Theage.com.au, November 19, 2006
ON JALAN LEGIAN in Kuta, Bali, the site where the Sari Club once stood is fenced off from the footpath by tall black pickets. Propped against this barrier are several large, parched wreaths, probably put there on the four-year anniversary of the bombing about a month ago. Attached to the fence are poems and photographs, curling and faded under the sun. Across the road, the site of Paddy's Bar is shielded by a high, blue, corrugated iron fence.
Both sites are unoccupied dustbowls, the pale earth churned and rocky. A taxi driver tells my sister and me that, according to Balinese tradition, nothing can be built on the land until the first crops have been harvested from banana trees planted at each site. Only with the harvest is the land healed and renewed.
There is a new Paddy's Bar, standing a short distance from where the original one stood. At its entrance hangs a banner reading, in charming awkward English: "Live the World Without Violence." We never see the place busy.
