Teukoe Oemar van Bernoen was the Acehnese chief of Bernoen on the North Coast of Atjeh whose collaboration with the ophthalmologist Dr. J. Tijssen made possible the cataract campaign recounted in Een strijd in Atjeh (1934). He is described by Tijssen as “een typisch conservatief ouderwetsch Atjehsch hoofd” — a typically conservative, old-fashioned Acehnese chief — and is not to be confused with the war leader Teuku Umar, who fell in 1899.
The approach
Tijssen recounted that, observing “de etiquette, waarop een personnage van zijn gewicht recht heeft en zoo gesteld is” — the etiquette to which a personage of his weight has a right and on which he sets store — he asked leave to speak with the chief, and requested him to bring together the next day all the blind he could find.
Teukoe Oemar was much out of humour, for reasons both personal and general: he had suffered much, very much, from the malaise, the world economic depression then at its height. He therefore came with a number of objections: it would help little, and it gave so much soesah (trouble), all for nothing. When Tijssen answered that it would indeed cost him a very great deal of trouble, he went off grumbling; but his sense of honour had been heavily struck.
The next morning
The following morning Teukoe Oemar had provided for everything: “Het was in de puntjes in orde.” — It was in perfect order, down to the last detail. Out of the great troop he had assembled, Tijssen picked eight unfortunates and ordered them to come the next morning. Five of them were operated on at once — five cataracts. Five days later, fortune having helped, all five could see. Then came the great rush, so great that Teukoe Oemar himself took pleasure in it and exerted himself to help.
The parting question
At Tijssen’s departure the chief, in the doctor’s own words, “beleedigde mij, zóó fijn, als alleen een Atjeher beleedigen kan” — insulted me as finely as only an Acehnese can insult.
He showed himself extremely astonished at the fact that all his blind had been treated free of charge. Talking of it, in their last conversation, Teukoe Oemar suddenly bent over to him very confidentially and said: “Zou ik u iets mogen vragen?” — Might I ask you something? “Zeker, Teukoe, moogt ge iets vragen.” — “Is mijnheer een Hollander?” — “Zeker, Teukoe.” — “Blanda betoel?”
Blanda betoel is Malay for “a real Dutchman.” Tijssen’s comment to the journalist was: “Voelt u de beleediging? Ik heb niet te veel gezegd. Staaroperaties hebben soms een politieke zijde. Oogen gaan open. Niet alleen voor het licht der wereld. Ook voor ons.” — Do you feel the insult? I have not said too much. Cataract operations sometimes have a political side. Eyes are opened. Not only to the light of the world. Also to us.
Significance
The episode is one of the few recorded encounters in which an Acehnese chief of the pacified period expressed, in the courteous idiom of adat, an implicit judgement on the character of Dutch rule: that disinterested benevolence was so foreign to the Dutch as known to Atjeh that a Dutchman who practised it must be suspected of not being a Dutchman at all. Tijssen himself read the question as a political statement and reported it as such.
See Also
- J. Tijssen
- Cataract campaign on the North Coast of Atjeh (1932)
- Een strijd in Atjeh (1934)
- Bernoen
- Noordkust van Atjeh
- C. Graadt van Roggen
- Teuku
- Teuku Umar
- 1933
Source
Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad), door Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen, met een voorrede van den heer H. Wanting, redacteur Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg, uitgave van de Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934), pp. 6–7.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad) by Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.