Chapter 13: reciting koranic verses at the pesantren^[*]

One afternoon about three o'clock, while my friends and I were absorbed in playing soccer in Simpang Usang, Uda Tjodi called for Djamin, Nasir, and me.

"His Honor's calling you to the surau," he said.

"Oh boy, now what," I said to Bujung. "What have we done wrong now?"

When we got to the surau, a "Muchtasar" holy book was presented to each of us—a book as big as a world map and a book we had certainly never seen before in our lives. Its pages were all covered in extremely

At the Muslim study-dormitory

refined Arabic letters. We couldn't read it yet, so it wasn't written at the same level as the Koran was.^[1]

We had been ordered to go study it in the minor surau with Haji Daud,^[2] my uncle.

Apparently our three sets of parents had come to the common decision to have us study the Arabic language, its grammatical rules, the fikhi [study of rules pertaining to ritual obligations], and the Muslim syariat [laws], all in as great a depth as possible. They were of the opinion that it would be better for the three of us to become religious teachers than merchants. And they'd be very proud if their children went on to become venerated religious scholars, kiai . All three of our fathers were hajis, not to mention the most prominent religious teachers in the village. And all of these men hoped that their sons would come to replace them eventually. Djamin and I did not agree, whereas Nasir was the exception. But we were forced to follow their dictates out of fear. After all, we could not fight our parents' wishes.

With sadness, because our ball game had been stopped, but also with some curiosity to know what that Arabic language was saying, we went on over to the minor surau. Each one of us was carrying the holy book under his arm. There we ran into Maskur, my paternal uncle's son (who also wanted to sell soap more than he wanted to do verse recitations) as well as several santris. They came from other villages and lived in the surau, studying religion. There were lots of other santris there, too, but they were already quite advanced in their recitation lessons. Only six started at the same time we did.

We sat cross-legged on the floor in a circle near a house pillar and opened the holy texts, which were rolled out on the floor. About half of the santris were pretty good by now at reading what they were going to study. For the three of us, though, everything was still murky. We did not understand a single word of Arabic. True enough, we were skilled at reading the Koran out loud, at droning it out, and we knew what letters to lengthen and which ones to shorten, but we didn't understand its content. We had been reading and reciting for four years, night and day, but we could not make sense of a single word of it. We couldn't take a single word of it to heart and retain it.

While I was still confused and nonplussed, not knowing whether I'd be reciting verses or going back to my ball game, my uncle came out of his room beside the surau. His body was thin, his face sour and rather pale from thinking too much and from studying inside the building too much and not getting any exercise. He always looked like he was going to get angry. He was always in his room, deciphering thick holy texts that he had carried home by the hundreds from Mecca. They were arranged along three walls of his room, absolutely covering them. He had studied the Is-

lamic religion for eleven years in Mecca and because of that he was very fanatical.^[3]

"Oh, so Ridjal is here too," he said, after gazing at us one by one. "Better that one recites Koranic verses than plays soccer during the day, or wresties at nighttime—things which of course have no benefit whatsoever, and which only afford us such misfortunes as broken bones in our feet or hands. If you recite verses, besides storing up merit you will also become a learned, pious person. Now then, it's best that you simply quit playing soccer. Are you willing to, or not?"

I did not answer. I was surprised. I hadn't done anything and already he'd attacked me. I felt Uncle and Father had formed this study team of ten students so as to divert my attention away from soccer and divert Maskur's attention away from soap selling.

In my heart, I thought that no matter what, soccer is much healthier for the body and mind than verse recitation. To my way of thinking, a person with a red face, with sweat flowing down it—a healthy, well-built boy—was more attractive than a santri who's always sitting around cross-legged in the surau, pale and thin-faced, like a person who hasn't eaten in five days, sighing and looking peaked, and so on. But I didn't have the courage to voice that opinion since he was my uncle, not to mention a teacher much exalted by the public. He didn't address my companions but only observed them for a moment.

Before commencing, he prayed and we accompanied him with the appropriate hand motions. He asked God that our verse recitation studies might be lengthy and that all of us might become pious, learned persons and enter into heaven.

Then Uncle read: "Alkalamu hual lafzu murakkabu mufidu bil wadhi."

He translated this as: "As a beginning, there was the word and what was this beginning like? What was called the word was lafaz , which was composed, which provided a salutary benefit and a wadahak ."

"Will of God!" I said to myself. "What does all this mean? Even though it has been translated, it still is pitch black."

What did he mean by "the word"? I only knew that that word was an instrument for writing the Arabic letters, made of a palm tree (rib) and sharpened at the end.

He continued further: "According to the Nahu people, those folks, a word is whatever, it lafaz , which isn't like the sound of the mosque drum, which provides some salutary benefit but has no letters to it nor is it like the wadhak ."

This didn't make it any clearer at all, just murkier. When he mentioned the nahu , I remembered a certain woman in Seberang Air whose name was Nahu. Her house was along the Sumpur River out in back of the surau of the Honorable Imam Muda. Perhaps she was an Arabic grammarian. And

why did the Indonesian passages used for the translation here have to twist and turn so much and be so repetitive, with half of the words in Indonesian and half in Arabic but the sentence structure absolutely, totally in Arabic? Only later on, three years afterward (once I'd studied Indonesian and Dutch grammar), did I come to understand that the meaning of the holy text was the following:

"A sentence is a composition of words which can be coherently understood and purposefully pronounced."

If he had only said that, we would have understood!

Or if he had gone on to say, "According to grammarians, lafaz are the voiced sounds that can be written out with words and whose meanings can be understood," we could also have understood.

But after reciting for some two hours, listening to his murky explanations, which repeated themselves and twisted and turned like a snake's armpit, half in Arabic, half in Indonesian, I was still totally confused. So were my friends.

Moreover, I was surprised: Why didn't we understand a single word of Arabic? Why didn't we know the words for things around us, like house, surau, school, door, window, kitchen, to eat, to drink, me, you, and him or her, in Arabic? We'd been taught the grammar and we'd been taught explanations of it in an unspeakably exalted^[4] form of Arabic—which we'd have to keep mulling over again and again and asking, does each letter have to be read with an A or a U or an I? Grammar was the science of the types of words there were, and the ways to join them together into compositions—but as yet we didn't even know the words themselves which those types and compositional rules would apply to. So what were we supposed to be joining together into sentences?

We barely had any acquaintance at all with the Arabic language when our heads started to spin with its grammar and with all these rules that we had to memorize and know by heart. Even though we had just started to study the science of reading, we weren't allowed to make any mistakes when reading aloud from the grammar text.

I was taken aback. Had we been born in Mecca, had we been speaking Arabic since we were little? Was it because of that that we had to be corrected with grammatical rules?

At five o'clock we were allowed to go home. Thanks be to God, but we were told to come back the next day at three o'clock, just when we'd all be in the middle of playing soccer.

"And you, Ridjal, don't you play ball anymore!" said my uncle as I was standing up. And then he went into his room.

"If he doesn't want to play ball himself, he shouldn't go forbidding others to," I said to Djamin, grousing. "I don't go preventing him from reading his Arabic holy texts, do I? Why does he forbid me to play ball? He's

permitted to read Arabic books to his heart's content, but as for me, I don't need to read Arabic at all!"

Once we got to the Upper Surau we tossed our holy texts onto a chest that was set over against the wall, and we all ran off to Simpang Usang to play ball again. Running around the field was more refreshing and healthful than studying Arabic grammar, which just made our heads spin.

