‘Peacock’ flies away to see his Creator

Darul Aqsha
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

WS RENDRA, a renowned Indonesian poet, actor, playwright and stage director passed away on Thursday.

Nicknamed “The Peacock” for his flamboyant but stinging style when reading his poems on stage, Rendra, died of cardiac arrest. He was 74.

His death shocked the Indonesian public, who two days before mourned the death of Mbah Surip, a popular Indonesian bohemian singer.

Rendra was buried in his Bengkel Teater compound in Depok, some 25km west of Jakarta. His tomb was just seven metres away from Surip’s tomb.

In September, Rendra came to Brunei to receive the 2008 Mastera Literary Award, together with Professor Madya Dr Hj Hashim Hj Abdul Hamid of Brunei Darussalam and Hjh Siti Hawa Hj Salleh of Malaysia. The Mastera or Majlis Sastera Asia Tenggara (Southeast Asia Literary Council) was established in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on August 25, 1995, by Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia to strengthen cooperation in developing regional literature.

The previous year, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Gadjah Mada (UGM) in Yogyakarta.

Willibrordus Surendra Broto Rendra was born in Kg Jayengan, Surakarta, Central Java on November 7, 1935 in a Catholic household. His father, R Cyprianus Sugeng Brotoatmodjo, taught the Indonesian and Javanese languages at a Catholic school in the city, while his mother, Raden Ayu Catharina Ismadillah, was a Serimpi dancer at the Surakarta Court. He once attended the Faculty of Letters at the UGM. But he didn’t finish it, instead he received a scholarship for further education at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, New York.

His return to Indonesia and set-up of the Bengkel Teater in 1967 in Yogyakarta ushered in a new era in the development of stage theatre and poetry reading in Indonesia.

Rendra gave a new nuance to the Indonesian theatre by adapting Greek dramas, like Sophocles’ Antigone, Oedipoes Sang Raja, Lysistrata, and British plays like William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Macbeth, as well as original works such as Bip Bop Rambaterata, Selamatkan Anak Cucu Sulaiman, Mastodon dan Burung Kondor, Sekda, Perjuangan Suku Naga, and Panembahan Reso.

When he was 19, his drama, Orang-orang Di Tikungan Jalan, won the Yogyakarta’s best drama and his book, Bermain Drama, won the Ministry of Education’s best book in 1976.

Although Rendra was credited as “the Father of the Indonesian Theatre”, many of his dramas drew fierce criticisms that at one point the government had banned them from being staged.

In 1979, when he was reading anti-establishment poems at the Taman Ismail Marzuki arts compound’s stage in Jakarta, military intelligence agents threw ammonia bombs at him. He was arrested and imprisoned at the notorious Guntur military prison for nine months, which inspired him to write the poem, Paman Doblang.

As a movie actor, Rendra played several roles such as in Motinggo Busye’s Cintaku Jauh Di Pulau (1972), Chairul Umam’s Al-Kautsar (1977), Sjumanjaya’s Yang Muda Yang Bercinta (1977), Eros Djarot’s Kantata Takwa (1992) and Lari Dari Blora (2007).

Rendra was prolific as a poet and writer. His early poems were mostly about love.

Literary critic Subagio Sastrowardoyo showed that Rendra’s poems were strongly influenced by Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca which had a unique, energetic, brilliant, and frequently sweet narrative style.

Unlike poems from authors such as Chairil Anwar and Rivai Apin, Rendra’s poems were “closer to landscape than ocean”, Goenawan Mohamad, a poet and journalist, wrote in Tempo.

In the mid-1970s, Rendra’s poems and drama became critical of the repressive government of Soeharto. His works gave voice to the people’s misery and aspiration.

In August 1970, Rendra embraced Islam. Long before he converted though he was already curious about Islam. Not long after his return from the United States, Rendra with his Bengkel Teater staged Kasidah Barzanji, a musical which presented Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) biography and eulogy.

The work is one of his masterpieces which even surprised the Indonesian public at that time, especially Muslims, because Rendra at the time was yet to embrace Islam.

Kasidah Barzanji was restaged 23 years later when he had already embraced Islam. “I easily cry when reading the Prophet’s biography. It’s very beautiful to imagine the struggle of one who was unselfish,” he said.

