Andreas Harsono, Jakarta – Hendra Putra said a final prayer at a Christmas vigil Mass on Sunday evening and offered a friend a ride home. Talking quietly, the two men headed to Putra's small Honda motorbike in a little parking area fenced with chicken wire, part of a Catholic school compound next to Jakarta's Church of St. Joseph.
In the heavily crowded compound, the second wave of churchgoers began to enter as those from an earlier Mass were leaving, their mood serene as they celebrated Christmas. The 37-year-old Putra and his friend had to walk slowly to get his bike, go out the front gate and pass beside a blue bus shelter in front of the church. It was almost 9pm.
Suddenly a bomb exploded amid some dark green bushes behind the bus stop, about 10 meters from where Putra was walking his motorbike.
He probably never knew what happened. In the bomb's fury, an old, dark-green Toyota van had its back door ripped open like a cheap plastic toy. A tree trunk was severed and blown away. The windshields of 24 cars were broken in the blast. Blood was splattered everywhere, in the parking lot, on a nearby cigarette stall. In a lightning-fast blizzard of broken glass, dozens of people were injured indiscriminately.
An old man waiting inside the bus stop was thrown several yards away, his head bleeding from deep cuts. A sound system operator sipping his evening coffee near the cigarette seller was instantly killed. Panic, panic and panic. Children and women ran for safety. People cried.
Sixty-six security officers, both private guards and policemen deployed around St. Joseph on the event of trouble, tried to call taxis for the wounded, calm down the angry and frightened crowd, and get backup. As the minutes passed, they sent more than 50 victims to two hospitals in the neighborhood.
Good Samaritans in a passing car apparently took Putra to a hospital. His forehead and right cheek were ripped open. He was bleeding and unconscious.
It is not clear what happened in the hospitals' overcrowded emergency rooms but three-and-a-half hours later, at about 12.30am on December 26, according to Lucia Devisanti, one of her brothers had found their oldest brother's dead body in the Ciptomangunkusumo hospital. Dead.
Hendra Putra, an entrepreneur who had just established an Internet cafe, died on Christmas in the biggest of the serial terror bombings that shocked Indonesia entirely. The old man who was thrown aside by the blast happened to be Putra's neighbor, Ronny Hariadi; the sound operator was Abdul Karim.
Bombs exploded on Christmas outside more than two dozen churches in Jakarta, Pekanbaru in Sumatra, Batam Island south of Singapore, Bekasi, Sukabumi and Bandung in West Java, Mojokerto in East Java and Mataram in West Nusa Tenggara. The police also found 18 bomb devices in those cities, which include Medan in northern Sumatra, but were able to prevent their lethal explosions.
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid said on Monday that the church bombings are an attempt to destabilize his already troubled government.
"Their steps are to destabilize the government and create fear and panic," he told reporters, adding that the explosions were a blatant attack on the country's minority Christian community.
"Clearly this is an attempt to destroy Christians by using Islam," he said, adding that the blasts were an act of terrorism, designed to stir religious tensions in this world's largest Muslim country, with an estimated 90 percent of its 210 million people followers of Islam. About eight percent of Indonesians are Christians.
The close timing of the blasts, mostly between 6pm and 9pm, outside churches that were organizing Christmas masses, points to a coordinated campaign of terror, but there was no word on who was responsible and Wahid did not specifically accuse anyone.
Chief police S. Bimantoro said at least 14 people were killed in the bombings, including two police officers and one private security guard, who found a suspicious Christmas gift in a Mojokerto church and tried to dump it into a river. The bomb exploded only seconds before he would have thrown it away.
"It's impossible for people in Mojokerto to produce this sophisticated bomb," said a police officer in smalltown Mojokerto, as if trying to say that the bombs were related to the others throughout Indonesia. Only organizations with military skills, a national network and strong financial muscle are able to produce these kinds of bombs.
Witnesses and family members said Hendra Putra was seen taking his motorbike a few minutes before the explosion. But Fredrik Atara, St. Joseph' s chief security guard, said he himself had checked the dark bushes about 30 minutes prior to the explosion and found nothing suspicious there.
The bombing, however, created a feeling of solidarity among Muslims and Christians in Jakarta. Taxi drivers, radio hosts, Internet chatterers, pedestrians, street vendors, and politicians both Christian and Muslims, mostly talked about an attempt to pit Christians against Muslims in Indonesia. A group of Indonesian leading figures even set up a private committe to investigate the bombing, telling the police that it is going to back the police pressuring the powerful army whose members were allegedlly involved in previous bombing cases.
In a morgue where Putra and Hariadi's bodies were placed, many Muslim neighbors attended a Mass to honor both men, led by Jakarta's Roman Catholic Bishop Julius Darmaatmadja. Many Muslim women gave family members huge hugs and paid their last respect toward the two men.
"Although I am not of the same faith [with Putra], I deplore this bombing. This is a sadistic, inhumane, barbarian act. He is a good boy. What is his wrongdoing? Why he was targeted?" asked neighbor Yeni Safriyati who helped the Putra family organize the service.
Safriati, who wore an Islamic headscarf, said she had known Putra since he was a small boy. "We're neighbors, we live for years to respect one to each other," she sobbed. Putra is of a Catholic and Chinese-descent Indonesian family.
For many, the sympathy showered on the family demonstrated that, in this pluralistic Indonesia, bombings can't stop people from feeling a sense of common identity.
"We're friends since we were both kids. He is a kind person who never hurts others," said Wiwik Satoro. Putra's mother, Maria Sodistiawati, kept on sobbing as each friend or neighbor gave her a hug. "He's a good boy, he is a good boy," she kept crying.