I was much happier going to school [elementary school] than I was reciting holy verses. Both the teaching method and what was taught there were in accord with the character and aims of my life. And these lessons could be understood ; they made sense, and your mind would accept them.

But what was a mind, anyway? Besides school to prepare us for life in this world, Father forced me to go to recitation school, as preparation for the life hereafter.

The next day at three o'clock we didn't get the ball and go out to the field. Rather, we got our holy texts that we'd tossed down yesterday and went over to the surau.

Uncle ordered me to read aloud what I'd studied yesterday. Of course I didn't know it and I made lots of mistakes reading it. Was he angry! This situation derived from the fact that all my thoughts were directed toward soccer, he said.

Actually it wasn't because I was always thinking about soccer but rather because I didn't understand things. And the reading method had to be just like what he'd been saying yesterday: repeating and twisting and turning around. In short, I was supposed to use a language system that I had not studied from the time I was little and that I was not studying at all in school. How in the world could I understand it if I wasn't given examples to show similarities and differences with the grammar of my own language? We were forced to study, read, and memorize what we absolutely didn't understand or feel. And if we didn't know something, he'd get mad at us.

Imagine how long those two hours felt. The cheers of my pals playing out in the field could be heard echoing through the surau. My feet itched to kick that ball. Uncle kept right on repeating and repeating his explanations.

After our recitation lessons, once again we tossed our holy texts onto the wooden chest of one of the santris who stayed there in the surau. We immediately ran off to the field, to play soccer until it got dark.

And that's the way it went every day. Mornings I'd go to elementary school, afternoons I'd study Arabic in the Lower Surau, and at night I'd recite verses from the Koran. And almost every day I'd get criticized by my uncle because I'd only pick up the holy text when I was in front of him and wouldn't read it at all once I'd finished my recitations.

Even though I was so lazy, he couldn't really reproach me, because whatever he asked me about a lesson that we'd already studied I'd be able

to answer adroitly enough, even if I didn't really understand what it was I was saying. Djamin was the same way. He had a sharp intelligence, though his laziness and love of sleeping exceeded even mine.

Apparently Uncle was still not satisfied; his face was always sour.

Every time I would come in, Uncle would ask:

"So, how do you do, Tuan Goal Keeper? No broken leg yet?"

I knew that this bit of ridicule did not come from someone who really cared. But, the more I was condemned and mocked, the more I wanted to go play soccer. Really early in the morning we'd be playing before the sun had appeared. And, at night when there was a full moon, we'd play far into the night.

Uncle thought Father still let me run wild. So, he proposed that I be ordered to stay right there in the Lower Surau and not be allowed to go out, except to go to elementary school from eight o'clock to one in the afternoon. After eating at home I'd have to come to the surau to memorize my recitation verses and then I could go home for the afternoon meal. After that I was to come back to the Lower Surau to wrestle with Arabic grammar until nighttime. I wouldn't be allowed to play anymore with my friends, and most especially I wouldn't be allowed to play soccer. The friends I'd have to associate with would be the santris, who had good conduct and character, he said. He made clear to Father that in such a way I would emerge as a pious, religious scholar in quite short order, in just five years.

And Father swallowed Uncle's suggestions.

One accursed day I went over to the Lower Surau not just clutching the "Muchtasar" text under my arm but also balancing a mattress, pillow, and blanket on my head. My uncle was delighted. He was satisfied now. He pointed out a bed alongside Juanin's, a santri from Katjang. Juanin was going to become my tutor because he was three years ahead of me in his recitation lessons.

Before doing my verse recitations, I thought things over, sitting there on my rolled-up mattress, contemplating this fate of mine—this fate of being put in jail and separated from my friends, from the soccer ball, and from the playing field. For sure, I wouldn't be getting to bathe and swim much either, or go splashing around and swimming in the Sumpur River and the lake. Here I wasn't free anymore; I was always under my uncle's supervision. And he rarely left the surau. He examined my every move.

I was amazed. Why was he like a person who was maliciously jealous of me? And one who would use any and all tricks to limit my freedom, as if the condition of my heart (always free, happy, full of laughter, dashing here and there, wrestling and always playing ball, bathed with sweat, redfaced, strong-bodied, healthy) was painful to him.

Starting that day I began to follow the lessons of the santris, who were

three years ahead of me. In the afternoons, I'd have to study Arabic grammar from the "Muchtasar" text and the Muslim laws from the "Fathul Karib," and after evening prayers until twelve midnight, I'd have to study Koranic exegesis, and Arabic language morphology (the science of the types and forms of Arabic words). This was all way too heavy for me. My brain was still too young for all this. Moreover, I had to go to elementary school. But Uncle didn't care a whir. It was as if he had become my guardian, for his main aim was that I would not have any time left over to remember games and freedom—his aim was that I would be diligently memorizing away day and night, without any time to do anything else.

I didn't find anything taught to me there to my liking. I just couldn't take any of it in. First, because it was forced on me, and second, because it was not in accord with my abilities and character. It was the same way for Djamin. He actually wanted to emigrate to the rantau to become a merchant in Muara Aman or Bangkahulu with his maternal uncle. Maskur paid more attention to how much soap got sold than he did to linguistics and Koranic exegesis. Every Monday and Thursday his maternal uncle would let him sell soap, blue bleach, cigarettes, and so on at the marketplace.

Only Masir was diligent. Indeed, he actually did want to become a religious scholar, but even though his aspirations leaned in that direction, because his brain was rather dull he was always falling behind us—we who didn't pay any attention at all to our lessons. He'd often say to us that he wanted to go on the haj to Mecca and then come back wearing a turban.

In the surau, so like an internment camp, I associated with a group of santris who came from several villages around Lake Singkarak. Some of them had done their recitations for some five, four, and three years over there. All of them slept on the floor: those who were well-to-do, on mattresses, and those whose parents were not wealthy, on rattan mats. Early in the morning these mattresses and mats were rolled up and piled in the corner because the room was going to be used as a place for prayer and recitation.

The surau's upper story was four sided and large. It was used as a sleeping spot for the santri group, not just as a place to call people to prayer, as is usually the case. When the room down below was full, about half the santris would be up there on the top floor, which could hold twenty people. At first, I had wanted to have my bed there, but Uncle would not allow this because he would not be able to watch my every move.

The surau was set in a little hollow about a half kilometer from the Upper Surau. Out back was a stream with clear, pure water in it and a water jet where women would take baths and fetch drinking water. This is what livened up this surau. The sloping land all around had been made

into a cemetery, which made us very scared to come to or leave the surau at nighttime. If there weren't lots of friends around I'd be scared to sleep there; the hair on your body would bristle up if you heard anything. But all the time I was there, nothing strange ever happened, even though among those buried there were some who had killed themselves or had been murdered.

The person who commissioned the surau, I was convinced, was not a person who loved life in this world. All he must have cared about was having a place of shelter! For him, a good building was of no consequence whatever. None of the pillars were firmly placed in their sockets; all of them were wobbly, and the floor was not even or strong. The floorboards didn't meet—it was enough if they were just joined together any which way—and they weren't made of strong wood. When we walked on them the whole surau would wobble back and forth. At first they were going to build the walls of masonry, but because they didn't have enough money, they only did the front wall that way, and didn't continue it all the way around. The men's hall and the women's hall were separated with boards, not a screen of unbleached cotton, like the one at the Upper Surau. So people couldn't peek into the women's hall.

In front of the surau there was a hard, but it was too small and cramped. Over on that same side was a big water reservoir for bathing, fetching water for prayers, and for washing the rice. The water was rarely changed, so it got greenish and putrid. At first I found it hideous to bathe there but because I got used to it (and because I was forced to use it) eventually I didn't find it all that revolting. The water jet in the back was only for the womenfolk. Near this reservoir stood a shed made of zinc siding, which served as a kitchen for the santris. They'd take turns boiling their rice out there.

