Ramadan Sky Read online

  Actually, my parents’ marriage put me off the idea for ever and ever, amen, till the socks do us darn, till the laundry floor do we accidentally flood, till the children do we humiliate and betray, till the hidden beatings and vivisections do we blow the whistle on, screaming, finally, plastic boiling suburban rage and tearing it all down while still in brown school shoes.

  I was not like my little school friend Annette Hume, who, despite years of living with her mother’s sour disappointment, spent a portion of her time daydreaming about her wedding day and smiling a knowing smile as she promised to be a bridesmaid at mine.

  First of all, I told her, I wouldn’t have that kind of wedding, even if I did get married, which I never would.

  I thought having bridesmaids was a stupid idea and a crappy word, even. It sounded like some weird cow-milking virgin from times of yore. If I did get married it would be in jeans, and not in a church and not with all of the hideous frosting, the flouncy dresses, the bows and ribbons, the men standing around in powder-blue tuxedos, hands folded awkwardly over their balls for the photographs.

  And that’s just the wedding. Then there’s the children. I have six aunts with an average of 7.4 children each. Curly-headed balloon women with cotton tent dresses. Hello now pet, how are ye? High, tense Irish voices. Pulling up in the driveway in Holden station wagons loaded up with bouncinettes and bassinets, big tubs of talc for the chafing, and each year another one in the oven, all respect and thanks to the great Holy Father, divinely inspired leader of the Catholic Church.

  When I was young, I divided my many cousins into ‘reds’, ‘dark reds’ and ‘oranges’ – referring to their hair, of course. I’m a dark red, which made me a commoner in my family growing up. There was one blonde, who might as well have been the Queen of Sheba, and a few smug browns and blacks. The lowest of the low were the lemony-oranges, with their big square freckles that piled up on top of each other, and their inability to go to the beach. When I was seven, my mother had my dark-red curly hair cut into a boy’s crew cut ‘for the convenience of it’. I looked like a boy, and instead of ‘Victoria’, my brothers started calling me ‘Victor’, which eventually became ‘Vic’. There’s nothing else to say about that, except that my freckles disappeared in adolescence and, these days, my hair comes down to my waist.

  Now that I’m writing this down, I can see that it’s possible that I have overreacted. Not to the haircut but to the other things. I ran away from two men who tried to marry me, and no matter how careless I was with my life, which was pretty careless, I never made the mistake of falling pregnant. When I was thirty-five, I started to panic a little, but told myself there was still time to seize the bull by the horns (so to speak) and have a baby. I was a bit averse to sharing it with anybody who might scratch his arse on his way to the kitchen, growing less and less attractive to me as the weeks rolled into months and into years. On the other hand, I could see the steep, narrow road of the older, childless woman stretching out in front of me and it didn’t look all that enticing. But I’m only thirty-five, I thought. No need to rush into anything.

  One thing I’ve done is travelled a lot. I’ve lived in a lot of places, but strangely, I’ve never been to Indonesia, even though (or maybe because) Australians flock to Bali the way the British overrun Spain. But I’ve found a job that looks pretty good on the internet. So, finally, in my thirty-ninth year of not yet being married, I’m going to Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, to work for twelve weeks.

  The first glimpse of the city is a shock, even at ten thousand feet. We are descending into a filthy grey haze with the light falling flat on a brown ocean that is choked with ships and prawn farms. It is a sunny day, but nothing shimmers or sparkles.

  The plane doesn’t quite make it to a gate, but comes to a stop in the middle of the tarmac, and we pile on to a bus that crawls off towards the terminal. Outside, the buildings struggle up through the stifling air. Bougainvillea droops dejectedly over the gateway as the taxi leaves the airport. Welcome to Indonesia. Jesus Christ.

  Something happens when you arrive in a place like this. It’s like meeting an old interesting friend that you haven’t seen for a long time and realising they are dying. You want to cry out: My God, what’s happened! Who did this to you? But everyone around is you acting as if the situation is perfectly ordinary and acceptable. The strange thing is, you can feel it even when you have never even set eyes on a place before. It has happened to me in Saigon, Delhi, Guangzhou, and here it is again. On arrival, the filthy sky and the sad trees tell the same terrible story.

  A taxi driver takes me on some crazy rampage through the traffic, past depressed people sitting by dead rivers. When we stop for a red light, children rap at the windows trying to sell small toys and newspapers and foam aeroplanes.

  I get to the hotel at sunset – the burnished light has softened the initial shock of smoke and I am in a tree-lined street. The call to prayer is ringing out across the city – it’s the first time I’ve heard it and I am enchanted. The hotel is a modest, three star affair – far superior to the noisy kost the company will shift me into the next day.

  I get the money mixed up and tip the doorman and the man who brings me a coffee and some clean towels about twenty dollars each. This brings a string of smiling hotel staff knocking at the door at fifteen-minute intervals to ask if I need anything. Gado gado is the only Indonesian meal I know, so I order that and, after double-checking my calculator, tip a severely disappointed maid a couple of dollars.