Together with Muslim preacher, KH Zainuddin MZ, dangdut musician Rhoma Irama and tycoon-cum-artist Setiawan Djody, Rendra set up Yayasan Hira, an Islamic foundation. He then helped form the Kantata Takwa music group.

Six days before he died, Rendra wrote a poem from his hospital bed. In the untitled poem, he expressed his wishes and love for Allah (SWT): “I want to return to nature’s way. I want to improve my dedication to Allah … God, I love you.”

Rendra was survived by his wife and 11 children. His first wife was Sunarti Suwandi, but they divorced in 1979. In 1970, while still married to Sunarti, he married Sitoresmi Prabuningrat. They divorced in 1981. His third wife was Ken Zuraida.

Rendra had denied he had converted to Islam for the sake of polygamy.

He said his interest in Islam grew when he was preparing for the musical Kasidah Barzanji, several months before his marriage to Sitoresmi on August 12, 1970.

It was also around this time he became a Muslim. He chose the name: Wahyu Sulaiman Rendra.

Rendra said he decided to convert because “Islam can respond to my basic question which was during this time always haunting: total individual freedom. I can directly worship Allah (SWT) without need of other people’s assistance so that I feel my individual right is respected.”

He was also interested in Al-Quran. “Is there any holy book, which explains its concept of deity in a short sentence like Al-Quran?”

Now, the “Peacock” whose spirit had desperately sought a true faith for years, had flown away to meet his love his Creator.

In the last four years, Delta FM, a Jakarta-based radio with 20 radio channels across the country, has been airing these words from Rendra: “Ya Allah, Pemilik seruan yang sempurna ini.” (O, Lord, The Owner of this complete call).

The post adzan or call for prayer should be a reminder that Indonesia has not only lost a poet and a playwright, but one of its Muslim brothers.

The Brunei Times
Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Miracle of Bahasa Indonesia and Arabic

Dr. Nikolaos van Dam*

It has always been the dream and wish of many Arabs that everyone should speak the same classical Arabic. Arabic dialects are considered by some Arab linguists to be a degenerate form of the language of the Koran, or of the Arabic supposedly spoken by the Prophet Muhammad.

In reality, however, Arabic dialects have always existed, even during the time of the Prophet Muhammad. It would actually have been an anomaly if the Arabian Peninsula would have been a homogeneous linguistic area.

For it is only normal that there are regional varieties in languages spoken over a larger territory. The Arabic of the Koran, therefore, was one of many varieties, also in the past. Language variations that existed at the time of the rise of Islam are even reflected in minor differences in readings of the Koran.

The Arab Islamic armies coming from the Arabian Peninsula and conquering Greater Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as North Africa, all brought their particular dialects with them, and they and their descendants “Arabized” the populations in the conquered regions in their own particular ways. Arabic dialects subsequently developed separately, growing further apart also as a result of language mingling with the various languages then spoken in the conquered territories; the highly diverse Arabic language of today is its natural result.

Among Arab nationalists, the ideal continues to be that all Arabs should speak the same classical language variety. The reality is, however, that nobody speaks classical Arabic, or modern, standard Arabic, as a mother tongue, be it at home or in other informal social environments. It would be unrealistic, therefore, to expect that classical Arabic will ever become the unified social language of the Arabs, which it has never been. Nevertheless, this desire remains of undiminished central importance as a unifying factor for the Arab world.

The development of Indonesian, (originally Malay), has historically been rather different from that of Arabic. A century ago, Malay was spoken only by a minority in the territory, which today constitutes the Republic of Indonesia. Less than 10 percent of the population spoke Malay as their natural, mother tongue; it was a majority language in particular parts of Sumatra only. From there, and from the Malaysian Peninsula, or the “Malay motherland” in the wider sense, it spread via tradesmen to limited areas elsewhere in the Indonesian archipelago where, over the centuries, it developed as a kind of traders’ lingua franca (Melayu pasar). It was only during the 1920s that Malay started to be developed into a new standard language, which was later named Bahasa Indonesia.

The initially somewhat artificial language was based on the former official language used in the royal correspondence of the Malay Johor-Riau Kingdom. This formal language, which was not a spoken, daily language like the Malay dialect of the Riau area, was further developed, initially by Dutch colonial linguists like Van Ophuijsen.

