Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Prayers and Hopes


The most captivating muezzin this morning before leaving the room for an early lunch. This man stands a mark above the other two or three, one of whom is well into his seventies. Hearing this man’s call as he draws his vowels alters your breathing; at the ends of what might be couplets the pauses leave one quietly gasping. Resuming again the extensions seem uncanny, tempting fate—a trapeze artist over-ambitious and without a net. Could the man possibly offer still more? After almost four weeks listening the form, length and culmination of the azan and the shorter iqamah have become more clear; today the last two lines of the latter (or the last long line) were anticipated, together with the final note. Nevertheless, each call remains a thing of itself, a performance in its own right, seemingly newly created. There are certainly no recordings at Nurul Huda.

         As Ramadan approaches new, accomplished beggars are appearing and almost no turning away evident. Prayers during Ramadan are offered with stronger hopes and made in the Holy Land, Mecca in particular, it is said fulfilment rarely fails.

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                            Nurul Huda

                                                                                                                Gang 3 Sosrowijayan, Jogja

                                                                                                                  Ramadan Eve, 17 June 2015

 

                                                                                      

Saturday, June 13, 2015

Gloom


Around the half-way point of the excursion in the becak yesterday a little “forest” Paijo called the treed area around a large road network that included a stone roundabout. Almost immediately, as if an air-curtain had been entered, a transformation of the atmosphere. Cool, lightly fragrant and seductive; birds appeared overhead passing along the top of the canopy. One large bird had to be an eagle, Paijo hazarded unconvincingly. In the variegated stands on the different sides and elevations the green provided refreshment for unaccustomed eyes. (Cheeky old Malays have their own expression for eye-candy: Cuci Moto are roadside motorbike cleaners; cuci mata cleansing of the other kind for the eyes.) The incline had been steep and Paijo had needed to be relieved of his burden. It was a ten minute slowing in all; two minute stop by the roundabout. Subtle intangible impressions weighing negligibly in the larger scheme; in the Tropics a common experience even in the radical, break-neck case of the Singaporean urbanization: one simple reason why we are surely doomed.

Friday, June 12, 2015

Cilacap Town


South-Central Java, Indonesia, arrived by the Express from Jogja that was hailed at the station as it was on its way toward the road. With Paijo the becak driver guiding everything was easier, and a decent translator into the bargain. 

The Express meant no change of vehicle would be needed, four dollar fare. Along the road passengers hailed the old 70’s wagon roadside, while as part of his job the assistant conductor hung from the rear door calling to any others that looked likely.

The young assistant conductor, as Paijo had termed him, helped haul the luggage—usually large, expertly tied bags and boxes—and rapped on the curtain-rail with a steel disk to signal the driver for stops. The assistant did not collect fares, that was left to the senior up front, who made his rounds every so often. Chaperoning young girls was the extra benefit for the young chap. One pretty teen properly scarved and wrapped had a solicitous father awaiting her at her stop, a man who jogged for the door in order to help his girl down. Nevertheless, fallen to the assistant, the lad conveyed without boasting shortly after she had alighted. Thus far twice she had been his, and biasabiasa, good hopes for again and again.

Some kind of police or military conference in town made the search for a room difficult, five hotels all full to the gills. Eventually a Rp550k was taken after almost three weeks of the cost-cutting losmen in Jogja at Rp9k. Hot water, aircon and fresh towel luxury.

Unexpectedly, Paijo came from a fairly well-to-do family, the mother in her mid-seventies head of a large kindergarten where a clean room had been offered. The second son Seno —wheat in Serbo-Croat—drove a perfectly maintained old 4WD Jeep that proved useful in the final round of room-hunting.

In Jogja Paijo was now in a Rp350k monthly room, rather than sleeping in his becak, but of course the old mother still fretted over her eldest son. 

We made a party for dinner at a lesehan not far from the water on the second night, where Paijo's table-manners caused some embarrassment. There had been a short tour in the Jeep searching an appropriate eating place for a pescatarian, including a pass along the beach where the raging sea was sighted and the wooded coast of Nusa Kambangan. The previous month the Australian Bali drug pair had been executed there

The rice fields en route on the bus from Jogja had been captivating after Singapore. Wide, wide fields peopled only sporadically with bent figures in straw hats. In Montenegrin alpine regions the first Spring shoots of green in the hills were unexaggeratedly said to hurt the eyes. Here on the Equator the fecundity was more comfortable. What was striking here was the extent and scale of the intensive cultivation. It seemed highly improbable that every stalk of rice visible had been planted by hand one after another over so many days. The scale was immense, defying all imagining.

