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  What is this for?! he demanded.

  I was standing with my pants around my ankles with everybody looking at my poor exposed bird.

  Do you have the crabs? Or are you some kind of perverted infidel?

  I wanted to tell him that he was the perverted one to lay his hands on my private parts, but instead I told him about my terrible heat rash, from riding the motorbike and wearing jeans. I quickly showed him the bribe money and he told me to do up my trousers.

  There had been three of us on that day and we all got a job, but the third man died soon afterwards in a traffic accident. He was run over on his motorbike on the way to work, and somehow never replaced. I wondered if Iskandar had continued to take his pay, because we had to cover three floors between two people, when it should have been one floor each. Budi and I had worked together like this for two years, when the same boss again called us in to the office. This time he looked into our eyes, instead of other places, to see if we showed any signs of smoking drugs. I could see that he had not gotten over his earlier dislike of me. He let Budi stand to one side and tried for some minutes to get a confession from me, but I held firm and he did not fire us.

  The next day we brought cigarettes to his office, with Budi leading the way.

  Please accept this small gift from my father.

  Iskandar gestured for him to put the carton down on the desk and then turned his eyes on me as I produced an identical package.

  Do not let me hear any more tales about either of you, he scowled.

  We closed the door and immediately began mocking him as we walked away.

  Please accept this gift from my father and please kiss my biji.2

  Does this man’s mother have a penis?

  No, his wife does; may she smoke him while he smokes our cigarettes.

  The truth is, everyone takes a little ganja when they can get it, even Remi, our accuser, and especially when working at night. That first time we did not get fired, but some months later Iskandar began to complain about other things – twenty minutes late and such. It all ended in a bag search where he found some money, which had been placed there.

  It is hard to prove you have not stolen money that is sitting right there in your bag, and if you make a fuss they can call the cops and then you have your hands in your wallet until they bleed. Iskandar told us we were fired. I had the feeling that only he could have placed the money there, because only he could have a spare locker key. This time I talked straight.

  Are you sure it was us, you old spider monkey? Do you want another look at our eggs before we go home? And then you can go and spank yourself!

  For the second time I stood before him with my trousers down, while Budi laughed hysterically and gathered our belongings.

  Fajar, you are the craziest son of your mother, Budi spluttered, when he had pushed me outside.

  And he was right. I am famous in my family for having a very hot temper that makes me do crazy things.

  We got on our bikes, but did not go home. Instead, we rounded up some friends and three of my brothers and went to find Remi. We caught him by surprise – although he surely must have expected us to act against him, but perhaps not so quickly.

  Our jobs were taken by his brother and nephew, but Remi himself found that he was unable to work for several weeks, as he fell off his bike that night and broke his arm and smashed up his face.

  For the first month without a job I was looking everywhere for work. My cousin wanted to sell me a job as a ticket conductor on the train to Surabaya. He told me that I should pay two million rupiah. It is not permitted to buy a job in this way, but many places will not employ you unless you do so. We cannot ask for our money back if they decide to take the job away later; they will simply deny that any money ever changed hands. This time my mother said that we would not pay, as she had already laid out money for my first job and the man had seen fit to fire me anyway. So I kept looking. I still had a little money and I told myself that everything would be okay.

  My father was the lucky one, who could do magic with money and animals. He could buy small things and sell them to people at a higher price. In his memory, I tried to do this myself with the raincoats. I drove a long way to the markets and bought ten raincoats at a cheap price. I tried to sell them to the other drivers in my street, but they all looked at me suspiciously and asked many questions. How much did you pay for this? Why do you want to go shopping for us like a woman? After that I tried at many places for every kind of job. I still had the bike but the payment was two months late. We should pay every month, and if we pay late, they will take extra interest from us. If they don’t get a payment for three months, they will come and take the bike.

  One day, on the street, when I only had one week left until the third payment, I met an old friend from my high school. His name was Hidayat, and he was not exactly a friend, but someone who had been in the higher class than me. I only knew him from playing football a few times, but he was easy to recognise because he had a wide forehead and very large ears for which he had been teased by many of the boys and even some of the teachers. I noticed that his ears had not grown smaller with time, as he held out his hand in welcome.

  Assalam alaikum, he gave me the greeting from our school times.

  He was drinking tea and asked me to join him and after a short time I found myself telling him of my recent troubles.

  What if I told you I have a way to give you one hundred thousand right now? he asked.

  I protested that I could not borrow any money, but he stopped me before I could finish.

  It is not a loan, he said. You will have to earn it, but it will only take a few minutes. We’ll take your bike.

  So I drove, while Hidayat sat behind me and directed me to a money changing shop a few streets away. Then he took a twenty-dollar bill from the United States of America from his wallet, and handed it to me. I had never seen one before and I was turning it over in my hands when he said quietly:

  Stop acting like a hillbilly or someone will notice. Leave the keys in the bike. Go and change the money and then come straight back.

  For a moment, I thought it was a trick, and that he would run away on my bike. He looked at me with impatience.

  What are you waiting for?