At a later stage, Indonesian nationalist linguists started playing an important role, some with a Sumatran Minangkabau Malay background, like Sutan Takdir Alisjahbana, as well as Indonesians from other regions. It resulted in a very successful example of “language planning”; it was a miracle that this language, originally labeled General Cultivated Malay, became, within a century, the official language all over Indonesia, from Sabang to Merauke.

It was a new language in the sense that it had not generally been written, let alone spoken, in this form in Indonesia before the Sumpah Pemuda, or Youth Pledge, of Oct. 28, 1928, or before the end of the Dutch colonial era. The language succeeded in attaining the strong position of a unifying language for most Indonesians.

Although it had apparently been the official intention to teach everyone the same standard Bahasa Indonesia, in practice various forms of colloquial Indonesian dialects developed as well. Malay dialects, which had already been spoken previously, remained relatively unaffected. Jakartan Indonesian developed into the most prominent and prestigious dialect. (It should be noted that Jakartan is not the same as Betawi, which is a much older Malay dialect spoken in Jakarta, formerly Batavia).

In theory, there had been the possibility for Bahasa Indonesia to achieve the ideal, which many Arabs had envisaged for their language, namely to have everyone speak one single official language as a mother tongue. In practice, however, things did not work out that way. This was probably also the result of the fact that teachers of Indonesian mixed the official language with regional elements of their own languages, or with their various Malay dialects.

Having studied only the official form of Bahasa Indonesia, I was surprised to discover that it is nowhere spoken spontaneously in its pure form as a home language or mother tongue. The differences between Bahasa Indonesia and the so-called dialects, whether considered “slang” or not, are generally big enough for non-Indonesians (who only know the official Indonesian) to not fully understand varieties of informal language. Conversely, something similar applies to less educated Indonesians, who may have difficulty in completely understanding the official language.

Is this a negative phenomenon? I think it just reflects the reality that dialects tend to develop next to an official language, and will almost inevitably keep existing alongside it.

This phenomenon, called diglossia, is known to exist in many countries, and as such, is to be perceived as a very normal thing, although this fact is not always recognized or acknowledged. Next to Bahasa Indonesia and a variety of colloquial Indonesian, there are also many Indonesians who know a regional language, such as Javanese, Sundanese or one of the other hundreds of local languages. In a language situation of this sort, we might even have to speak of triglossia, or even multiglossia. For instance, Javanese Indonesians are expected to be able to switch between three varieties, depending on the social context.

There is not much that can be done against diglossia or triglossia, or even multiglossia, except for — in the Indonesian case — creating a strong awareness that a high-level Bahasa Indonesia should be taught in schools and other educational institutions, with the message that it is a very beautiful and sophisticated form of Indonesian, which has played a vital role in uniting the people of Indonesia. This unifying role deserves to be well maintained, just as is the case with Arabic.

Language purists tend to want to enforce certain formal language forms. They can never dictate, however, what people speak at home, and efforts to impose their linguistic standards may even help create a dislike for the official language. What they, and others, can do, however, is to stimulate a strong affection for Bahasa Indonesia in such a way that the people of Indonesia will like to also speak this language in their daily lives.

Nikolaos van Dam, Chiclana de la Frontera, Spain.
The Jakarta Post, Friday, November 04, 2011.

*Nikolaos van Dam (born April 1, 1945, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is a Middle East scholar, former Dutch Ambassador to Iraq, Egypt, and Indonesia, and author. Van Dam studied Arabic and Political & Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (cum laude), where he obtained the degree of Doctor in Literature in 1977. He taught Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Amsterdam (1970–75). A fully updated edition of his best-known book, The Struggle for Power in Syria, was published recently. He studied Arabic and Indonesian language and literature at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Source: http://bahasakita.com/the-miracle-of-bahasa-indonesia-and-arabic/

Arabic Language in Contemporary Indonesian

Dr. Nikolaos van Dam*

 

One of the most often heard cliches is that Bahasa Indonesia is a simple language. I find this cliche is mainly used by those who have never mastered the language. Nevertheless, it should be admitted that Arabic is much more complex and difficult to master.

Before being posted to Jakarta, I expected that my knowledge of Arabic would be a great advantage in Indonesia. As I started studying Arabic in the 1960s and have lived and worked in various Arab countries for over 15 years, I thought I would have a soft linguistic landing when assuming my new responsibilities as Ambassador of the Netherlands in Jakarta in August 2005.