A couple of days before departure Paijo had wanted kuda for supper—horse flesh. It had run out at the street stall where it could usually be found and Paijo had settled for a skewer of emprit. The emprit fed on rice stalks in the paddies, Paijo had explained. Outside the bus window tall white birds with a wide wing-span resembling ibis had wheeled over the fields and landed in no doubt ravaging clusters. The skewer Paijo had taken held small portions of brown coloured, soft-looking flesh, like innards.

No, not emprit here, Paijo explained. Those other birds that he gave another name were difficult to trap.

In a front yard of an old handsome crumbling house on Jendral A. Yani, the main street of Cilacap, a pair of white plaster storks from the Australian lawns of the sixties came to life passing the front fence. Colourful, striking, largely mute birds were on offer around the main market, garishly coloured love birds among them. As in most cities, there were no birds in the air. The caged birds through the urban kampungs of Jogja were much less common in Cilacap, only occasionally an overhead twitter in the town-centre.

Raised footpaths reminiscent of the old cowboy boardwalks delivered a walker from the dirty roadway, where honking drivers demanded passage. There was a good deal of the wild west through the town. 

Rickety wooden structures, cantina eateries and numerous Mexican hombres loitering. After Jogja, the Chinese store-keepers and the churches reappeared.

A short trip revealed little new of the Malay world. We had missed the chance to explore the paddy with a friend of Paijo’s who had offered escort. Among the other suggestions had been the prospect of an investigation of the little peasant huts, where people escaped the sun and took their noon-day rest. The makeshift shelters that rose no more than three feet high dotted the fields. On their bicycles workers wheeled large bundles of produce along raised and tamped narrow ridges. It was mainly men out in early June; the women had likely played a larger role in the planting.

At night away from the main strip the streets were dark. In front of the supermarket on Jendral Yani tables, chairs and various stalls gathered a variety of groups—families, a mainland Chinese work-crew it looked and a group of forward young girls heavily made-up. Had there been a single other Caucasian sighted in three days? There must have been many in recent weeks with all the attention on the Bali pair.

Language difficulties at the train station brought some confusion over the return leg back. Paijo and Seno were in fact right: there was no direct train to Jogja. The only train leaving the platform at Cilacap went one-way to Jakarta. If one wanted to head east by train, Kroya an hour away was the link.

It had to be bus again, 4-5 hours if we were lucky. (From Kroya the train was little over two.) We dithered over the alternatives; in the end making the connection at Kroya with minutes to spare. Aircon would make Paijo ill, he said; it would be the cheaper bus for him.

          While we awaited the Kroya bone-rattler, a convoy of either police or military streamed by sirens blaring. There must have been a dozen and a half 4WDs, a large Polici Akademi bus and sundry others, lights flashing, sirens and horns, a megaphone added from one of the lead vehicles.

The procession was staggered: two or three cars; a minute or two gap and two/three or more others. Gaps, more cars, sirens and lights. Shiny, late model vehicles, though not luxury items, mostly with darkly tinted windows. Little attention was given to the procession by the bystanders. Paijo had ignored the announcement from the leading vehicles and could not provide translation.

The convoy had torn along as rapidly as they could on the narrow, busy roadway. Elders on bicycles kept a steady posture as they pedalled along. People on the street presented the usual bedraggled frieze while these chariots thundered. There was a touch of the surreal in the circumstance. One recalled old filmic recreations from China and Japan where a local potentate or daimyo passed through a barefoot, kneeling populace.

Some older officers of high rank had been observed at the Chinese eatery at the main Jendral A. Yani traffic intersection, where large banquet tables had been crowded with impeccable uniforms and high-polished boots. The manager and staff accommodating the gathering were clearly flustered in their duties. The younger troops displayed a familiar swagger and confidence in what was clearly the highly-prized, resplendent uniform. In their demeanour and manner the seniors suggested another order of magnitude in their standing.