  Hidayat had said that the moneychanger would ask for my ID and then give me the two hundred thousand and some small notes in exchange for the twenty and that is exactly what happened.

  When I got back to the bike, he was sitting in the driver’s place with the engine running.

  Get on! he hissed.

  We drove back to the tea stall where he handed over my share as promised.

  Come again tomorrow, he told me. We will try a fifty, but not at the same place.

  I told Hidayat that I did not understand why he would want to give me this money. He looked at me for a moment and then spat on the ground and shook his head.

  I thought you were the clever one in school, brother, he said. The money is not fucking real. My job is to give you this money, and yours is not to ask me where it comes from, and to get it changed.

  This information worried me, because I had used my ID to change the money. What if they found it was a fake later on?

  They do not write it down like that, he said, on each note. There is no way for them to do anything now.

  We arranged for him to text me in coming days to try again, and I left.

  I drove through the heavy afternoon traffic and went straight to pick up Aryanti, to take her for ice cream. I was eager to tell her the whole story, but she was not pleased.

  Tell me, she asked. You were not good friends with this big telinga3 in school? Then why does he want to give you all this money? Are you suddenly a brother to him?

  I do not know, I replied.

  Well perhaps you can tell me this, she said, and she looked very stern, despite her tiny build and the glass of strawberry ice cream she was eating. Who is the person who will be caught with the fake money – you or him?<
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  I did not answer.

  If they catch you, you will not find him anywhere. He will drive away on your bike.

  You are very clever, I told her, and it was the truth, especially as she was only nineteen years old.

  Yes, I am clever, she said. Fajar, please don’t see this man again.

  Hidayat sent me many texts the next week but I did not answer any of them, as promised, and after a short time he didn’t send any more. But time was marching past me and there didn’t seem to be any way forward.

  Chapter Three

  Another six weeks had passed without work when, on a steamy Friday afternoon, Aryanti came and asked for me. My heart jumped up when I heard she was there and I hurried outside to find her unsmiling at the gate. I was worried straight away because normally a young lady would never call at a man’s house, especially unaccompanied. She looked pale as she delivered the news: her mother had asked her to break with me because I still didn’t have a job.

  I drove her to a place where we could talk without interruption and tried to get her to see sense. Her small brown hand held firmly onto the tea glass and her pretty face was quiet and sad, but she was insistent.

  Finally I said: It is you who wants to break with me, not your mother. Lempar batu sembunyi tangan1 Why are you telling me these lies? Who do you want to marry instead of me?

  She began to cry a little but did not answer. Then I changed tack and told her I would not accept her request to cut our relationship, because it was a mistake. I would call her the next day after she had informed her mother of this.

  Rhamat saw me come in that afternoon. Earlier he had seen Aryanti at the gate and I knew he would be full of questions. He can sniff out bad luck like a cunning dog and would be delighted to rub my face in it, while admonishing Aryanti for her lack of decorum. Only worse would be the kindly advice that would be given by his scornful wife who was holding his arm as I entered. They watched me together, like a vicious animal with four eyes and many claws waiting to pounce.

  Even our hopelessly small house was against me as I tripped over an electric cord that someone had forgotten to put away and a plate came crashing down from the table and shattered onto the floor. I tried to find a reason not to smash it all down with my fists: the worn-out furniture and cracked dishes and the toys and clothes that had been carelessly tossed all over the couch where I slept. As soon as Rhamat began to scold me about the plate, I picked up a cup from the table and sent it flying past his ear and into the wall. Then I went out, quickly, kicking over a pile of sneakers at the door. The voice of Rhamat’s wife followed me like a chattering ape as I got on the bike and pulled out past a group of curious children. My throat was strained and tight and I realised that I had been shouting and my face was streaming with tears.

  I drove through the traffic for several hours until I was tired and had to stop. I was nearly on the edge of Jakarta by then, at a small warung2 by a river. The people were speaking the language of the Jakarta tribe who were here before everybody else. These people are very rough and many are bandits, but I am curious about them. I smoked and drank coffee and tried to understand a woman who was barking out instructions to her husband and children through the thick smoke of fish grilling over coals. The moon was small and faraway in the sky when I finally arrived home. The house was silent, full of people sleeping as if dead.

  The next day I called Aryanti, but her answer was the same. Four times that same week I asked her not to break with me. I begged her to believe in me. I would get a job and pay the bike and we could get married as planned. But she did not change her mind.

  I had been working in the street as an ojek driver for some weeks, but the money was small. Every man who has a bike and doesn’t have a job will be an ojek, and so you must wait in line for the jobs that come in slowly. Wait and smoke and talk. Sometimes Aryanti would walk past while I was there. I did not offer to drive her as I had done in the past, and she did not turn her head my way.

  I was making very little and spending it every night, drinking and smoking kretek3 on the street with my friends.

  Two more months went by like this. I had borrowed heavily from my mother, and my sister, who had borrowed herself to help me, and still I had not found any work. Then, one day, Budi came to see me and he was very excited.

  Forget about the raincoats – this they will line up to buy from you!

