Budi, teruslah bermain bola (Budi, keep on playing ball).

July, 2009.

I thought it was thunder.

In Indonesia, the weather is truly a force. In the wet season, often the thunder will drop over Jakarta like a smattering of firecrackers on bitumen, clapping across the sky and setting off car alarms. Or it will pop like a gunshot in the distance. Mostly the storms roll over the skies in the afternoons; morning thunder is relatively uncommon. It is also very rare to have rain in the dry season.

So that morning when I awoke to a sound like one great clap of thunder, I sat straight up in my bed. And there, from my little apartment oasis, 28 floors above an awakening city, I wondered why on earth there was thunder at 8am in the dry season.

It didn’t occur to me that a few kilometres from my bedroom, two men had just detonated backpacks and suitcases full of nail-packed high explosives inside the Ritz Carlton and the JW Marriot hotels in Mega Kuningan.

I wandered out into the lounge room and my flatmate swung around to me from the TV, open mouthed, phone in one hand and the other outstretched, pointing toward our open balcony door in the direction of Mega Kuningan where 9 lives had just been lost.

I thought it was thunder, I heard myself say.

We watched the TV coverage together for a little while and I wandered out onto the balcony, confused about how this could have happened, just over there, just beyond that road, through that haze. Where my friends attend meetings, and take salsa lessons, and have breakfast.

When it became too much to try to understand the local TV coverage, I went back into my bedroom. There, my unanswered phone had vibrated itself off my bedside table with warnings from the in-country managers of our program.

You don’t have to go to work today. (It hadn’t even occurred to me to get dressed).

Stay somewhere safe. (This was a difficult command to follow with confidence).

Don’t go into the Kuningan area. (This was also difficult- I live in Kuningan so I was already breaking this last warning).

The rest of the day was spent watching coverage on TV, calling friends, returning messages, hearing reports of car bombings on the roads (this didn't happen), watching more coverage on TV, talking talking talking... and.... sadness. A friend of a friend was killed. Another friend knew someone who had his leg blown off. Sadness that made me sick in my stomach and weak in my wrists.

This is my home. So yes, I'm angry. And a little bit scared. But the predominant feeling is sadness. That unbearable, aching sadness that wraps itself around your chest and tightens, slowly. I'm sad for the people and families directly affected. Sad for this wonderful country and its people.

When I first decided to moved to Jakarta from Sydney, a number of people thought it was a strange choice. But the most offensively sweeping warning I received was: “you know they put bombs under tables there.” At the time I was pre-emptively protective of my new home and sighed and said something along the lines of don’t be ridiculous. Because it was ridiculous. It still is. The statement was ill-advised, over-dramatic and damaging. After the bombings, the memory of that warning magnified my sadness, because somehow that person has now been validated and that ridiculous, sweeping remark has been made less unreasonable.

One of my Australian friends in Jakarta saw an Indonesian colleague later that day, just hours after the bombing. “So do you think this means Manchester United won’t come anymore?” The young Indonesian man asked sadly. It seemed a flippant concern.

Indonesia isn’t high on the list of tour stops for world-class sporting teams. It is, however home to many passionate soccer fans. The top soccer players are idolised and there are posters of them on the sides of street stalls, above road overpasses and on bedroom walls across the country. Manchester United had been scheduled to arrive in Jakarta a few days after the bombing, for an exhibition match with the Indonesian team. It was a rare and highly anticipated visit and the city had been bannered with massive advertisements for months. Great red posters, with Manchester United players wearing traditional Indonesian batik over their soccer uniforms. The symbolism was unpretentious and effective, aimed at engaging the hearts of ardent young soccer fans across the archipelago – to tell them that the best players in the world knew that Indonesia existed, and it was important enough to visit for a soccer match. “Mau?” (want?) the posters asked, as if inviting every young Jakartan to come and meet these superstars in person.

YESSSSS!! You could imagine the chorus of young people who could never dream of being able to afford to see them play anywhere else.

The team was scheduled to stay at the Ritz Carlton. The visit was cancelled.

Soon after the bombings, the building-sized banners plastered across Jakarta advertising the game were replaced with simple black banners with the sentence: “Budi, Teruslah bermain bola”

“Budi (a common Indonesian name), keep on playing ball.”

The banners have been taken down now and replaced with ads for whitening creams and cigarettes. But every so often I’ll walk down a broken street and see an old ripped poster on the side of a street stall - one of the red posters from before the bombing. “Mau?” it asks, provocatively. And the sight of it will tighten my chest with sadness.

Budi, Teruslah bermain bola