Ramadan Sky Part 2

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

Good bye Vic!

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

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

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

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

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

But most of the people here are as out of touch with things back home' as the teaching materials. At least, because of the bombs, the security is state of the art. We have fingerprint ID to get into the office and all bags and people are scanned at the entrance. The Bali bombings are the most infamous attacks in Indonesia, because of the large number of tourists killed there, but over the last five years there have also been several suicide bombings in Jakarta. The success rates have been relatively low so far, if killing foreigners has been the aim. The Australian emba.s.sy was bombed in 2004, with this message from the radical Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah: We decided to settle accounts with Australia, one of the worst enemies of G.o.d and Islam ... and a Mujahadeen brother succeeded in carrying out a martyr operation with a car bomb against the Australian emba.s.sy ... It is the first of a series of attacks ... We advise Australians in Indonesia to leave this country or else we will transform it into a cemetery for them.

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

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

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

You are grandmother! they exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

I sought refuge in a nearby mall.

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

The next week a Catholic nun was shot in the back in Somalia, which had some kind of link to the cartoon protest. This one I brought to the cla.s.s and one of the students tried to explain: If I am a bee and you get in my way I will sting you.

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

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

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

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

How does that make you a good policewoman?

It shows you have a good character.

What if you are already married?

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

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

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

Is anyone willing to tell me how this is done?

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, of course.

They are all nodding now.

Then why do you put up with it?

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

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

I've taught in a lot of places in South-East Asia, and all of them have the same unmistakable odour of excess and ruination. The availability of cheap s.e.x and alcohol for men draws a steady stream of drunks, s.e.x addicts, drug addicts, fallen school princ.i.p.als and fallen diplomats, men who are only there for the boys, and the odd one who fits into all of those categories. It's so easy to get cheap booze and s.e.x, and it isn't hard to get a job as an English teacher: you can even buy a degree off of the streets if someone points you in the right direction. I've worked with men who have impregnated the students, teachers who curry favour by scoring drugs for the boss, men who can't go home because of pending warrants, and also a couple of paedophiles. I had been expecting pretty much the same from this place, and I have not been disappointed. There are some people who, regardless of their predilections, I can talk to. But others, I have quickly learned to avoid.

The female teachers are a different story. For a start, while there is no end of s.e.x available to white men in a country like this, it is not so easy for Western women. There are too many good-looking, poor, young females around. Who wants an old white bird with the financial resources to walk out on you at any time? Who wants an independent woman who will not tolerate infidelity, nor take care of all of your cleaning and cooking needs? Marion, the senior teacher on the staff, has already confided in me that she has not had s.e.x for eight years. In fact, it was one of the first things she told me when I started and was I settling into my desk at the back of the room. At fifty-five, she has converted to Islam and then back again, and married and divorced a gay chauffeur. All to no avail. She is cast adrift in a sea of loneliness and anxiety, and this makes her dislike the women in the office, while fawning upon the men. They can say anything to her and she will take it with a schoolgirl's giggle.

Where's Gabriel today, Ricky? she will ask with a breathless tremor.

Up Jack's a.r.s.e picking strawberries!

Ricky the Pom is obsessed with vulgarities, as well as having a special interest in c.o.c.kney slang, although he has not been home for at least twenty-five years. Marion will listen eagerly and chuckle in turns as he trots out his lists of rhyming slang or his favourite insults from North America or Serbian translation, or as he ranges round the staffroom waving student papers, magazine articles and personal emails under everyone's noses and demanding attention.

Gabriel was not up Jack's a.r.s.e picking strawberries on that particular day, but he could have been doing something along those lines with the security guard in the storeroom, where they have sometimes been known to retire. The office is divided into straight men, gay men and women (mostly, unhappy eunuchs). While the gays are usually talking amongst themselves, the straights are usually talking loudly about football. The women are either standing on the sidelines joining in where possible, or wearing headphones.

29 March After less than two months in my new job, I have begun to wear headphones while in the office. I also wear them at night, to block out the terrible noise of the kost. It begins at eleven, right about when I need to go to sleep to prepare for a six o'clock start. It is mostly workers arriving home from evening shifts and maids playing and giggling in the next room. The traffic, of course, is another a.s.sault on the ears, but definitely the office is the worst by far the sound of unlikeable, lonely people clamouring for attention in a wilderness of dust, smoke and disappointment.

The trees around the kost are tall and thin they stand with their arms by their sides and when the wind blows, they wave their long necks around in the courtyard. There is a filthy dog that lies half-blind in the sun. The woman who owns the place is a sleepy Chinese with milky pudding arms who wears pyjamas all day long. She minds her own business. The servants are all from the village and are not trained. There are many of them but the place is always dirty. They spend their days burning shirts and shouting to each other across the yard or scrutinising me. The gateman watches me come and go, and the laundry girls, and the kitchen cleaners. I can never get the hang of being so closely monitored by people.

