EDWIN SETIADI

“The Stranger” by Albert Camus

This is a novel about a life lived by someone with a detached moral code and a difficulty to experience, identify, and express emotions.

It is written through the first-person vantage point of the main character, Meursault, who lives in a poor and violent neighbourhood in Algiers, Algeria, but who crucially marches on in his life without attaching meaning (and indeed, emotions) to anything.

And that is what makes his story interesting, considering that his life involves all the spectrum of emotions: romantic relationship, the death of his mother, a psychotic neighbour, a violent friend, and even a deathly encounter with a stranger that involves a murder, all of which he goes through without really a hint of grief, fear, joy, anger, remorse, disgust, sadness, etc.

The narrative itself is quite simple, but filled with so many philosophical interpretation and dilemma, with existentialism theme at its core. Because reading about how Meursault responds to the events of his surrounding can make us think about our place within society, and how meaningful or meaningless events can be if we detach all emotions from it.

It is quite the philosophical journey from a book of only 123 pages long, a book that made Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and, among many others, inspired The Cure to write the song “Killing an Arab.”

And upon further investigation, it is believed that the Meursault character is based on Camus’ real-life friend Galindo, who is an intelligent but odd person that exhibits the social and personal characteristic impairment of Asperger’s syndrome.

“The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped the World” by Vincent Bevins

The date was 18 May 1958. In the island of Maluku in Eastern part of Indonesia, there is an increasingly violent separatist movement that suspiciously uses weapons bore the mark of a manufacturer in Plymouth, Michigan. The rebellion is also occurring elsewhere like in the Western island of Sumatra, but it is in Maluku that the tension escalates into air bombings by mysterious fighter pilots, hitting Indonesian military, commercial shipping vessels, and even a crowded market.

But then, on this day, 18 May, the Indonesians managed to shoot down one of the planes, with a single person floated down on a parachute and eventually captured by the Indonesian soldiers. His name is Allen Lawrence Pope, from Miami, Florida. And he is a CIA agent.

This is an incredible account of one of the most turbulent periods in world politics, the post-World War 2 era that quickly transitioned into the Cold War period of the 1950s-1980s. Within this period of time the battle of ideology was in its full force, with US capitalism in one side and Soviet communism in the other, with a lot of “Third World countries” swing from one ideology to the other, often done through violence. This book is the clearest explanation about the method behind this violence, the one that the US first perfected in Jakarta in 1965.

Indonesia in the Sukarno era was a chaotic place. The young country was experiencing many teething problems that come after independence in 1945, which stemmed from 3 centuries worth of colonialism. And most crucially the country adopts a multiparty system that embraces all parts and classes of the society, including Partai Komunis Indonesia (the Indonesian Communist Party or PKI for short).

I must admit, by just reading its name PKI gives me chills, due to a constant propaganda since elementary school. But unlike the common stigma of atheism and barbarism, the book shows that PKI actually consists of religious people who sees Muslim unity as a revolutionary and anti-colonial force. As the author Vincent Bevins remarks, “[t]here were committed Muslim Communists who wanted to create an egalitarian community—inspired to varying degrees both by Marx and the Koran—but felt that foreign infidels were holding them back. And for almost everyone in the country, “socialism” by definition implied opposition to foreign domination and support for an independent Indonesia.“

And under the leadership of D. N. Aidit, the PKI transformed from a rebel party (with infamous uprising incident in Madiun in 1948) into a “mass-based, legal, ideologically flexible movement that rejected the armed struggle, frequently ignored Moscow’s directions, stuck close to Sukarno, and embraced electoral politics.” They also distance themselves from the way the Chinese communist party do thing after the Sino-Soviet split, and instead they form an anti-feudal “united national front” with the local bourgeoisie and wont implement socialism “until the end of century.” In other words, there’s arguably little communist DNA left in this 3rd largest communist party in the World after Soviet and China.

Moreover, in their day-to-day life the PKI increasingly added active members or cadres who took a pledge to uphold party ethics. It also ran a number of affiliated organizations such as BTI (mass civilian participation), SOBSI (union worker member that includes much of the country’s working class), LEKRA (the cultural organization that provides concerts, plays, dances, and comedy shows in small towns), and Gerwani (the women’s movement group).

Indeed, they’re anti-imperialists first and foremost, with party members growing their movement by legally winning democratic elections and winning the hearts and minds of the people though their organizational works. Which is exactly what scared Washington.

But PKI was not the only concern for them. The Indonesian charismatic leader Sukarno was a force to be reckoned with, who attempted to place Indonesia high up in the ranks of powerful countries. And instead of aligning Indonesia with US imperialism he instigated the Asian-African Conference in Bandung in 18-24 April 1955, to solidify the idea of the Third World. As Bevins explains, “[t]his remarkable gathering brought the peoples of the colonized world into a movement, one that was opposed to European imperialism and independent from the power of the US and the Soviet Union.” And as you may have guessed, this did not bode well with Washington.

But things are never straight forward in politics, and this is where the strength of the book lies. It perfectly captures all the intricate detail about the geopolitics dealings without getting too complicated. And it shows that Indonesia did still got offered economic and military aid from the Soviet Union, but in alignment with its neutral position in the Cold War, Indonesia said it wouldn’t take any more than the Americans offered. That is, until 1958 when Allen Pope and other CIA operatives burned Indonesians alive and open the lid to their real intention, that Indonesia finally took the Soviet aid and became a stronger ally for them.

Indeed, Washington’s intention to interfere in Indonesian domestic matters was crystal clear. In total, the US government spent $10 million to back a revolution in Indonesia, with CIA pilots such as Allen Pope took off from Singapore (an emerging Cold War ally), with the goal of “destroying the government of Indonesia or breaking the country into little pieces.” The US also tried to infiltrate the Indonesian political scenes by funding a million dollars to Masjumi, an Islamic conservative party to the right of Sukarno. However, Sukarno and his supporters did well in the 1955 election, and worse for the US, the PKI (who are in the left of Sukarno) came in 4th place with 17% of the votes (their best performance to date). And so, Washington decided to take a different approach.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Indonesia experienced a sudden hyper inflation, which was initiated by Indonesia’s compliance to IMF’s loan conditions in order to secure lending from them. As Bevins remarks, “[t]he IMF demanded what amounted to a structural adjustment program in Indonesia, which dictated spending cuts, an increase in the production of raw materials for export, currency devaluation, monetary tightening, and an end to government subsidies. Sukarno’s ministers went along with the IMF’s demands, and they had a swift, severe, and widespread impact on the population, which saw prices double, triple, or even quintuple overnight.”

And perhaps most significantly, the inflation was then exacerbated due to a sabotage by a certain figure named Suharto. As Bevins explains, “[a]ccording to Subandrio, his former foreign minister, Suharto intentionally engineered hyperinflation by working with businessmen to restrict the supply of basic goods like rice, sugar, and cooking oil. Suharto encouraged anticommunist student groups, often drawn from the same schools Benny had attended just years earlier, to protest those high prices. The US government was intentionally destabilizing the economy.”

