Two curious invitations arrived for me on my 22nd birthday of
20 January 1962, at my Jakarta asrama, asking me to join two families in
Ramadan, starting on 6 February and running through to Idul Fitri on 10 March.
I was in my second year of total immersion into Indonesian language and
customs, essential to my intended work as a foreign correspondent in Indonesia.
The first, from Surabaya, would entail me selling two new Arrow shirts,
the inflation hedge s I had brought with me to finance travel. I chose the
second family, in Bandung, a travel cost of just one Arrow.
I sent a telegrams telling the Bandung family I was coming. Next week I
took a “Soober Ban” (Suburban) bus, actually a Chevrolet truck from the Korean
War turned into a 9-seat passenger vehicle to Bandung, over a pot-holed, narrow
road, stopping for a nervous hour past Puncak Pass, lined up at the narrow
bridge where the Islamic fanatics of the Kartosuwiryo rebel brigade in the
Prianger hills often took pot shots to keep the bridge guards on their toes.
I slept just the one night of Sunday, 4 February in Bandung, in my usual
spot between two brothers on a wide wooden platform. After breakfast on Monday
morning, my telegram arrived to say I was coming. It had taken a week. The
family had shown no surprise, thanking me for the telegram, as though it was
common for visitors to arrive before the telegram that said they were coming.
The family consisted of Ibu, the mother, Ayah Rudi the father, a garage
mechanic who fixed automobiles but could not afford to own one, two sons, my
closest friend Donni, also aged 22 and his 17 year old younger brother Joni,
and their sister Emi aged 10. Minah, a handsome, female house helper aged about
30, who lived rent free with the family in return for maid help. She lived a
pointless life, other than actively seeking a husband, and on a previous visit
offered to marry me, but was not unduly miffed when I said I was too young.
We travelled by, with the now familiar wooden seats, detouring to the
famous Garut orange orchards where we loaded up with a hundred oranges and a
dozen pond fish, before continuing to the pretty town of Tasik Malaya, a
further two hours away by a dreadful, unkempt road.
Our Ramadan hosts were related directly to Ibu; their boys knew our
boys, the two fathers were old friends and they were overjoyed to have me,
their first foreign guest. No one in the neighbourhood Rukun Tetangga group
had ever spoken to a foreigner.
The two fathers were very formal about fasting procedures. They took no
notice of a chap driving black pick-up truck circling the town the night before
with the driver announcing on a crackling loudspeaker, that Ramadan fasting
would begin at so and so time, demanding people set their clocks or watches.
We were called out before sunrise, Rudi and the head of the Tasik family
took us all out onto a first floor east-facing balcony where one held up a
black cotton threat and the other man a white cotton thread for everyone to
see. “When we can tell which is white and which is black, fasting begins!” they
said.
The days were hot, the town traffic slowed to just an occasional
vehicle. Inside the house, the mothers and daughters gathered in the kitchen,
murmuring quietly, preparing the fast-breaking meals for around 8 pm. The men
lazed about and read. There were a few religious ceremonies at the local
mosques, which they occasionally attended. But as the days wore on, the heat
and humidity set in. There was a Koran in the main room, but the Malay was too
old fashioned for us.
The black-white cotton formalities continued each evening in the
west-facing backyard, and this ceremony we looked forward to, because the
moment both cottons appeared black was the moment we could begin the evening
meal. But before long the quality food had run out and we were scraping along
on kurma dates. I had to eat a date or two, but in the 53 years from
that March 1962, I have never eaten another date.
When hungry, one quickly feels faint, and the senses are heightened. The
heat and humidity drained our energies and I was happy to move around in a comfortable
sarong. There were three handsome young Indonesian boys and four attractive
Indonesian daughters, so they flirted, and secretly cuddled, but even they in
the heat of the day, just slept or lazed around. Fasting was intended as a form
of self-discipline, and a time to think of the misfortune of others, but not
much of that took place.
Late in the fast the sewing baskets and scissors came out, a welcome
change of activity. School uniform cloth was so expensive in these years that
boys uniforms all looked too tight, and the girls skirts were higher than any
mini-skirts soon to appear in the west, and showing their coarse fabric
bloomers. None of the girls wore headscarves; they were for older women.
The Bandung brothers enticed me into chess games, but they soon tired of
winning. There was no reading material, and in the shops I found only Hamka
books, which I had read. During the several thunderstorms and heavy rains even
the flirting teenagers were quiet. We were listless and exhausted, despite the
evening meals, and we spent day after day of life without obvious meaning, the
household of fourteen falling into a somnambulant mood, meandering, murmuring
politely.
Midway through the fast, two cars collided with a thunderous crash, at
our intersection. The street seemed to empty out to see the damage. One one of
the drivers, badly hurt, was lying on the pavement, smoking! Rudi, who was
craving to smoke, looked on enviously. The accident was an entertainment break.
A couple of policemen arrived, spoke to the drivers then ordered the crowd to
push both cars to the side to clear the road, and walked away! This minor
accident became the welcome focal point for hours of discussion. I learned the
word for collision, tabrakan, and joined the gossip: Was the driver’s
injury sufficient excuse for him to smoke during Ramadan? Had he just come from
a secret Chinese restaurant?
I emerged from the experience with a lot more insider knowledge of
family life, but unconvinced that this archaic tradition has any meaning in a
modern world. The young ones felt the same and admitted it to me, but they
obeyed their parents, and went along with the charade that they were using the
time for self-improvement, thoughts of charity and enriching their spiritual
life. But they looked forward to Idul Fitri, for good reason.
The merriment of the March 10 Idul Fitri celebrations included scores of
visits to neighbours and feasting. The ladies led the way with the boys
carrying gifts house to house. My basket took about ten house-visits to
empty. My Idul Fitri pleasure was
genuine, and my manners proper, but by late afternoon, I started to falter, and
with Donni and Joni, the rhyming brothers, I returned home and slept until
morning. No black or white cotton threads tests at dawn. Ramadan was over.
In later years I looked over the diary of those fasting days and was embarrassed
to find it read as one dull day after another. One line read: yet another
korma date, the last ever in my life. Back in the asrama I shamelessly
milked the fasting experience in stories to the other four foreign students.
They were openly envious and said they now regretted not trying it. Donni, a
natural embellisher, visited often, so these “fasting highlights” continued
with the few good moments becoming rosier as the weeks passed. (Donni never
fasted again.)
The Fellowship directors gave me a surprise Idul Fitri present, a
bicycle, purporting to be a British Raleigh, stamped Raleigh: Made in
English. I tried a Ramadan story of two on them, but they showed only
polite interest: “We wish we could have had time to fast, but we were too
busy.”
© Francis
Palmos, Scarborough June 2015
If you missed the first two parts of this three part series you can find them here:
[Historian
Dr Francis (Frank) Palmos opened the first newspaper bureau in the new Republic
of Indonesia in December 1964 for the Australian newspaper group of ten dailies
headed by the Herald-Sun in Melbourne. He stayed on through the “years of
living dangerously” and was on many occasions the honorary interpreter to
Indonesia’s first president, Soekarno, and other leading political party
figures, including the PKI. His Surabaya 1945: Tanah Keramat is the most
in depth account of the founding of the Republic, and his translation of Student
Soldiers, a significant diary from revolutionary days, are being published
for the 70th Year of the Republic
celebrations later this year. Frank is a member of the Indonesia Institute, and
active in UWA and Murdoch U research.]
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