The crazy thing in all this running away from Australian suburban-domestic bliss is that, almost as soon as I arrive somewhere, I start looking around for ways to make it more homely. I have friends who live like monks in these situations, which makes a lot of sense. You spend as little as possible on home comforts, or on anything else for that matter, and you work and save and then travel. But I don't. I'm always looking for ways to make it more comfortable, buying knick-knacks, plants, linen and kitchen utensils. Not that I even have a kitchen where they have put me. But, of course, I will start looking for a nicer place to live immediately.

So the stage had been set for the great dark-red Victoria O'Halloran. Inedible food, hostile workmates, filthy poisonous clouds of petrochemicals piled up sky-high like dirty washing, constant noise, terrible heat. Reading back on this now, as the Indian Ocean stretches out below, I realise that this is basically what I do. I go to great lengths to place myself on some rocky, uncomfortable outcrop, and then, as if I have no intelligence at all, begin to build a nest.

Aryanti

For six years our family has lived in this street. Every day I make the cakes and take them down to the factory where people may buy them at their break time. At first my father resisted this: Why are we sending our daughter out like a common woman to sell at a factory? What else will she sell and who will buy from her?

And he is right because sometimes the boys there are very rude.

Do you have something sweet for me? they will ask, or: Who is it you are coming to see every day? Is it me? Are you in love with me?

At such times, I lower my eyes and keep silent, remembering that these are the cakes that keep our family with some extra money for food and medicine. My father has been sick for many years and cannot work, but he is a proud man and he would kill these boys if he heard them speaking to me in this way.

There is life in the house and life on the streets. The man appears to be head of the house but, from behind, the woman is really in charge. The streets are ruled by men, especially those who are looking for driving work, and also families with small restaurants and, of course, cars, which are constantly moving like a river through the houses and people. Wherever you go in the streets, there are men watching you. If they are sure there is no relative of yours around, they will mock you as you go past.

One day I was walking past the warung, where many men were sitting and smoking together. I was carrying the cakes and there was a big wind blowing my hair across my face. My eyes were stinging with dust and I felt foolish walking past all these staring men.

She is going to blow away. We must tie her down, one of them joked.

Although my face was burning, I tried to ignore them and walk straight past, but I stumbled and they began laughing and clapping as I bent down to pick up the basket I had dropped. I was furious at my face, which would not obey orders and calm its fire, and with this pack of cowardly fools who were amusing themselves in this way.

Someone stepped quickly through the little crowd and said: Let me take them for you.

I looked up and saw Fajar, the brother of my friend Chitra, holding his hands out for the cakes. I used to see him at Chitra's house before she got a job and we could not meet very often after that.

Where are you going, little sister? I will take you there, he said.

As I handed him one of the baskets, a young man shouted: Look! They are Rami and Ramanya!

Only one second later he was picking himself off the ground and Fajar was standing over him with his nostrils flaring like a crazy horse.

Would you like to give me some more bulls.h.i.t? he shouted.

The young man shook his head and rubbed some small stones from the heels of his hands while Fajar glared at the small crowd, which had gone very quiet. Then he walked over to me a picked up the basket again.

These are men with nothing to do, he told me very softly, without taking his eyes off them. You mustn't let them upset you.

His face glistened with sweat as he put the cakes on the front of his bike. When we arrived at the factory, n.o.body spoke badly to me because they could see that he was waiting at the door. I was getting back on the bike when he surprised me by saying: I am working tomorrow, but will you visit my sister tomorrow night?

I am happy to visit your sister if she will be home, I answered.

He wanted to drive me home but I asked him to drop me at the shopping centre. I did not want my father to see him driving me like that, and I was confused by all that had happened. I wanted to be alone for a while and not have to make conversation with anyone.

That night I listened to my brother arguing with my father as usual. That is something they always do in the evenings, while my mother and I talk and cook and watch the television shows. I felt very still and excited at the same time. In my mind I could see the road flashing along beside me as I sat sideways on Fajar's bike holding my skirt on the way to the factory. I could see his checked shirtsleeves as he handed me the cakes and hear the warmth in his voice. He already knew my name, of course, but he said it slowly and carefully. Aryanti. I had a strange, pleasant feeling in my arms. It was like a lovely sound had been rung out, which only I could hear. It is the beginning it is now, I was thinking. After all this time of nothing happening, suddenly it has begun.

The next morning I took the cakes as usual along the road to the factory and n.o.body gave me any trouble. I was thinking about the evening ahead and I was very afraid but also had an exciting chill running through me. When the time came to go to Chitra's house, I had to remind my mother where I was going, and I was certain that she would see that something was different. But she only told me not to stay too late, and be sure someone would take me home.