When Sukarno figured out the root-cause of the hyperinflation, it prompted him to respond with his famous line of “go to hell with your [IMF] aid!” The many aids soon indeed dried up from the US, except their aid to Indonesian military that would become handy later on. Things got worse after the friendly US Ambassador to Indonesia, Howard Jones, was replaced and especially when US president John F. Kennedy (who was also friendly with Sukarno) was assassinated in November 1963 and his replacement Lyndon Johnson opted out from reconciliatory approach under the JFK administration.

It was within this hostile environment that the 30 September 1965 incident occurred in Jakarta. By then the three forces in the country were the PKI on the left (loosely influenced by the Soviet and China), nationalistic Sukarno in the middle, and the military and Muslim groups on the right (funded by the US), with the president would “use his personal influence to play rivals against each other, and maintain a delicate balance.” The PKI in particular now had 3 million card-carrying members, with the organizations affiliated with the party had at least 20 million members. At that point, the population of Indonesia was roughly 100 million (including children) therefore nearly a third of the country’s adult register voters were PKI affiliates. A grave concern for Washington.

But they had a plan, a big scenario, where “both the American and British governments had believed, and discussed often, that the ideal situation would be a “premature PKI coup” that could provoke an Army response. It’s possible that some version of this plan had been worked on secretly, under the cover of Kennedy’s civic action program, since 1962.” But the problem was, under D. N. Aidit, the PKI took the non-violent path, despite being advised by Mao Zedong to take up arm struggles when Sukarno fell ill in August 1965, in a fear of a right-wing attack towards the left if Sukarno dies. But as CIA themselves noted earlier in May 1965, the PKI had “only limited potential for armed insurgency and would almost certainly not wish to provoke the military into open opposition.” And thus provoking the PKI to stage a coup was out of the question.

So the alternative would be a CIA-funded military coup, since they’re already in Washington’s payroll anyway. But confusingly, Washington also told Indonesian top commander General Nasution that “he should wait patiently; even if Sukarno dies [head of the Armed Forces, General Nasution] should be flexible rather than start a coup. He accepted the suggestion from the Americans.” But still, as 1965 went on, “rumors that right wing generals were conspiring with the CIA or some foreign power began to spread like wildfire in Jakarta.”

And their suspicions intensified when Sukarno and many in the Indonesian government found out who was coming to Jakarta to replace US Ambassador Howard Jones. As Bevins remarks, “[n]ewly minted Ambassador Marshall Green, they learned, had been in Seoul when Park Chung Hee took power in a military coup that destroyed the short-lived parliamentary Second Republic.” And that suspicions did not take long to be proven right.

Until this day, what happened on 30 September 1965 remains blurry due to the unavailability of the hard evidence (still kept in secret), but to its credit this book made a very clear distinction between facts and speculations. And what’s factually accurate is as follows: “At some point, a group of midlevel Army officers formed a group and decided to call it the Gerakan 30 September (“G30S” or “September 30th Movement”) and came up with a plan.”

The leaders of the movement were Lieutenant Colonel Untung and Colonel Abdul Latief, and they genuinely believed that the military generals were about to conspire against Sukarno and stage a coup. Being Sukarno loyalists, they would take actions to prevent this from happening. How do they come up with that conclusion, what information were being fed to them, and by who? It’s still a well-guarded secret until today, and naturally not mentioned in the book.

But what did happen was these low ranking officers organized 7 teams that consist of soldiers already under their official military command. Each one of them would head to the homes of 7 of the highest-ranking officers in the Armed forces, arrest them, and bring them back to the Halim Air Force Base where they met before the operation.

But the plot went offrail real quick when 6 of the teams brought back their targets, allegedly tortured them, and assassinated them. The victims include the commander of the Army Lieutenant General Achmad Yani, Lieutenant General MT Haryono, Lieutenant General S. Parman, Mayor General DI Panjaitan, Mayor General Sutoyo Siswomiharjo, Lieutenant General Suprapto, but the most important target General Nasution escaped by jumping over the back wall of his house and hid in the home of his friend, the Iraqi ambassador. And instead, the team accidentally killed Nasution’s 5-year old daughter and brought back his military assistant Captain Pierre Tendean and assassinate him instead.

Another General that escaped the slaughter, rather conveniently, was Mayor General Suharto. The only General spared right from the start. He was the person who Washington used to exacerbates the hyperinflation, the person who Washington supported and funded after the coup, but notably there’s no official public evidence ever published that shows he’s directly involved in the coup (with “published” is the key word here).

However, if CIA didn’t orchestrate the coup, they surely made the most of it by grabbing power after the incident. As explained by Bevins, “[s]oon after the initial confusion, the US government assisted Suharto in the crucial early phase of spreading propaganda and establishing his anticommunist narrative. Washington quickly and covertly supplied vital mobile communications equipment to the military, a now-declassified October 14 cable indicates. This was also a tacit admission, very early, that the US government recognized the Army, not Sukarno, as the true leader of the country, even though Sukarno was still legally the president.” Hence, the many strong assumptions and speculations that the coup was backed by the CIA, due to the activities it conducted around the coup, although this book stopped short on labeling it as a CIA orchestrated coup.

And what was the US-assisted propaganda that Suharto was spreading? That it was not the conduct of a faction of the military that believed the Generals were about to betray Sukarno in a coup (something that Lieutenant Colonel Untung until his last dying breath swore that it is what he was doing, to save Sukarno and the country), but instead it was the PKI that staged the kidnapping, torturing, and killing of the generals (which fits with the ideal situation discussed by the US and Britain).

Subsequently, due to the false smear campaign towards PKI, there were a tsunami of rage and revenge towards the PKI and a mass slaughter then occurred for its members (most notably conducted by the youth faction of Nahdlatul Ulama – a right wing Muslim group). And astonishingly, it wasn’t only the US government officials who provided a kill lists to the Army. But “managers of US-owned plantations furnished them with the names of “troublesome” communists and union organizers, who were then murdered.” They also raided the houses of the Chinese embassy personnel.

In total, it is estimated that between 500,000 to 1,000,000 people were slaughtered, and 1,000,000 more were herded into concentration camps, which consist of Sukarno supporters and PKI members (including its affiliate organizations). And for the rest who got away? They mostly went underground and stayed silence. As Bevins remarks, “[t]heir silence was the point of the violence. The Armed Forces did not oversee the extermination of every single communist, alleged communist, and potential communist sympathizer in the country. That would have been nearly impossible, because around a quarter of the country was affiliated somehow with the PKI. Once the killings took hold, it became incredibly hard to find anyone who would admit to any association with the PKI.”

