TheyGotAlex (harshbarger.a@gmail.com)

Oeroeg was my friend. When I think back on my childhood and adolescence, an image of Oeroeg invariably rises before my eyes, as though my memory were one of those magic pictures we used to buy, three for ten cents: yellowish, shiny little cards coated with dried glue, which you had to scratch with a pencil to reveal the image underneath. That is how Oeroeg comes back to me when I delve into the past. The setting may vary, depending on how long ago the period I am recalling is, but Oeroeg never fails to appear, be it in the overgrown garden at Kebon Djati or on the reddish-brown muddy paths along the sawahs in the Preanger highlands, in the hot carriages of the little train we took to primary school each day in Soekaboemi, or later, at the boarding-house when we were both at school in Batavia.