Chapter 5: Hide-and-Seek

After reciting verses from the Koran and saying the evening prayers, we children (not wanting to go to sleep yet) would play out in the yard in front of the surau, or near the coffee stall close by. Whenever there was a full moon we'd go out to the playing field about half a kilometer from the surau. We'd play various games while waiting for our eyelids to get sleepy: hide-and-seek, joking with each other, tickling and teasing friends, and wrestling.

If it wasn't a rainy day, and most especially if there was a full moon, we loved playing outdoors. Normally we'd use these fine evenings, the ones when Father had already gone on back home (so we wouldn't have to be hesitant about doing such things) to play hide-and-seek. Because lots of our pals wanted to join in (often as many as sixteen people) we'd divide up into four small teams, each one consisting of four people. Three teams would go hide, while the other one would go seek. If a member of a team got found, his band would take their turn as the seekers. The places to go hide in increased in number and range because there were so many people who were trying to hide, and because we were so ardent in seeking

them out. It wasn't just a matter of using the area right around the surau: the area about five houses out from there was also included. Before things would begin, we'd make a pact that no one was allowed to go outside the set boundaries (for instance, beyond So-and-so's house or a certain tree). And it was also decided that one was absolutely not allowed to hide inside a house; the roof and the space behind the house posts under the floorboards were all right, though.

The team that was going to go seek would stand in the courtyard facing the surau wall or the big water tub, so they wouldn't see the movements of those of us who were running off and hiding or see which way we headed. We'd ask Lebai Saman (who was watching us) to keep a close eye on the seekers, just in case they tried to look. They'd wait for a whistle blow from the team's chief as a sign that everyone was hidden and ready now and that they could all be looked for. We'd hide under people's houses, in trees, in ditches, on roofs—which we'd climbed up to on the trees that leaned up against the houses—and we'd hide out in the bushes. When I reminisce now, I shudder to think about the dangers that might have befallen us when we were in hiding, such as being bitten by a ground snake, or stepping on a piece of crockery, or being stung by a centipede, and so on. But at that time we didn't think about these things, in the least. The only thing that was important was finding a good hiding place.

Sometimes, when it was fruit-picking season, playing hide-and-seek was a good opportunity to get to the rambutans [lychees], mangoes, and the duku and jambak fruits^[1] owned by the villagers who lived around us. During this season we'd play hide-and-seek far into the night, and everyone would be sound asleep, not hearing a thing. Once we saw that all was quiet now in the house of the rambutan owners and that they'd gone to bed, we'd climb up the rambutan tree very, very quietly and sit on a fruit-laden leafy branch. While hiding there, we'd pluck and eat rambutans one by one, or duku fruits or mangoes.

But we did not get the ripe ones because in the dark we couldn't tell which rambutan was ripe and which one was still young and green. We'd sure know once they were eaten, though. We'd feel our lips pucker and we'd toss the fruits away.

In the fruit season the ones who went and hid were quickly found because the seekers always knew where their opponents would go. In this endeavor, each was adept in guessing the other's thoughts. Upon locating a friend during the fruit season, you wouldn't cry out, "So-and-so had been found!" as you normally would. Rather, you'd climb up into the tree, catch hold of your opponent, and whisper, "Hey you, you're caught!" This was so the rambutan owner wouldn't wake up. The team member who had found the kid would whisper to his friends that he had found So-and-so from team such-and-such. By whispering, it was decided that team

such-and-such would have to be the seekers now. And the team that had just been the seekers would go hide out in yet another rambutan tree.

Sometimes the rambutan owner would awaken—or rather her husband would. At first he'd shout "Who's that?"

We hiding up in the rambutan tree would fall silent. We'd stop eating and hold still and quiet, like statues, bringing our bodies close in to the tree. If the owner was overheard coming to the door we'd slide down; the ones perched down rather low in the tree would jump right down out of it, totally scared, forgetting the fact that their legs might get broken. At the exact moment that the owner opened his kitchen door, all of us would be on the ground, racing each other madly to get back to the surau. It could well be that the man heard the great thumps of our feet sliding down out of the tree and then running off.

