The Rainbow Troops (18 page)

THERE WE were, in a rowdy oval room in an art deco style building. We were backed into a corner: Sahara, Lintang and I.

Once again, we were in a situation where our reputation was on the line: the Academic Challenge. Our spirits were low after seeing the state school and PN kids carrying textbooks we'd never laid eyes on. Their covers were thick and shiny. They must've been expensive.

The risk here was higher than the one we faced in the carnival. The Academic Challenge was an open arena to demonstrate intelligence or, if you were unlucky, an un thinkable amount of stupidity. All the bad luck would be borne by me, Sahara and Lintang. We were Team F in this buttonpushing competition. What if we couldn't answer and came home with no points? It would be humiliating! Ah, the classic problem of selfconfidence. This was the main issue for those from marginalized environments trying to compete.

We had been through painstaking preparations with Bu Mus. She had high hopes for this competition, even higher than for the Carnival. She collected example problems and worked hard training us from morning until evening. For her, succeeding here was the perfect way to convince Mister Samadikun not to condemn our school.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard Bu Mus tried to strengthen our minds, advise us, persuade us and push us to stay strong, we were still terrified. The thick books with the shiny covers in the hands of the PN kids made all of our weeks of hard work and memorization vanish in an instant. Our thought process became deadlocked.

I struggled to imagine myself sitting in meditation on a green meadow in the calmest place in my imagination: Edensor, usually that calmed me down. This time, it failed.

We sat behind a large, beautiful and cold mahogany table. The room teemed with supporters from all the schools. We shrank behind the table.

The most dominant supporters, of course, were those rooting for the PN School. There were hundreds of them and they wore special shirts with loud writing on the back:
Veni, Vidi, Vici
—
I came, I saw, I conquered
, the ambitious words of Julius Caesar. It was enough to break their rivals' spirits.

The PN School's Academic Challenge team members were the best of the best. They were specially chosen according to very high standards. This year, they were prepared more thoroughly and scientifically than normal by a young teacher famous for his intelligence. This dazzling teacher made a simulation of the competition with bells, a jury, a stopwatch, and various potential questions. He was a new teacher. He used to work in the research and development unit for a multinational corporation. He was offered a teaching job at the PN School with some incredulous salary and the promise of scholarships for his graduate and doctoral degrees. He graduated
cum laude
from the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at a wellknown state university. This year, he was chosen as our province's model teacher. He taught physics, and Drs. Zulfikar was his name. Drs. distinguishes him as having earned a bachelor's degree.

Our supporters were led by Mahar and Flo. There weren't that many of them, but they had tremendous enthusiasm. They brought two Muhammadiyah flags and various other things usually carried by football fans. The PN students considered Flo a traitor and gave her brutal stares. However, just like Lintang, Flo didn't care. Even though it was almost certain that our team would be put to shame by PN's team, Flo didn't hesitate one bit to defend her school, a Muhammadiyah village school.

Among our supporters were Trapani and his mother. They were holding hands. I saw all the schoolgirls whispering, giggling and constantly looking over at Trapani. The older he got, the more handsome he became. He was tall and slim, with clean white skin and thick black hair. His eyes were like unripened walnuts: calm, cool and deep.

Actually, Trapani had been chosen for our team. His overall score was higher than Sahara's—but his geography score was lower. The structure of our team's strength was as follows: math, natural sciences and English were all in the hands of Lintang; I was pretty good in civics, history of Islam, fiqh and, to some extent, Indonesian; our weakness was geography, and the expert in that was none other than Sahara. And so, for the sake of our team, Trapani, with an open heart, gave Sahara the chance to compete. He was a handsome young man with a big soul.

Bu Mus appreciated Trapani's sacrifice and gave him permission to hang any picture of his choosing in our class room. Trapani took advantage of this sweet offer and hung up his parents' oldtime wedding picture from Seruni Sa lon in Manggar. It was an elegant black and white photo graph.