  He had begun selling ganja, which he bought from a guy from our old workplace. At first I thought it was a crazy idea and I told him so. He was a very small fish, and would get someone upset with him. But after a while I could see that he was making a little money without anybody bothering him, and I started to think about it more seriously. The problem was that I would have to borrow in order to buy the first ounce. I was still making my mind up when the police came.

  In the street, opposite the ojek stand, there is a small petrol shop where they will sell you petrol and also fix your bike. Budi was there drinking coffee while someone was mending his tyre. I was in line at the ojek stand when I heard the alarm ring out:

  Plokis! Plokis!

  That is our name for polisi. Straight away I saw three pigs moving quickly towards the petrol shop. I was close enough to see a look of panic run across Budi’s face. The coffee was knocked from his hand, and then I nearly shit as I saw one of them push him onto the road, put his boot down on his face, and pull out a gun.

  The street was suddenly electric watching the policeman scream and point the gun at Budi’s head.

  Who told you to come here and sell that fucking shit on my street?

  He gestured to the two others to stand Budi up and search him. He didn’t have anything in his pockets but a wallet, which they threw on the ground, after removing his money. He was standing there with two cops holding his arms and the other pointing the gun straight at his face. That’s when the silence froze everything for just a second. The whole scene seemed to shrink and get very far away. The little toy policeman pulled back the hammer on the gun and then leaned forward and Budi crumpled to the ground, like he was only a pile of clothes with nothing to hold them up.

  It took a minute to realise that the policeman had not fired the shot, and that Budi had only fallen down with fright. The three men laughed in surprise when they realised what had happened. The one with the gun put it back in his holster, and they all returned to regular size and walked, slowly and still laughing, back to their car. Budi was lying down on the road holding his head in his arms.

  After that I forgot about the idea of selling ganja. Rhamat told me not to see Budi any more, but I told him to mind his own fucking business and see what he would do if he suddenly found himself without a job.

  A man slips and the ladder falls on him.

  After the trouble with the job and Aryanti and Budi, I wondered what would come next. It already seemed that my bad luck would last forever, but late one afternoon a small change did come. Like other times before and after, it didn’t seem like anything special. I really only notice it now that I’m thinking about it. The beginning of change is a narrow laneway that opens like magic onto a large field of rice.

  Chapter Four

  Vic

  2 February

  I’ve been upgraded to First Class. That never happens. I’ve tried to sneak in there before, though. A friend’s brother does it all the time. He just walks into First Class from Economy, finds a spare seat and sits in it. The only time he’s ever been moved back to his seat was when he complained about the food. After I heard that story I tried it for myself, the very next time I flew. They frogmarched me back into Economy so fast I didn’t have time to put my seatbelt on. I’ve never tried it again, although I’ve flown to a lot of places since. Anyway, the upgrade today is simply due to an error; somehow they have overbooked and don’t have enough seats. I am choosing to see it as a good omen.

  Looking out the window, everything is as empty and clean as I feel. It’s one of my favourite places to be – on a plane at the begin
ning of a long journey. For once you can focus on one simple objective – getting there – and that’s really the pilot’s job anyway.

  But there are still a few things that can go wrong. It seems my good luck has not extended to getting an empty seat next to mine. A man exposes his large hairy stomach as he reaches for the overhead locker, like he’s saying hello in gorilla, and then plonks himself down next to me. He doesn’t look like First Class material. I wonder if he is in on my friend’s secret, or if he just got upgraded as well. He’s wearing shorts and rubber thongs – as though the plane is going to Bali, not Jakarta – and has one of those noses that could be made of soft, red putty. I can tell he’s on for a chat and am happy to oblige, until he spies my unadorned hand and asks:

  Are you married, or are you a career woman?

  This makes me jump. I have been asked this question in exactly the same words before, by a work colleague.

  Are you married, Victoria, or are you a career woman?

  At the time, I thought he was trying to insult me.

  I give this man a Mona Lisa smile and ask him:

  Are there any other alternatives?

  Unfortunately he takes my discomfort as a slight. His shoulders stiffen and he shifts his attention to his in-flight magazine. I could try to make it better, but, instead, I decide to look out the window for a while.

  To answer his question, I couldn’t say I’ve traded it all in for a career, because, after all, teaching English as a Second Language is more of a joke than a career, especially when it comes to salary, and some of the other people who are doing it. Still, I tell myself, it is a good job if you want to travel. And I do. Want to travel. I love being in new countries and finding out about different people and writing long letters home to people that I dearly miss but don’t seem to be able to live around.

  The single most common question I have been asked in the last ten years is that one. Are you married? I can tell you how to say that in five languages. I have been asked this question by taxi drivers, tuk tuk drivers, shoeshine boys, businessmen, women selling me perfume, students, strangers on the street. In South-East Asia the standard response is ‘not yet’, as if it’s just developmental delay or a run of bad luck standing in the way, and that soon, please God soon, one’s luck will change. Sometimes I say, ‘Yes, I am married’, just to avoid the look of disappointment that I know is coming my way, and the feeling that I’ve let the nice, friendly stranger down somehow.