Most lost everything.

Kristina got lucky.

A British woman, a pretty blonde lady in her thirties named Elizabeth Martin who was married to a British Petroleum executive, had purchased a few items of ceramic from her over the years. By happenstance, they had met on the streets a few weeks after the cleansing. Elizabeth mentioned that she wished to hire another member of the household staff. Technically, the job description was seamstress. But Kristina wound up doing almost everything-taking the Martins’ kids to school, shopping at the market for groceries, watching the children in the evenings while her employers attended social events.

Elizabeth, who was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, was closer in age to Kristina. The two women became friends.

Last August 17-Indonesian Independence Day-another twist of fate had changed Kristina’s life.

Elizabeth’s husband Tom, who was friends with the British ambassador to Indonesia, was invited to attend the hoisting of the flag at Merdeka Palace.

Hosted by President Santos and Vice President Magadia, and attended by top military officials, government dignitaries, and special guests of those dignitaries, it was the most solemn annual event in Indonesia, an event that Indonesia’s poor could only watch on television, if they were lucky enough to get to a television.

But by a stroke of fate, the British Embassy had allotted Kristina’s boss five tickets. Four of the tickets would be used by her employer, his wife, and their two children. She was offered the fifth.

Their seats were in front of the fountain, on the lush green grass of the National Monument Gardens. The white-columned Merdeka Palace, the presidential palace of Indonesia, stood majestically just across Medan Merdeka Utara Avenue.

The wind was whipping that day, and she felt occasional mist from the gushing fountains behind her.

The crowd rose for the entrance of President Santos, who took a seat at the center of the large portico amidst the white columns, no more than one hundred meters from where they were sitting. Decorated military officers and a host of other dignitaries, officials of the Indonesian government, surrounded the president.

Crack troops of the Indonesian army marched along the parade grounds to brass and percussion. As they marched by, she noticed one of the officers in the presidential entourage, a stout man in the green army uniform with all the glistening ribbons and sparkling medals. Was he looking at her? His eyes returned to her several times. Perhaps he was looking at something else, she had decided at the time.

After all the troops had marched in and filled the parade grounds, and after President Santos made a short speech about the greatness of Indonesia, a group of schoolboys dressed in the national colors of red and white had done the honors of raising the giant flag against the solemn music of the national anthem played by an army band.

Confetti, elation, applause, and tears of pride flowed freely among the masses as the Indonesian flag, furling in the tropical wind, reached the top of the flagpole.

Kristina could not believe that she was actually here, at the presidential palace, at a magnificent time and place with the eyes of the nation watching. Tears flowed. Only weeks before she had been knocked off her feet by the powerful blast of water hoses. Now this.

Perhaps there was a God. Perhaps that moment had been evidence of it.

Her parents, who had been devout Catholics and who had raised her in the church, had taught her that there was a God, and that he was a God of redemption.

She thought of her parents, who had been killed in a car crash, and of her brother, Asmoro, from whom she was partially estranged.

Asmoro had rejected Christianity and embraced Islam. Then he had rushed off to join the Indonesian navy. His conversion to Islam had separated Asmoro from her, and from her parents while they were alive. Although she rarely saw him anymore, she occasionally received a letter, but he kept Kristina at arm’s length. He kept quiet about his assignment with special forces of the Indonesian navy. He was stationed in Sumatra, she had heard, at a naval station along the Malaccan Strait.

Asmoro certainly didn’t believe in her parents’ God, but maybe Kristina did. Perhaps she had now been redeemed.

With fireworks crackling and cannons booming and the throngs of the masses cheering, someone tapped her shoulder.

Perhaps the tap of an angel.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” She turned and saw a young, slim Indonesian army officer. At least she thought he was an officer. “General Suparman Perkasa would like to meet you.”

“General who?” she had asked.

“I am Captain Taplus,” the army man had said. “General Perkasa is chief of staff of the Indonesian army. I am on the general’s staff.”

She looked up into the presidential box. The rotund army man in the green uniform was looking down her way, smiling and slowly nodding. And then, a wave of his hand.

“The general would like to meet you and requests the honor of your company for a private lunch at his quarters.”

She had turned and glanced at Elizabeth Martin, whose blonde hair blew softly in the warm Indonesian breeze. “It is up to you,” Elizabeth said with both a raised eyebrow and a smile. “If you would like to go meet the general, your job will wait. It’s entirely up to you, my dear.”

In retrospect, she knew Elizabeth was trying to give her a way out. And a voice had screamed on the inside of her that she should decline the invitation at that instant and return to her domestic duties at the Martin household. But there, at that moment, in the tropical sunshine of her native land, she stood on the precipice of a decision. It was as if her feet were upon two cliffs, and the cliffs were inching farther apart, leaving below her a deep chasm from which she would never survive if she did not choose. And indeed, it had proven to be a decision between two worlds. She had glanced back into Elizabeth’s eyes one last time, but when the breeze brought an alluring whiff of the handsome young captain’s cologne, she turned back and looked at him, so utterly manly in his uniform, and then across the street at the general, still nodding and smiling and sitting next to the president. She knew in that instant that, both her country and the prospect of an exciting new life were calling her.

She had stood, and in an oxymoronic moment of nervousness blended with the starry-eyed excitement of a schoolgirl first in love, accompanied the captain to a private dining room at a nearby military base. Thirty minutes later, the rotund man in the green uniform came through the doors and began a relationship in which he could simply snap his fingers and have her there at his powerful whim, and then send her away for days until he needed her again.

Not that she totally objected. The benefits had in some respects been mutual. A poor girl transformed overnight by the trappings of power and luxury!

Despite it all, the emptiness in Kristina’s soul was not fulfilled. She felt like a part-time concubine, switching back and forth from the luxurious trappings of the general’s quarters to her meager government apartment.

She had tried mustering the strength to talk to the priest about it, but ran away, as she had done all her life.

She shuffled over to the door, cracking it slightly open. Light poured in from the hallway. She looked and saw no military servants on the second floor. The voices came from downstairs.

Hugging the wall, Kristina tiptoed slowly toward the spiraling staircase. She reached the open area by the top of the staircase and peeked around the corner of the wall for a look down.

All the lights were on-the great chandelier hanging over the main entryway of the house was burning brightly. Lamps were burning on tables on each side of the foyer.