Bevins then added, “[e]very part of the story the Indonesian Army told is a lie. No Gerwani women participated in any killings on October 1. More than three decades later, Benedict Anderson was able to prove not only that the account of the torture of the generals was false, but that Suharto knew it was all false in early October. He himself ordered an autopsy that showed all the men were shot except one, who may have been stabbed with a bayonet in a fight at his home. But by 1987, when Anderson’s proof was published, not much of that discovery mattered anymore. The story of a demonic communist plot to take over the country by mutilating good, God-fearing military men in the dark of night had become something like part of the national religion under the Suharto dictatorship.”

Moreover, US officials made it very clear to the military that direct assistance could resume “if the PKI were destroyed, Sukarno was removed, and attacks on US investments halted. Aid flows were also conditional on Indonesia’s willingness to adopt IMF- and US-approved economic plans.”

And that’s exactly what Suharto did. “In his first acts [after taking over power from Sukarno], he officially banned what was left of the Communist Party, then arrested much of Sukarno’s cabinet, including Subandrio. The United States immediately opened the economic floodgates. The stranglehold on the economy was loosened, and US firms began exploring opportunities for profit. Within days of the transfer of power, representatives from the US mining company Freeport were in the jungles of West New Guinea, and quickly found a mountain filled with valuable minerals. Ertsberg, as it is now called, is the largest gold mine on the planet.”

Bevins then continues, “[i]n 1967, the first year of Suharto’s fully consolidated rule, General Electric, American Express, Caterpillar, and Goodyear Tire all came to explore the new opportunities available to them in Indonesia. Star-Kist foods arrived to see about fishing in Indonesian waters, and of course, defense contractors Raytheon and Lockheed popped over, too.” Moreover, they also set up a conference in Geneva titled “To Aid in the Rebuilding of a Nation”, and it was a huge success. “Under Secretary of State George Ball was there. New Foreign Minister Adam Malik, a longtime Washington favorite in Indonesia, gave a speech emphasizing the importance of the military as “the only credible political power in Indonesia.” And David Rockefeller made some very encouraging final remarks: “I have talked with a good many people over the course of the last couple days and I think I have found universal enthusiasm.”

Indonesia was back in business.

The sheer success of the coup (or taking advantage of the incident) inspired the US to implement the “Jakarta Method” into 22 more countries, most notably in Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, and Cambodia, which are covered extensively in the book.

The method has very specific objectives similar to what they did in Indonesia: to kill off the spread of communism, even those built through a democracy, as well as practically destroying any trace of the Third World Movement of non-alliance. And instead, the US actions in 1950s-1980s were to make the world submissive to its control, through IMF loan and its neo-liberalist conditions of austerity, liberalization and privatization, which open up “profitable markets” for corporations.

All in all, the book is a carefully written account of one of the darkest periods (if not THE darkest period) of Indonesian history, written based on “declassified information, the consensus formed by the most knowledgeable historians, and overwhelming first-person testimony.” And for the latter part, Bevins “visited twelve countries and interviewed over one hundred people, in Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Indonesian. [He also] pored through the archives in the same number of languages, spoke to historians around the world, and did work with research assistants in five countries.”

As a result, Bevins combined the explanation of the evidence-based context with a brilliant story telling using the vantage points of previously-unknown ordinary citizens like Sakono, Zain, Francisca, Ing Giok, Carmen, Agung, Benny, Sumiyati, Magdalena, Winarso, and many more people who represent many different demographic classes in Sukarno’s Indonesia, Guatemala, Brazil, etc.

The book also provides further background context for these individuals in chapter 11, which culminated nicely in chapter 12 where it shows where they are now. Not all of them have a happy ending, however, and the majority of them are now living in exile, such as the scores of people studying abroad sent by Sukarno and unable to come back home after the coup because they were forced to sign a form declaring allegiance to Suharto by their embassy, and those who refused to do so got their passport confiscated (thus making them stateless).

And for anyone wondering about the legality of the coup, Bevins reported that “[i]n addition to the crime of extermination, an International People’s Tribunal assembled later in the Netherlands found the Indonesian military guilty of a number of crimes against humanity, including torture, unjustified and long-term detainment in cruel conditions, forced labor amounting to enslavement, and systematic sexual violence. The judges found that all this was carried out for political purposes—to destroy the Communist Party and then “prop up a violent, dictatorial regime”—with the assistance of the United States, the UK, and Australia.”

The statement couldn’t be any clearer than this. But somehow, the verdict was hardly heard in Indonesia, if any. And instead, the narratives in Indonesian textbooks and media are still those that stigmatizing PKI, where being a communist is still the gravest and most taboo thing to be, and the PKI propaganda museum still exists today and hasn’t changed one single false narrative even 26 years since Suharto stepped down in 1998. I should know, because I visited it last month. As they say, they may changed the clothes but the regime stays the same.

“Hands of Time: A Watchmaker History of Time” by Rebecca Struthers

This is a well-rounded book about time keeping, written by a professional watchmaker who just happens to have a PhD in Horology. An expert in many sense of the word.

The book is mainly a history of watches, but it is so much more than just focusing on the timepieces. And instead, the book also provides an impressive range of world history for the context of the development of timepiece technology, from primitive sundial, to water clock, sand clock, pocket watch, to the many first wrist watches, the complicated perpetual calendar timepieces, to the rise of Quartz and digital watches, and so much more in between.

This is also a story about our relationship with time, how we utilize time very differently in the past, how we record time in the pre-GMT era, about quirks such as the human alarm job (the knocker-uppers) in the medieval era.

But ultimately this is a watchmaker’s notes, that goes into intricate details about all the components that make a watch, the trial and errors of using many different materials, the revolutionary breakthroughs that made watchmaking smaller and lighter and stronger, and most incredibly in the last chapter it provides a guide to repair a mechanical watch from start to finish.

Along the way, in between the amusing stories, we get abundance of facts around Horology, such as why we use “clockwise” movement, where the word “clock” comes from, the fact that the small pocket in the right pocket of a jeans was intended for a place to put our pocket watch, and many personal stories about a timepiece and its historical figure owner such as my favourite (if not tragic) story of Queen Mary of Scots.

And of course, with this book being a history book of watchmaking, we get to learn about the earliest watchmakers in history, the development of fake watches and forgeries, and plenty of stories of horology heroes such as Abraham-Louis Breguet, Hans Wilsdorf and Alfred Davis the founders of Rolex, or even the author’s personal tutor Paul Thurlby who was a watchmaker for Omega.

All in all, it is quite simply a complete book on everything we need to know about timepieces and our relationship with time. A delightful read from the beginning to the end.

“Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck

This is a classic story of a small genius and his giant-fool friend, hustling and bustling, trying to survive in the harsh environment of the 1930s Great Depression.

You see, George Milton (the intelligent but uneducated small man) and Lennie Small (the gentle giant) have a dream of one day settling down on their own piece of land, and they both try to accomplish this by travelling together around California in search of job opportunities.

But a lot of obstacles come in their way during the journey, like the bad people they encounter, the misunderstood crowds, or the many small animals that Lenny accidentally kill by stroking too hard. Will they succeed in realizing their dream?