There were about one hundred santris living there in the surau. About half of them (the ones with mattresses) had definite places to sleep. At night the others rolled out their mats wherever there happened to be a spare spot. Usually it was those who were still in the lower classes at school who'd be moving hither and yon.

In Minangkabau santris were called "siak people": folks who had emigrated from their home villages to take recitation lessons and pursue knowledge at the surau of the renowned syech. Normally they'd be young kids whose parents had ordered them to go pursue religious knowledge so that they could become religious teachers in their villages, or at the very least, so that they could become pious people. For, at this time, religion teachers were still held in very high regard, and the public would praise those who were pious and devoted to their religious duties. Consequently, the aim of Minangkabau people was to live a life devoted to religious duties—and especially to get into heaven. So they'd be really pleased if their children

were skilled at reciting their verses, providing exegetical commentaries on the Koran and reciting chapters of the Koran to the village populace.

When a certain syech was famous (because he had performed some miracle or other) and if his students had gotten much praise and appreciation (that is, if they were highly respected by the populace), parents would tell their children to go take recitation lessons there. Syechs' villages, which were once lonely and unknown, would eventually become quite crowded from the many santris crowding in from villages far and near in Minangkabau.

There were many famous recitation spots in Minangkabau, such as Silungkang, Parabek, Batu Hampar, Djaho, Mungkar, and so on. Thousands of Minangkabau youths would come to these villages, urged on by the hope of becoming learned devouts. All the time they were taking their recitation lessons they'd be called "siak men."

From their home villages they'd bring mats, pillows, blankets, two or three sets of clothes, several kilos of rice, a bit of cash, and a stock of delicacies as was appropriate for presenting to his honor the syech. Normally this would be all the provisions they'd have; the majority of them couldn't hope to get a package or contribution from their mother or father if they weren't very well-to-do. Wealthy kids would get money contributions from the village each month; the nonwealthy ones would have to endeavor to eke out some sort of a livelihood some way. "Obtain knowledge, obtain a livelihood."

Every day off, each Friday, all the santris who didn't get contributions from home would go begging for rice early in the morning out in the villages rather far away from their surau. In the syech's own village they'd be embarrassed to go around asking for handouts of rice, because these villagers would come to the surau every prayer time and surely they would recognize the mendicants who'd come to ask them for rice.

To go begging like this the santris would wear special clothes, all in white. The hat, shirt, pants, and the sarong they'd carry over their shoulders would all be white; so would the knapsack where they'd put the rice. All the clothes would normally be made of rough material, for instance, of Merekan, or unbleached cotton. Lots of them carried canes, which also were white.

At each house that a mendicant came up to, to start with he'd stab his cane up and down on the foundation stone under the house ladder. Then he'd cough softly for a bit and then in a low, touching voice he'd say: "Please provide your humble servant with an alms meal so that there will be provisions enough for him to recite the prayers!"

Not long afterward, a woman would come out of the house, and if she truly did wish to give alms (according to the Ulamas, if you give on a Friday that means you store up ten times as much religious merit as you

would on a normal day), well, she'd pour the rice down into the knapsack. Normally this would be about three-fourths of a kilo or more. If she didn't intend to give alms, she'd say, "I'm very sorry, siak man."

Sometimes, she'd happen to want to call in a siak man to say some prayer. Then the mendicant would be asked to step up into the house to eat a meal and to say prayers, after the woman had burned some incense on the burner. In his prayers the mendicant would ask God that the lives of the woman and her family might be lengthened, that their means of livelihood might come quite easily to them, and that they be comforted in this world and in the hereafter.

When he was getting ready to leave, the mendicant would be given rice grain and some cash, to buy his provisions, to support his recitations. As the mendicant took his leave, the woman would feel very happy to have done good to a person who was pursuing knowledge. Then the mendicant would go on to another person's house. He'd get rice grain there, too, and sometimes a meal. A mendicant once told me that he had eaten seven times, just from morning to noontime prayers.

Because he'd come every week, eventually he'd find a woman who liked to give alms and who was a soft touch. She'd become the regular source of support for the mendicant. When he'd come over to the house he wouldn't have to cajole her in touching tones—it was enough just to cough a little and then he could come right on up into the house. The woman of the house would have prepared food, and after he'd prayed, there would be piles of uncooked rice at the ready. Some mendicants had as many as fifteen supporters.

A mendicant with a supporter would already know for sure, once he left the surau, that he'd be getting enough rice grain to last an entire week. So he'd just have to ask for rice grain to sell, on top of this basic supply.

When it got on toward noon and he'd gotten ten or fifteen half-kilo measures of grain (in short, more than a week's provisions, which was not more than six half kilo-measures), the mendicant would go home to his surau. The excess rice (over what he needed until his next begging day) he'd be able to sell to well-off friends or to the village people. He'd save the money that he got from the sale. Once he had enough, he'd buy a shirt, a book, or other necessities. Sometimes they'd be able to send some money back to their parents in the village. "Knowledge he's gotten, yet the parents receive aid to boot."

At night, after saying the sunset prayers, the santris who'd been begging during the day would get their worn-out feet massaged, since they ached from walking so far. All their friends who'd also been out begging would be there. While they were sitting there massaging their feet, they'd relate all their experiences from the day and praise the goodness of their sup-

porters. Afterward, after evening prayers, they'd recite Koranic verses or memorize their lessons.

That night, in the surau at issue, several little knots of santris would sit in a circle around the light or a wall lamp, diligently reading the holy text and memorizing it, watched over by an older tutor, the syech's assistant. The surau walls would rebound with the great hubbub of noise as the people recited from the Koran and memorized Arabic grammar rules. Underneath the roof of the surau people would get playful when doing their memorizations; they'd say daraba, darabaa, darabu, databat, darabata, darabna, darabta, darabtuma, darabtum, darabti, darabutma, darabtunna, darabtu, darabnaa. The smart ones would just lie back comfortably on their backs while doing their studying.

They'd only go to sleep once it was far into the night. They wouldn't sleep apart but would all be lumped together. There on the floor they'd sleep side by side, sometimes crowded tightly together.

Eventually Uncle also proposed to Father that, like the other santris, I should bring rice and dried fish from home, sufficient for a week's food. That way I would have to go back to the house only once a week. That would be to ask for rice, dried fish, and pocket money, because (he said to Father) when I'd go home to eat two times a day, often I'd play halfway home with the Village Privates (that is, with my old companions from the past).

To me, he said, "You must see the one kilometer distance between your parents' house and the surau as a distance of one hundred kilometers, and you must think that you are far off in the rantau, and you must not remember your desire to go home every moment or so. In short, all of your attention must be focused upon your religious lessons and on the life hereafter."

Little by little my connections to the outside world lessened. I would rarely run into my old playmates, such as Zainal, Bujung, Dullah, and so on. They played with one another while I associated only with the santris. I wore white clothes and pelekat sarongs^[5] like they did, I behaved and talked like the santris—that is, I always acted modest and viewed myself humbly and was pale faced and always bowing my head when I talked to women, since santris weren't allowed to see women's faces. And, when out taking a walk, I wasn't allowed to look up but always had to keep my head bowed down toward the ground. Those were the teachings in the surau.

