Hard to tire of the musollah behind Pak Muh's at Beringharjo. Sometimes people seated at the head of the narrow passageway observed the observation and wondered to themselves. Often women waited their turn outside on long low benches, where they also restored themselves afterward. Within a remarkable scene of humped forms in gleaming white satin down on the rugs, from behind nothing of the faces visible; there was only a hint of preparation in the features going in and coming out. In a pass once JoJo the dishwasher at Pak Muh was found on the right where the men kept when they attended, spread-eagled on his back like an upturned turtle in a most ungainly pose. No way of knowing what that was about. In the Hindu temples in Singapore you often saw the full-length male prostration, arms outstretched and forehead to the ground. It seemed there was no call on the Hindu women to follow suit; on Shivaratri two years ago there had been no evidence of it among a great number of female devotees.(In old Montenegro women were rare in the churches and when attending stood on the left at services. Funerals too they rarely attended; but then the famous keeners were of course only women, who drew many notable foreign travellers to the high gravesides.) Fridays in the neighbourhood in Singapore it was only ever men one saw filing off to the sermon. On the odd occasion at the Beringharjo Musollah there was a kind of chorus line, or sometimes even two lines in formation, all covered in the provided white robes, holding hands and moving in unison in the first stage of prostration. The brotherhood of Islam certainly did extend to the sisters.
Yogyakarta, Indonesia
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