For many weeks and months the power struggle between the police, the military and the KPK—the Corruption Commission—with all the allied business and political interests, together with the new administration of Jokowi working against years of accumulated privilege and entitlement, had been played out in the newspapers. Accusations and denials, claim followed by counter claim; functionaries ignoring court orders, legal devices manipulated, abrupt forceful actions, bargaining and temporary strategic truces. It was difficult to cast the Javanese into the historically documented role of brutal, pitiless killers and murderers. Some minor inkling was afforded in Cilacap.


Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Sweet



Lurid hot pink spillage. The barefoot man in his soiled clothes bent to collect what he could of the stream with a tall white fast-food container. The liquid ran around a tree trunk that stood in a raised planter on the corner by the train station, over the mostly firm dirt and through a crack in the brick-work that acted as a funnel. Judging by the run-off the man might have been able to collect two or three fingers of the fluid; he had been quick. A single glimpse in passing. You could not stop nor look back.

Monday, June 8, 2015

Wheels



Two cycles en route to the Warnet, first motorized and second pushing. Three youths in fact; two vehicles. The first was a pair of either high school or college students in matching camel safari-shirt uniforms. (Many of the universities of the region had retained smart military-inspired uniforms from earlier generations as optional wear.) The girl was pillion, lad in front with his arm out signaling. Rare as is any such incidence here on the Equator (even Singapore), the rider must have been signaling. Coming to a stop at lights there had been some kind of exchange up the road that had drawn a long face behind, downcast eyes and a Pieta look of abstraction. A little worry and fretting here that would only spur love one could tell instantly from the distance of the footpath; the merest glance in a single moment showed the position; further enquiry needless.
         The sign clearly presented, what followed was unnecessary confirmation. Downcast and troubled, obstacles and difficulties. In the midst the lad's signaling arm caught the girl's attention. The lad’s hand emerged from a roughly rolled and creased sleeve that the girl now tugged lightly out, straightened and folded properly to make a nice new regular neat cuff. Years of happiness lay on the road ahead, off they sped toward it.
         The second lad outside the Warnet added pure comedy. Many times the same action had been witnessed in Singapore as well as the wider Malay world. In the former case it was always the Indian and Bangla construction workers on cheaply scavenged bicycles giving the display. In Indonesia there was almost nothing but for two-wheeled pushies, rusty old creaking wrecks offered for sale at numerous road-side stores.
         Coming up to Tugu the old Fred Flintstone hoof—here the sandal—more reliable than any fancy braking system of wires and levers.           

Sunday, June 7, 2015

Anomaly (Waisak)