We'd take turns cooking meals. Eight santris, for instance, would buy a large cooking pot, then each would pour a cup of rice into the pot and one person of the group would cook it. After the rice was done, the one who boiled it up would ladle it out onto the plates of the eight people in equal amounts. Then each person would eat it, using his own side dishes.

Rarely would anyone eat meat; the usual thing to have was dried fish with hot red pepper sauce. The fish would be fried or cooked with coconut milk so that it would last for a week or two. After that, someone else would take a turn cooking the rice. They'd keep taking turns, back and forth in that way, until all eight had had a turn. If a tutor happened to be among the eight, he was freed from the obligation to cook rice because, after all, he was helping them in their studies.

In that way I pursued my recitation lessons there for almost a year. Every Friday, vacation day, we'd set our blankets and mattresses out to air in the sun and we'd search for lice in our trousers, shirts, and sarongs. We'd brush our hair to get rid of the fleas and we'd kill the bedbugs that nested in the gaps between the floorboards. (Our lice and fleas were numerous. In fact, beyond counting.) The bugs would pick up and move from one person to the next because we slept all mixed together.

When the blankets were set out to sun and they got hot, dozens and dozens of loathsome lice would come creeping out. We'd kill the whole lot of them off. Tomorrow there would be more of them.

Many of us had scabies from bathing every day in dirty water, in that water from the tub that never got changed. These folk would always be scratching their bodies because they were itchy from sweat or because they'd been bitten by lice, which made nests in every little fold of our shirts and pants.

I myself got scabies, for three months, on my feet and arms. Its pain, dirtiness, and itchiness were unbearable. If you wanted to go to the polyclinic, you couldn't: there wasn't any such thing as a polyclinic in my village. So we were forced to try village doctoring. Uncle said this was all a result of a Koranic curse, which came from holding the holy text without using prayer water first. He went on to say, scabies is a test from God, a sign that he loved us, as with the Prophet Job in ancient times. I myself did not believe it was a test. Scabies results from nothing other than dirtiness.

The number of books I was studying grew to eight in all: I had four during the day and four at night. Afternoons we studied from two to five o'clock, and in the evenings from nine to eleven, though sometimes until two o'clock. It was like that every day, except on Fridays. We'd read with the aid of a tempel lamp [wall lamp]. The lessons got harder and the conflict between them and my soul became sharper, conflicting as these lessons did with the books I was reading in school. These two sorts of reading materials continuously caused a conflict inside me. The one told me to believe and accept on faith whatever the ancient syechs had taught, while the other broadened the intelligence and urged me to actually think. The one taught that the earth was flat and was carried on the shoulders of a cow, while the other said the earth was a globe. The latter was the one that my mind could accept.

One day, while he was teaching about the sky and the earth, my uncle

explained that the first sky was made of copper, the second sky was made of silver, the third of gold, and the fourth of diamonds. And that atop these diamonds the sun revolved, pulled by thousands of holy angels on a golden chain. According to what he said, the sun went around the earth, not the earth around the sun as they taught us in school. Each of the skies was as thick as a foot trip taking five hundred years.

"Please give me leave to inquire, Your Honor," I said to Uncle, for there was something that I didn't understand yet. "Your Honor said the first sky is made of copper, which is as thick as a foot trip of five hundred years. All right, for now let's just discuss this first sky and put the second, third, and fourth ones off to the side for a moment. What I don't understand is how can copper as thick as all that be penetrated by the sunlight, whereas the sunlight doesn't shine through roof tiles of just one centimeter thickness?"

"Because God intends that the copper sky as thick as all that will be penetrated by the sunlight, while he does not intend the same for the roof tiles," answered my uncle.

"Oh, so the difference doesn't depend on the quality of the things at hand but rather upon the will of God? All right, then! Let me go on to ask, why does God's will differ in that he wants the sunlight to come through in one case but he doesn't want the sunlight to come through in the other case, although the rays that pour out of the sun are exactly the same in both instances?"

"That is God's own will and we are not allowed to question it. God does not want the house roof to be penetrated by sunlight, so that the people inside the house won't get too hot."

"Well, all right! But if, say, we make roof tiles out of glass and not clay, why is it the will of God that the sunlight goes through the roof? Why would it be God's will that the clay tiles not get penetrated but the glass ones do, even though the two roof tiles might be placed right beside each other?"

My uncle was about to lose all patience at this point. His answer was that it was all the will of God and we weren't allowed to ask any questions.

"If you speak thus, you do not believe that the first sky is made of copper and is a five-hundred-year-long foot trip thick?" he asked me.

"No, I do not believe it! And the same goes for the silver sky and the gold one and the diamond one. I'm totally sure if all that were true, we couldn't see the sun. Why, roof tiles as thin as this aren't penetrated by the sun—that would surely be all the more the case with copper, silver, gold, and diamond skies, two-thousand-year-long foot trips thick."

"Now, you must be very careful here! If you say that one more time and purposefully cast doubt on the teachings of religion, you will be an infidel . . . an apostate . . . a polytheist . . . a criminal, and will burn in hell for thousands and thousands of years. You must pronounce the Confession and ask for God's forgiveness."

"I don't feel I'm being insubordinate to God," I answered. "It's just that

I don't understand all this yet and I'm asking for further clarifications. And if everything is the will of God, might not my desire to find out all these things be an action of God, too?"

He didn't answer. His face just reddened and he said to the other students: "Now, this is the cause of so many young children becoming lost souls today. It's all because they base their faith on their intellect. They do not have a firm faith because they lack a complete belief in the prophets, the caliphs, and the ancient Ulamas."

I didn't feel lost; I just wanted a satisfactory explanation of how the sunlight could come through the copper! I hadn't suspected that I would get called an infidel because of this question, for, in my opinion, the intellect is an instrument of inquiry that we must make use of, and what we accept must be in accordance with the intellect. And, I averred, God would not have given us an intellect if it wasn't to be put to good use. And what's wrong with measuring everything we're taught in terms of our intellect, so we'll know which parts are true? Because maybe the teachings are not true, and then too, sometimes it just might happen that our intellect might make a mistake.

Upon hearing his pronouncement, half of my companions agreed with me while the other half were of the opinion that in matters of religion, no doubts could be countenanced, and we must not ask any questions. Our teacher (who had spent eleven years in Mecca) knows more than you do, they said.

Starting that day, I began to be seen as an apostate child, and my own heart flagged at my efforts to do the recitation verses, since I couldn't accept any of it. How could I find any satisfaction at this? What use was religion's recitations and teachings if they told us to live with our eyes closed, if they wouldn't let us look at the things all around us, and if they wouldn't allow us to discover our true character—and if religions' recitations and teachings wouldn't tell us to think, but only to believe in a totally reckless manner and follow the pronouncements of some syech or imam?

Once we spent almost a whole month studying and memorizing the tayamam theories, that is, the ways to get prayer water out of the desert and how to clean off our feet and hands by rubbing them against the house pillars or trees when there wasn't any water around.

I proposed to my uncle that we just skip the tayamam chapter or just take from it what we really, really needed, (that is, the core essence of it), so we could just finish it all in a day or so.

"All this tayamam business, in my opinion, is important in Arabia, with its vast deserts, where it's real hard to get water. This matter can be explained at great length for the Arabs, down to all its tiny details. But for us Indonesians, who live in a country rich in water, where the waterspouts

overflow and the fish ponds, rivers, and lakes are very numerous—just look at Lake Singkarak and the Ombilin River—we don't really need to study these tayamam matters very intensively, wasting a whole month over it."

"But that is what's written down in the holy book and we are not allowed to skip it. Tuan Syech, who composed these passages, knows better than we do about what we need to know and what we don't need to know!"