  The call to prayer comes back again at about eight o’clock. Next morning I am woken at five by the same call. I have never lived in a Muslim country and, before I even step out onto the streets, I have been reminded three times. After a few weeks, the call will be etched into my mind like a tattoo – the male voice proclaiming the greatness of Allah. The Arabic prayer ringing out over the Asian city, seeming to claim dominion over everything. I walk to the breakfast room where about fifty men are smoking clove cigarettes, and decide to go outside and find breakfast somewhere that I can breathe.

  The first thing I notice is that the streets are dotted with clusters of shabby men, who stare at me as I walk by. I’ve been travelling a long time, but I still get a rush of fear and embarrassment when people are staring at me en masse, especially a group of men. I wonder what they see. Once, in Saigon, a man who had been watching me said:

  You are quite nice, but not as beautiful as some Hollywood movie stars.

  Is that what they are doing here? Comparing me to a movie star? Or are they just looking at my breasts, large by Western standards, bazookas over here in this country?

  The only way for me to feel better is to walk up really close and smile and say hello. The men transform from a belligerent mob into some people that live nearby and are curious to find me walking through their streets. Handshakes all round. Contact.

  What is your name?

  Nobody can say Victoria, and I will never answer to the little girl’s name Vicky, so I am surprised to find myself telling them, Vic, my name is Vic.

  You want kopi, Vic?

  Next minute I’m in a small shop with five men who are smoking clove cigarettes and watching me have coffee. Brown skin, brown eyes, black hair, thin, small. Right now, I feel like their new pet giant they’ve hauled in off the street. They order me a plate of fried rice and my hands swipe with the cutlery like a pair of bear paws.

  Breakfaarrst, a young, skinny man tells me pointedly, baring his white teeth.

  His friend jerks a thumb.

  He English very good.

  Yes, I agree. Very good. Thank you.

  Terima kasih. Thenk you, he says.

  Oh Terima kasih means thank you?

  Terima kasih. Thenk you.

  Everybody says it twice. We sound like a little flock of bilingual sheep. Terima kasih. Thank you. Thenk you. Thenk you. Terima kasih.

  More kopi?

  No. Thank you. Terima kasih.

  And off we go again. When th
e second round of bleating dies down, I set off back to the hotel. The clothes I have been advised to wear make me feel like a tired librarian, but they are still a bit racy compared to what the other women in the street have on. An old Chinese woman in stretchy acrylic trousers comes right up and walks around me, with her hands behind her back, looking me up and down as if I am a statue or an object in a curio shop. I wave my arms at her to stop, but she will not scare, so I walk across to the other side of the road again. At the corner I turn back. The woman has gone, but my breakfast buddies are still watching me, so I give them a wave.

  Good bye Vic!

  Later that morning I am driven to the office where I meet the boss, a pale Englishman who gives me a perfunctory introduction and then disappears. The Indonesian staff are all right – they seem very warm-hearted and friendly, helped along by the tradition of shaking your hand and then touching their hearts when they meet you – but the ex-pats’ office, which is where I will be stationed, has an immediate aura of musty resignation and defeat.

  This year’s programme is all built on aid money – we are preparing people for overseas scholarships, with the belief that they can come back and make a great difference to their country. The female students are covered from neck to wrist and all the way to the toes. Their faces appear to be terribly exposed and vulnerable without the softening effect of hair. They sit on one side of the classroom and the men sit on the other. We survey each other with excitement and good will. This is the first Muslim class I have ever had and I see that I am also a very new thing for them.

  There is no excitement backstage, however. Most of the teachers have worked here in the same office for more than twenty years. There certainly doesn’t appear to be anyone at all who would like to make a new friend. That’s all right. I’m used to doing it alone. Walking through strange cities by myself and taking photographs is what I do a lot of these days.

  21 February

  I wonder if anyone here has noticed that the materials are old. Not just the reading and research materials; the training videos feature people wearing burnt-orange shirts, long white socks and shorts, sideburns and moustaches. They look like Muppets. These, apparently, are the lecturers the students will be meeting when they get to their designated countries.

  Will they be taking a plane, I ask anyone who will listen, or a time machine?

  But most of the people here are as out of touch with things ‘back home’ as the teaching materials. At least, because of the bombs, the security is state of the art. We have fingerprint ID to get into the office and all bags and people are scanned at the entrance. The Bali bombings are the most infamous attacks in Indonesia, because of the large number of tourists killed there, but over the last five years there have also been several suicide bombings in Jakarta. The success rates have been relatively low so far, if killing foreigners has been the aim. The Australian embassy was bombed in 2004, with this message from the radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah:

  We decided to settle accounts with Australia, one of the worst enemies of God and Islam … and a Mujahadeen brother succeeded in carrying out a martyr operation with a car bomb against the Australian embassy … It is the first of a series of attacks … We advise Australians in Indonesia to leave this country or else we will transform it into a cemetery for them.

