Among The Believers Part 22

"No."

"It happens every day in Islamic countries. It is news for you. It isn't news for us."

But the taxi driver was Chinese and, according to one newspaper story, couldn't get a permit to own a taxi.

The haji, cleaning his nostrils with his index finger and then wiping the finger on the velveteen arm of the chair, said, "We must finish the story about the Jews. Before the time of Moses there was a Jewish tribe in Arabian lands. Among this Jewish tribe there is a prophet. The prophet, through revelations from G.o.d, ordered the Jews to pray on Sat.u.r.day. But the Jews ignored the commands of the prophet because on Sat.u.r.day there were a lot of fishes in the sea and they preferred to go out fishing rather than make Sat.u.r.day a religious day."

I said, "I don't know this story."

The haji said, "It is in the Koran. As a result the prophet was angry, and the wrath of G.o.d-"

Khairul had some trouble with the translation here. He broke off and talked in Malay with the haji. Then he carried on. "And the wrath of G.o.d was imposed on the Jews, and G.o.d swore to convert the whole tribe to monkeys-" He broke off again, to giggle.

"Apes," the doctor said severely. "They were converted to apes."

"For seven days," the haji said.

The journalist said, "And then they pa.s.sed away."

The haji said, "This story is mentioned in the Torah, the Koran, the Testament-"

"The Old Testament," Khairul said, commenting on his own translation. "We don't recognize Luke and the others."

"These are the three books of G.o.d," the haji said. "The people of the three books will all know this story. We Muslim people believe in the Old Testament. If you don't believe in that book you are not a Muslim."

The doctor said, "Because in the Old Testament there is one part that clearly mentions the coming of Mohammed."

Khairul said, "There is a book written on this matter by Professor Benjamin. You can get it in the Perkim Bookstore. He is a Catholic priest converted to Islam. His new name is Professor Abu Daud."

The haji, who had been left out of this English byplay, said, "The story of the Jews hasn't finished yet. As a result of being turned to apes, the moral prestige of the Jews declined. To rectify this situation, because they are already degraded-"

"In the eyes of the world," the doctor said.

"-the Jews are now pulling down the whole society with them."

"They have that principle," the doctor said. "If they are dirty, let others be dirty."

The haji, bright-eyed, plump-lipped, said, "I surprised you when I said that the Jews were the enemies of G.o.d. But this is just one of the signs that show the wickedness of the Jews. You have asked me questions. Now let me ask you some. It is the way of Islam. You ask, then I ask. I tell, then you tell. Do you believe that your great-grandfathers were apes?"

"No."

The haji smiled and said (Khairul, after the Coca-Cola, burping through his translation), "That proves the wickedness of the Jews."

I said, "But don't men evolve? I don't mean this in a personal way"-and I appealed to all of them-"but you told me that your grandfathers in Sumatra were headhunters. Now you are a haji and an educated man."

The haji said, "That was a wrong way of life. That is why Islam came into being, to rectify the discrepancies of the way of life. For instance, before Islam, the Caliph Omar would take his daughter and bury her alive. It was a disgrace to have a daughter. It was the practice of the Arabs at that time. The Caliph Omar used to sob and weep thinking of his past, his life before Islam."

The doctor said, "His friends would see him in the desert crying."

"And after he came into the fold of Islam he became the best of men."

Khairul said, "Have you read a book called The Road to Mecca? Ah, that's a book. It's by Mohammed Asad, an Austrian Jew."

The journalist, silent for long, said, "What was his name before? Pold something."

"Leopold," Khairul said. "You can get that book, too, in the Perkim Bookstore."

The doctor said, "It's a biography, no?"

"Yes," Khairul said, "it's a biography. It's a beautiful book."

The haji, left out again, re-entered the conversation. "Do you believe in a creator?"

I said, "No."

"But that is the basis of Islam."

"It's too difficult for me," I said, after we had had some discussion. "I feel lost if I think too much about the universe."

The haji said, "That feeling of loss I would describe as contentment."

And I didn't know whether he was being compa.s.sionate or critical.

"When you were in Iran, did you talk to the religious teachers there?"

"I saw some ayatollahs. Khalkhalli, Shirazi."

