Ibu Tinem's memories of Dutch domesticity do not gloss over the strictures
imposed by a paternalistic employer, but rather provide a context for her willing
submission to them. Her account was ultimately less about her familial ties
within the Dutch household than about her lack of strong family bonds outside
it. She chose to tell us of a difficult childhood in a desperately poor village, of
her mother's death and her father's remarriage to a woman who was cruel. She
told of a strained relationship with her only sister and of losing her husband in
the Japanese occupation. She bitterly recounted how her eldest son, who she
feels should be caring for her in her old age, lives far away and has converted
from Christianity to Islam. Her daughter, present at one interview, described her
as someone "floating," abandoned, with a life amounting to nothing