I expected things to be even easier because I was aware that Indonesian also contains numerous words of Dutch origin. According to European Loanwords in Indonesian (published in 1983 by the Indonesian Etymological Project), some 5,400 words in Indonesian are of Dutch origin.

According to a sister publication, Arabic Loan-Words in Indonesian (compiled by Russell Jones who focuses specifically on the root forms of Arabic- and Persian-derived words), there are some 2750 Indonesian words derived from Arabic.

This means that, even if some words in Jones’ list are now obsolete, the real number of Arabic words in Indonesian may be more than 3000. This is because Jones’ compilation does not include the derivative words which are so abundant in Indonesian. For example, syair, which produces bersyair, menyairkan, penyair, kepenyairan, syairi and so on.

Adding the 2,750 and 5,400 figures led me to suppose that I already knew more than 8000 Indonesian words, even before arriving in Jakarta. During my first ride by car on the highway from Soekarno-Hatta Airport to our new residence in Menteng, I tested my elementary vocabulary by reading the first large billboard we passed. It was the well-known sign warning against the dangers of smoking which reads: Merokok menyebabkan kanker, serangan jantung, impotensi, dan gangguan kehamilan dan janin (smoking causes cancer, heart disease, impotence, and pregnancy complications).

Enthusiastically I concluded from this first practical linguistic encounter, that of the ten different words mentioned here, I already knew more than half, because they were of either Dutch, European or Arabic origin: merokok, kanker and impotensi are easily recognizable by any Dutchman, whereas the Arabic origin of menyebabkan (from sabab), kehamilan (from hamil) and janin is easily identifiable for anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of both Arabic and the Indonesian system of prefixes and suffixes.

This led me to the optimistic — albeit somewhat premature — conclusion that, with my linguistic background, it would be a relatively easy task to learn Indonesian. And the other way around: that I could likely make good use of my knowledge of Arabic in my contacts with Indonesian society. This was also suggested to me by Indonesians on various occasions.

But the reality turned out to be rather different. Of course, I had a big advantage over other foreigners who did not know either Arabic or Dutch. But in practice I discovered that — despite what many people, including many Indonesians, say or believe — Bahasa Indonesia has a rich original vocabulary. Therefore I am obliged to consult my Indonesian dictionaries rather frequently.

In fact, I am not able to use Arabic particularly often, because — despite my expectations — there are few Indonesians who can actually communicate in Arabic. Nevertheless, speaking Arabic well in Indonesia is generally regarded as something prestigious, deserving of great respect.

I think that the Arabic component of Indonesian is rather overestimated. Certainly this is so when it comes to the real usage and knowledge of the words of Arabic origin in Indonesian daily life. The fact that some 3,000 — if not many more — words of Arabic origin can be found in Indonesian language dictionaries does not imply that these words are being used on a daily basis, let alone that their meaning is generally known to the Indonesian public, whether well-educated or not. Nor does it mean that people are generally aware of the particular Arabic origin of words they use in modern Indonesian.

As a participant in an intensive Indonesian language course at the well-known Alam Bahasa Indonesia Institute in Yogyakarta (formerly known as Puri), I was asked by my teacher to translate various texts from English into Indonesian, as part of my homework. Since I had only the Indonesian-Dutch dictionary of Professor A. Teeuw with me at the time, I could translate from Indonesian to Dutch but not the other way around. And so I experimented with searching the dictionary for the Arabic equivalents of the words to be translated. In several cases I found this method satisfactory.

To my surprise, however, back at the language institute the next day, I found that my knowledgeable teacher did not know some of these Indonesian words of Arabic origin, although they appear in various Indonesian dictionaries.

The same phenomenon was illustrated by Russell Jones, who, after the publication in 1978 of his list of loan words in Indonesian, asked three young university lecturers in Indonesia to examine this list independently. It turned out that they were familiar with only about 10% of the words.

In the era of Dutch Arabist and colonial advisor Snouck Hurgronje, it was apparently still possible to find people in Indonesia who spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Most of them were from Hadramaut or other parts of southern Arabia. Although Snouck Hurgronje met most of his Hadrami informants while in Mecca, he also spoke with Arabs in the Dutch Indies.

