White ants only occur in the eastern part of the archipelago, rendering this theory rather less credible; though perhaps rather more credible than the notion, briefly popular in Batavia, that an Indian ship’s captain had asked a local boatman what name was given to the pointed mountain he could see, prompting the local to reply Kaga tau, meaning “I don’t know.”
“Land crocodile” = Playboy, womanizer.
One who treats women as expendable.
To older Indonesians, buaya darat is a thief, or scoundrel. Philandering was tricky in the old days, partly because young women rarely met men without chaperones. Families arranged marriages, and some betrothed couples set eyes on each other for the first time on their wedding day. Marriage among distant relatives was common.
Another term for womanizer is hidung belang (striped nose). A lover kisses her man on the nose, leaving a smear of incriminating lipstick.
An untrustworthy person is mulut buaya (crocodile mouth). He inflicts wounds with words, not teeth.