"I think we don't need to study everything that's been written down. What we study must be in line with our own situation and our own self-interest, among our own people and in our own native land that we inhabit. We don't have to recklessly follow whatever such and such Syech happens to have written down from its beginning to its end—even if we do acknowledge the learning and piety of the Syech and the fact that he's smarter than we are."

"So it's your opinion that here in our country, there's lots of water, right? Well, what if we happen to be up on a mountaintop and we want to say our prayers, what can we do then?"

"In Indonesia, if there isn't any water on a mountaintop, there certainly will be some down in the valley, and we can just go down there for a moment and fetch some."

"And if there is no water in the valley?"

"So don't pray right away, before you can happen upon some water! And you don't have to make an easy matter so difficult. God, I think, will not force us to pray if he knows there is some obstacle in our way."

"I have reminded you time and time again," said my uncle with a growl, "do not use your intellect. That's the work of the devil. You're being an apostate, like Abu Djahal. How many times have you said words that veer away from the teachings of religion? You must ask God's forgiveness and read the Confession. If you speak that way one more time you will become an infidel and will burn in hell for a thousand years. I shall tell all this to your father!"

In that way, my desire to know and to analyze anything with the intellect and with healthy thinking was discouraged. It was all abruptly cut off by his saying that I was an infidel, and by his scaring me with the torments of a thousand years in hell.

I believed that God would not be that cruel! God knew more about what I was feeling in my heart—maybe God caused all of this uproar, who knows!

One other time, on a Sunday morning, because I didn't have to go to school, I attended a class of the real brains, the ones whose books were as thick as bricks. For more than two hours they debated the matter of whether or not some prayer water would have to be invalidated as unholy

if it were stumbled over by a guy who happened to be walking along and a little piece of his penis, which had been chopped off his body, happened to be lying across the highway.

Half of them said yes, it would have to be invalidated. The other half said it wouldn't be. Each of them set forth various proofs and reasons that they had taken from the holy books they'd read, or that they had excerpted from the teachings of Imam Sjafei or Imam Maliki or Imam Gazali—but none of which represented any brain work of their own.

And a second question: must a little piece of penis be prayed over, like a corpse, or not? Must it be wrapped in a holy shroud, or not?

For hours and hours they debated this, but they never came to any conclusion. Even my own uncle was unable to give a satisfactory answer.

At first I had just kept quiet. Finally, I got bored listening to them, and I thrust myself into the middle of the discussion.

"Listen, all of you! I would ask to speak. In your entire lives have you ever encountered a piece of a human penis rolling along the middle of the road?"

"Never."

"If this never happened, why do you make it into such a big deal, and one that wastes so much time and energy?"

"We're only talking it over and making a case of it, just supposing it should happen."

"Why should we waste time talking about something, 'supposing it should happen,' while there is lots for us to study that really has happened and demands our full attention? Aren't there really a great many things which are real and very much more pressing, which we must bring to some satisfactory end? The whole matter is really simple for me: if it gets stumbled over, we'll just go and get some more prayer water. What's wrong with having to work a bit—there's lots of water around. And then, too, why do we want to go and bother ourselves so much whether to pray over it or not? If we really ran into a piece of a man's penis along the road—something that very rarely happens in the course of a hundred years—what would be wrong with digging in the earth for a moment and burying it in a little hole? To touch it we could wrap up our hand with a banana leaf, for instance. That's a very easy matter. It isn't necessary to hem and haw over it for so long a time or to keep cracking open the ancient Ulamas' holy texts!"

"But we have to be capable of answering this question if there happens to be a person who asks such a thing when we are dispensing religious advice for the multitudes."

"I think that the Indonesian people are healthy enough in their thoughts and will not be so crazy as to ask such a thing, even if they don't know how to recite the Koranic verses," I answered.

My uncle got angry again, called me impudent, and told me to go on off, because I was just sowing disorder. I went on off . . . My pals were asking me to go bathe and swim in the healthful, refreshing lake.

But things were not destined to be that much fun, splashing and swimming around in the water! Halfway to the lake we were asked by an old woman rushing toward the surau if we would be willing to go recite verses over an old man who was about to die. He was in fact at that very moment in his final death agony. The five of us were confused; we trembled and just looked at one another. All of us were afraid to see a person who was actually going to die. The old woman urged us on, while crying: "If you're willing to do it then I won't have to go on to the surau," she said, sobbing.

We were still looking at one another, confused and stunned as if we had just been hit on the head. None of us had the courage to make a decision. To go see a person die? That was an event that we had not yet experienced. Once, we'd seen a person who had already died, who was covered over with a long cloth. But even that scared us, and here we were going off to see a person whose last breaths were coming out one by one?

But to refuse her wouldn't be very appropriate either. The woman urged us fervently to do it and pulled on our arms. Udin, who was rather bold, came to a decision:

"Come on, let's go!"

The four of us followed along once someone had made a decision. But oh, it felt so heavy to pick up our feet! Our hearts pounded. Out in the houseyard, people noisily reading the Surah Jasin [37th chapter of the Koran, read when someone is dying] could already be heard. That was what was normally read right before and after a person died. At that time it was twelve noon. The sun was straight overhead, and toward the north, not far from the house, a hawk keened movingly, in an uncaring way. The sound was touching, hair-raising. "This is not a good spot to be in," my heart said.

One by one we climbed up the stairs. Our feet got even heavier. In the front room I saw an invalid stretched out on the mattress with two men on his left and right holding his two hands, and fifteen men and women sitting all around him, reading the Koran. In the midst of all this clamor, the sick person drew in short little breaths, one by one. His chest was evidently closed and tight, so that he wheezed. They passed out one Koran per person to us and asked us to sit down. We sat down near the wall, a bit distant from the invalid, while opening the holy book. Back inside, in back of us, the sobs of about half the women could be heard, and the other half had red, weeping eyes, at seeing this person in his death agony.

I could not focus my attention on what I was reading, because what I saw and the whole atmosphere of the house was very frightening. The others would look at their books for a moment, then they'd take a look at

the invalid for a moment, who was kicking his two legs and thrashing his two arms about at every faction of folks gathered around him. All the while he was drawing short, difficult breaths, one by one. His eyes, wide open, looked upward; he did not hear or even care about the requests of those beside him that he start pronouncing the Confession. (According to the beliefs of Muslims, when the final words of a person who is dying are "la ilaha illallah," he or she will get right into heaven.) The invalid just kept pulling up violently, even though the men at his side were trying to calm him down. His chest rose and fell furiously; his mouth gaped open.

I did not have the strength to look at him.

Two of my companions had already gone down out to the house in turn, saying that they had to go pee. I had thought I was the most scared of all of us, but apparently they were even more so. Eventually, I saw that the limbs of the man's body (from the knees on down) were not moving anymore. He lay still and stiff, his eyes were open, still staring upward. (At that time, old folks said, a person who was about to die would see the Angel of Death descending the stairs that extended from the doorway of the sky to the soles of the feet of the person who was going to die.) I trembled even more. In a few minutes more would the Angel of Death stand in the midst of this gathering of Koranic reciters and pluck away the soul of the person who was going to die? Would I get touched on the shirt by the Angel of Death, who'd be standing just three meters from me? Or might he look toward me after pulling out the soul of the sick person? Oh—maybe he's already standing right there in front of me and he's just invisible!

Disturbed by these frightening thoughts, I quaked with fear even more. I whispered to the person sitting next to me that I was going to step down out of the house for moment to go pee. I stood up and went on down. On the stairs I met the Datuk nobleman, the younger brother of the man who was going to die. I said with a trembling voice that I was in a real hurry to go pee. But he was so sad and panicky, he hardly heard my words anyway. Thank God, he didn't hold me back any longer!

