Java is both a geographical span of Ajo Kawir’s working life and the setting for a history in which martial training, employment, and political violence are closely entangled. Its roads carry him across the island as a truck driver, while its southern coast marks the reach of a former guerrilla commander whose attempt to build a future for ex-fighters was eventually reduced to a martial arts school.

The island and the academy

The Kalimasada Silat Academy stands near a public hospital. Its name comes from the Kalimasada, a sacred book associated with Yudhistira and the Pandawas. Its founder, Kyai Abdul Kadir, had fought in a twelve-year civil war between the republican army and Islamic rebels. As a guerrilla commander, he controlled jungle territory along Java’s southern coast, from Cilacap through Pangandaran, Parigi, and Cijulang to Port Ratu.

After the republican army captured rebel leader R. M. Kartosuwirjo, the militias’ morale collapsed and their commanders surrendered. Some former fighters were executed; others were jailed and later pardoned. Many emerged to find their former lives gone and no work or housing. Some turned to robbery, theft, or market “security”—a form of extortion—and relied on armed protection from soldiers, including men who had once captured them.

Rehabilitation and its limits

Kyai Abdul Kadir founded the academy to gather former guerrillas, including some who had served under him as child soldiers. He intended it to offer more than self-defense: students were to learn religious wisdom and practical skills that could help them earn a living, including sewing, cultivating land, and managing loans for small businesses. The project answered a particular danger: former fighters accustomed to guerrilla life could be drawn into work for soldiers, who might later discard them violently when their services were no longer needed.

Only a few ex-guerrillas joined. Others continued to work with soldiers, supplying manpower to maintain order or disrupt it. Kyai Abdul Kadir died of old age before the soldiers turned against and killed the former fighters. The academy passed to his son, who had also been a guerrilla and had been born in the jungle. He removed the religious classes and abandoned his father’s attention to practical livelihoods. Under him, Kalimasada became an ordinary martial arts academy, attracting students who wanted to fight effectively and discover what courage felt like.

Roads, labor, and violence

Java also figures as the expanse of Ajo Kawir’s post-prison working life. Uncle Bunny tells Iteung that Ajo Kawir became a truck driver after leaving prison, owned his own truck, and traveled the roads of Java and Sumatra. The journeying suggests a practical change in his life: rather than returning to violence, he makes his living through transport and keeps moving across a wide territory.

The novel places that work within an insecure economy. At a truck terminal in Pluit, in northern Jakarta, drivers wait for loads and take whatever freight pays enough, provided it will not get them arrested or bring down their trucks. When cargo is scarce, the men pass time at food stalls and coffee shops, smoking, drinking coffee, watching television, and spending extra money on beer. Ajo Kawir and his young assistant drink together while waiting for a full load, which he expects will take two days.

This working world borders on organized violence. The Empty Hand is publicly mistaken for an ordinary gang, though its members are sometimes paid to kill and are skilled with weapons; some have ties to police, while others have been arrested for gang fights. Elsewhere, soldiers informally control a fighting arena where men are brought from places including Aceh, Papua, and Ambon, sometimes after surrendering as rebels or rioters. These details place Java’s transport routes and institutions within a broader order where soldiers, former fighters, employment, and coercion overlap.

A route rather than a refuge

Java does not appear simply as a home or a single destination. It is a connected landscape of the academy, the truck terminal, and the roads on which Ajo Kawir earns his living. The academy’s history shows how an effort to redirect former guerrillas toward education and work can be narrowed into the teaching of combat alone; the trucking episodes show ordinary labor continuing amid unstable freight and the nearby presence of armed networks. Together, these strands make the island a setting where survival depends on movement and work, yet both remain shadowed by the political violence that shaped the world around them.