It is an old tale about humans and their many emotions and tricks during a bleak period of time, complete with character developments that paint a perfect picture of life during the era of economic hardship. An instant classic right from the start.

“The Odyssey of Ibn Battuta: Uncommon Tales of a Medieval Adventurer” by David Waines

This is a secondary-account book about the travels of Ibn Battuta, an odyssey from his home country Morocco, to North Africa, the Middle East, East Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, and back home through the Iberian Peninsula and West Africa, which span in the period between 1325 and 1354.

The book is written by David Waines, an Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies at Lancaster University, who selects some of the best passages from Battuta’s own travel journal, organize them under several different topics, and add further context and commentary along the way.

This is where the book fell short, however, as the single narration of the epic 29 years journey is re-organized and broken down into 5 categories, which kill off the flow of the story and turn the daring adventure into a somewhat academic discussion.

The 5 categories are: 1. Critics about the validity of the travel tale (a buzz kill right from the start) 2. The summary of the journey, which only describe things in generic way and leave out the interesting details such as the human interactions 3. Specific chapter on food and hospitality 4. A chapter focusing on sacred places, saints, miracles, and marvels 5. Tales of the “other”, which leave out some of the most interesting parts at the very back of the book.

Which is a shame. Because Ibn Battuta’s story is a tale of weird encounters with the strange and sacred, which shows us a rare glimpse of the world in the 14th century not through the point of view of the kings and sultans, not through the priests and imams, but through an ordinary traveler’s eyes. Hence, the number one appeal of his story is the epic journey in a form of medieval story-telling, which the book purposely breaks off.

It was also supposed to show all the details about food, dress code, hospitality, sexual customs, various employments and even his many marriages throughout the journey. And all mashed up chaotically together into one big narrative painted vividly alongside the pirates and the slaves, the cruelty and diseases, and the encounters with many different religions.

Having said that, in hindsight the book actually provides all of these information but the 5 chapters keep on overlapping each other. And in a non-linear way the book keeps on jumping from one place to another depending on the topics being discussed, so much so that I needed to constantly double check the actual route taken by Battuta.

Therefore it is perhaps best to read this book as a complementary note for the real travel account written by other books or the original Rihla by Battuta himself. With all the commentaries, further contexts, and fact-checking from this book can indeed be a great additional information for the epic story.

“Secrets of Divine Love: A Spiritual Journey Into the Heart of Islam” by A. Helwa

This is a romantically-written book about our transcendent relationship with God.

The book strips down all the elements that usually construct a religion – the rules, the customs and traditions – and focuses only on our direct spirituality, supplemented by the verses of the Qur’an that are interpreted within the appropriate contexts.

The book also reflects the love-based spiritual journey of the author, A. Helwa, and her re-embrace of Islam, which gives a personal twist to it. But that personal twist is also arguably the down side, as Helwa specifically over-quoting some of the icons that understandably moved her, with Rumi and Imam Ali in particular taking the biggest load. And she fails to provide a wider range of wisdom from the Wives or Companions of the Prophet (PBUH) or any other Muslim scholars throughout the centuries to give more substance to her points.

It can also become repetitive at times, with the narrative does not really have a smooth flow and instead looks more like Instagrammable sentences put together into a paragraph, which collectively become a chapter. Especially for the earlier chapters 1-5. I mean, if we open the book right from the middle we won’t get lost too much in the narrative due to the stand-alone nature of the many sentences. But I guess that’s also the appeal of the book, that we can open it daily and find stand out and meaningful sentences to read, just like the popular blog @quranquotesdaily (Instagram) that she curates.

Moreover, the book is not a theology book nor a history book, with Helwa herself never claimed to be a religious scholar, which makes it “feel” light in comparison with books written by the likes of Karen Armstrong or Reza Aslan. Any explanation about Islam is mostly on the surface level, and quite a lot of what’s written in the book are based on a generally accepted assumptions (even cliches) rather than a careful theological approach to ensure a clear line between facts and speculations.

But to be fair, Helwa did remark that “This book will not delve into the history and evolution of Islamic theology, but it does seek to create a bridge—not just between Islam and other faiths through universal spiritual truths, but also between various Muslims who practice differently from one another.”

And so, analogically speaking, the book is more of a Yoga retreat in Bali rather than a theological discussion by scholars about the Vedas. At some parts of the book it even have word of encouragements that look like they belong more in a seminar with a motivational guru, or in a self-help book in the style of “The Secret” complete with lessons about gratitude journal and positive affirmation chants, with an Islamic twist to it. So it’s dzikir and not chanting, ruku and not forward bending pose in yoga, Zakat and not charity, etc.

Moreover, Helwa further underlines the target audience for the book when she commented “Secrets of Divine Love was written for the longing heart, for the one who is searching for something they have not been able to find. For the one who sometimes spirals into hopelessness and cannot help but feel too imperfect for a perfect God to love. This book is for the one who is at the edge of their faith, who has experienced religion as a harsh winter instead of the life-bearing spring it was sent to be by God.”

In short, the book is the reflection of the author’s spiritual journey and her experience in personal development, which can be positively contagious and justifies the much hype over it, but with its quality of knowledge constantly swings from 3 stars to 5 stars (and overall settles in about 3.4). And I can see how it can relate well with the more religious people, it might also be an epiphany for some skeptics or newbies, but it would probably look like a spiritual mumbo jumbo for others.

“Islam yang Disalahpahami: Menepis Prasangka, Mengikis Kekeliruan” by M. Quraish Shihab

This is the 3rd book of an enlightening series about Islam, written by one of Indonesia’s most beloved Islamic teachers and scholars, M. Quraish Shihab.

In this book Ustadz Shihab addresses some of the most misunderstood parts of Islam, such as the misconception that Islam spread with violence, on slavery, adultery, murder, the Jizyah (tax) imposed towards non-Muslims during the empire days, or one of the most criticised ones especially in Wahhabi strongholds: the punishment for stealing (including the chopping off of hands).

The book also addresses Islam’s true point of views – through Qur’an verses and Hadiths – that are often misinterpreted or even violated by Muslims, such as on women equality with men, on inheritance law, or on dealing with Murtad (deserted of Islam and convert to other religion) and the false stigma that they should be killed.

It also answers some of the most difficult controversies, such as the fact that the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) practiced polygamy and married a 9-year-old Aisha, where Ustadz Shihab addressed them all using the appropriate historical contexts. That during the 7th century polygamy was the norm but the Prophet (PBUH) practiced monogamy for 25 years before Siti Khadijah passed away, and he began to take more wives to help old widows and forged an alliance with many different tribes, as well as marrying a 9 year old Aisha whom never consummate their marriage until she was 12, the common age for marriage in those days (Virgin Mary was also 12 when she gave birth to Jesus).