At first I walked along kind of slowly, with the scene still hovering in front of my eyes. Once I got to a turn in the road, and the people in the houseyard couldn't see me anymore, I ran just as fast as I could toward the lake. It wasn't far from the house, and my friends were waiting for me there. Apparently we all felt the same way and each of us was just as scared as the other.

"He hasn't died yet?" they asked.

"Not when I stepped down," I answered.

While we were talking, two more friends came up, running fast.

"Why did you leave us behind?" they asked, panting and out of breath.

"How in the world could we invite you to come along in front of all those people? We were really scared. Had he already died when you left?"

"Almost. The longer it got, the more horrible it was, and we told the householder that we were going out to pee."

"So, it was the same trick for all of us then," said Udin. "Well, let's all just go bathing in the lake and forget what we just saw."

But even though we tried to forget, we kept remembering the scene. Indeed, as we dove down into the water, the man with his breaths coming out one by one kept hovering before our eyes. Even though we didn't talk much about it, it hung in each of our imaginations.

Upon returning from the lake, we heard that he had passed away.

"Well, luckily not in front of us," my buddies said.

In our village—when I was still really small—when someone died the whole family and especially the women would sing mourning laments. That is, they'd cry hard and mention various good deeds done by the deceased, as well as that person's behavior, disposition, and how deep and close the lamenters' love had been for the person. A short-form life story of the deceased starting from A going to Z would be related in a softly moaning voice. It would greatly move the listeners. They'd moan out laments, sitting all around the corpse of the deceased, all the while lashing themselves on the body, beating their chests, or rending their own garments, or rolling about on the floor moaning and screaming. No one would be able to calm them down. The women who'd lament would adjust the lament's intensity according to the size of the family of the deceased, and according to how close the lamenter was to the deceased. Or the lament's intensity would depend on the person's wholesomeness over the course of his or her life. From the intensity of the laments, it would be evident whether folks loved the person who'd died or not. Men did not lament; they'd just cry with pouty faces.

The neighbor women would normally be the ones to calm the lamenters down and restrain them from lamenting and shouting too much so that they didn't go so far as to bother the one who had died. I myself once saw some lamenters go to excess, in fact. They went on and on for two days past the burial of the deceased.

Little by little over the course of ten years, thanks to the teachings of religious teachers (who explained that religion strictly forbids lamenting, or crying with words), the custom of lamenting decreased. They still cried in great sobs and that was allowed, but it wasn't with words anymore. The Ulamas said that when the living lament, the tranquility of the soul of the deceased will be bothered and the dead people will think back, more than they should, toward the world they have left behind. The living should be willing to let their loved ones move on to eternity, so they can depart with tranquility, and so their quiet won't be disturbed, said the Ulama.

If a person died, the neighbors and the women from the village would

come into mendjenguk , in the local word: to bring a half-kilo measure of rice or two, as a contribution for the people who had been afflicted by hardship. This they could cook and offer the folks who came to help with the burial.

After a person had breathed his last and the public had finished reading the Surah Jasin, the body would be laid out in the middle chamber, covered with a lovely cloth. The guests would come to formally declare that they were among the grievers, and they would sit down around the body, talking and whispering about the illnesses or the well-being of the deceased throughout the course of the person's life. If he had done small, insignificant wrongs now and then, those in attendance would remember those wrongs with contented smiles and look upon them as instances of sweet naughtiness. The atmosphere there in the house would be dark and blurred, rather quiet and desolate, with a kind of moving, dull sadness.

But out at the cemetery it was just the reverse. After stopping for a moment or so at the house, the village men would go out to the graveyard to dig the grave. Out there, everyone would be happy, and laughing in loud guffaws and joking and jesting uproariously. Not a one of them was grieving. On the contrary, the family of the deceased, when they got out there, would smile hazily, listening to the jokes and pleasantries of some certain guy who'd be playing the clown.

Often I've noticed that in every gathering of human beings there is a clown, even if that wasn't the person's particular gift since childhood. There will be someone among those in attendance who's natty-looking and whose behavior and speech make people laugh. And without their meaning it to, everyone's attention will focus on the clown. If there isn't any clown, the crowd will surely not be so cheerful. But there are always clowns around, even in graveyards.

There was another adat custom in my village. If a person fell fairly ill in his wife's house, everything possible would be done to take him over to his mother's house. He wasn't allowed to be seriously ill while still in his wife's house. Because, according to public opinion in my village, it would look as if his siblings and close family didn't care anything about him and didn't want to take care of him. And this would disgrace his mother's family. Even more so, if he actually died: it wasn't at all proper that he be brought down the steps, that final time, at his wife's house, when his corpse was being carried to the grave. No matter how great his wife's love and devotion for him was and no matter how much she wanted to care for him, his parents' and siblings' rights were greater than hers.

His wife was permitted to go along over to her husband's mother's house. If the invalid happened to have two or three wives (something quite common in my village), all of the wives would take care of their hus-

band in their parent-in-law's house. A person might ask, well, don't they fight? I also asked that and wanted to witness such fights, but the situation had never happened, to date. Apparently they just didn't think of fighting because their mutual distress so strongly suppressed their hatred for their co-wives—even though we can certainly imagine what feelings might actually be running amok, hidden down deep in the recesses of their hearts.

If the husband died, all the wives would cry, and sometimes they'd compete fiercely with each other at this. Because in their opinion the louder their sobs were, the greater their love for the deceased. Who loved him the most? The one who cried the loudest!

When the corpse had been washed off and prayed over, he was carried out to the grave. At the moment he was about to be carried down the front steps, the whole family and all of the relatives would start to sob all at once, because the deceased was leaving and wouldn't ever come back. They all would escort him out to the grave, reading and reciting the zikir [the first part of the Muslim Confession of faith la ilaha ilallah ]. After the body was put into the grave and buried with clumps of earth, the talkin was read and recited—that is, the advice for the dead about questions that must be answered when the two angels Munkar and Nakir came to interrogate him.

According to Muslim people's beliefs, when a person had been put into a grave and the escorts had all gone back home, along would come two angels, Munkar and Nakir, carrying poles as big and as long as coconut tree trunks. These would be flaming like torches. The dead person would be asked who God is, who God's prophets were, what the holy book was, what religion was, and what sorts of things had the person done in the world. If he didn't answer or answered in the wrong way, the person would be pounded with this big pole until he was beaten down into the seventh layer of the earth. And the angel would scrape him with his long fingernails and beat him again and then scrape him again and then beat him again. He'd keep being beaten and scraped on until doomsday. Not a single person knew how many more years that would be!

The talkin readers would instruct the one down in the grave what his answers should be.

But the Modernists^[6] in Sumpur Bawah had eliminated the talkin reading. A dead person, they said, wasn't going to be listening anymore, anyway. If he had been a good person in the world, he'd give the right answers.

Usually, the people who worked out at the grave a while beforehand were formally given a meal of rice and chicken curry, contributed by the women. But this custom of providing a rice meal had been eliminated too by the Modernists, in their circle: according to them as long as the corpse was lying there stretched out in the middle of the house, folks shouldn't be making a big racket, boiling rice, grating coconuts, chopping up chickens and cooking curries out in the kitchen. All attention, rather, should be

focused on the funeral ceremony and the atmosphere must remain tranquil. As long as the folks in the house are still sad, they shouldn't be bothered with some obligation to offer big festive meals to their guests, said the Modernists.