But, really, there wasn't any such a thing as fear for us, when we were still children. Often we'd hide behind the masonry walls of a grave, which in Minangkabau are always near the surau. According to the beliefs of Muslims there, the closer a person's grave is to the surau or the mosque, the greater the good fortune of the deceased will be. The merit generated by people praying and reciting the Koranic verses there will serve to protect them and give them shelter, rather like a chilled person sleeping near the hearth and thereby gaining warmth. Because we feared being found, we'd hide atop graves, but every moment or so we'd remember that the dead person was stretched out there down below. Maybe he'd heard us up above, and what if he should pull on our leg from down underneath?

One time, oh wow! was I scared. It was when I was hiding on top of a rather old grave; maybe its wooden corpse cover had rotted away or gotten holes in it, I don't know. The packed earth over the coffin had sunk down into the ground, falling into the corpse cover, and when my right foot stepped on it my leg sank in, up to the thigh.

I was scared speechless. When I looked into the hole a white form appeared inside, like the shroud of the dead person. Immediately, I ran off toward the surau. In running, I was caught by the seeker team. "Ridjal's caught!" they cried.

Actually, it was my turn to be a seeker again but once they had heard my story, that there was a ghost down there in the grave, hide-and-seek was halted and we went into the surau to go to sleep.

One time when we were absorbed in playing hide-and-seek, a friend of mine, Zainal, hid himself inside his sister's house. According to the rules we had set before playing—rules Zainal also agreed to—no one at all was allowed to go hide inside a house, even if its location was within the set boundaries. We were allowed to hide in the space under the house, or on the roof. The roofs of all the houses were made of thick zinc sheeting so stepping on them wouldn't ruin them.

But this one time, maybe because he was very tired or didn't want to play much anymore and was afraid to ask for the game to be stopped, Zainal and his team went off to go to sleep in his older sister's house. We took great pains searching for them for over two hours. But the only ones we found were the other teams; we three teams took turns playing. Zainal's team didn't go seek and never was caught. We were all astounded: could they possibly have gone outside the boundaries? When we called them they didn't answer. We began to suspect they had gone outside the boundaries. Half of us began to get angry. Now we had the right to go search on tops of the houses. We knocked on the doors of each house asking if Zainal was there. People in each house woke up but didn't rise from their beds. With sluggish voices they answered that Zainal was definitely not in their houses. It didn't occur to us that all this might have disturbed their comfort.

After knocking on the doors of several houses (the ones we were brave enough to knock on, that is), and Zainal hadn't been found yet, finally we went to his sister's house. It could very well be that he was there. It so happened that his grandfather had just then come back from the surau. After evening prayers he usually just did the sunat prayer.^[2] This old grandfather was extremely devoted to prayer and quite diligent at doing them. We happened to go up into the house at the same time and, sure enough, Zainal and three members of this team were sleeping away in there. They were sleeping on the floorboards, without mats, since his sister had not expected their arrival.

Hearing us come in, they awoke, quite startled and surprised. I saw Zainal turn pale. He immediately acknowledged his fault and asked to be forgiven. On the way home to the surau he was roughly advised not to do such a thing again.

"If you're tired or don't want to play any more you can just ask to stop, but don't go running off to go to sleep in secret," our friends said.

After that night, Zainal was rarely asked to play, except when he promised not to run off again, for we had begun to not trust him. He didn't have the courage to just be frank with us. If he wanted to do some certain thing without talking it over with others first, he'd just go ahead and do it, and he didn't realize that he was violating a promise and really putting other people to a lot of trouble.

Eventually we forgot his mistake and he was allowed to play without having to swear a formal oath first. Apparently he regretted things.

