Mosques of Jogja

Just gone 10 AM. Omar, who arrived yesterday from S'pore via Jakarta, off to the Kraton earlier in company with a blonde, blue-eyed Belander met at an up-market hotel a few doors from Kristina. A brief survey of PetiMas out of curiosity had revealed swimming pool, bathroom half-exposed to the outdoors with climbing fern on a sculpted wall, and a central garden showcase the equal of anything on the Little Red Dot. Irresistible to Omar, who will move there on Saturday. Stories to relay to friends and acquaintances back home, at under S$50 a steal. We blundered upon the Belander in her swimsuit beside the pool. A little pampering in her case too after dues paid at various backpackers places, camping and shitting in the forest (toilet paper under the arm), Cuba, Sydney to Perth on the trans-continental. Finance/admin woman who listened patiently to the author countering opinions on the local beggars and pestering young street musicians doing the rounds of the eateries. (The woman was encountered a second time on Malioboro at dinner.) 
         At PetiMas—Chest of Gold—there stood beside reception a door signed MASJID. Usually the hotels in Indonesia provided a musallah, prayer-room. A mosque was unusual. Within the size and lay-out did indeed present as a fully-fledged mosque. Omar was caught off balance. For one thing a masjid needs to be bequeathed to the community; and it needed to be open to all. A masjid cannot be a private, exclusive domain. Omar agreed the muscle in the Sentry box at the gate would ensure the riff-raff of the Dagen street would be excluded there, the becak drivers, the ragged and dirty. On the wall beside the microphoned pulpit hung a large framed photograph of a glittering night scene of the Kaaba. This brought immediate disapproval from Omar. Pictorial distraction in a holy place where one was preparing to focus on the Almighty was not in keeping with Islam; indeed to Islam.
         It was the underground masjid at the Kraton, the local Sultan's palace, that raised Omar's interest that morning. (Not the company of the blonde who would be joining the excursion.) Thirty years ago Omar and his young family had stayed at the Kraton, then one of the few up-market hotels in Yogyakarta. The old ruins of the Water Palace that had been bombed during the war and the adjacent underground masjid had not come up on the radar at the time. Six or seven hundred metres from Kristina on Jalan Dagen, only such an attraction was able to rouse a devout and somewhat jaded Omar.
         ….The lovely burnt orange and black batik blouse chosen by Lia at Kristina reception this morning may or may not be associated with a possible after-work teh tentatively arranged with a busy author struggling to get the words down as the impressions keep flooding without let-up.