"Ah, Shirazi," the haji said. "What did you talk about?"

"About religion a little bit. I believe he was worried that I might be a communist."

They laughed.

"What's it like in Iran now?" the haji asked.

"A mess. No law. The factories aren't working. The mullahs don't know how to run the country. It's something you may have to face here, too."

The haji said, "If Muslims live in the Islamic way, the true Islamic way-" And again Khairul had some trouble with the translation.

"All will follow," the doctor said.

I said, "What's the difference between your life now as true Muslims and your life before?"

They didn't say.

The haji only said, "You can see at a glance when you meet a person whether he is a Hindu or an animist or a Muslim."

How? Did it show in the face? Was there a kind of grace or contentment in the face of the believer?

No, the haji meant something simple. Nonbelievers ate pork and weren't fussy about food.

I asked about their clothes. Was it necessary for religious people to dress as they did?

Khairul answered. "There are five principles governing clothes. They are commandments of Allah. For men to cover from the navel to the knee. For women to cover everything except the face and the hands."

I said, "Some women in the university are covering their hands."

"It is better," Khairul said.

"Why do you wear green cloaks?"

"To wear white and green is encourageable under Islam."

"Why?"

"Because this is the way the prophets lived. Wearing a batik like yours is not encourageable under Islam."

"Batik?" I plucked at my Marks and Spencer winceyette pyjama jacket.

Khairul said, "A batik like that is only for ladies."

The journalist said, "For men it has to be plain."

"But pyjamas are Islamic. The styles and colours are Islamic. The Europeans took the idea from places like Turkey and India."

"They are from Islamic countries," the haji said. "But they are not from Allah's commandments."

"You don't understand the beauty of Islam," Khairul said. "Once you understand the five principles, you will see the beauty of it. They apply to everything. In Islam certain things are mandatory. Certain things are encourageable. That's a technical word, a translation from the Arabic."

"Permitted?"

"Permitted? No, encourageable is better. Then certain things are not encourageable, like your batik. Then certain things are haram, forbidden. Like a man exposing his knees. The fifth category is harus, discretionary."

"Discretionary, discrepancy-you have quite a vocabulary, Khairul."

He said, "I am a lawyer." And, boasting a little, "I was educated in a Malay-language school. Let me give you an idea of a discretionary principle. A businessman who only really needs five shirts, but buys forty because he can afford forty. In the hereafter the extravagance will be accountable. These five principles cover all aspects of life. Everything-politics, economics, family life, even coughing. There is so much to learn about Islam. You can spend years and never come to an end."

"Tell me about the coughing and the five principles."

"I will give you an example. If you are in a gathering and you are ashamed to cough and three days later you wake up with a pain in your side because you didn't cough, that is wrong. It is mandatory to cough, if not coughing is going to damage your health. Coughing is encourageable if you cover your mouth and say, 'Grace be upon Allah.' It is not encourageable to cough without covering your mouth. But to cough in somebody's face"-he turned towards the doctor and made as if to spit in the doctor's face-"to do that is horrible. It is haram. It is forbidden. It is un-Islamic and sinful."

"What about the discretionary cough?"

"Harus. When you are by yourself and it doesn't offend anybody. Then you can stand up and cough or sit down and cough. It becomes entirely discretionary. All these things are regulated."

Then it was time for them to go. The haji had a meeting; they said he was a great traveller and preacher. The doctor had his clinic.

"You must see his clinic," Khairul said. "It is so Islamic and beautiful. You are not well; I can see you are not well. He would have treated you beautifully. He would treat you now."

I said, "I am in the hands of another doctor. I can't change."

The doctor, oddly professional now, said, "That is so."

THE commune was on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, in a hilly wooded area. There was a signboard on the roadside some distance before. I wasn't expecting a signboard. But-though the commune had the reputation of being secretive-there was no point in dressing up like an Arab and hiding.

The land was perfect for a Malay settlement, for wooden houses on stilts or pillars, for green gardens and tall shade trees. But the forest had been cut down for a wide street; and the street was lined with modern Malay houses-modern because they had gla.s.s louvres instead of windows and because the downstairs, pillared part of the houses had been walled around to provide more s.p.a.ce.

