The Flame Tree (14 page)

Ibu Halimah lifted a cup to Isaac’s mouth. He drank the thick, grassy liquid. He closed his eyes and was taken away to a world of twirling figures, snippets of words, echoes of screams, hints of heat, and carrion birds perched on barkless branches of dead trees. Then that world vanished into the sweet nothingness of unconscious sleep.

Several woozy days passed, the equilibrium between parasite and herbal medicine sloshing back and forth from one side of the battlefield to the other. Isaac drifted in and out of his stupor. Every time the jamu wore off, something with glittering eyes chased him back to wakefulness.

When he next came to, Tanto stood brooding over him. “I only find out now that you moved him,” he said to Ibu Halimah. He was wearing a gardening uniform of shorts, dirty T-shirt, and bare feet. “You didn’t even tell me. I nearly raised the alarm when I saw the empty shed.”

Ibu Halimah’s natural posture of authority stiffened to regal imperiousness. She said, “If I had told you, you would have told Imam Ali. Now that the kiai knows he is here, you can’t take him away, can you?”

Tanto snorted. “A single woman is able to destroy paradise,” he said.

Ibu Halimah harrumphed. “It takes years to learn the ways of a Madurese racing bull but only one day to learn about men. And from what I saw, the bulls were getting better treatment than this child. Shame on you.”

“The shed was not going to harm him,” Tanto said. “And he needed a little lesson in the harsh things of life. Didn’t you, Isak? Life is hard outside those compound walls of the mission.”

Isaac stared at the gardener.

Tanto said to Ibu Halimah, “A million Javanese children get sick with malaria every year, and most of them don’t get even half the attention you are giving this bulé boy.”

“He is a special boy. The Tuan Guru says that Allah has chosen him for a special purpose.”

“Maybe we should just circumcise him, make him say the
shahadah
, and get it over with.”

Isaac rose on his elbow. He croaked, “Mas Tanto, what’s happened to my parents?”

Tanto scowled. “Why didn’t your parents leave on the helicopter?”

“They’re doctors, they help the sick and the poor and—”

“They are Christians trying to convert Muslims. In true Muslim countries you would have all been beheaded.”

“Is that why you made that secret gate in the wall? So you could sneak in at night and kill us?”

Tanto growled and said, “We’re not murderers.”

“So why did you make the gate?”

“We were planning a raid, to put you on a boat to Singapore
quietly and without fuss. We didn’t expect helicopters, but they did the job for us, praise be to Allah. Your parents should have gone on them.”

“Why did you rob the church?”

“Rob? We were merely collecting the infidel tax.”

“Then why are you wearing Reverend Biggs’s watch?”

Tanto immediately covered the watch with his left hand.

Ibu Halimah arched her left eyebrow. “So that is where you got it,” she said.

“I could have kept the Chinaman’s gold Rolex,” Tanto said. “This watch is hardly worth anything.”

“If it’s part of the tax, then it doesn’t belong to you,” Ibu Halimah said. She held out her hand. The two adults glared at each other. Tanto lost the battle of wills. He stripped off the watch and tossed it at her.

“I don’t know why I don’t divorce you,” he growled. “Other wives are dutiful and respectful, but you are like the thorns of a cactus plant.”

He stomped out of the room without another word.

Isaac said to Ibu Halimah, “You two are married to each other?”

“Fifteen years. We have one son. About your age. My boy is smart, but my husband—well, he has the stout heart of a bull, and sometimes the brain of one.”

From the noises that had filtered into his periods of semi-consciousness, and from the sweet coolness of the air, he knew that he was at an Islamic school, a pesantren run by the Nahdlatul
Umat Islam, high in the mountains. But he asked anyway, “Where am I?”

“In a safe place,” Ibu Halimah said.

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“Nothing bad. We will all be told in time.”

“Do you know anything about my parents, Ibu?”

“Don’t worry, Isak. Mas Tanto did not allow anyone to harm them.”