All in all, the book is undoubtedly an excellent conclusion to a brilliant series on understanding Islam, with the first book provides a compact introduction about Islam, the second book dwells into Islam in the context of socio-political issues, and this one addresses the misconceptions of Islam. I can’t recommend them enough.

“A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam” by Karen Armstrong

This is not an easy book to read nor to review, due to the imense amount of information presented. And also, not everyone is ready to read this book. Heck, it took me 14 years since the day I purchased the book to finally read it.

The book was the one that introduced me to Karen Armstrong 17 years ago, before I decided to purchase it 3 years later but only to be kept in the pile of unread books ever since. Sure, I’ve read 7 of her other books since then, I’ve watched the documentary with the same name “A History of God”, I’ve even read the little summary book of it while reading bits and pieces from random chapters in the book, but I’ve never actually read it cover to cover.

But I guess as they say the teacher will appear once the student is ready. Now, in the yellowing pages of the book lie some of the most fascinating sentences that have so far summarised my reading journey in religious matters, some 61 books on various religions later. And it fits, as without my prior knowledge from the books I’ve read in the past decade or so I wouldn’t be able to fully comprehend this book, accept its thesis, or appreciate it. Funny how one of the earliest books I’ve bought on religion turns out to be the one that can sum it all.

The main thesis of the book is to show how throughout history the concept of God has been reshaped or reconstituted according to the new or changing cultural contexts, and that human necessity for the divine is what made God always exist and never really abandoned. The premise of religion to support this concept has also been one of the main tools (if not THE main tool) to implement social control in any society, whether for the good or for the bad, and that the exploitation of religion or justification using it for any bad deed are nothing new and have been going on since way back in the BCE era.

However, as Ms. Armstrong made it very clear, “this book will not be a history of the ineffable reality of God itself, which is beyond time and change, but a history of the way men and women have perceived him from Abraham to the present day.” In other words, the book is not a history about our Creator – which is beyond our ability as merely spec of dusts living among 200 trillion galaxies – but it is rather a history about how us humans interpret Him and create a reflection of Him, in us.

And it focuses on the three Abrahamic religions that have monotheism at its core: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Hence the title of the book, which is not a history of many gods, not a history of multiple deities, but a history of God. One God. Although as we can see in the book human interpretation has created many different versions of one God: The philosopher God (since the days of Plato to scholars such as Ibn Rusd and Thomas Aquinas), the mystic God (best reflected through Sufi and Kabbalah), a God for reformers (the many branches of Protestantism), and the concept of God for scientists and even atheists.

As in the case of any Karen Armstrong books, this book is so very dense with important information and stories, in an impressive mix of tales of religion and their many historical contexts. The gems of the book are definitely the many behind-the-scene historical events, from the schism, to the theological debates between many factions, or even escalation to war among them, with the winners got to shape their respective religions into the arguably more simplified version today.

Here are some of the most notable lines from the book, quoted verbatim:

• The more I learned about the history of religion, the more my earlier misgivings were justified. The doctrines that I had accepted without question as a child were indeed man-made, constructed over a long period of time.
• My study of the history of religion has revealed that human beings are spiritual animals. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo Sapiens is also Homo Religiosus.
• Like any other human activity, religion can be abused but it seems to have been something that we have always done. It was not tacked on to a primordially secular nature by manipulative kings and priests but was natural to humanity.
• Our current secularism is an entirely new experiment, unprecedented in human history. We have yet to see how it will work.
• Instead of waiting for God to descent from on high, I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself.
• A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that God did not really exist – and yet that ‘he’ was the most important reality in the world.
• When one conception of God has ceased to have meaning or relevance, it has been quietly discarded and replaced by a new theology.
• This was, of course, a most unfair and reductive description of Canaanite religion. The people of Canaan and Babylon had never believed that their effigies of the gods were themselves divine; they had never bowed down to worship a statue tout court. The effigy had been a symbol of divinity. Like their myths about the unimaginable primordial events, it had been devised to direct the attention of the worshipper beyond itself. The statue of Marduk in the Temple of Esagila and the standing stones of Asherah in Canaan had never been seen as identical with the gods but had been a focus that had helped people to concentrate on the transcendent element of human life.
• In the beginning, human beings created a God who was the First Cause of all things and Ruler of heaven and earth. He was not represented by images and had no temple or priests in his service. He was too exalted for an inadequate human cult. Gradually he faded from the consciousness of his people. He had become so remote that they decided that they did not want him any more. Eventually he was said to have disappeared. That, at least, is one theory, popularised by Father Wilhelm Schmidt in The Origin of the Idea of God, first published in 1912.
• Schmidt suggested that there had been a primitive monotheism before men and women had started to worship a number of gods. Originally they had acknowledged only one Supreme Deity, who had created the world and governed human affairs from afar. Belief in such as High God (sometimes called the Sky God, since he is associated with the heavens) is still a feature of the religious life in many indigenous African tribes.
• Atheism has often been a transitional state: thus Jews, Christians and Muslims were all called ‘atheists’ by their pagan contemporaries because they had adopted a revolutionary notion of divinity and transcendence. Is modern atheism a similar denial of a ‘God’ which is no longer adequate to the problems of our time?
• All religion must begin with some anthropomorphism. A deity which is utterly remote from humanity, such as Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, cannot inspire a spiritual quest.
• Nobody expected religion to be a challenge or to provide an answer to the meaning of life. People turned to philosophy for that kind of enlightenment. In the Roman empire of late antiquity, people worshipped the gods to ask for help during a crisis, to secure a divine blessing for the state and to experience a healing sense of continuity with the past. Religion was a matter of cult and ritual rather than ideas; it was based on emotion not on ideology or consciously adopted theory.
• Today we have become so familiar with the intolerance that has unfortunately been a characteristic of monotheism, that we may not appreciate that this hostility towards other gods was a new religious attitude.
• During the first century, Christians continued to think about God and pray to him like Jews; they argued like Rabbis and their churches were similar to the synagogues. There were some acrimonious disputes in the eighties with the Jews when Christians were formally ejected from the synagogues because they refuse to observe the Torah. We have seen that Judaism had attracted many converts in the early decades of the first century but after 70, when Jews were in trouble with the Roman empire, their position declined. The defection of the Godfearers to Christianity made Jews suspicious of converts and they were no longer ancious to proselytise. Pagans who would formerly have been attracted to Judaism now turned to Christianity but these tended to be slaves and members of the lower classes. It was not until the end of the second century that highly-educated pagans became Christians and were able to explain the new religion to a suspicious pagan world.
• In the Roman Empire, Christianity was first seen as a branch of Judaism but when Christians made it clear that they were no longer members of the synagogue, they were regarded with contempt as a religio of fanatics who had committed the cardinal sin of impiety by breaking with the parent faith.
• If the Logos himself were a vulnerable creature, he would not be able to save mankind from extinction. The Logos had been made flesh to give us life. He had descended into the mortal world of death and corruption in order to give us a share of God’s impassibility and immortality. But this salvation would have been impossible if the Logos himself had been a frail crea-ture, who could himself lapse back into nothingness. Only he who had created the world could save it and that meant that Christ, the Logos made flesh, must be of the same nature as the Father. As Athanasius said, the Word became man in order that we could become divine.
• When the bishops gathered at Nicaea on 20 May 325 to resolve the crisis, very few would have shared Athanasius’s view of Christ. Most held a position midway between Athanasius and Arius. Nevertheless, Athanasius managed to impose his theology on the delegates and, with the Emperor breathing down their necks, only Arius and two of his brave companions refused to sign his Creed. This made creation ex nihilo an official Christian doctrine for the first time, insisting that Christ was no mere creature or aeon. The Creator and Redeemer were one.
• But Christians were still confused: if there was only one God, how could the Logos also be divine? Eventually three outstanding theologians of Cappadocia in eastern Turkey came up with a solution that satisfied the Eastern orthodox church. They were Basil, Bishop of Caesarea (329-79), his younger brother Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (335-95) and friend Gregory of Nazianzus (329-91). The Cappadocians, as they are called, were all deeply spiritual men. They thoroughly enjoyed speculation and philosophy but were convinced that religious experience alone could provide the key to the problem of God. Trained in Greek philo-sophy, they were all aware of a crucial distinction between the factual content of truth and its more elusive aspects. The early Greek rationalists had drawn attention to this: Plato had contrasted philosophy (which was expressed in terms of reason and was thus capable of proof) with the equally important teaching handed down by means of mythology, which eluded scientific demonstration. We have seen that Aristotle had made a similar distinction when he had noted that people attended the mystery religions not to learn (mathein) anything but to experience (pathein) something.
• Behind the liturgical symbols and the lucid teachings of Jesus, there was a secret dogma which represented a more developed understanding of the faith. A distinction between esoteric and exoteric truth will be extremely important in the history of God. It was not to be confined to Greek Christians but Jews and Muslims would also develop an esoteric tradition. The idea of a ‘secret’ doctrine was not to shut people out. Basil was not talking about an early form of Freemasonry. He was simply calling attention to the fact that not all religious truth was capable of being expressed and defined clearly and logically. Some religious insights had an inner resonance that could only be apprehended by each individual in his own time during what Plato had called theoria, contemplation. Since all religion was directed towards an ineffable reality that lay beyond normal concepts and categories, speech was limiting and confusing. If they did not ‘see’ these truths with the eye of the spirit, people who were not yet very experienced could get quite the wrong idea. Besides their literal meaning, therefore, the scriptures also had a spiritual significance which it was not always possible to articulate.
• In the Koran an ‘unbeliever’ (karir bi na’mat al-Lah) is not an atheist in our sense of the word, somebody who does not believe in God, but one who is ungrateful to him, who can see quite clearly what is owning to God but refuses to honour him in a spirit of perverse ingratitude.
• On addressing Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses: Three of the Arabian deities were particularly dear to the Arabs of the Hijaz: al-Lat (whose name simply meant ‘the goddess’) and al-Uzza (the Mighty One), who had shrines at Taif and Nakhlah respectively, to the south-east of Mecca, and Manat, the Fateful One, who had her shrine at Qudayd on the Red Sea coast. These deities were not fully personalised like Juno or Pallas Athene. They were often called the banat al-dahr, the Daughters of God, but this does not necessarily imply a fully-developed pantheon. The Arabs used such kinship terms to denote an abstract relationship: thus banat al-dahr (literally, ‘daughters of fate’) simply meant misfortunes or vicissitudes.
• The Koran does not condemn other religious traditions as false or incomplete but shows each new prophet as confirming and continuing the insights of his predecessors. The Koran teaches that God had sent messengers to every people on the face of the earth: Islamic tradition says that there had been 124,000 such prophets, a symbolic number suggesting infinitude.
• During the ninth century, the Arabs came into contact with Greek science and philosophy and the result was a cultural florescence which, in European terms, can be seen as a cross between the Renaissance and the enlightenment… Arab Muslims now studied astronomy, alchemy, medicine and mathematics with such success that, during the ninth and tenth centuries, more scientific discoveries had been achieved in the Abbasid empire than in any previous period of history. A new type of Muslim emerged, dedicated to the ideal that he called falsafah.
• The ulema had always been suspicious of Falsafah and its fundamentally different God but Ibn Rushd had managed to unite Aristotle with a more traditional Islamic piety. He was convinced that there was no contradiction whatsoever between religion and rationalism. Both expressed the same truth in different ways; both looked towards the same God. Not everybody was capable of philosophical thought, however, so Falsafah was only for an intellectual elite. It would confuse the masses and lead them into an error that imperilled their eternal salvation. Hence the importance of the esoteric tradition, which kept these dangerous doctrines from those unfitted to receive them.
• As the Koran had taught, all truth came from God and should be sought wherever it could be found. It could be found in paganism and Zoroastrianism as well as in the monotheism tradition.
• Unlike dogmatic religion, which lends itself to sectarian disputes, mysticism often claims that there are as many roads to God as people. Sufism in particular would evolve an outstanding appreciation of the faith of others.
• Ibn al-Arabi developed the positive attitude towards other religions which could be found in Koran and took it to a new extreme of tolerance… The man of God was equally at home in synagogue, temple, church, and mosque, since all provided a valid apprehension of God.
• The situation of the Jews in the Islamic empire, where there was no anti-Semitic persecution, was far happier and they had no need of this Ashkenazi pietism. They were evolving a new type of Judaism, however, as a response to Muslim developments. Just as the Jewish Faylasufs had attempted to explain the God of the Bible philosophically, other Jews tried to give their God a mystical, symbolic interpretation.
• In March 1492, a few weeks after the conquest of Granada, the Christian monarchs gave Spanish Jews the choice of baptism or expulsion. Many of the Spanish Jews were so attached to their home that they became Christians, though some continued to practice their faith in secret: like the Moriscos, the converts from Islam, these Jewish converts were then hounded by the Inquisition because they were suspected of heresy. Some 150,000 Jews refused baptism, however, and were forcibly deported from Spain: they took refuge in Turkey, the Balkans, and North Africa. The Muslims of Spain had given Jews the best home they had ever had in the diaspora, so the annihilation of Spanish Jewry was mourned by Jews throughout the world as the greatest disaster to have befallen their people since the destruction of the Temple in CE 70.
• A new type of Twelver Shiism had become the state religion in Iran under the Safavids and this marks the beginning of a hostility between the Shiah and the Sunnah which was unprecedented. Hitherto Shiis had had much in common with the more intellectual or mystical Sunnis. But during the sixteenth century the two formed rival camps that were unhappily similar to the sectarian wars in Europe at this time.
• Shah Ismail, the founder of the Safavid dynasty, had come to power in Azerbaijan in 1503 and had extended his power into western Iran and Iraq. He was determined to wipe out Sunnism and forced the Shiah on his subjects with a ruthlessness rarely attempted before. He saw himself as the Imam of his generation. This movement had similarities with the Protestant reformation in Europe: both had their roots in traditions of protest, both were against the aristocracy and associated with the establishment of royal governments.
• While Muslims like Findiriski and Akbar were seeking understanding with people of other faiths, the Christian West had demonstrated in 1492 that it could not even tolerate proximity with the two other religions of Abraham. During the fifteenth century, anti-Semitism had increased throughout Europe and Jews were expelled from one city after another: from Linz and Vienna in 1421, from Cologne in 1424, Augsburg in 1439, Bavaria in 1442 (and again in 1450) and from Moravia in 1454. They were driven out of Perugia in 1485, Vicenza in 1486, Parma in 1488, Lucca and Milan in 1489 and from Tuscany in 1494. The expulsion of the Sephardi Jews of Spain must be seen in the context of this larger European trend.
• Muslim fundamentalists have toppled governments and either assassinated or threatened the enemies of Islam with the death penalty. Similarly, Jewish fundamentalists have settled in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with the avowed intention of driving out the Arab inhabitants, using force if necessary. Thus they believe that they are paving a way for the advent of the Messiah, which is at hand. In all its forms, fundamentalism is a fiercely reductive faith.
• Ever since the prophets of Israel started to ascribe their own feelings and experiences to God, monotheists have in some sense created a God for themselves. God has rarely been seen as a self-evident fact that can be encountered like any other objective existent. Today many people seem to have lost the will to make this imaginative effort. This need not be a catastrophe. When religious ideas have lost their validity, they have usually faded away painlessly: if the human idea of God no longer works for us in the empirical age, it will be discarded. Yet it the past people have always created new symbols to act as a focus for spirituality. Human beings have always created a faith for themselves, to cultivate their sense of the wonder and ineffable significance of life.