First time on Java was like first time over the 800m Causeway from Singapore. After so long on the Little Red Dot the over-powering question: where had all the Chins gone?... In Johor Bahru back in 2011 the effect was startling, unnerving, quite discombobulating, as they say now. Hints, suggestion, glimmers were not lacking both in JB and then later Jakarta and Jogja; on the contrary, these hints and suggestions of form, bone structure, aspect were plentiful on each and every side. But no two ways about it, not really the true Han. Definitely not. A short little hop-step-and-jump — in the case of JB literally — the Chinese rare as hen's teeth, as they also say. 
         That was why a couple of nights go at Ayam Pedas on Sosrowijayan corner one could not help stopping and staring, in all probability tongue out gaping like a thirsty dog surveying the tables. Not one, not two, not a minor scattering; in fact on the contrary, almost a dozen Chins spread over three of the long wooden tables. There was no mistake. Hungry Chinese trying to catch the attention of the poor waiters sweating under their shirts. Eleven bona fide Chinese; no need enquire and check family trees. Hokkein speakers one could immediately guess from the rhythm.
         — Oh! You know that too? the daughter with the mother at the table enquired hard on the heels of hearing some little extended bahasa and indeed fluent rap with the waiters. (Minor show-off.)
         .... Well, after four years in Singapore....
         (For those expectant of a salacious tale hold your horses right now. A straight good girl who had likely taken over her parents' store in the capital, from where they had driven over. Not ready to risk all for quick, emergency love, as the Nobel winner Garcia Marquez termed it. Polite chat. Settled for the well-grooved.)
         Nine other older women at the two front tables, struggling with the poor service. They were famished, used to chop-chop. Might even have been from the Little Red Dot were it not for the level of bahasa. Tucking in mightily when the nasi reed buckets and the plates eventually arrived. Solicitous too for all at table. You want some of this? Here, try this. You got enough there?...
         When the rowdy young buskers arrived the heart shrank a little in expectation of a stony-hearted response from this unusual majority that night. The young singer with the monstrous studs in his ears waited at their table an eternity. Looking on from the rear it appeared as if there might be some stand-over challenge going on between them, a kind of turf war. You wanna sit there feeding your faces while we the indigenous?... In fact that might have been all wrong. Lady in the centre of the table ahead had been fidgeting in her lap a loooong while. It looked as if the alms might have been delegated to her. And then, surprise, surprise, what she fished out was neither the standard grey Two, not the light brown Five, twasn't even the mauve 10,000 Rupiah. What flashed across the table top from yellow to brown hand was the clearly coloured green Twenty in the tone of the forest and jungle of recent memory in these parts.
         Almost $SG2. The lad eye-balled in a not dissimilar fashion to some of the other observers at the tables. TWENTY THOUSAND Rupiah. G-G-G-Golly!
         Prompted by the Buddha's birthday perhaps, or day of Enlightenment some called it. Vesak it was termed in Singapore;  Indonesia Waisak. Numerous variations across the region—Thailand, Myanmar, the People’s Republic, South Korea. If generosity could be prompted across racial lines, Waisak was the day for Buddhists on the territory of the largest Buddhist temple — or structure if not temple — this side of Nirvana.
         Beautiful to behold. Heart-warming. There was a collective sigh not heard so much at Ayam Pedas on Sosro corner as sensed in the momentary thinness of oxygen. No exaggeration to say a little dizzying.
         On the day following the celebrations would be marked by a procession from the marvelous little Mendut temple over the 4-5kms to Borobudur, where lanterns of some kind were to be lit and hoisted to the pinnacle. A couple of young German backpackers left the losmen early to venture over for the event. Late afternoon of that next day numbers again of Chinese at J. Co Cafe in the mall on Malioboro, big boxes of donuts delivered to the small round tables and marching out the door.
         The Jakarta Post had mentioned it was a public holiday. One had taken that with a grain of salt. “Public Holiday”, duly acknowledged. All things fair and even in a multifarious archipelagic nation state and all that. But really?...
         It was a shock to find the Malioboro library closed. In fact the sign on the door showed  Buka, Open. Behind the desk indoors the nice young chap in the batik uniform rising to his feet advised, No. Closed….
         Closed? The sign? (Not voiced: thought bubble.) ….
         One could not sit at one of the tables on the lesehan either, No, as the library was closed. The lights were indeed turned off; very dark.  
         The new Perpustakaan Kota Jogja around behind Gramedia on Sudirman perhaps?
         No, that would be closed too. All public offices in Indonesia would be closed today. You see — indicating the calendar on the wall carrying the red letter June 2 — in Indonesia it was a public holiday.... Waisak, yes. Very sorry.
         Wikipedia confirmed the suspicion: about 0.8 percent Buddhists in Indonesia. Around two million people, punching above their weight no doubt. A number, but not in the big mix, not in the local scheme of things. Strange. More than strange. A throw-back to something in the distant past. How many Chinese had got out after the last communal violence at the end of Suharto's reign? Doubtful that it had decimated the population. Quite odd. Quite. Or was it?... How different was Cup Day back home? One recalled all the foreigners of years past—our own pre-eminently—marveling at the fact of a National Public Holiday for a horse race. A nation closing down for a dozen and a half mares running in a paddock. The Queen's Birthday. Had the conservatives reinstated that festivity in the last few years?
         Waisak in Jogja.


Saturday, June 6, 2015

The Call (Muezzin)