Isaac waited for a flood of happiness at the news. All that came was a little trickle of relief that he did not have to worry about his parents. “When will I see them again?”

“When Allah wills. No more questions.”

Another woman in green robes and headdress brought in a tray with a bowl of steaming rice porridge flavored with chicken broth and a glass of sweet lukewarm tea. Beside the bowl was a spoon wrapped inside half a paper napkin. She also had a small Garuda Airlines cabin bag over her shoulder. She placed the tray on the seat of the chair and hung the bag on its back. She left.

Ibu Halimah said, “Eat now.”

The rice porridge was ambrosia. But after only half the bowl he began to feel as stuffed as a Thanksgiving turkey. He pushed the bowl aside.

Ibu Halimah said, “Finish the food. Your stomach can take it. And you need the strength to start your studies tomorrow. The kiai himself will teach you.” She beamed as though Isaac were most fortunate and favored.

“My studies?”

“Certainly. You are in a school, are you not?”

Isaac contemplated this startling revelation. Something dark grew within his heart. “I don’t want to study anything here,” he said.

Ibu Halimah sighed as though she had heard this sort of truculence before from many reluctant scholars. “Isak, this is a difficult time for you. It is foolish to pretend otherwise. You can’t exactly keep busy in here, so you need something to occupy your thoughts.”

“But I’m still sick.”

“Yes, it is a nasty malaria you have, but your attacks are getting less severe.”

“What am I going to be studying?”

“Why, the Holy Qur’an, of course. This is an Islamic school.”

Isaac stiffened. “But I’m a Christian.”

“Of course you are. That does not mean you cannot study the Holy Qur’an. Finish the porridge and drink your tea.”

Isaac did so, after which Ibu Halimah said, “Now you will bathe. Starting tomorrow it will be first the bath and then
magrib
evening prayers and then dinner. In that bag are a small towel, soap, a toothbrush, and a change of clothes. The
mandi
is on the first floor. Mas Bengkok will take you there and back. You shouldn’t be seeing anyone, but if you do, do not speak to them. Not one word. Understand?”

Isaac understood.

Isaac left his cell for the first time, escorted by Mas Bengkok, who was camping out in the hall. By the door was a cot similar to
Isaac’s, and on the floor beside it was a thermos of tea and an old radio.

One end of the hallway was blocked with construction plywood; just this side of it was an indoor stairway. Mas Bengkok led Isaac down the cobwebby steps. Isaac’s muscles were weak. He descended the steps at half speed, putting both feet on each tread before moving down to the next.

Mas Bengkok was chanting again: “Allah Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim, Al-Malik, Al-Quddus, As-Salam…”

They came to the bottom landing. Mas Bengkok ceased his chanting and slowly peered around the corner. Satisfied, he stepped out into the corridor and motioned Isaac to follow. He pointed to a tin-sheeted door. Isaac pushed it open and entered a washroom about the size of two phone booths illuminated by a flickering bulb. The rough cinder-block walls were coated with thin whitewash. Built into the corner was a cement water cistern with a brass tap plugged into the wall. A plastic dipper floated in the water. Algae grew in the corners of the unevenly tiled floor. A squat toilet—two cement footpads on either side of a hole—graced the spot between the cistern and the near wall. Nailed into the space above the toilet was a small wooden platform.

Isaac closed the door and put the Garuda bag on the platform. He squatted over the hole. On the other side of the mandi wall somebody was moving around. He immediately thought about hollering for help, but what good would that do?

Isaac bathed, using harsh lye soap he found in the Garuda bag. He also found a cheap plastic toothbrush and a small tube of
hotel toothpaste, along with a pair of used but clean gym shorts and a T-shirt with a faded judo club logo on it. There was no underwear. The thin towel hardly dried off all of him, and damp spots appeared all over the clothes, including an embarrassing spot on the crotch. But what was there to be embarrassed about? Nobody was going to see it except a hunchback.