  I had read all about this before leaving home. The suicide bomber had not even known how to drive a car until a couple of weeks before the attack. Someone had bought the little Datsun for him, and given him driving lessons. They had taught him how to blow himself up at the same time. All the people killed in the bombing were Indonesian: the driver of the car, of course, a gardener, a security guard and four policemen. The deaths of these people and the message on the website to Australians had disturbed me, as had the reports of the attacks on the Marriott Hotel, but now I am here I am even more disturbed by my colleagues’ lack of concern about the bombs. They roll their eyes when I suggest a fire drill at one of our meetings and when I find that one of the exits has been blocked off by boxes full of stationery, they think it’s funny.

  5 March

  The first thing you must do when you are settling into a South-East Asian city is organise your transport – I know that much from living in Vietnam – and while you are doing this, you have to be very careful that your transport doesn’t choose you. The terrible danger is that you can get stuck for several months with someone you do not like and cannot understand practically stalking you because they believe that you have an agreement. My preferred method of transport for short distances is motorbike taxi. Any closed vehicle has you inching along narrow streets in barely functioning air conditioning and will always get you there late. For the first two weeks, I commuted with a different motorbike taxi driver every day, and was careful not to be too friendly. But now, like a miracle, I have found a young man who speaks English and has a mobile phone, although it looked so decrepit he had to convince me that it worked. It had a matchstick wedged into the side of it and he had to hold it with both hands in order to make the text visible. I gave him my number and he asked if he could pick me up every morning, and upon phone request. He was very happy when I agreed, and rang me several times in the first week to check that I still had the same number and to offer me various services from other members of his family.

  When my students saw me arriving on motorbike they were horrified.

  You are grandmother! they exclaimed.

  Actually, I don’t have any grandchildren, I replied.

  But that is not what they meant. In this place, thirty-nine is thought of as old.

  In fact, in this place I am having trouble with people’s thinking generally. It is a city of demonstrations, or demonstrasi, as they are called. They are a new-found freedom and an exhilarating expression of independence from the old regime. But I’m finding that this does not necessarily mean free speech, and certainly not free thought. The first demonstrasi I encountered on one of my walks was outside Indonesian Playboy, where people were throwing rocks at the windows.

  I don’t agree with Indonesian Playboy either, I tell my students later. They seem very satisfied, until I add: But should we throw rocks at people’s windows when we do not agree with them?

  The second demonstrasi I walked past was against Denmark. A newspaper in Denmark had recently angered the Muslim world by publishing blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet. There had been reverberations around the world. I suddenly felt like it was the wrong time and place to have red hair and blue eyes and be tall. When I started taking photos in the street a man came up to me, shouting:

  Get out of Jakarta! Get out of Jakarta!

  I sought refuge in a nearby mall.

  Jesus, I didn’t draw the cartoons, I said to the kind woman who had seen what happened and bought me a cup of tea. It just doesn’t make sense.

  The next week a Catholic nun was shot in the back in Somalia, which had some kind of link to the cartoon protest. This one I brought to the class and one of the students tried to explain:

  If I am a bee and you get in my way I will sting you.

  They often seem to come up with a small, trite phrase like this one, as if a clever metaphor is all you need to back up any argument, and I begin to wonder if this is the way people are taught here at the mosque.

  But you are not a bee; you are a rational human being with many ways of making a protest. A bee’s sting is a pure, irrational, defence mechanism. It kills the bee, actually, in the end.

  Eyebrows are raised. I am a woman and a non-believer. They’re only going to give me so much credibility.

  13 March

  I teach one class of police officers who are happy to tell me about the culture here. My favourite is how the female officers are tested for virginity before they can be accepted into the police force. I can’t believe it.

  How does that make you a good policewoman?

  It shows you have a good character.

  What if you are already married?

  It
seems that married female police officers are required to have a letter from their husband stating that they were virgins on their wedding night. The letter is kept on file and used afterwards as support documentation in applications for promotions and such. I feel the need to point out the double standard here, but am met with a reply that completely stops me in my tracks.

  Teacher, unmarried men will also have their virginity tested before becoming police officers.

  Now I’m on thin ice – I want to know how the hell that is possible, but I’m talking to a group of Muslim men. I decide to push ahead anyway, carefully.

  Is anyone willing to tell me how this is done?

  After a silence, the youngest student cups his palm and makes a squeezing motion.

  I see. I see, I reply. And how does doing this indicate that the man is a virgin?

  It is what happens when they are touched. They will go back.

  The student’s cupped hand makes a small contracting motion. No one has smiled, or even moved one facial muscle since the little story began. I have to go on.

  You do know that this method is complete and utter nonsense?

  Yes, of course.

  They are all nodding now.

  Then why do you put up with it?

  If we don’t do it they will say we are afraid to do. Because not virgin.

  14 March

  Over time I have found that the students and I have more in common than I had imagined, and even when it is clear that we are in disagreement, it is never really hostile. We marvel at the differences in perspective and the many possible ways that people can see things, or at least I do. This is more than I can say for the staffroom, which is a cesspool of petty grievances and power struggles and more than a splash of downright madness.