This Home Was Never Mine

Based on the real life accounts of dozens of survivors, “This Home Was Never Mine” is a literary non-ficiton which retraces the life of one Ahmadiyya (a Muslim minority sect) family from Lombok, Indonesia from how people began treating them differently, systematically driven from their homes, forced to live in a strange new place, endures harassments and discrimination with no government protection, placed in an abandoned government building where they remain to this day.

“This Home Was Never Mine” also deals with how the family copes with separation, how they painstakingly rebuild their lives only to have their homes attacked again, how a cowardice son forced to man up and confront his fears, how a childish daughter forced to become a woman and deals with her non-Ahmadi in-laws as they tried to bribe her into leaving her new husband.

The book tells a story of the intrepid and rebellious fourth son who selfishly and recklessly tries to make his way to Australia by boat while doing little to feed his family. And how the second daughter has to work hard to rebuild her life, she loses her pregnancy.

The book also discusses how religious extremism and hard-line groups flourishes in Indonesia, once a model for religious tolerance and diversity. How intolerants are emboldened by weak governments and the inaction of people sworn to uphold the law, how clerics fan hatred and provoking their followers to commit heinous acts of violence and stay in the shadows and how powerful elites profit from chaos and instability. How years of negligence to their plight paved the way for more religious violence targeting other minority groups.