Coming Together

A journalist, TV anchor and author, Desi Anwar is the youngest of three sisters in a scholarly family. Her oldest sister, the political analyst Dewi Fortuna Anwar, lived away from the family in their ancestral village for much of her early childhood until they came together in London in the early 1970s. Desi, 45, looks back on their relationship.

When I was growing up, Dewi had already decided to leave and go to live in the village. We were living in Bandung, and she is four years older than me. She wanted to be in West Sumatra where my parents come from, where there is a matrilineal kinship system and so much land. She visited the place, and according to my mom was very insistent about staying there, and she was enticed to go there because of the space.

I was brought up with my middle sister, Danti, and I didn’t get to meet Dewi until I was 7 or 8. We didn’t get to live together until when I was in junior high, when I was in London because my father was a lecturer there.

My mother always worked, my parents were very active, into academia, very much campus people. A lot of the time we were left to our devices and given our freedom. Our parents weren’t there to tell us to do our homework, or to choose our clothes for us.

When I was very young, my mother went to the U.S. for a time, but it didn’t seem to pose many problems. I was brought up on a campus that was a very nice environment, I had my own circle of friends, my own play area, a lot of things that a lot of children living in big cities in Indonesia do not have.

My mother was a librarian in Bandung, so I was surrounded by books. I made my own dictionary at the age of 4. I went to school very early, because I felt that I was able to read and write. At kindergarten I was very bored, so I asked my father if I could I join first grade, and he gave me a book and pencil.

I was four and a half and I went to the teacher and she looked at me, and was like, OK, give it a try. So I started very young.

If you are the youngest, you don’t have that rivalry [that older siblings have], although I must have been pretty annoying to my middle sister. With my oldest sister, her memory of me was as a baby; when she left home, she didn’t see me as a rival.

When we actually lived together later in London, we got on very well together. There was a stint where we were all together, but perhaps we had issues with our middle sister just because she was in the middle. With Dewi, I would hear she was always number one at school, so she was like a role model to me.

We did very different things. When we were in London, she was a member of the Indonesian Student Body, and she would bring me along to help with their magazine. I would collect the articles for the magazine. I was pretty good at art and I would create my own magazines.

She was always the reader of my works. When we shared a bedroom in London, I would tell her bedtime stories. When we walked to school, I would tell her more stories. I was the more artistic one, if you like, into writing stories and drawing pictures, while she would be reading Time magazine, arguing world politics with my parents. But there are certain things we share, like favorite novelists and historical novels. It’s very much like friends.

There are many things I respect about my sister. There is a lot of my mother in her that I admire. She knows what she wants.

When I was younger, I would ask my mother, “What is she doing in the village?” And she would say she knew what she wanted, and she went after it. She also chose when she wanted to get married and so forth. She was very clear about what she would do academically.

She was very clear about her objectives, when for a lot of people it’s not so easy. She was able to leave her family and go to the States [as a Congressional Fellow]. She’s not the hesitant type – she is very much in control.

My father would say, “Dewi is like your mother, and you are like me”. The traits are very clear – when my mother passed away, Dewi very comfortably assumed her [matriarchal] role. She has that sense of playing that role in the village; a much stronger sense of roots.

My father was very romantic, a thinker; he would say that being academic and intellectual are not the same thing. “Dewi is very academic but you are intellectual. Each has its own qualities.”

Dewi likes to do research, gather the materials and write papers. I remember her writing her thesis for the School of Oriental and Eastern Studies in London. I typed it for her, and she paid me to do it.

She is into the research and the academic stuff; I like the literature and the reading, but when I write articles, it’s more creative, intellectual, based on a philosophy, my perspective on things. Sometimes our paths have crossed, when I was doing the interviewing and she was giving the answers.

I respect her a great deal, and it’s the same with all our family. It comes from being independent and free to pursue our own things. We’re not encroaching on each other’s space, we’re fortunate in being brought up to do what we want. I stopped living at home at 18. That distance actually brings a closeness among us that we wouldn’t have if were always together.

Both of my sisters have children and I am close to my nieces and nephews, I am kind of the favorite auntie. It’s close without being claustrophobic. Dewi does her own thing, and I do my own. But she’s still very much the older sister.

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Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a  onetime adviser to former president B.J. Habibie , was recently a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

I am the oldest daughter, which is important in the West Sumatra matrilineal system, because everything comes from the female line. The first time I went home to Payakumbuh to visit my uncles was when I was three and a half, so I got very interested in the place, and I stayed there for a year.

Both of my parents were busy people, and I thought it would be fun to live in the village. There was more space, lots of people paying attention to me.

I did my primary school in the village, and only visited Bandung for a few weeks at a time during holidays.

The first time we really came together as a family, Desi and me, was in London after I finished junior high school. Danti was just starting junior high so she went to the village to take my place. There were fewer distractions and a better environment in the village. There was only one point when all three of us were together, after Danti finished junior high school, but she was only in London for a year before she returned to Indonesia for high school and university.

We came together every holiday after primary school, but by the time we were together I was already an old woman, more traditional, conservative, strait-laced. I told everybody off, including my mother, about not wearing miniskirts, or bright lipstick.

I didn’t fight much with Desi because the age difference was too great. We got on; we are similar but also very different. Desi is very artistic, I am more analytical I’m more interested in public speaking. But all three of us share the same passion for reading.

Both of my sisters are accomplished. Danti is in the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment; she is not so well known in the media, but she is well known in her line of work, traveling around the country to give training.

They are artistic. Desi can draw, paint, plays the piano, she puts her mind to something and does it. She’s a good linguist, too. She learned French, Italian and Spanish. She inherited that capability from my father. 

Desi is the most patient of us all. She’s very good with children. She has a much more nurturing quality – she’s much better with children, the favorite aunt.

So we never really had that big sister, younger sister thing. We got on more as friends. But of course I am still the oldest sister. I know all the things about inherited property, things like that.

I have never regretted going to the village when I was small.  I also sent my daughter there. In a way, we understand the same cultural experience. She’s a Minang woman, and she knows that. My education in the village was just as important as my high school and university education in England.

+ As told to Bruce Emond

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