That night, people who had suffered the death would call on several santris to read from the Koran, to pray for the safety and good rest of the deceased in the afterworld. The Surah Jasin was what was always read, though why I don't know. And after praying, they'd all eat. On the way back to the surau they'd ask the santris if they could come over to the house for the next six nights to read and recite and say prayers—a request that the santris always greeted with good cheer and glowing faces.

But, the Modernists had also cast off this reading and recitation custom. A Modernist house that had suffered a death would always be quiet and lonely and tranquil, and I noticed that this quiet and loneliness increased the sadness of the house's occupants. I don't really know which is the right approach, of the two options offered by these two groups. But what I do know is that people who called in the santris to read and recite weren't all that sad since their house was noisy and crowded and this constituted a form of entertainment, which deflected their attention from their sorrow. The same was true of folks who had the person in the death agony prayed and recited over, in a big noisy crowd; that way the attention of the one who was going to die wasn't directed one hundred percent toward his or her illness. In the din and uproar, the dying person's concentration would be broken a bit, and amid all these goings on, without knowing it, he or she would just appear in the World Hereafter. The sufferings would be very severe and frightening if the person's room were quiet and still, and if all those in attendance had gloomy faces. In my opinion, all that noise does have its purpose, especially if a few drums are beaten and there are a few cheery mars songs [marching tunes] sung.

Because I was in the santri category, oftentimes I was called in to do recitations. I didn't yet understand everything I was doing because I wasn't allowed to investigate it carefully. However, I just followed along and did it anyway. All of it amazed me—an amazement that I did not understand the cause of. And could I make this amazement disappear? A tutor of mine said philosophy can eliminate amazement. But because I was still small, I didn't know any philosophy yet.

Because I was not yet fully acquainted with the study of philosophy by this point, what I relate below once happened:

One night, after doing recitations at a house of folks who had suffered a death, we were about to go on down out of the house when suddenly it began to rain really hard. In a book I had read: "Rain poured earthward from the skies." That night the rain could be said to have been almost like what was written in that book. The surau was a kilometer away from there,

and we didn't have an umbrella along. We hadn't thought that it might rain, and the people in the house there, by happenstance, also didn't have an umbrella.

We waited a long time there on the front stoop but the rain showed no sign of slackening. According to all indications, the rain was going to last for a long time—maybe until midnight. Because the cloud cover was very thick, the whole sky was pitch black. The householders did not go back inside. They just looked at us from the door and the windows, pitying us.

Eventually, we (eight of us in all) became quite embarrassed. The householders weren't going to go back inside before we left. We made the decision to take shelter for a moment under the eaves of the neighbor's house, who had already closed their door and windows. We dashed over there and held another meeting to determine how we were going to get to the surau, because it was getting near the time for the night classes, and to run through rain coming down that hard meant our clothes would get soaking wet for sure, and about half of us didn't have a change of clothes.

Finally, we just decided to go stark naked. We santris (who had just a while ago been acting so polite and virtuous back in the people's house) now shucked off all our clothes in a dark spot and wrapped them up into the smallest bundles possible. Luckily, no one from the house saw us. If there had been anyone who did, their faith in our santriness would surely have faded a bit.

Clutching our clothes packets to our chests, we ran off fast in the dark in the rain. It was good we ran into only a few folks along the road: just three women coming home from the surau carrying torches. The women were startled to see eight black shapes running along in the dark. So that they wouldn't recognize any of us, the naughtiest one of all of us kicked out their torch. It shot skyward. And the one who kicked it flipped and fell on the ground himself and all three women screamed.

Help, help, a ghost, a ghost!" they cried.

People in the nearby houses opened their windows and doors and looked outside, but we were already far off. The next day, all the village people fully believed that it had been ghosts who had run along bothering the women.

Under the eaves of the surau's roof we put our clothes back on, and inside we became good, pious santris once more.

The seventh night, the householders killed a goat and some chickens. Normally people in my village would hold a selamatan on the seventh day. Holding a Seventh Day ceremony, it was called. Rich people would kill a water buffalo, while folks who weren't rich would buy some meat (rather a lot of it) in the market. Lots of santris and other guests would be invited over for that night. Father and my uncle attended. That night they read not only the Surah Jasin but the salawat [invocation, short prayer, usually

made of Koranic verses] too, a prayer passage whose contents we didn't know. People said it was packed with praise of the great beauty of the Prophet Mohammad. And a little bit of his life story, too. When they'd read the part about the Prophet emerging from his mother's womb, those in attendance stood up and read the "Marhaban," saying "Welcome, Welcome." All except the Modernists, that is; they just sat there. They didn't believe that the Prophet was really in the house at that moment. By contrast, the Traditionalists^[7] actually did believe it.

After we ate, a tutor who had been sitting next to Uncle moved over to sit next to me. And after chatting about other matters for a while he asked: "So, does Ridjal believe that the Prophet Mohammad came to the house a while ago, when folks were reading that part about him emerging from his mother's womb?"

The tutor had to have been put up to this by Uncle.

"Please tell my uncle that if the Prophet came in his actual physical body, no, I did not see him, as I don't have the right sort of faculties for seeing him. So there's nothing that has to be believed in here."

I kept waiting for some bit of ridicule to issue from Uncle the next day. I wondered if I was going to get called an infidel again.

While everyone was sitting around smoking cigarettes, from around back came a person carrying a tray full of yellow rice and little leaf packages. He placed one in front of each of us. The package for Uncle was bigger than all the rest. And then another man came out and gave each of us a religious alms meal, and the tutors got a quarter apiece, and my uncle got half a rupiah. All the santris were pleased and merry, at getting some yellow rice provisions and a dime or so, too—and all that after just having eaten a big meal.

Off we went back to the surau, our yellow rice packets swinging from our hands. When we got back, our friends who hadn't gone along all crowded around and tried to get some food from us, since they hadn't been invited. About half of the stingier santris hurriedly stuck their yellow rice into their wooden chests of drawers and locked them shut.

A month later we were invited out to the same place for the Fourteenth Day commemoration, and three months later for Hundreds, and three years later for Thousands. Most of the animals sacrificed for the feast turned out to be buffaloes, or cattle, too.

For a year and a half I lived in the Lower Surau, isolated from the outside world. We lived in our own little world, with a view of life that differed from that of most people, who struggled on the practical plane of life.

We lived in an age of five or six hundred years ago, thinking in the way the ancient Ulamas we were studying had thought. We planned to make the outside world conform to plans set down by these Ulamas, complete with the very best forms of social organization—because those forms had

emerged from the brains of syechs who had risen to the crowning, top-most part of religious scholarship. When we all returned home to our individual home villages, we would doubtless be spreading these medieval views to the Minangkabau people.

When I say "we" here, I mean the majority of santris. I myself was always rebelling; I'd opposed the whole lot of it, seeking freedom of thought. I was always worried that if I stayed there a long time, associating with these santris who were thinking like human beings living in the thirteenth century, I'd surely be influenced by them. My spirit would be extinguished, and after that I would have no use whatever for living in this real world. My hopes and the aspirations whose flames still burned in me would be cloaked and vitiated by a darkness that would simply kill them.

For one and a half years I studied Arabic, and I memorized a great many grammatical rules (whose books were of a thickness we could take pride in). But we didn't know how to talk yet! How to say, for instance, "A coconut fell from its tree, rolled swiftly into the river, and got washed away toward the estuary." We had no idea how to say this! It wasn't just us, either: our tutors, who had been reading and writing for seven years now, couldn't chat along in Arabic among themselves. They were really adept at reading aloud from an open book, but if that book was closed then everything disappeared from their memory. The life spirit of the language had not penetrated our souls.