Mas Bengkok knocked loudly.

“Okay, okay,” Isaac said, smearing his hair down with his hands before opening the door.

Mas Bengkok took one look at him and said, “You have a toilet in there, and you still manage to piss in your pants.” He marched Isaac back up the stairs, once more chanting the sequence of Arabic words as though it were a litany. Once again he stumbled over a word and roundly cursed himself.

“What is that you keep saying?” Isaac asked. He repeated a sequence.

The hunchback’s eyes widened. “You pronounce those perfectly.”

“So what are they?”

“Those are the first seven names of Allah. There are ninety-two more.”

The hunchback locked Isaac into the mushollah cell. His footsteps scurried away down the hall. Moments later a loudspeaker came to life somewhere near the mushollah, broadcasting the call to prayer.

Isaac put his good eye to the crack in the shutters. He was on the second floor above a well-tended garden crisscrossed with
graveled paths leading toward a one-story building of glass and marble and pale blue roof tiles. Above the teak doors of the entrance was a sign with a one-line scrawl of Arabic, a verse from the Qur’an. The Indonesian translation said:
MY LORD! INCREASE IN ME KNOWLEDGE
.

Through the building’s open windows, Isaac saw a single room, devoid of any furniture, which was too large to be a classroom. The room was brightly lit with fluorescent lights. Children knelt at prayer on their mats. The boys wore brown sarongs and white shirts. In their half of the room, segregated by a cloth screen, the girls were dressed in white from head to toe.

A short while later, after the prayers were finished, Mas Bengkok unlocked and threw open the door to Isaac’s cell, holding a radio. “Listen, this is Australia’s Indonesian service. We’re on international news,” he said excitedly. The crackly voice of the radio’s newscaster said, “The American State Department spokesperson referred to the Nahdlatul Umat Islam as a terrorist organization and said that there would be direct consequences if the abducted schoolboy was not immediately freed unharmed. Meanwhile, Major General Rachman of the Indonesian police stated that his men were continuing their search for the twelve-year-old boy. Isaac Williams’s parents issued a new plea for his release.”

Graham Williams’s hoarse voice came over the waves. He spoke in slow Indonesian. “We plead with whoever has our son, we beg you to release him to us. He has been gone from us almost one full week now. Allah has given all parents the gift of children,
regardless of race or religion, and we ask that our son be returned to us, which is surely according to Allah’s will.”

Mas Bengkok switched off the news and grinned at Isaac. “You are a star,” he said. “They even have your picture in the newspapers. Maybe someday I’m going to be interviewed about you. I’ll say, ‘I taught Isak the ninety-nine names of Allah.’”

Hearing his father’s voice on the radio was strange. Isaac wished he could reassure his parents that he was okay. It was distressing to hear his father so distressed.

A half hour later Ibu Halimah put Isaac to bed with another cup of bitter herbs that Isaac eagerly drank. With its sedative, he would not dream.

A
FTER
F
RIDAY NOON PRAYERS
Ibu Halimah woke Isaac from a shallow nap. Her round face beamed. “The honorable
kiai
is here to start your lessons.”

The honorable
kiai
stood at the doorway. Isaac found himself looking into the gentle eyes of Mr. Suherman. He backed up on the cot until he was against the wall. Mr. Suherman’s calm expression did not change. Isaac’s gaze became riveted on the large Gucci leather case dangling from the teacher’s shoulder. Isaac said to Ibu Halimah, “Tell him to go away. Tell him to leave me alone.”

Ibu Halimah said, “Isak, what is the matter with you?”

“He’s a terrorist; he’ll kill me.”

“That’s ridiculous, child, that’s—”

“He had a bomb at the school, he was going to blow us up, he’s one of those terrorists, he’s got a bomb in that bag!”

Ibu Halimah grabbed him by the shoulders, peered into his eyes, felt his cheeks. “You’re delirious again.”