If we weren't playing hide-and-seek, we'd play touch field tag. The surau courtyard was rather spacious, and we'd make boundary marks out there on the ground with dribbles of water, three lines laid out lengthwise and five across. Two of the lengthwise lines would be the end lines. Between the lines there were three meters. A player was not allowed to go outside

these lines. If he went out, he was "scorched," and his team would have to "hamper him," or count him out. The crosswise lines were the places where five guards would stand, and they would have to defend these lines so that no opponents passed over them.

This game taught us to keep a sharp, careful eye out, to be nimble and adroit, and to move quickly.

Whoever could pass by, over the lines, without being tagged out by the guards was in the clear. But if he got nudged slightly, he and his friends would have to change places and be guards.

So in this fashion we'd check each other from going over the lines, taking turns back and forth. If a member of one team came in from the first line and then could adroitly run straight back to line number five and still wasn't caught, he and his team were "salty," which meant that they'd won.

When there was a winner, the losers would usually begin to get a bit hot under the collar. They'd get real expert at catching their opponents, and when it was their turn to be pursued, they'd run very carefully and with extreme deftness, so they wouldn't get caught. Because if they weren't careful and fast, they wouldn't be able to mount a respectable response. That is, to wipe out their loss.

So that our clothes wouldn't wear out quickly from all the sweat (and especially so that we'd be hard for our opponents to catch), usually we'd play without our shirts on. We'd only wear trousers. And this was especially the case since wearing shirts often led to disputes, because our opponent would say he had nudged against our shirt even though we hadn't quite felt it. That is often what led to disputes. Because of this, it was better just to go shirtless. That way, if our pals touched our bodies we'd feel it for sure.

One night the villagers who'd been saying their evening prayers had all gone home. So had Father. Ten of us were playing touch tag in the light of the full moon.

Because none of us was shy around the others anymore in the surau, one of our friends named Sjarif made the proposal that we just play naked, so as to conserve our shirts and trousers and so that our opponents couldn't catch us. All of us (all between the ages of twelve and fifteen) agreed to this. Zainal said that there were still two old women saying their sunat prayers in the surau.

"Oh, there's no need to worry," answered Sjarif. "They don't know anyway, and they won't come down out of the surau, because those old grandmas and grandpas are always totally absorbed in their prayers and verse repetitions^[3] anyway."

Without the least bit of shyness we striped off all our clothes. We were as stark naked as Adam after he has just descended from heaven. The ones who weren't playing (some kids our age and Lebai Saman) watched from the sidelines. They were simply dumbfounded by our recklessness.

We chased each other around, tagged each other out, and soon every-

thing turned clamorous and high-spirited. We got damp with sweat, but no matter: we were grateful to have the chance to play naked this one time.

While we were absorbed in playing, suddenly two old women from the village came over to the surau to defecate. Seeing them come, we immediately hid behind the wall of the cement water tub, and half of us dove into the tub and started to bathe. Eventually, everyone was in there bathing. All the while the two women were in the outhouse we bathed, swam, splashed about and threw water at one another. Only after they had gone on home and had disappeared behind a house did we start playing touch tag again. Not long afterward, a man passed by. We weren't shy at this but just kept on playing. He wasn't angry; rather, he took pleasure in seeing we had such modern thoughts.

While we were still totally absorbed in chasing each other around and checking and tagging one another, without our suspecting a thing, Father approached us. We were shocked beyond words! Who had informed on us and said that we were playing naked? Or did he perhaps just want to come get a holy book? We didn't know.

We ran for our clothes, intending to run as far away as possible, but he forbade this sharply and said whoever ran off would get a severe penalty the next day. We came to a sudden halt not knowing what to do; we were afraid and embarrassed at the same time. Not long afterward, he went up into the surau and all of us were ordered up in there too. We weren't allowed to carry our clothes or put them on. The sweat of recent play trickled down our bodies, augmented by the sweat of embarrassment. But luckily, everyone was male. The old grandmothers kept on with their prayers.

