A Spectator to Insanity

Sitting beside the sultan's palace in Yogyakarta, Richard Lloyd Parry decided to leave Indonesia. He would return to London, where there was a woman he loved waiting for him, "a face and the smell of clean skin"; he would put on hold his life as a reporter covering Asia for the Independent . But in Jakarta, where he waited for his plane to Europe, Lloyd Parry stalled. Maybe it was just cold feet; maybe it was a foreign correspondent's instinct for impending mayhem. He canceled his flight and headed into the city, just in time to catch a student protest that would...