Map of the Invisible World. Tash Aw

came and took their order; she looked sexless in her baggy male clothing – oversized shirt, buttoned at the collar, and dirty pleated trousers – and disapproving. Margaret felt her own décolletage, modest though it was, suddenly too revealing.

      ‘Tell me about the research you started in Holland,’ Margaret said once they had ordered. They were on surer ground if they stuck to work matters; he liked talking about his work. ‘Pre-Islamic religion, wasn’t it?’

      ‘More or less,’ he said, his gaze shifting gently but noticeably so that he met her eye and held it. It caught her off-guard, this sudden switching of moods, and she blinked and smiled to hide her unease. She didn’t like being taken aback this way. ‘Actually it was a bit wider than that,’ he continued. ‘I was looking into writing a Secret History of the Indonesian Islands in the South East, everything from Bali eastwards. To me those islands were like a lost world where everything remained true and authentic, away from the gaze of foreigners – a kind of invisible world, almost. Such a stupid idea.’

      ‘Why stupid?’

      ‘Oh.’ He smiled, suddenly bashful again. ‘Such a big subject – too big for a little guy like me.’

      ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea. You shouldn’t give up.’

      ‘No, there’s no hope for someone like me. I was stupid to think I could do something like that, as if I were a Westerner.’ He spoke with no bitterness, but a despair so deep that it felt almost calm. He won’t be shaken from it, thought Margaret; it was so frustrating.

      ‘What a thing to say,’ she said, trying not to sound didactic. ‘You can do anything you put your mind to. I’m not saying it’s easy, but if you want something, you’ll get it. Don’t be so defeatist.’

      The food arrived, dishes of watery curries of meat and vegetables. Margaret peered at the rice and noticed that it had been mixed with maize. ‘I think we have a civic-conscious vendor on our hands,’ she said. Since the previous year’s drought every meal was a lottery. Sometimes your rice would be rice, other times it would be a gritty bowl of ground meal, in accordance with government recommendations.

      ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Din said with a shrug. He spoke as if trying to convince himself of something. ‘My idea was that we needed a history of our country written by an Indonesian, something that explored non-standard sources that Westerners could not easily reach. Like folk stories, local mythology, or ancient manuscripts written on palm leaves–’

      ‘Lontar, you mean.’

      ‘Yes. When you think about the standard approach to history, all the historical texts, you’re really talking about Western sources. It’s as if the history of South-East Asia started with the discovery of the sea routes from Europe to Asia. Everything begins at this point in time, but in fact so much had already happened. The empires of Majapahit and Mataram had been established; Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism…I wanted to retell the story of these islands because I have a theory that their history is beyond the comprehension of foreigners – sorry, you’ll forgive me for saying that, I know–’

      ‘Forgiven–’

      ‘–and that history has to be told by a voice that is non-Western…’

      Din continued talking, but Margaret had become distracted by a boy who had sat down three tables away. He was an Asian of indeterminate age – anything from fourteen to twenty-one – not malnourished like most of them were, but still somehow ragged. His dirty white T-shirt bore a logo of an animal on the front (a bear?) under blue and gold letters that said BERKELEY. He appeared at once lost and deeply focused. Was he looking at them? She glanced at him once or twice and each time he ducked away just as she turned her head in his direction. Establishing eye contact too freely was a mistake many foreigners she knew made, misjudging Asian regard. What their smiling faces suggested was not always accurate, and what your own smiling face transmitted was not always what you intended. There was nothing on his table; he had not ordered food or drink.

      ‘…and of course the unknown story of Muslim seafarers.’

      ‘Well,’ Margaret said, ‘why don’t you just go ahead and do it?’

      Instantly Din fell pensive and silent as he played with the pool of curry in which he had drowned his rice. ‘No one will fund me. I asked everyone in Holland and they all said no. They think it’s about politics. And here, well, the President talks about grand projects, but we all know there’s never going to be any money. Not for people like me.’

      Margaret did not answer. She looked at his slim sloping shoulders as he toyed aimlessly with his food. He had a way of making the morsels on his plate seem meagre and almost inedible. There was nothing she could do for him, she thought; perhaps she ought to give up. Perhaps she ought to have given up on this country a long time ago. It was still early in the evening, but she was already tired.

      ‘Let’s go for a drink,’ she said. She would shake off this lethargy, she knew she could.

      Din’s face twisted into a half-frown. ‘Um, no thanks actually. I’m quite tired today. Maybe I’ll just go home.’

      Margaret stacked the empty dishes on top of each other to signify the end of the meal. ‘Just come for one quick drink. You’ll enjoy it from an anthropological point of view if nothing else. Come on.’ She waved a few notes at the vendor.

      ‘Really, it’s very kind of you, but I don’t think I’d be comfortable at the Hotel Java.’

      ‘Rubbish. You’ll have a ball. I told you, I never take no for an answer.’ She smiled sweetly and knew that he would come: when she decided she wanted something, she was never refused.

      As they got up to leave Margaret turned back to look one last time at the boy with the Berkeley T-shirt, but he was no longer at the table. She looked around at the stalls, expecting to see him half-hidden behind a pillar or milling in the crowds, but she could see nothing. He had been there at the table half a minute ago and now he was gone.

      ‘Well, what fun this is going to be,’ Margaret said brightly.

      Built in 1962 to celebrate the Asian Games, the Hotel Java sits on the edge of a sweeping roundabout in an area that might be called downtown if this city had an uptown. Like so many of the brutalist concrete buildings springing up around Jakarta, the hotel’s angular lines and slightly industrial appearance were meant to remind the beholder of both Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus aesthetic: international yet functional. The roundabout in front of it is in fact a shallow, perfectly circular pool of water from which jets of water spurt majestically at a young peasant couple standing on a tall narrow plinth. The hotel and the fountain are just two of the many projects designed to impress visitors to Jakarta with the city’s dynamism, and were commissioned by Sukarno himself (‘the President’s majestic erections,’ Margaret called them). Not more than two years had passed and already the toilets in the hotel were unpleasant; some of the bulbs in the grand chandelier in the lobby had blown and hadn’t been replaced; the carpets were scarred by cigarette burns and the table linen dyed with old wine stains.

      ‘Looks as if the President’s erections are faltering,’ Margaret said as she looked at the chipped edge of the bar. She had had two martinis already. The first had gone straight to her head and the second had slipped down all too easily. She was trying to make the third one last, but it was difficult; she felt a flush in her cheeks and she wanted to drink quickly. She was already quite light-headed, she knew, but she felt strong again.

      Din stood with his elbows on the bar, facing away from the room. He stared at the rows of bottles arranged on the mirrored wall facing him, as if examining every single label. He would take only a Coke, no matter how hard Margaret tried to persuade him otherwise. He wouldn’t even drink a Bintang. She was usually sensitive enough not to transgress cultural boundaries – but Din was different. Yes, he was Muslim, but he had lived for three years in Europe, and was not just another unsophisticated small-town Indonesian. If they both had a drink, she thought, the alcohol might help break down the boundaries that remained between them and they would be friends.

      There