Father called us in, a person at a time. We were ordered to sit down with our right foot placed up on the bookstand for the Koran. Each player was beaten twenty times with a rattan switch; Sjarif and I each got thirty switches apiece because we were considered the leaders. Then we were told to promise that we would not misbehave like this ever again in the future. If we did not want to so promise, the number of beatings would be increased. We promised, but in our hearts we did have the intention of doing it again, because playing naked was loads of fun and, after all, it did conserve our clothes.

The punishment didn't entail all that much pain. It was the embarrassment that was unbearable. Everybody laughed in great amusement to see us lined up there waiting for the rattan switch—ten stark naked people with their bodies shining with sweat.

I believe that Dad was actually laughing inside to see what we had done. But as a teacher he had to get angry about it and he had to mete out due punishment. After rattan-whipping us, he took a holy book down from the pulpit and went on home, issuing an order to Lebai Saman to make sure to tell him tomorrow if we played tag the same way again.

That night we didn't play again. It was already late at night, eleven

o'clock. After bathing again and dressing, we went to sleep in an orderly and peaceful manner, afraid of being informed on tomorrow.

I've related above that we played hide-and-seek during the fruit-harvest season, while at the same time plucking off a good load of other people's lychees, duku fruits, mangoes, and jambak fruit. In short, making quite a haul of little fruits. One time there was a big one, though, a jackfruit. To get this one we weren't playing hide-and-seek, but rather we set off purposely from the surau to shake it down from its tree.

The owners of big jackfruit trees normally wrap the fruit in gunny sacks, rattan sacks, or rotten old cloth so they won't get eaten by the squirrels. One evening when Djamil was walking by underneath a jackfruit tree, he smelled the fragrance of the ripe fruit. He averred that this one was prime picking, just ready to eat. After evening prayers Djamil asked me and three other friends to go with him to pick it. At first I was a bit worried—this jackfruit was a real sizable one. The owner's anger would also be sizable, and she sure wouldn't forgive our taking it any time soon. But since there were so many other buddies of mine who were ready to do the deed, I just joined in anyway.

At ten o'clock, when the villagers were all asleep, the five of us crawled stealthily toward the jackfruit tree, out in back of the owner's kitchen. This was about five hundred meters from the surau. Djamil, the leader, cut through the stem of the jackfruit with a penknife, and we four caught it on its way down. Wow, we almost collapsed in a heap on the ground—kerplop!—it weighed about thirty kilograms. If we had really done so, the owner would surely have woken up.

Working together, we carded the jackfruit outside the village to an open field. Underneath a tamarin tree we cut into the fruit, but after cutting it in two it was clear that it wasn't ripe yet and it wasn't good to eat. We then came to the decision, let's not eat it yet: let's just let it sit there and ripen for three more days. And we hid it back in the bushes, covering it over with dried leaves.

The next day, the old grandma who owned it complained to my dad. She was already sure that the recitation students at the surau were doubtless the ones who had stolen it. And who would be their leader except Ridjal? Dad called me in, for he felt that I was the group's leader. In this particular matter, in truth, Djamil was the promoter at issue; I merely corroborated what he did. As usual, I wouldn't confess to anything. Because there was no proof, I wasn't reprimanded. And this case ended right there, just like that. We were surprised. We were prepared to get several whippings with the rattan switch. Apparently, Dad had advised the owner to just donate the jackfruit as religious alms. It's better that other people eat it than that you eat it yourself, maybe Dad said.

Three days later, almost at sunset, the five of us went out to the bushes where we had hidden the jackfruit. Along the way we met two pals who

said they wanted to join in and help us eat it. We asked them if they were capable of bearing the burden of sin, too? Sure, they could do that, they said. The seven of us finished up all the jackfruit. We only came out of the bushes after it had gotten really dark so that people wouldn't see that our hands had sticky jackfruit juice all over them and smelled of it too.

This jackfruit was the only big fruit we ever stole. According to the terminology we used at the time, it wasn't really stealing, but rather, just adding to the fruit owner's store of religious merit, so that her palace in the World Hereafter might grow more beautiful.