Ramadan Sky

RAMADAN SKY

a novella

Nichola Hunter

authonomy

by HarperCollinsPublishers

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

About Authonomy

Copyright

About the Publisher

Preface

I thought about leaving the phone, complete with an entire story in text messages, on a seat at the airport. Perhaps some stranger would pick it up and have something to read on the plane. I thought about snapping that little sim card in two, as I had seen Fajar do in one of his sensational fits of rage. But, when I arrived at the airport, I just turned off the phone, put it in my bag and walked towards the gate. A sales assistant raced out of a souvenir shop and waved a set of postcards in my face, but I hardly glanced at her. I went through the boarding gate and got on the plane.

Chapter One

Fajar

It was early afternoon. I had suffered through all of my morning lessons almost screaming with pain when the teacher called me into his room and ordered me to sit on a plastic stool. My tooth was abscessed and swollen, and I felt like one side of my head was light as air, and the other side made of bricks. Even though my tooth was throbbing, I was curious. I had never been in a teacher’s room before. It was neat and bare, like the dormitory that I slept in at night with the other boys. A plaque bearing the ninety-nine names of Allah was hanging sternly on the wall above the bed, and there was also a washbasin, and a number of books were lined up along a shelf.

The room was not right for the teacher’s large body and kind face. I wondered if this man, whose name was Dedi, would not like a wife and perhaps a young son, and also why he did not have a television. He washed his hands at the basin and then shocked me by putting one fat hairy finger right inside my mouth.

Bite.

Against my beliefs regarding the biting of a teacher, but in accordance with the laws of obedience, I clamped down on his finger as hard as I could. A shock of pain was followed by a burst of warm, foul-tasting liquid, which I spat into Dedi’s handkerchief.

Bite again.

After that he tied one end of a piece of thread to my tooth and the other end to the handle of the door of his room. I felt the blood drain quickly from my face and I tried to tell him that I would ask my family to send money for the dentist, but his arm moved swiftly to the door and it was over. He gave me some medicine to take, and then he was showing me out of the room when the headmaster found us, approaching with his nervous, birdlike manner, head cocked to one side as if testing each word.

Your father has gone to Allah, Fajar.

Both men turned their eyes on me, thoughtfully, as if they were weighing up all of the consequences of that one piece of news – the way that each difficulty would now line up against the next and crash down on my small frame.

Within the hour, Teacher Dedi walked me down the road to the bus stop. His large hand rested on my shoulder for a moment before I got on and paid the driver and found my seat. I turned to wave, but there was only a square white back bobbing along the road in a cloud of smoke.

As the bus started moving, my tongue sought out the place where the rotted tooth had been so cleverly removed, leaving a satisfying new gap. Then I turned my attention to a rooster that was staring at me from its seat on the lap of a young woman. Rain began to strike at the windows of the bus, but then stopped as if changing its mind. I looked at the chicken and pretended not notice the woman, who had a large birthmark on her face and sat staring out at the grey, threatening sky. I was trying to think a clear path through the fuzziness of the medicine.

My father has gone to Allah. But how? Is he in Paradise already? Doesn’t he know that he is urgently needed at home?

The concept of death had not taken a definite shape in my mind, although I had seen it before in the form of a motionless, doll-like form that had once been the next-door-neighbour’s baby. But I couldn’t see that my father had anything to do with that. A tiny voice crept in to offer some advice.

It might be a mistake, it whispered.

I watched the people getting on and off the bus with their children and animals and packages, as the journey passed slowly, with many stops.

As we neared the centre of the city, the buildings grew taller and the sky became dirty with smoke from the traffic. I got off the bus on a side road. There were scraps of rubbish blowing around in the street as the wind was picking up for a storm. My eyes began to sting with grit and heat.

I crossed the high bridge over the motorway, which was swarming with beeping cars and motorbikes and people heaving carts through the murky air. I was home. I could hear the praying coming from our house as I went along the back alleys until I saw that some relatives of ours standing in the front yard. A flash of lightning gave them a strange yellow glow for a moment and then the youngest boy began waving and shouting to me. My father should be greeting them, I thought stupidly, and my mother, and they should not be standing there in the heat and wind with the storm coming.

