Grateful 'for a couple of hours of normal life'

Tari Lang was just 14 when her home country of Indonesia experienced an abrupt political U-turn in 1965. What followed would rip Tari’s family apart. A change of government quickly descended into a wave of violence right across the country. Both Tari's British mother and her Indonesian father had been prominent in the previous government and were among the many people targeted by the new regime. Soon many of Tari's peers were on the run.

Even though she was still at school, Tari responded with resistance. She started preparing safe houses for fugitives in the kampungs, the village-like communities on the outskirts of Jakarta, and – rather unexpectedly – found her first love in one of them. With both her parents in prison, Tari would eventually become the sole breadwinner of the family, looking after her younger brother and coming up with imaginative ideas to make ends meet.

Tari's book about her teenage years in Jakarta and the military coup is called My Neighbour, the Dictator.

Presenter: Mobeen Azhar
Producer Radek Boschetty
Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Photo: Tari Lang in Indonesia in the 1960s. Credit: Tari Lang)