Under ten meters from the losmen to the mosque across the lane. Small lanes in Java are called gangs, usually measuring less than 1.5 meters. Beside Pinang Merah Losem—Red Palm—there is a small yard of trees behind a rough picket fence, with a rooster that does not belong to the house and which disdains apple cores often perched and chortling on the top rail. An open space between mosque and house.
         After almost two weeks in residence the early pre-dawn call to prayer rarely now wakes entirely, the blast detonating somewhere just beyond the trench of sleep and soon forgotten. Out at the main mosque on Malioboro the muezzin seems to be auditioning for radio or TV, the strain and put-on enough to make one wince. Last year Faris revealed that it was the Muslim prayer—in Faris's particular case the crucial example heard in the Shah's Iran—that brought him the last part of the way to conversion. Since this discovery hearing the muezzin often brought Faris to mind. Just now for the noon-call the voice was the stirring one of an older man, perhaps mid-sixties, natural and deep-welling timbre reaching out in the way that Singing teachers encourage their pupils. Plangent, modest and yearning, the example gave a hint of what had struck the young Arizonan—a classically trained pianist in fact—so particularly.
         Faris had recommended the family at Red Palm. The head of house attended the mosque across the way where Faris went when in Jogja, Nurul Huda. In these two weeks however the old man has not been seen. In the last six months he must have passed away. The old bent Ibu still made herself useful minding her grandchild, doing the laundry and cooking. One could not help wondering whether the son, Adhi, missed his father's voice coming from the mosque. That is presuming the old man took his turn at the microphone calling the prayer; through the course of the day certainly a range of voices can be heard from Nurul Huda. As one might expect from a small, local neighborhood mosque, no grandstanding nor egotism detectable here.

         Listening from the room, thinking of the ghost of Adhi’s father, whose photographs hung on the wall of the losmen, Baba's remarks are recalled on her own father, granddad Rade's beautiful voice answering the priest during services at St. George, a short distance from his house in the village. Granddad Rade had a year or two of learning with a priest, before his father's death put an end to the prospect of the priesthood. Even sixty years ago before mother's immigration, while her father was still in fine voice, one of the neighbors had anticipated a time when there would be no one to answer the priest at St. George. Not anyone of Rade Todorov’s gift.
         A non-Muslim non-speaker hangs uncertainly on the end of these verses. Sometimes the calls are very brief; sometimes the extensions coming unexpectedly when one had assumed the man was done. In the mature, ripened voice of a man in his sixties the straining is clearly not for effect; the striving of this local muezzin in the urban kampung of Sosrowijayan all in another direction. Quite remarkable. Totally gripping. Generations past in the courts of Sultans, Tzars and Emperors listening to prisoners pleading for their lives must have fascinated onlookers in a similar fashion. 

Monday, June 1, 2015

Jogja Song





This street was full of tears. Smiles, joy and some tears too in the classic way.
       Boy with his dad outside Ayem Pedas tonight on Sosrowijayan corner. From the first moment there was an involuntary twitch produced seeing Dad carefully position the lad one step outside the entrance and to the side. With his guitar Dad stood himself on the outer flank. Half an hour before the usual uninspired Trannie pair had been along and as usual stood themselves inside the entrance of the eatery. More forward and confident those lasses. The trinket seller with his shelves along the railing either side of the entrance to the eatery made way immediately for this second pair without needing to be asked.
         Clearly father and son; the genetic line, the form, shape and size perfectly self-evident. Youngster was twelve or thirteen, tall for his age; dad may have recently crossed forty, weathered in the usual way in this region for his class.
         The guitar was simple strumming, adequate and adept enough. For the greater part Dad concentrated on his strings; there may have been some humming accompaniment. Later when the boy went around for the collection the mature voice rose to fill the gap.
         The whole of the effect was delivered by the vibrant young voice. Without needing to try the boy gave out notes and rhythms in brief swells that easily rose above the hubbub of the traffic and the strollers cramming the walkway. It was an instantly striking voice capable of registers that were only hinted in this performance. One was immediately taken by such a voice, lifted by the movement and carried as if by a sudden tide.
         Again as in the previous October with the large chorus of older teens a couple of hundred metres up the road, it was difficult to watch the singer here. This kind of force and feeling seemed overly intimate and probing for naked public display. This lad had not learned the song from the radio or television alone. From earliest childhood Dad and possibly Mum too had been heard lightening their days with song in their room along the river here perhaps.
         It was early days in the busking for the boy. He did not know where to position himself and as he sang he stretched his right arm behind his back taking the left below the elbow. The gaze was turned anywhere but toward his audience. With his father beside him he bore up somehow and carried the lyric to its end in a couple of looping refrains.
         Then further, as had happened three years before in Singapore in the case of a mutilated beggar, the bule, the white foreigner at the tables was given a wide berth for the collection. Given the lad’s callowness it had been half-expected. No doubt about it: not much could be expected from the outsider. Often nothing in fact. One needed to rely on one’s own kind.
         A not entirely unhappy love song was the guess. Had it been possible to concentrate on the lyrics some of the wording might have been picked out.