Halida Mulyadi

The rain came down harder this morning, and with it, the anxiety I’ve learned to live with. My husband was frying tempeh in the back, and the sizzle blended with the distant sound of rushing water. We run a snack bar out of our small house in Luar Batang, the part of Jakarta where you can hear the ocean from your kitchen. If you stretch your arm out the back window, you can almost touch the sea.

Jakarta is a sinking city. We've known it for years. It sinks by centimeters each year, while the concrete walls built to hold back the water rise higher. These walls are supposed to protect us, but they feel more like prison gates. No one here trusts them. We’re waiting for the next heavy rain, the next high tide that breaks the wall. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

Our snack bar is popular; people come because we serve good food at prices they can afford. But these days, the future of our business feels as unstable as the ground beneath our feet. It’s been five years since we opened, and my husband and I joke that we’ll keep frying tempeh until the water touches the stove. But it’s not really a joke, is it?

I am 30 years old, but in a city like Jakarta, age feels irrelevant. What matters is survival. Every monsoon brings with it another round of floods, and every flood reminds us that the government has given up on us. While they build a new city in Borneo—Nusantara, they call it—we’re left to watch as Jakarta sinks into the sea. Nusantara is for the rich, for the politicians and businessmen who won’t have to fight rising water in their kitchens.

For now, we stay. Our snack bar still stands, our house still dry. But when the time comes, we’ll leave, go to family in the countryside where the rain falls but the earth stays solid. Until then, we’ll fry tempeh and serve customers.