In truth, our house is not large, and inside was full of other relatives. I could not find my mother, but my eldest sister came forward to greet me. I saw that she had been crying – but my own eyes stayed dry. Even when I saw the white shroud that tightly held my father’s body – when the thunder and rain came shouting, banging and smashing on the roof, and when we took him to be buried the next day and I watched my grown-up brothers carry him without stumbling to the car. Even now, so many years after, as I am remembering, it feels like it felt then. Inch by inch, I turned to very cold stone – the feet first, followed by the hands and chest. The cold feeling crept along the veins in my arms and ran like ice down into my fingertips. I became very quiet and still. I went through all of the prayers and rituals with the spice of incense burning at my nostrils. I did not want the green and pink cakes that my sister offered to the neighbours.

More than anything, I was disappointed to find that this is what happens in spite of everything, to change colour and shrink, and to be wrapped in white cloth like some terrible gift for the earth to receive. Even to men like my father, who had a reputation for being very lucky and was able to steer his large family away from trouble and into prosperity.

After most of the people had left, my mother made me a place to sleep on the floor by the window, next to my small cousin. I lay looking out at the darkness through a gap in the curtains, listening to the clatter of cups and plates being washed and stacked. The big rain turned into smaller rain and finally disappeared. The grown-up men of the family would take him very early, at first light, and then come back to help my mother receive visitors and to observe the three days of mourning. I wondered who would now catch and tend the doves that my father used to sell at the markets and who would raise the rabbits and chickens and go around buying and selling all kinds of useful things in order for us to live.

For the next few days it seemed that everything in our house had changed, but around us the streets continued their song as if nothing had happened. Children rose like ragged birds in the mornings and chirped and screamed and laughed on the roadside where they always played. Women carried baskets of cakes through the neighbourhood and men pushed their breakfast carts selling bubur ayam and coffee and fried snacks. The ojek drivers watched the street and smoked and gossiped and waited for customers.

I wanted to stay there amongst the cheerful noises and the quiet shadows of our house, where my father’s presence could still be felt in the corners and around the windowsills, but my lessons had already been paid for the next two years and my mother was anxious to begin honouring my father’s wishes straight away. So, a week after the funeral, she packed my things. This was not an easy task as I had made up my mind not to return to school, so as soon as she had finished packing the case, I took everything out again and returned the case to the shelf where I kept my things. After I had unpacked for a third time, my mother called two of my sisters to help her. At the sight of me standing there, glaring fiercely, in front of the neatly stacked clothing, all three of them started giggling. That was an insult I was not prepared to take. I was surprised to find my legs moving of their own accord, and a loud screaming noise coming out of me.

You think it’s funny! Why are you sending me away from my father’s house? I started kicking at the case and then picked it up and threw it across the room. Unluckily, it hit my mother’s shelf of special family things, including flowers and photographs of my father, which came crashing down from the wall.

Suddenly nobody was laughing.

Fajar, I thought you were a good boy, said my mother, in a shocked voice.

My eldest brother, Rhamat, came running downstairs to find me standing amongst the debris, breathless and defiant. He swiftly grabbed me by the shoulders and then pulled down my trousers and took off his belt.

My mother tried to intervene.

Rhamat! No!

But Rhamat would not listen.

This kind of temper shows a very bad character, he said steadily, waving at them to stand back. Best to catch it early.

He pinned me down on the table with one hand and thrashed at my legs and buttocks many times with the belt, while my mother and sisters stood and watched him. That is the way it would be from then on: Rhamat taking over my father’s position in the family before we even had a chance to get used to his death, but unlike my father, Rhamat did not hesitate to use force. He would beat any of us, especially the boys, while the women would stand there like stunned deer, staring wide-eyed, and doing nothing.

I did not give Rhamat the satisfaction of crying out when he beat me. I kept silent, and afterwards walked out of the house without looking at any of them. That night when I returned, I lay awake with the red welts stinging, my skin itching, but I was determined not to show any feelings, even to myself.

The next morning, I ate the breakfast that my mother cooked for me, and then the two of us walked, without speaking, to the bus stop.

You must work hard and try to be gentle, she said, as she hugged me goodbye.

I did not answer. She looked small and worried as the bus the bus pulled away, but I did not return her wave.

On the way back to school, I stared out of the window, barely noticing the other people riding on the bus. I watched the sky change from dirty brown to pale blue and the tall city buildings dwindle into the distance. Nobody was waiting for me at the bus stop, so I walked down the laneway alone and found the latch on the gate at the back of the school grounds. I returned to my classes without any fuss – a cold stone boy, but nobody seemed to notice any difference.

Chapter Two

All that was more than twelve years ago. I am not a child anymore, but that’s not easy to explain to five older brothers and six older sisters. Rhamat is still the bossiest and the worst. Although my mother is the head of the family, and she still tries to do things according to my father’s directions, Rhamat argues with everything and always wants the best of everything for himself and his dog-faced wife.