Similarly, maybe to help him be strong, Lintang brought a photograph of his mother and father sitting side by side when they were still newlyweds. The bride and groom, Lintang's mother and father, were pressed between two big jugs filled with plastic flowers of various colors. The background of the photograph was a paper wall: a meadow, a sedan surrounded by a happylooking family, and odd trees with red leaves. Maybe it was supposed to look like somewhere in Europe.

"Brace yourself, Ikal," Trapani coached me.

Lintang opened his rattan sack, looked at his parents' newlywed photograph, put it back into his bag, and went back to being still.

I couldn't stop fanning myself. Not because I was hot, but because my heart was raging with fear. Never had even one village school won this competition; it was an honor just to be invited.

Since dawn, when we boarded an openbed truck after
subuh
prayer to bring us to the capital of our regency, Lintang had been mute. His mother, father, and little sisters came along. It was their first time to Tanjong Pandan, Lintang included.

Sahara sat in the middle. Lintang and I sat on either side of her. Lintang leaned forward listlessly. He felt inferior, discouraged, and shy in this completely foreign environment. He looked exhausted, like someone carrying the entire burden of defending our reputation. Occasionally he glanced over at his mother, father, and younger siblings in their poor clothing, sitting huddled together in the corner looking confused in the boisterous atmosphere.

"To hell with selfconfidence! The important thing is to listen carefully to the questions, hit the button quickly, and answer correctly!" I said to encourage Lintang and Sahara. They didn't seem to care.

Lintang and Sahara couldn't be counted on anymore. I saw the hands of other contestants start to test the buttons in front of them. Sahara, who had been assigned and specially trained to push the button for our team, wasn't even able to bring her finger close to the round device. A paralyzing stage fright gripped her. The noisy sounds of the buttons and microphones terrified us. We didn't test them out at all. We lost before the fight even began. The Muhammadiyah supporters read our fear. They were very uneasy.

The atmosphere grew tenser when the head of the jury rose from his seat, introduced himself, and announced the start of the competition. My heart raced, Sahara was deathly pale, and Lintang was silent.

I lacked the courage to face the audience. Bu Mus and Pak Harfan didn't even have enough courage to face us. Pak Harfan was hunched over. Maybe because expectations for our performance were so high, he was disappointed at our palpably broken spirits. Bu Mus turned toward the big lamp in the center of the room, which looked like an octopus king. For these two teachers, this competition was the most important event in their teaching careers. A single event exemplifying all the things they had to prove to Mister Samadikun, it put their very reputations as teachers on the line. The burden carried by Bu Mus and Pak Harfan was as heavy as Lintang's.

Not much later, a woman asked the audience to calm down so she could begin the questioning. The moment of truth had arrived. The contestants were rapt, ready to listen to the barrage of questions and attack the buttons. It was nervewracking.

The first question reverberated throughout the room. "She's a French woman, between myth and reality ..." Buzz! Buzz! Buzzzz!

The question was not yet finished. Someone had pushed the button prematurely. All in attendance were startled. Sahara and I were beside ourselves because a coarse arm had just attacked the button in front of us with lightning speed—it was Lintang's arm!

"Team F!" yelled the woman asking the questions. "Joan D'Arch, Loire Valley, France!" sounded Lintang, without blinking, without any hesitation, with an incredibly nasal French accent.

"One hundred points!" yelled a man sitting at the jury table as he was greeted by a thunderous applause from the Muhammadiyah supporters. The woman continued.

"Question number two: use an integral to calculate the area bounded by functions y and x, where y equals two x and x equals five."

With no delay, Lintang attacked the button and shouted out, "The integral limits are five and zero, and two x minus x times dx equals twelve point five!"

Incredible! Without any doubt, without writing any notes, without even blinking.

"One hundred!" the man yelled once again.