But today we see a different picture. Whereas there are still many Indonesians of clearly identifiable Arab origin (mainly Hadrami), there are hardly any among this community who are still able to speak Arabic, let alone any authentic, colloquial variety of Arabic. One of the main reasons for the fact that Arabic has almost entirely disappeared as a mother tongue in Indonesia is that most Arab immigrants married Indonesian women and their offspring learned only the language of the mother. Hence, the “father tongue” — so to speak — has ceased to be a living language.

It is only through coincidence that I have met Indonesian Arabs who speak their “father’s colloquial”. And this is primarily in cases where these individuals have migrated from Arab countries to Indonesia. I have not discovered any unique, isolated variety of Arabic existing in Indonesia as a kind of “linguistic island”. And I am not aware of the existence of such a phenomenon in the past.

During my first two years in Indonesia, I met very few Indonesians with whom I could communicate in Arabic. At first I found this surprising. On second thought, I realized that it is quite understandable. This is because of the fact that most Indonesians who have studied Arabic have devoted themselves almost exclusively to studying the Koran or to memorizing parts of it. In addition, they may have studied Arabic texts concerning important subjects such tafsir al-Qur’an, fiqh and the hadith.

However, committing the Koran to memory does not necessarily imply a real understanding of the text. And even if a perfect understanding of the Koran could be obtained, this would not necessarily result in an ability to converse in Arabic about mundane issues.

When visiting a well-known pesantren in Tambak Beras (Jombang, near Surabaya) I met a female student who was studying the Tafsir al-Jalalayn. She had written a Javanese translation above the Arabic text word by word and was learning it by memory. I was surprised by her ability to work with a text such as this, which is challenging even for advanced students of Arabic. Nevertheless, even very accomplished students of Arabic
who have mastered complicated texts such as this would not necessarily be able to communicate orally in classical Arabic.

There are many studies concerning the Arabic component of Indonesian and the way that Arabic words have entered Bahasa Malayu and Bahasa Indonesia. There are also studies that address the notion that, for Indonesians, studying Arabic may be uniquely challenging because of the Indonesian linguistic background.

These studies indicate that almost all words of Arabic derivation have entered Indonesian via written language. As there are many Indonesians of south Arabian origin, one would expect to find at least some residue of dialects from regions such as Hadramaut or other parts of South Yemen. But this occurs rarely, if at all.

Nearly all the Indonesians I have met who do speak good Arabic have studied or lived for some time in the Arab world, whether Cairo, al-Madinah, Baghdad or elsewhere. Their language competency results from daily exposure to spoken Arabic for an extended period.

It can be concluded that colloquial Arabic has mostly, if not entirely, disappeared as a living language in Indonesia. Knowledge of Arabic among Indonesians is almost exclusively derived from studying the Koran or Islamic subjects in general. Those who fully master Arabic have either studied it at an Islamic university, institute or pesantren, or have studied and lived for a long period in the Arab world. In such situations usage of Arabic is usually obligatory, including in the case of an Indonesian pesantren, such as the one in Gontor, East Java. An “Indonesianized” variety of Arabic, existing as a kind of “linguistic island”, separate from dialects such as Hadrami Arabic, does not presently exist — if it ever did.

*Nikolaos van Dam (born April 1, 1945, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is a Middle East scholar, former Dutch Ambassador to Iraq, Egypt, and Indonesia, and author. Van Dam studied Arabic and Political & Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam (cum laude), where he obtained the degree of Doctor in Literature in 1977. He taught Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Amsterdam (1970–75). A fully updated edition of his best-known book, The Struggle for Power in Syria, was published recently. He studied Arabic and Indonesian language and literature at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

 

 

Source: http://bahasakita.com/arabic-language-in-contemporary-indonesian/

Indonesian author writes of life’s journey to UNISSA

Siluet Cinta di Unissa
Author: Yenni Patriani Yakub
Publisher: Mujahid Press, Bandung, July 2013, 197 pages

Darul Aqsha

DARE to dream! Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing and knows what His servants need. If people believe in Allah and work with righteousness, He will open the door for sustenance.” That is the core message of this novel “Siluet Cinta di Unissa” (“Silhouette of love in UNISSA”) written by Yenni Patriani Yakub.

This book tells the story of a female student, Fakhra, who hailed from a remote village of Bengkulu, an Indonesian province in the southern part of Sumatra island.

