In Jakarta, a Choir of the Displaced Sings the Corridor Home

JAKARTA — The hall was built for buses and now holds voices. In a repurposed transit terminal on the city's northern edge, a choir of climate migrants — most of them arrivals of the last two years, drawn from the swelling corridors that have carried registered numbers toward 116 million — gave a concert this week that neighbors queued around the block to hear. The choir, assembled by a Passage Trust caseworker, sings in seven languages, none of them translated for the audience. "We are not asking to be understood word by word," said its founder, Sri Wulandari, who crossed from a drowned Sumatran district in 2122. "We are asking to be heard as people who arrived." The program mixed lullabies from villages that no longer exist with a commissioned piece about the walk itself. For an hour the terminal, ordinarily a place of departure and paperwork, became a place people chose to enter. Wulandari plans a second concert before the rains. The tickets, as before, will be free.