One time I asked Djaunin, one of my tutors, what was the Arabic for "The clay before yesterday, in a friend's rice paddy, I ate some really yummy stewed breadfruit, sticky rice, and newly harvested rice." After thinking a long time, he didn't know what it was and he just stood there confused. And if you went to look for "stewed fruit," "sticky rice," and "breadfruit" in the text, you wouldn't find them, because the holy texts were crowded with nothing other than matters of praying, tayamam, zakat , fasting, going to Mecca on the pilgrimage, marriage laws, the divisions of inherited goods, major sins and minor sins, and so on and so forth.

After that I became even lazier about making any effort to waste my life studying a language that would never get used in human society. Even though the holy text may be big and thick, everything you read really has to be translated first into your own language and only then can you understand what it says. If you just read it through once all in the Arabic language, you sure won't understand it.

To improve our comportment—as if our comportment all this time hadn't been good enough—to our eight books we had added yet another one, the "Tarikat Muhammadiah." This one was filled with advice and models for good conduct, like that demonstrated by the prophets. This text taught us how to be afraid. Whoever was the most afraid would be the very one most praised and loved by God.

The prophets would sometimes sweep out the floors of their houses. So

every morning and afternoon we ourselves would be ordered to go sweep the surau yard and floors, so that we'd be humble just like the prophets.

The texts also told how the prophets would carry their own sandals in their hands rather than having some follower carry them. This was also a sign that the prophet was humble. We were told by my uncle to carry our sandals in our hands when we were coming home from some selamatan, in imitation of the prophets.

I asked the tutor (saying that I didn't understand this at all) why we were asked to carry our sandals in our hands when we could just wear them? And moreover, for us normal people, I said, it's not a sign of glory when we sweep out the yard and carry our sandals: the general public will see that as just an ordinary sort of thing to do. For the prophets, as very important personages, that sort of humble behavior is praiseworthy, but for us who are already humble to start with, there isn't much left to lower us even farther down.

But the tutor did not agree with me.

We were taught hundreds of prohibitions to rein in our inclinations and movements. Hundreds of "don'ts": don't lust, don't be jealous, don't be angry, don't be insulting, don't think obscene thoughts, don't be lazy in saying your prayers, don't be gluttonous, and so on, until they mounted up to hundreds and hundreds of them. There were more prohibitions than there was time and ability to carry out all these taboos in the first place. I was confused: what was left that we were allowed to do?

Don't do this, it's a sin. Don't do that, it's a sin. We were also taught lots and lots of theories about goodness. This thing here was good to do on a regular and customary basis. This thing here, though, should be done every minute. This prayer was good to read; that prayer had to be read two thousand times—yes, there were hundreds and hundreds of good prayers and supplications, but we didn't have the energy and time to do them. To do them all, a thousand-year-long life wouldn't be enough.

This one here was good to read each night so you'd get into heaven. That one there was good to recite each morning so that you wouldn't go to hell. This one's good, that one's good, and so on—until finally not any of them got done at all!

These theoretical teachings piled up in heaps, all mixed together haphazardly and all running wild in our young minds. It got so our heads felt very heavy, as if they were going to explode. To put all of these rules into practice—we had only two hands and just two feet! There were hundreds of holy verses and deeds of the prophet that we had to memorize, all of which told us to do thus and so, or prohibited this or that, but what we actually did every day was just read, sit, eat, sleep, and shoot the breeze with one another.

What we filled our heads with each morning and evening until two

o'clock was not in accordance with what was actually put into practice. And certainly not with what was going to be put into practice in the future.

I was very, very worried that if I kept going the way I was, after seven or ten years in recitation school, after using up all of mother and father's money as well as my own time and energy and ruining my eyes and health, I'd be about as clever as my tutors. There would be no difference whatever between us.

And this wasn't what I hoped for!

Moreover, I didn't have even the slightest, tiniest desire to become a syech.

A syech, a recitation teacher, would usually make his living from the alms given him by his students of the village people, if he didn't own rice paddies or garden land. His weekly income was quite uncertain. Sometimes it was just a little, but usually it was more than his needs. In fact, there were some honorable syechs who were rich and who could afford to build two or three houses from their followers' alms and donations. Their students would not allow the teacher to work for his livelihood by being a merchant or farmer, so he could concentrate absolutely all of his time on teaching.

However, to support their families, the small unknown teachers were forced to work paddy land and farmland since the income from alms was not sufficient. They didn't have many students; their names weren't famous yet. But in the rice paddies and on the farm the students could help the teacher out, and they'd just get paid in food to eat.

Once they'd gotten the title of syech, religion teachers (especially if they were hajis) were held in very high regard and were greatly respected by the village people. In fact, there were several syechs who were thought to be outright holy men, like Syech Silungkang, Syech Batuhampar, Syech Lima Pulah, Syech Malalo, and so on. Sometimes this feeling of respect would get excessive and would overstep proper bounds. For instance, the syech's followers would fight mightily over the leftovers of his meal, and they'd drink the water where he'd bathed his feet, so they'd gain a clear mind when reciting.

In Malalu, the water that fell from the floor where folks had been washing the corpse of the honorable Syech Lima Puluh was caught by people in dishes, glasses, and basins and they drank it to receive his holy blessings.

Because of the great respect these honorable syechs had in the eyes of their followers, they had lots of wives. Their followers very much wanted to receive blessings from their teachers' great religious scholarship, holiness, and sacredness. Even if the teacher already had three wives, there'd still be somebody who would get lucky and get the opportunity to seek the teacher as a son-in-law. They'd feel very fortunate indeed when the honorable syech would have the pleasure of going up the stairs into their house

and sleeping there. Because of that they wouldn't feel burdened at all to surrender their young daughters to the syech, who'd usually be quite old. A man would do this because he believed that in the world hereafter the syech would help save his wife and relatives from the fires of hell, and would carry them all into heaven.

The people of his own village and of other villages wanted to have a syech as a son-in-law. But according to Muslim law, devoted followers of the religion may not have more than four wives. So in order that all the others would get a share (and be able to get the much-sought-after syech as a son-in-law), the syech would be forced to divorce one of his wives. And then if there was yet another person who came to seek him as a son-in-law, he'd divorce another one of them so his total number of wives would always stay at four. But it was a pity about the women he divorced. Rarely would anybody else want to marry this widow, since they feared a curse. A great many syech's former wives never did marry again.

According to the story told by a certain santri who once did recitations in the Payah Kumbuh area (and who was now continuing his recitations at the Lower Surau), over in the Lima Puluh domain lived a syech who had more than one hundred former wives, and numberless children. The honorable syech didn't even recognize his kids if he happened to meet them going along the road. Even though he was seventy years old, there were still folks who wanted to surrender their virgin daughters to him in order to get his blessings for as long as the syech happened to live. This was so he could help them out in the hereafter a bit later on.

In addition to being skilled at recitations, the honorable syechs knew witchcraft, or how to cure the sick. Sometimes one of them would have to protect his high position with witchcraft, since, to be frank, not everyone really loved him. Someone who hated him would put a witchcraft spell on the syech, or play with him with magic so that he'd fall ill or crazy, or so that he'd actually die. But if he didn't get injured after all that, then people would acknowledge the syech as a very sacred person.

To frighten people: that's why syechs would often mention magic in their conversations with their followers. They'd say it was all part of the secret knowledge of the West they had pursued in Mecca. The aim of all this was that folks would not try to test or challenge the syech.