Rain had turned the dirt street to mud. Many young people were about, with green cloaks or gowns and white turbans. At the far end of the street a stalled car was being pushed in the mud. Among the pushers I thought I recognized the haji; anything seemed possible here. I was wrong; it was only that the white turban gave a mulatto cast to some Malay faces. Other costumed figures (waiting for prayer time, like actors waiting for a stage call) were lounging about the verandah or porch of the shop at the corner, where-as part of its independent Islamic way-the commune sold little things to pa.s.sing motorists.

I bought a few ounces of fried shredded sweet potato. It came in a stapled plastic packet. It tasted less of sweet potato than of the frying oil.

The taxi driver said, "You see the kind of bulls.h.i.t we are getting these days?" He p.r.o.nounced the word "bu'shi'." I heard it as "bushy," and thought at first it was his word for a village Malay: "You see the kind of bushy we are getting these days?"

I offered him some sweet potato.

He said, angrily, "No."

5.

The Spoilt Playground

Shafi came from the undeveloped northeast, from Kota Bharu. I wanted to see the village for which he grieved-unpolluted once, the people pious, dignified, and not materialist. And Kota Bharu was the first stop in a trip to the interior that he arranged for me.

It began badly. The gap-toothed Tamil driver, the man of misfortune, was to drive me to the airport. He ran up happily to me in the Holiday Inn lobby the evening before and told me that my airport job had fallen to him; having involved me over many drives in all his anguishes, he now regarded himself as my friend. And, as I half expected, something went wrong. His car was smashed during the night (but he said he was going to get the insurance), and in the morning I had to hunt around for another driver.

An hour's flight took us to Kota Bharu, and the monsoon. (For Shafi, seventeen years before, it had been a journey of a day and a night from Kota Bharu, through rubber estates and then jungle, to all the shocks of Kuala Lumpur.) The plane made two tries at the Kota Bharu runway. We landed in a downpour and the pa.s.sengers went out to the little airport shed in small groups, under gaudy umbrellas. And Rahman wasn't there to meet me, as Shafi had arranged.

I got the name of a hotel and took a taxi there. Kota Bharu was flooded: a rickety colonial town of the 1920s and 1930s-little low shops, little low houses, tiled roofs, corrugated iron-out of which new money was causing a new town of concrete and gla.s.s to grow. The hotel was new, small, with modern pretensions. And I found-it was like a little miracle, but there was only one hotel in Kota Bharu-that Rahman had booked me in for the night.

He telephoned later. He said it was strange no one had met me. He hadn't sent just one man to meet me; he had sent three men, three head teachers. He had even told them that after my years in England I would probably have a white skin. His storytelling-the opposite of the directness of people like Shafi-was meant to be read by me as storytelling: it was Rahman's way of letting me know that he didn't want to have too much to do with me. Rahman worked for the government. He didn't want to have too much to do with Shafi and ABIM and a visitor sent out by ABIM.

The rain never stopped. Rahman came to the hotel late in the afternoon. He was a small, plump, smiling fellow in a short-sleeved blue safari suit. I was expecting to be taken to Shafi's village or a village like it. But Rahman didn't intend to do that; he didn't intend to appear in public as my guide to anything. Instead, we drove through the rain in the fast-darkening afternoon-flooded fields, scattered sodden little Malay houses below dripping fruit trees-to a Muslim college where Rahman could share responsibility for me, his dangerous visitor, with two or three other people who were as nervous as he.

They had laid out tea. The tea was sweet, milky, and cold. And they, my hosts, seemed determined to say nothing. Were these Shafi's fellows, the fisher-boys and bird-stoners of his childhood? They were. Not Shafi's actual friends, perhaps; but people like them. It wasn't Shafi alone who had evolved.

There was a man who was a lecturer in philosophy. A lecturer? A man from Shafi's pastoral past? Yes; he lectured at the college about the attempts by Arab and Persian philosophers to synthesize Islamic thought with Greek thought. That seemed a difficult course, and the lecturer said that it was difficult, adding with some sadness that he still had to read a lot, especially in Greek philosophy. He had studied at the Islamic Al-Azhar University in Cairo. He hadn't liked it (but few village Malays seemed to have liked their travels). He had found the Arabs undisciplined and unreliable.