“A Man & His Watch” by Matt Hranek

The author Matt Hranek remarks at the beginning of this book that “for many men, watches seem to have a deeper meaning than just keeping time. Watches mark special occasions, they tell the world a bit about who you are, and they can, if you’re lucky, connect you to the people in your life who matter most.”

I’ve never been a watch enthusiast before. I was given a Swatch by someone I really look up to and I wore it since high school to university days even until my masters degree. And afterwards I use Apple Watch and later Garmin as a part of my sporty life, while at the beginning of my collector phase I tend to purchase more simple watches like an Edwin Jeans watch just because it has my name on the dial, a MVMT, or that time I bought a special edition G-Shock in Hiroshima, as well as that time I bought a Swedish minimalist watch at the N Seoul Tower. Also, I was particularly proud of this limited edition watch by Fossil that made several luxury watch enthusiasts asking about what it is (but it deteriorated less than a year).

But then I learned about brand association and that a watch is not just a time keeping device, but a part of our personality. And soon enough I became intrigued with learning who wears what kind of watch brand, and whether it fits with their personality. Like James Bond with his association with Omega, while Jason Bourne is more of a TAG Heuer guy. Or how Che Guevara sported a Rolex Submariner (which is cool AF but a stark contrast with his socialist idealism), or Indonesia’s dictator Suharto wears Audemars Piguet Millenary 150161ST which shows power. And then there’s Jurgen Klopp, who is loyal to one brand IWC even though he’s not an endorser, which fits with his personality as the brand is a kind of silent luxury brand at par with Rolex, without needing to show off like in-your-face designs of Panerai or Richard Mille.

And so the interest in watches turned into an obsession. I kept searching and reading articles about personalities with the watch brands that they wear, like how Ed Sheeran is apparently an avid watch collector but who loves one watch above all the APs and the Hublots in his collection: his cheap ToyWatch that meant a lot growing up.

Which brings us to this book. The book is listed as the number 1 recommended book on watches, by several different watch websites. It shows what many different watches mean for many different people, from a legacy watch handed down from generations above, to expensive top luxury brands, to cheap watches with a huge backstory that makes them priceless. There’s something for everyone to relate to.

The book is filled with sentimental stories about a man and his watch. Such as Francis Chichester, an adventurer, sailor, and navigator who circumnavigate the globe wearing Rolex Oyster Perpetual. Benjamin Clymer with his Omega Speedmaster Mark 40 that was given to him by his grandfather that pretty much started off his love of writing about watches that eventually led to Hodinkee. Keith Haring and his Swatch collections (which he sees as pieces of art that can be put in our wrists). How Dimitri Dimitrov – a Maitre D at the Tower Bar at the Sunset Tower Hotel – got a Timex watch from Bill Murray. Or that interview with a NASA guy whose job is to test the endurance of watches to see whether they are equipped to be used as a tool in space (which only Omega passed the tests).

There’s also Geoffrey Hess who met his wife because of his love of vintage Rolex (and someone who makes me want to attend vintage collector gatherings). Tom Sachs who loves his Casio G-Shock DW-5600 that he has been wearing for 20 years. A Rolex Submariner reference 5513 that was buried in a beach and found by some chap with a metal detector, and ended up purchased by Grahame Fowler. Sylvester Stallone’s Gold Rolex submariner reference 1680/8. Ralph Lauren’s Cartier Tank Cintrée. Or Andy Warhol’s impressive collection of as many as 300 high-end watches.

As Hranek commented, “at the end of the day, a watch is just a watch – it’s the story behind it that can make it exceptional. Just like Paul Newman’s model 6263 big red Rolex Daytona given by his wife, with the engraving of “Drive slowly – Joanne.” Which is a nice touch since Newman was a race car driver. Or how according to Mario Andretti, “in racing watches can stand in for trophies”, which he indeed collected along the way during his illustrious career.

But my favourite sentimental note on watches got to be the vintage Tudor watch that Jacek Kozubek bought that came with a handwritten note from the seller telling the backstory of the man who had owned it: “her father, who had been a marine, a submariner, and mechanic aboard the USS Barbel, stationed in Papa Hotel – also know as Pearl Harbor.” The seller wrote, “Though it is hard for me to part with my father’s watch… my hope is that someone will appreciate it as much as my father did!”

The book also inserted watch history in between the personal stories. Like how Eric Ripert’s watch Vacheron Constantin Historiques American 1921 tilted to the right because it was designed for a driver whose cars back then had big steering wheels. Or how Patek Philippe is credited with inventing the wristwatch, but the style was largely created as a timepiece for women. And it wasn’t until the Cartier Santos-Dumont that wristwatch became associated with exploits of daring and courage: “Louis Cartier invented a small timepiece that attached to the wrist with a leather strap, and gifted the new “Cartier Santos-Dumont” wristwatch to his famous aviator friend [Alberto Santos-Dumont], who never flew without it.”

Furthermore, to write this book Hranek got access to archives of Rolex, Cartier, Omega, Zenith, Hermès, and TAG Heuer, held Paul Newman’s Daytona in flesh, talked with Kikuo Ibe (the creator of Casio G-Shock), among many others, which was an intriguing read by themselves.