He is twenty years older than me, and all of us hate him. We wish he had not taken the place as the first man of the family. My mother has said that perhaps one day he will be run over by a bus. When she said that I told her that he is our brother and we must try to love him, but in my secret heart I was glad to hear it spoken.

Our mother works very hard and watches over us, especially me because I am the youngest, and my next brother Satiya because he is lazy and will not settle down to a wife or a job. He is ten years older than me and we have four sisters in between.

Everyone says that Satiya and I are the handsome ones in our family and also that we could be twins, but I don’t think so. For a start, he is shorter than me, and he covers his face with a beard. I can see that his eyes are dark like mine and he has high cheekbones and curly hair that he grows long and ties with a red bandana. I keep my hair short and my face clean-shaven. Satiya stays out most nights and refuses to answer to anyone when he comes home in the mornings. He eats and then goes off to work, his eyes sullen and drooping from lack of sleep. He did not like school and cannot speak a word of English, whereas I still have the certificates that I won in high school for best English student two years in a row – the year my father died and the next year. After that I came back home, to Jakarta, as there wasn’t any money to keep me there.

Night is the best time for Jakarta. Our houses are small and hot, so we hang out in the street or down by the river, where there are a few scraggly trees and a warung that sells tea. We also buy snacks there, and sometimes a little vodka, and other things if the right person is buying. There are piles of rubbish along the street and clouds of insects rising from the river, and a straight stretch of road that is good for racing. Our motorbikes roar like stallions, kicking up dust over the oily moon. There are no women here – all wives, mothers and sisters are in the homes that they are constantly spinning for us, like spiders. When we return at dawn, wives will be sulky and silent, mothers will scold.

Everyone who has a bike comes down here to try to earn a little extra money by racing and betting at the balap1. We do this every Friday and Saturday night – unless the police come. Then they take whatever they can get out of us and send us home. Sometimes there is very big money to be won at the balap, and then the police will allow it, for a share of the prize money. If you want to win big, though, you have to put up top money. This is why you must be very careful about lending money to your friends. They will sometimes borrow from many friends on the same day, in order to do this racing. When they lose, they will have no way to pay anyone back.

One night I won three races, all of them against the second brother of my street enemy, who had cost me both my girlfriend and my job. My friend Budi was there, and he told me:

Take this bastard, Fajar, and show him who is the winner and who will be the winner, always, in the end.

We had put two hundred thousand rupiah on the first race. They called the start and from the beginning I felt the bike rush out fast and straight and I beat him easily. His face was blank as he called for another race. We always double the money if another race is called for. I told him he would be very sorry to lose four hundred thousand more. I could still feel the magic coming from my jeans and the warm seat of my bike, so I agreed and again, I beat him easily. This time he was sweating and showing his teeth after the finish.

He slowly walked over to where his friends were standing and talked for a minute and then returned. He wanted to race for eight. I had already won six and Budi was telling me to stop, but I was looking at the sweat forming on his forehead and I knew I would beat him again. Give me two hundred thousand, I told Budi – I knew that he had some money, although he had lost his job at the same time as me. This time he wanted to double the distance but Budi said:

No. He will run off the end if he loses.

Leave my eight here, my opponent said, and nobody runs anywhere.

So we raced with two men from each side at the finish line and I beat him again. I was happy to take his money, although we never usually race for this amount and I surely knew he would have to borrow to live and would struggle to pay back his friends for a long time.

The next night he wanted to race me again, but I refused.

You are three times the loser. I won’t waste my time racing such a rider.

His body stiffened and he glared at me for a moment but said nothing, and after a few seconds he got on his bike and drove away into the night.

My blessings to your brother, I called after him.

I was relieved to see him go. In truth, I couldn’t feel the magic in my body that night and I was sure he would have beaten me.

In the daytime and some nights I had been working as a security guard at KFC. I had a uniform and was earning one million rupiah per month. There is a trick to that job that not everyone knows: you can take your free meal, which you are given every day, and sell it outside for half price. You take the back lane, or the car park, and there is always someone who will buy it. If you can find a way to get two meals out, and nobody notices, it is even better. In this way you can increase your salary and that is how I could get a deposit for my motorbike.

Aryanti was my girlfriend at that time. I had told her that as soon as I paid the bike we would be married, but soon after that I became impatient and did not want to wait. Aryanti’s mother was the one who refused.