“I am not. Mr. Summerton had a photo of him. Please, Ibu Halimah, don’t leave me alone with him.”

Mr. Suherman sat down in the chair. He said to Ibu Halimah, “Stay a moment for the boy’s sake. Isaac misunderstands, but he has reason enough to be afraid.” He opened the case and withdrew
a Qur’an, its cover soft leather embossed with calligraphy.

Ibu Halimah crossed her arms, regarding Isaac with a displeased frown.

Mr. Suherman draped his right leg over his left and said, “Righto, let me get my bad cards out on the table. Eight years ago, as a newly fervent and radicalized Muslim, I went to Afghanistan and attended one of bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda training camps. I wanted war against the West. I wanted to become a martyr for the cause of Allah and Islam. But the organization forbade me to become a martyr. They had other tasks for me. I was sent to Jakarta to launder Al-Qaeda money, as my father did in London for the Suharto regime. There I met Tuan Guru Haji Abdullah Abubakar. I learned from the Tuan Guru a better Islam, a truer Islam. The Tuan Guru is to bin Laden what the tree of life is to a shriveled weed. Instead of being an Al-Qaeda jihad warrior seeking the death of American infidels, I am now training to be a Nahdlatul Umat Islam missionary to save their souls.”

Isaac’s gaze inched upward to Mr. Suherman’s face. The teacher grinned. “Does that sound familiar?”

“You weren’t trying to bomb us?”

“Absolutely not.”

“There was a bomb at the hospital.”

“But not at the school. I made sure of that.”

Isaac didn’t know what to make of such a baffling statement. Was Mr. Suherman implying that there had been plans to bomb the school? “So you were trying to convert us instead of blow us up?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. But mostly, I was at the school to learn about American Christianity.”

“Why?”

“I want to learn how to contextualize Islam to the American culture. To paraphrase something your Reverend Biggs said, I see in America a wheat field ripe unto harvest for Allah.”

Isaac felt dizzy, as though six had become nine. “But Mr. Summerton had a picture of you—the State Department says you’re a terrorist. No way they’ll let you into America.”

“It’s just a matter of negotiations.” Mr. Suherman rubbed the bottom of his lip and studied Isaac. “I have certain information that perhaps I could trade for a green card. As your Bible says, be innocent as doves but wise as serpents.”

Isaac said, “The State Department says the Nahdlatul Umat Islam is a terrorist organization.” He touched his eye. “The Nahdlatul Umat Islam did this to me.”

Mr. Suherman sighed. “That is a good start for our first lesson. The word ‘Islam,’ Isaac, means ‘surrender to Allah.’ It is not a religion, but a way of life. The straight path. Some Muslims walk it true, and some meander off the edges into sin at times. It is no different in Christianity. There are Christians who are convinced that God has called them to kill homosexuals, there are pastors who urge violent war against abortionists. So it is in Islam, even in the Nahdlatul Umat Islam.”

“Like Udin?”

“The sullen boy with the scruffy beard? I apologize for him. Violence against children is always a sin.”

“And Mas Tanto?”

Mr. Suherman glanced at Ibu Halimah.

She harrumphed and let her arms drop, moving to the door. “I’ll leave you two gentlemen to discuss my husband in private.”

After she left, Mr. Suherman said, “Mas Tanto means well, but he is easily led by misguided rhetoric, such as Imam Ali’s—” He cut himself off. “You are sidetracking me. And I am sure you do not want to hear about the inner politics of the Nahdlatul Umat Islam. Now, before we continue, I want to show you something.”

Mr. Suherman led Isaac out into the hallway, where Mas Bengkok had placed a bucket of water on a plastic mat. He said, “You’ve seen Muslims wash up at the mosques before prayers? That’s called
rukun wudu
. I’ll show you how in a minute. But first, you did have a bath this morning?”

“No, I take them in the afternoons,” Isaac said.