And the many pictures of the watches in this book, especially the vintage or rare ones, are also superb. The Cartier belonged to King Constantine I of Greece, Elvis Presley’s Corum Buckingham, Sir Edmund Hillary’s Rolex Oyster Perpetual Officially Certified Chronometer from 1950, John F. Kennedy’s inauguration Omega, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Tiffany & Co Yalta conference watch, the Popeye and Domino engraved Rolexes, the 1952 Tudor Oyster Prince that was one of 26 models sent to Greenland on the wrist of scientists and military and medical personnel to do a seismological and gravitational research. And the many incredible watches that I’ve never heard before, like Orfina, Fisher Ancre 15 Rubis, Elgin, Waltham Trench, Jaeger-Lecoultre Reverso, Doxa, Kurono, Autodromo Monoposto, and many others.

I mean, I get it now. It’s not necessarily about the brand name or the price, but more about the memory or what it symbolized. My dad was a watch collector, and among the Rolexes and Cartiers that he has, he was most fond with this fake Rolex Submariner that he bought in a flea market in China. He even like to wear it to the office every once in a while for a laugh. When he passed away, that was the watch that I took to keep him in memory (for the cheekiness), just like Paul Newman’s daughter took and wear his Daytona when he passed away (although I don’t think I will ever wear it in public).

Moreover, just like Hranek, I too have an Oyster Perpetual Datejust, which was given to me by my father in-law on the day I married his daughter. It took me years to realised what it meant, because he didn’t literally say it to me back then: That it symbolized the day he accepted me as his son. So, I get the sentimental meaning of watches, just like when I bought myself a TAG Heuer Aquaracer Solargraph for my 40th birthday then went to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in the evening.

Or my current everyday watch IWC Mark XVIII Little Prince edition, a watch that I got obsessed with due to the fact that I love to read books and the watch is a tribute to one of my favourite authors Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Never thought that I would get my hands on it, and just like all men interviewed in this book I wouldn’t trade this watch or any of my other sentimental watches for anything else in the world. Not even this vintage Omega that I found in an antique market in Java, which I bought for less than $10.

“Animal Farm” by George Orwell

How in the world have I not read this book much earlier?

This is an incredible book that teaches us about the nature of politics, disguised in a fable of animals that live in a farm owned by humans.

The book begins with an organised gathering by the animals to stage a coup against the cruel human ruler Mr. Jones, led by a wise elderly pig named Old Major whom passed away too soon and becomes immortalised as the father of the movement. And then the actual coup occurs quite accidentally, when an unplanned incident gives an opportunity for the animals to get rid of the humans once and for all.

And so the Manor Farm is freed and the animals then change the name into Animal Farm, with the place is now controlled by 3 pigs that are the protégés of Old Major: Snowball, Squealer, and the alpha, Napoleon.

What happens next is a masterclass of political analogy by the author, George Orwell. First, the exiled humans begin to badmouth the animals to fellow farm owners, which is acknowledged by other powerful farm owners (not unlike political dissidents backed by Australia, the UK, and the US). The humans then stage a counter coup, which failed but was enough to be used by the pigs as a propaganda of “the common enemy” (that is similar with how the Nazis demonised the Jews), alongside the chant rituals and the revolutionary-type national anthem.

The Iranian and Cuban revolutions also come in mind when reading this part of the book, just like the case with most draconian rulers that use the same template. This also includes the way they handle the proceeding inner struggles of how to actually manage the farm, which causes a rift between Napoleon and Snowball (the intellectual architect of the new regime in the farm).

And then one day Napoleon stages an internal coup himself, where he get rid of Snowball with the help of 7 attack dogs that he has secretly trained. Hence begins the period where Snowball becomes the pariah of the state, being smeared as the root cause of every future misfortune that ever going to happen in the farm. Which reminds me of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s usage of Fethullah Gülen as the boogie man in Turkish politics, or Israel’s tactics of using the excuse of Hamas as a justification of all the nasty crimes they’re doing.

Furthermore, with one competing pig exiled, the other, Squealer, becomes the chief propagandist and the mouthpiece of the ruling regime, as well as the overall number one ass kisser to Napoleon. And thus, Napoleon becomes the sole leader of the farm and – just like the real story of his namesake Napoleon Bonaparte – increasingly transformed the place into a dictatorship. They even create a presidential election, with Napoleon wins as the sole candidate.

Soon after, the Sunday Meetings (that symbolises democracy) is being cancelled. The original 7 rules of the farm, which was created to assert equality among the animals, are constantly violated by Napoleon and his cronies with the rules are constantly modified to fit their actions.

And so the idealistic dream of a free Animal Farm ruled by equal animals has turned into an Orwellian nightmare. And true to the dictatorial nature that strikingly resemble North Korea, the Napoleon regime constantly feeding propaganda on the brutality of other farm towards fellow animals, exiling or even killing those dare to speak up against Napoleon and brand them as traitors or spies, constantly diverting issues by creating false flag operations to make the citizens forget about the real problems, and creating more propaganda with songs, speeches, false news that things are better now. They even scrapped the revolutionary-style national anthem and change it to a “more mature” anthem that signals things are now stable and prosperous.

Moreover, squealer keeps on producing statistics showing that things are much better now economically, while in reality they are creating a system where the hardest working animals will get the least food, while animals like pigs and dogs who don’t work to produce food will get abundance of food and will never get hungry. Indeed, an apartheid system has been developed, with pigs and dogs are on top of the caste, while the rest of the population are kept illiterate and stupid so that they will accept everything being told to them without the ability to fight back. Even those few who can read and understand what’s really going on, like Benjamin the donkey, cannot do anything about it.

The book ends on a sour note, where their original revolutionary motto “four legs good, two legs bad” is edited to “four legs good, two legs better” when the pigs are starting to learn how to stand up with two legs like humans. They begin to dress like humans, drink alcohol like human, have diplomatic relations with other human farm owners, and have gatherings with them up to a point where we can no longer differentiate between pigs and humans. The scene where the critical bunch of sheep suddenly change their idealistic chants to chants that support the regime, after a “retraining”, gives me the creeps.

And then as a final touch, they change the name of the farm back to Manor Farm, “its original name.” But now with pigs ruling the land in a much worse condition than the previous human regime.

The book was written with the Russian revolution as the inspiration, and we can see how the characters nicely embodying it. The deposed Mr. Jones is Tsar Nicholas II, the wise pig Old Major is Karl Marx or Lenin, Napoleon is Joseph Stalin, Snowball is Leon Trotsky, and while there’s no specific real-life character assigned to Boxer the horse, his story is the most heart breaking for me and presumably the most common one among the ordinary citizens who simply love their country no matter what.

What a gripping read from the beginning to the end, and I finished the book in one sitting. Absolutely phenomenal.