Chitra opened the door with a smile that showed nothing at all, and brought me straight away to her mother who was making coffee in the small kitchen. We drank the coffee and began work on the cakes, which Chitra had asked me to teach her how to make. I felt like a quiet little doll under the eyes of Fajar's mother, not kind but not unkind, and the small room was stifling. She was asking many questions about my family and I tried my best to answer. All the while my back was tingling, because I knew he must be coming soon. Then, without warning, he walked in the door.

I hope you saved some for me.

He seemed very tall standing under the low ceiling. He took a cup of coffee from his mother and some cake and sat down next to me. My face, which has been my lifelong enemy, betrayed me by turning pink and hot. Thankfully, almost straight after he had finished, he looked at the clock and said: Thank you for coming to help my sister. May I take you home now?

Of course I told him that I would take an ojek, and, of course, his mother insisted that he would take me.

It was fresher outside and my face began to cool down in the darkness. As I got onto his bike for the second time, he said: Call your father tell him you will be home soon; you are still with Chitra.

I did as he said and then we drove to a small warung and got some green tea. Although it was quite dark inside, I was worried. This was the first time in my life I had been in a place without my father's knowledge, and the first time alone with a man. I looked around to see if there was anyone who might know me.

What are you afraid of? he laughed. There is nothing for anyone to see. We are having a nice cup of tea and then I will take you home.

We sat and he asked me some questions and he told me about his job, which was a security guard for KFC. He told me that someday he would like to get married, when he had paid for his motorbike. It was easy to sit there with him, not like the awkward moments at his mother's house, and after a while I forgot that I should not be there and began to relax.

You have a very pretty laugh, he told me and smiled with his black eyes.

When we left, we did not drive in the direction of my house, but to a small park where he stopped under a big tree and switched off the engine. The silence came rushing up from the road and seemed to be shouting all around us, until suddenly he asked: Do you want to kiss me?

His skin was very smooth except for the top of his lip, which was p.r.i.c.kly, and he smelled of cigarettes mixed with some kind of perfume. We were at first on the bike and then somehow we were standing under a tree and then he was pushing me against it. I felt his hand moving upwards from my waist and started to panic and push away. I began to scold myself in the middle of panicking. Was I a crazy woman to be in the dark with a man I hardly knew? I had witnessed, with my own eyes, his uneven temper. Then I reasoned that he would not have invited me to his home if he had planned to take advantage of me. I started to ask him to take me home, but he kissed me again, softly, and this time only held my hands in his and pushed them backwards above my head. It was late when he dropped me home. I hurried to the door so that no one could come out and scold us, but only my brother was still up, watching TV, and he did not ask me any questions.

That night I wanted to pray before sleeping, but there were too many things to think about and remember. Each time I thought I had done something very bad and should repent, I would remember that mouth pushing against mine and the lips opening softly, and the blood hammering through me in panic and excitement. I could still feel his presence, and smell the delicate blend of cloves and tobacco and something else I couldn't name; it was a man's smell and I wanted to keep it somehow and wear it around my shoulders like a jacket.

I worried that he would think I was a fast woman. After all, it was the first time he had asked to meet me. I should not have allowed that kiss. Perhaps he was testing me and would no longer show any interest. But it was clear that he had talked to his mother. If he had already kissed me, surely it was time for him to talk to my father. I secretly wished that he would not do this. I did not want my mother and father and brother watching me each time I left and returned to the house. I wanted to keep this adventure for myself.

The next afternoon I returned from an errand and found Fajar's motorbike outside our house and him sitting in the front room drinking tea with my father. He was sitting up very straight and respectful in the visitor's chair, but he winked at me as my father reached down for his tea.

This young man has asked to take you on his bike to deliver the cakes tomorrow morning. What do you say?

He may do so if you permit it.

My father's eyes searched my face for a few seconds.

Well then, he may do so.

Suddenly, it was moving too fast and I wanted to shout at him.

Who are you to walk into my father's house and drink tea without my permission?

When my father gave Fajar the blessing, I looked down at my feet and did not look up again until the front door had already closed on him. I ran upstairs to the small room that I have had to myself since my sister was married. The afternoon call to prayer was coming from all directions, and for the first time this calling made me feel hunted and alone.

The next morning, however, I was glad to see Fajar waiting for me when I left the house. I noticed that his shirt was frayed at the collar and that he scratched his cheek a little nervously with the long fingernail of his small finger. I made up my mind to greet him first and noticed that my voice sounded strange, as if it were coming out of a tunnel. It seemed the whole street watched me get onto the bike and it took several slow minutes before everything was settled and we drove out past all the watching eyes into the traffic. After we had delivered the cakes, we drove straight to a grove of trees in the park across the road from the plaza and kissed for a long time.