That man was an Academic Challenge legend. For years and years he had been specially assigned to hold onto the answer key and scream
one hundred
for correct answers and
minus one hundred
for incorrect answers. The shape of his mouth and lips was very dramatic when he screamed one hundred, like a gold fish. Many came to the Academic Challenge arena just to see him scream
one hundred
.

Our supporters clamored and clapped their hands.

"Question three: Calculate the area in the integration region of three and zero for a function of six plus x minus x to the second degree."

Lintang closed his eyes for a moment, as he often did when Bu Mus asked questions in class. Less than seven seconds later, he wailed, "Thirteen point five!"

"One hundred!"

Right on, no haste and no hesitation.

The attendees were astounded by Lintang. The other contestants were stupefied, as if they were under a spell Bu Mus moved forward. The worry on her face had disappeared. Her lips mumbled, "
Subhanallah
,
subhanallah
, Allah is most holy ..."

Lintang's mother and father were proud watching him answer so adroitly.

The woman continued asking questions.

The math and natural science questions were swept away by Lintang. Questions drawn from outside those realms were attacked by other contestants, especially PN's team. The first round of the competition was over. We had a definite lead.

In the second round, our competitors gradually began to gain ground on our impressive first round score. To make matters worse, Sahara and I had answered a few questions incorrectly, costing us points. The second round was over and the situation became critical.

In the third round, the contestants from the state school stepped aside. It was a distressing situation — the PN contestants, intelligent like Lintang, had caught up to our score; they even surpassed it a few times.

Every time a PN team member answered correctly, hundreds of supporters cheered loudly. Ours did the same. It was strange, though, maybe it was because their team had no chance of winning, but the state school's supporters joined ours. The total number of supporters was almost 1,000, and they were just about evenly split. They all rejoiced when their respective team successfully answered a question. The happiest of all was Harun. He truly en joyed the festivity. I saw him clapping his hands nonstop and shouting encouraging words, but he wasn't looking at us. He was looking out the window. It appeared he was encouraging a group of girls playing
kasti
out in the yard.

At last, the final round arrived. PN's team and our team kept trading the lead, like lapping waves. The difference between the two was only 100 points. The competition had reached a critical point: A correct answer would determine the winner, an incorrect answer carried fatal consequences.

The situation grew even tenser because the tight scores were chasing each other until there were only five questions left, at which point we were losing 1,700 to 1,600. We had the chance to tie, but then the woman asked the question, "Pleng Chard Thai is ..."

With absolute certainty, I hit the button and shouted out, "The Chinese national anthem!"

And I was wrong.

"Minus one hundred!"

Everyone cursed me. How foolish. It was clear from the name itself the answer was Thailand. But because of A Ling, everything in three word phrases, for example Njoo Xian Ling, made me automatically think of China.

My stupidity landed us in a serious situation. To make matters worse, the PN team correctly answered a question about a scientific finding in the field of genetics. Things like that, from television and the latest scientific journals, were things that we simply didn't have access to and therefore didn't know.

So we lost out on two questions, 200 points. We hadn't been down by this much throughout the whole competition. The state school contestants could only look on con fused, sitting uncomfortably in their misery. Our supporters were apprehensive.

Defeat danced in front of our eyes. It was truly saddening. Lintang's greatness would be overshadowed by Sahara's and my incompetence—especially mine. Sahara and I hadn't been able to perform up to Bu Mus' expectations in our fields of expertise. I felt at fault. Sahara was very angry with me. She whispered heatedly into my ear, "
Boi
, listen up! If any of the questions are about geography, don't you dare interfere! Shut your mouth and watch yourself !"

Sahara was a straightshooter.

"This is what happens when a task is given to a non expert! Wait for the destruction!"

Amazing! Even in this critical situation where we were about to lose, Sahara could still quote hadiths, and she could still quarrel—it was truly her hobby. What she meant was that she was the geography expert, and any question having to do with any country's residents, agricultural produce and national anthems should only be answered by her. Her griping wasn't for nothing; while elbowing me in the ribs, Sahara went straight for the next question.