For many years she has nurtured the dreams of meeting the His Majesty the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam. She admires the Monarch for leading his people with just and wisdom based on the Syariah (Islamic law), thus allowing the people in the Sultanate to live in peace and tranquility.

Fakhra, who comes from a poor family, even installs a poster of His Majesty in her room’s wall. She later met her old friend who was on vacation from her studies in Brunei.

The friend, a daughter of a wealthy merchant in her village, assisted Fakhra by paying the medical expenses of her sick mother who was initially refused by the hospital management for being too poor to pay.

It was through her good friend that Fakhra gets information about scholarship opportunities at Brunei’s Universiti Islam Sultan Sharif Ali (UNISSA) in Bandar Seri Begawan.

But the path to achieve her dreams are not easy. Poverty is one of her hurdles. She has been living with her mother in the remote village since her father who worked as a rubbish dump scavenger in Jakarta was jailed. In the capital city, her patience mother laundrying neighbours’s clothes. After moved to their village, she works as a local traditional bag weaver.

In her ‘pesantren’ (Islamic boarding school), Fakhra is known as a smart and rather rebellious student. But, she experiences life’s hardships such as the jailed father, ailing mother, burned home, failed in love, and corruptions in local bureaucracy – All of these resentful things make her sick and hate her own country.

However, the news from Brunei that she is received as a scholarship student in the UNISSA pushes aside her resentment. In Brunei, she lives in the university’s hostel. Involved an association of foreign students, she meets a Tanzanian male student who reminds her to her ideal classmate in the pesantren who has married to her best friend. The Tanzanian student expresses his love and proposes her . She agrees. But, the student turns out has a wife in his country. Their plan to get marry is cancelled after the Tanzanian’s wife did not approve him.

Anyway, there is a Bruneian student who loves Fakhra secretly. As he completed his studies and proposed to her, the disappointed Fakhra agrees.

They eventually marry in a ceremony at her village in Bengkulu. Fakhra and her husband now live happily in Brunei with a child. She loves her husband because he always reminds her to love her country that had disappointed her.

In the meantime, Fakhra has made efforts to complete her study. During the university’s convocation day, she had the opportunity to meet His Majesty the Sultan. At last, her dream comes true.

Reading the novel thoroughly, readers are reminded to the narrative style and plots of the novels of Habiburrahman Al-Shirazy, an Indonesian author, well-known for his Islamic novels such as Ayat-ayat Cinta, Dalam Mihrab Cinta and Ketika Cinta Bertasbih. Some of Al-Shirazy’s works had been made into feature films and TV series.

Despite the story is interesting to drive people to have any dream and to reach their ideals, unfortunately, in the chapters when the Fakhra living in the sultanate, the author lacks of building another conflict in the novel plot.

The author also makes readers are confused with a brief chapter about the death of her father in the middle of the story, while in the next chapters she asks an approval from her father and mother to marry with a Bruneian man. There is no information when and how his father was released from jail.

Besides, the novel apparently is published in haste. Its book cover, typography and editing are not seriously done. And instead of photographs, sketches or vignets are better for the novel’s illustrations.

The author, Yenni Patriani Yakub, nicknamed Yeyen, is an Indonesian student who received a Master degree scholarship in Arabic at UNISSA from Brunei’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She wrote this novel just a year living in Brunei.

Yeyen was born in Curup, Bengkulu, 33 years ago. She is also known as the writer of several books such as Panduan Belajar Mengaji Untuk Santri (Guide to Study Al-Quran for Muslim Students in Islamic Boarding School, 2007), Rumus Cerdas Memahami Kaidah dan Tata Bahasa Arab (Smart Formulation to Understand Arabic Principles and Grammar, 2011), Biografi Iblis (Devil Biography, 2011), and some education books for primary and secondary schools such as Senam Poco-poco (Poco-poco Gymnastic), Globalisasi di Sekitar Kita (Globalisation Around Us), and Kumpulan Ekspresi dalam Bahasa Arab (A Collection of Arabic Expression).

The Brunei Times

Bandar Seri Begawan

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Yenni Patriani Yakub

Source: http://www.bt.com.bn/features/2013/11/10/indonesian-author-writes-life%E2%80%99s-journey-unissa