“I suppose that will have to do. You washed everywhere?”

Isaac nodded.

“Even your private parts?”

Isaac flushed. “Yes. And behind my ears, too. Look, Mr. Suherman, I’m a Christian. To do this ritual would insult my religion and yours.”

Mr. Suherman laughed and shook his groomed head. “Is it true that you are uncircumcised?”

Isaac’s blush deepened. “What does that matter?”

Mr. Suherman ignored that. “Have you reached puberty? Do you have hair around your genitals?”

Isaac’s face burned. “A little.”

“Have you ever experienced a nocturnal emission?”

“Nocturnal emission? What’s that?”

Mr. Suherman said dryly, “If you have to ask, then you haven’t. So, you are still in puberty and uncircumcised. By tradition, impure. Since being uncircumcised is an impurity that wudu cannot remove, then what you are about to do is not true wudu and insults neither Christianity nor Islam. Learn it for the sake of cultural knowledge. Is that acceptable?”

“I guess so,” Isaac said, listening for God’s still small voice that would tell him if it weren’t. He didn’t hear it.

Mr. Suherman showed Isaac the procedure of ablution. Hands, mouth, nose, face, forearms, head, ears, neck, and feet were rinsed in a precise way. Puddles began to grow on the plastic mat.

When he was done, Isaac said, “I don’t feel a whole lot cleaner.”

“As I said, the rite is only symbolic. Its true effectiveness is when it is done in the spirit of prayer.”

They returned to the cell and sat down cross-legged on prayer mats that Mr. Suherman had folded up inside his large bag. The teacher began his lesson. “The way of Islam is the way to salvation. God in His great mercy has given us two guideposts. One is the Holy Qur’an, the word of Allah, and the other is the Sunnah, or the way the Blessed Prophet lived his life, which is a practical example of how a holy life should be lived. In these lessons we shall concentrate on the Holy Qur’an.”

Mr. Suherman paused. It was a teacher’s pause. Sure enough, he asked a question, smiling at his not altogether eager student.
“What do you know about the Holy Qur’an, Isaac?”

“It is the Muslim Scripture written by Muhammad a long time ago, sometime after Christ.”

“When you speak of Muhammad to a Muslim, Isaac, it is polite to say ‘peace and blessings upon him.’ Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him. Muhammad,
salla allahu alaihi wa sallam
, which means the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.
Salla allahu alaihi wa sallam
. Repeat, please.”

“Salla allahu alaihi wa sallam.”

Mr. Suherman nodded approvingly. “You have an ear for languages. Most Westerners would find that a true tongue twister. Now, you have said that Muhammad, peace and blessings upon him, wrote the Holy Qur’an. That is a common misconception of non-Muslims and sometimes a deliberate one. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Blessed Prophet was no more the author of the Holy Qur’an than I am the creator of the universe. The Holy Qur’an was revealed to blessed Muhammad by Allah As-Samad Al-Awwal Al-Akhir, Allah the Eternal, the First, and the Last, who, over a span of years and through His angel Gabriel, gave His prophet His word, syllable by syllable, in such glorious and thrilling language as was never before heard in the world and which we have with us to this very day in unbroken and uncorrupted transmission. This Holy Qur’an in front of me is exactly the same, syllable for syllable, as what Allah revealed to His prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, over a millennium ago. We can be confident that this Holy Qur’an, this very one in front of me, is the word of God without corruption. It was given in history to one man, but it is
nonetheless the true and eternal word of God. It is living Scripture, vital and vibrant. It is Allah’s greatest blessing to our ancestors, to us, to our descendants, forever and forever. The Qur’an purifies our thoughts, corrects our behavior, and molds our lifestyles. It enriches our inner being, it lights up our hearts and souls. But this is possible, Isaac, only if we study the Holy Qur’an and meditate on it.”