He can wait and pay the bike first, she told her. Have an umbrella ready before the rain.

My own mother was not in agreement because she did not want me to follow in Satiya’s footsteps. I was already twenty-four and she was anxious not to have a second son in his thirties with no wife, but she told me to respect the wishes of Aryanti’s mother without argument.

It was some time later that I lost the job. Remi, the brother of the man I later beat on the bike began telling stories about me and Budi. First he told them that we were smoking ganja when working, but he could not show any proof. We were called into the office, where Mr Iskandar, the boss man, looked into our eyes for signs of drugs. This was the same man who had squeezed our testicles at our job interview, in order to check that we were virgins. I had shaved all the hairs from around my penis and testes, as I had seen done in many porn movies, and he was very surprised to see this.

What is this for?! he demanded.

I was standing with my pants around my ankles with everybody looking at my poor exposed bird.

Do you have the crabs? Or are you some kind of perverted infidel?

I wanted to tell him that he was the perverted one to lay his hands on my private parts, but instead I told him about my terrible heat rash, from riding the motorbike and wearing jeans. I quickly showed him the bribe money and he told me to do up my trousers.

There had been three of us on that day and we all got a job, but the third man died soon afterwards in a traffic accident. He was run over on his motorbike on the way to work, and somehow never replaced. I wondered if Iskandar had continued to take his pay, because we had to cover three floors between two people, when it should have been one floor each. Budi and I had worked together like this for two years, when the same boss again called us in to the office. This time he looked into our eyes, instead of other places, to see if we showed any signs of smoking drugs. I could see that he had not gotten over his earlier dislike of me. He let Budi stand to one side and tried for some minutes to get a confession from me, but I held firm and he did not fire us.

The next day we brought cigarettes to his office, with Budi leading the way.

Please accept this small gift from my father.

Iskandar gestured for him to put the carton down on the desk and then turned his eyes on me as I produced an identical package.

Do not let me hear any more tales about either of you, he scowled.

We closed the door and immediately began mocking him as we walked away.

Please accept this gift from my father and please kiss my biji.2

Does this man’s mother have a penis?

No, his wife does; may she smoke him while he smokes our cigarettes.

The truth is, everyone takes a little ganja when they can get it, even Remi, our accuser, and especially when working at night. That first time we did not get fired, but some months later Iskandar began to complain about other things – twenty minutes late and such. It all ended in a bag search where he found some money, which had been placed there.

It is hard to prove you have not stolen money that is sitting right there in your bag, and if you make a fuss they can call the cops and then you have your hands in your wallet until they bleed. Iskandar told us we were fired. I had the feeling that only he could have placed the money there, because only he could have a spare locker key. This time I talked straight.

Are you sure it was us, you old spider monkey? Do you want another look at our eggs before we go home? And then you can go and spank yourself!

For the second time I stood before him with my trousers down, while Budi laughed hysterically and gathered our belongings.

Fajar, you are the craziest son of your mother, Budi spluttered, when he had pushed me outside.

And he was right. I am famous in my family for having a very hot temper that makes me do crazy things.

We got on our bikes, but did not go home. Instead, we rounded up some friends and three of my brothers and went to find Remi. We caught him by surprise – although he surely must have expected us to act against him, but perhaps not so quickly.

Our jobs were taken by his brother and nephew, but Remi himself found that he was unable to work for several weeks, as he fell off his bike that night and broke his arm and smashed up his face.

For the first month without a job I was looking everywhere for work. My cousin wanted to sell me a job as a ticket conductor on the train to Surabaya. He told me that I should pay two million rupiah. It is not permitted to buy a job in this way, but many places will not employ you unless you do so. We cannot ask for our money back if they decide to take the job away later; they will simply deny that any money ever changed hands. This time my mother said that we would not pay, as she had already laid out money for my first job and the man had seen fit to fire me anyway. So I kept looking. I still had a little money and I told myself that everything would be okay.

My father was the lucky one, who could do magic with money and animals. He could buy small things and sell them to people at a higher price. In his memory, I tried to do this myself with the raincoats. I drove a long way to the markets and bought ten raincoats at a cheap price. I tried to sell them to the other drivers in my street, but they all looked at me suspiciously and asked many questions. How much did you pay for this? Why do you want to go shopping for us like a woman? After that I tried at many places for every kind of job. I still had the bike but the payment was two months late. We should pay every month, and if we pay late, they will take extra interest from us. If they don’t get a payment for three months, they will come and take the bike.