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NIGHT HAD FALLEN, WITHOUT COMPLAINT, WITHOUT PRETEXT. Like a black net enclosing the city, ink from a monster squid spreading across Jakarta’s entire landscape — the color of my uncertain future.

Inside the darkroom, I know not the sun, the moon, or even my wristwatch. But the darkness that envelopes this room is imbrued with the scent of chemicals and anxiety.

Three years ago, the Nusantara News Agency where I worked was cleansed of lice and germs like myself. The army was the disinfectant and we, the lice and the germs, were eradicated from the face of the earth, with no trace left. Yet, somehow, this particular louse had survived and was now eking out a living at Tjahaja Photo Studio on the corner of Jalan Sabang in central Jakarta.

I switched on the red light to inspect the strips of negatives hanging on the drying-line overhead. It must have been around 6 p.m. because I could hear the muzzled sound of the muezzin drifting in to the darkroom through the grate in the door, summoning the faithful for evening prayer. I imagined the scene on Jalan Sabang outside: the quarrelsome cackling of motorized pedicabs; the huffing and puffing of slow-moving opelets searching for passengers; the creaking of human-driven pedicabs in need of an oil job; the cring-cring sound of hand bells on bicycles as their riders wove their way through the busy intersection; and the cries of the bread seller on his three-wheel contraption with its large box and clear glass windows. I could even see the early evening wind bearing the smoke and smell rising from skewers of goat satay being grilled on the brazier at Pak Heri’s itinerant but immensely popular food stall located smack dab at the intersection of Sabang and Asem Lama.

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