Rain. In the morning it was light. By afternoon another episode saw first a spattering on the windowpane, and some minutes later streaks lashing the dark screens on the balcony at the top of the pesantren behind the hotel. Finally, evidence of its strength was down in the puddles over the paving, meaning sheltering indoors.
Hal had popped in at Al Sarah—formerly Al Azhar and before that Al Wadi & Mr Teh Tarik. As expected, it was almost noon by the time she arrived, after her call to her daughter in the boarding pesantren, to which she had been sent in Java.
A month ago the girl was dispatched to a superior kind of establishment of two or three storeys, newly painted and with fancy arches. Initially Hal had reported the girl was well settled, when last year there had been much resistance at the prospect.
There was no surprise now at the video Hal presented, at the tears and clinging to the legs of her aunt, who had come to visit. The late-30s aunt, Hal’s younger sister, had her twelve year old son there in the same pesantren, a year now in the male section.
Last year without her mother’s presence in the kampung, Hal’s girl had been lazy, disordered and not attending school. The pesantren had been hoped to be a solution.
Hal's sister had come up in the mentions earlier. She was pretty, earning some reasonable rupiah in a furniture factory in Jepara, where Hal too had worked before coming to Singapore. Now in addition the sister was also running a little food stall that Hal had helped establish.
The young woman was recalled for her marital situation as the second wife of a rich guy from Majalengka, further west in Central Java. They may have met in the furniture factory, where the chap had been a client. Rich guy with a first wife & children back in his home town, taking a younger second. Nothing particularly unusual there.
Hal had been against the union; a second wife’s position was always problematic. The sister was pretty, had some upper secondary schooling. Guy was some years older too.
Nonetheless, so it transpired.
One other detail on the sister had been forgotten: this was her own second marriage too. From the first there was a previous child, but what may not have been conveyed last year, the child of that first union had been taken by the father, the first husband, over to his kampung in Sumatra. Dark side of the moon more or less; a heck of a distance for a mother of limited means.
The sister had divorced what had been a lay-about first husband. Very likely she had not seen her child for years; it was no doubt a question when she might.
So, that much. And then news this morning that the second husband was marrying again; or had in fact done so. Hal might not have been informed promptly.
This woman now, the third wife, hailed from the region of the pesantren, where the boy with the second wife, Hal’s sister, had been placed. Third wife added for the rich Majalengka husband, and you would bet he might not stop there.
A husband of course was supposed to obtain his wife's free approval for any subsequent marriage. All wives were supposed to be treated in precisely the same way; financially equally supported, housed in the same manner and style. Conjugal duties were supposed to be undertaken equally, without any discrimination.
Hal's sister had in fact never met wife No. 2; never been over to Majalengka. Bets were off on anything better with the third wife now.
It was an unfortunate state of affairs; pretty routine in Indonesia. At the table telling it Hal could only bow her head.
Hal's daughter, this No. 2 Wife’s niece, clung so very tight to her aunt’s legs, using her scarf to dry her tears and cover her face, before she returned to her clasping. The girl begged rescue. Begged to return back home with her aunt.
At the pesantren classes were difficult. Many of the girls had passages, some even a number of chapters of the Quran already by heart, before they had even entered the school. The chief program of the pesantrens was to learn the whole of the holy book by heart.
Ten years of age; late-thirties the aunt. The child in the woman, unavoidably suggested.
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