Isaac stared at Mr. Suherman, the Muslim kiai, with frank amazement. He had just heard, in the mellifluent tones of Oxford, a short sermon that he had heard many times before. Except those sermons had been about the Holy Bible. Mr. Suherman had a radiant glow on his face that Isaac had seen before on those anointed of God. The last time he had seen a similar expression, it had been on the face of Reverend Biggs. He said, “You sound like you’re talking about the Bible.”

“I’m afraid not. The original revelations to the early prophets such as Moses, Abraham, and Jesus were indeed the words of God. But those revelations were distorted, altered, and occasionally purposefully adulterated by the followers of these prophets. The Holy Qur’an makes this very clear. There is truth in the Bible, but it is not the Truth.”

Isaac stiffened.

Mr. Suherman said, “This is a hard thing I say, for Christianity is your tradition. I don’t ask you to believe me. Instead, meditate on the Holy Qur’an, and it will speak the Truth to you in ways that I cannot.”

Isaac blinked. How many times had he heard the same thing said of the Bible?

Mr. Suherman withdrew from the Gucci bag a paperback Qur’an.

Isaac stared at the book being held out to him.

Mr. Suherman wiggled it. “Go on, it won’t bite.”

Isaac reluctantly took it. The cover had a border of intricate calligraphy. The book looked to be well thumbed.

“Please be careful with it. This Pickthall edition is out of print and hard to find.”

Isaac had countless times heard the Qur’an being recited and had seen the calligraphy of Qur’anic verses, but this was the first time he had actually held a Qur’an.

Mr. Suherman said, “Let’s find a verse. Chapter—we call it a sura—sura 11, verses 69 to 73.”

Isaac did not move.

“Isaac, the Qur’an is a miraculous book, but it is not going to open its covers of its own accord. Sura 11, please.”

Isaac shook his head, without looking at Mr. Suherman. “I am a Christian. It’d be a sin to read the Qur’an.”

Mr. Suherman jerked back, whether in genuine shock or mock show, Isaac couldn’t tell. “Nonsense! How could it be a sin to read the Qur’an? This is a thought from Satan.”

“You don’t understand. From what you have said about the Bible and the Qur’an, one of them must be wrong. And since I am a Christian and believe the Bible is true, how could I dare open the Qur’an, even if I am wrong?”

Mr. Suherman studied Isaac without expression. Then he lifted his face to the ceiling and laughed with rib-shaking humor. He said,
“Isaac, Isaac! You have the talent to be a scholar of Islamic law.
Aduh
, I did not intend to put you between the desert and the devil. That is not the case. Are there not Qur’ans in your Christian universities for your Christian scholars to study? And do they feel as though they commit sin when they read the Qur’an? Certainly not! If nothing else, Isaac, read and study the Qur’an to expand your horizons, to extend your intelligence and knowledge of other religions, to appreciate the beauty of the Qur’an as magnificent literature. Are not these things
halal
, or permitted, in Christianity?”

“Well, yeah,” Isaac said slowly.

“Surely they are. You don’t have to agree with the Qur’an, but don’t ever mock it. Mocking things you don’t believe in is a fool’s game. Now, wouldn’t you like to know what the Qur’an has to say about your namesake, the prophet Isaac, peace be upon him? If you would open your Qur’an to sura 11, verses 69 to 73.”

Isaac opened the cover. Nothing with claws whooshed into his soul to possess him. The heavens were not rendered. His heart beat as before. He flipped some pages. The fresh whiteness of original publication had long acquired an aged tint, and the top corner of each page was shiny from constant thumbing. The left-hand pages contained the verses in English, presented like the Bible. The right-hand pages were covered with flowing Arabic script. He took a deep breath, feeling as though he were about to plunge into a strange pool of dark water and unknown depth. He read aloud:

As Isaac read this he found that the pool he had dived into was not so strange and alien after all. This was nearly the same story that was in the Bible. Aside from the quaint language of the translation, the Qur’an was a lot more user-friendly than he would have thought.