The Rebel Cleric

    Solemnly, Bumiputra entered the inner compound of the mosque. A large crowd of men had congregated. Men of all ages, sizes and occupations from all over the kampong were there, standing around on their toes and shoulder-to-shoulder, their curious heads craning over each other, looking for a clear opening, they gathering there that day in near-perfect silence to pay their last respect to the beloved dead.

    “Who is it?” Bumiputra asked one of the random faces in the crowd.

    “It’s our Ustaz Hambali” a fellow said, answering the out-of-towner's query.

    “How did it happen?”

    “It was tragic, his death. For a man as devout and holy as him.”

    “He died of a grave sickness?”

    “No. A motor accident.”

    Another man, older and sadder than the fellow talking to Bumiputra, shushed, and held a stiff, calloused finger across his black smoker's lips, reminding the two to keep it down, there’s a dead man here, it’s a mosque, no worldly talks! His eyes twitching from anger softened by woe for the dead; the shadow of his face, ghastly and hollow.

    We’re sorry, the two gestured with their eyes.

    Respectful, Bumiputra pulled the fellow to the back of the crowd, tugging at the loose ends of his ragged baju Melayu. He then asked him about the ustaz’s death.

    “How did it happen?”

    “The ustaz was coming back from his fruit orchard at the bend of the river near Kim Wong’s bicycle workshop. He was riding his blue Boon Siew Honda, on his own, and carrying a long bamboo pole with a sharp metal hook at one end on his shoulder.”

    “What is the pole for?”

    “It’s a homemade tool, for plucking raw mangoes high up on tall trees. The ustaz liked to eat raw mangoes dipped in sweet sour ketchup. His favorite food. We all know that. Sometimes he brought some over to share with us folks at the coffee stall.”

    “So, he accidentally fell from his motor and impaled himself?”

    “No. At the corner near Ah Choon’s Fiberglass factory –-that’s a sharp, blind corner, many accidents happened there this year already-- in Batu 5, a big 8-tire lorry carrying live pigs from Negri Sembilan came down fast from the other direction towards him, and we all think that when the ustaz saw this coming straight at him and he noticed what it was carrying, he panicked, and he tried to steer his motor away.”

    “The lorry was coming at him?”

    “Well, no, we can’t possibly know that. Probably, he simply panicked and tried to get as far away as possible from the pigs. Those filthy pigs, they smell horrible!”

    “So, the lorry did not hit him?”

    “No, it did not. Ustaz’s Honda swerved sharply, it wobbled, and he quickly lost control of it --because he was holding that long bamboo pole with one hand, remember? The Honda wobbled, jumped, but the ustaz was still pressing on the gas.”

    “Then…?”

    “He was heading straight into the monsoon gutter when suddenly one end of his bamboo pole swung back at him, hitting him on the head, at the back. The pole possibly swung back at him from the force of the rushing wind when the lorry passed him by.”

    “The sharp metal end?”

    “No, the blunt bare one. It hit him hard, and then he fell unconscious.”

    “The ustaz was not wearing a helmet?”

    “No. He wasn’t. We all don’t. We don’t wear them riding in the kampong.”

    Upon hearing that, Bumiputra pulled back his bewildered face from the conversation, his mind struggling to make sense of that silly and dangerous habit of the kampong folks.

    “So, that was how he died?”

    “He fell unconscious, the motor crashed into the road divider, and then the sharp metal end of the bamboo pole swung back at his neck, killing him off instantly.”

    “From Allah we came and to Him we shall return.”

    The fellow looked away from Bumiputra, and set his eyes on the crowd of grieving men from which he came, and the soft, swollen lines under his eyes trembled greatly.

    “How do you know all this?”

    “My father told me. He said a Bangladeshi immigrant who saw the entire accident –-he was walking along the same road, returning from work in the city— called the police, and the police head, a son of the kampong, alerted us, and my father went to the scene.”

    “He saw the ustaz’s body?”

    “His head was severed off of his shoulders, found about 100 meters away.”

    “O Allah! There is no god but Allah!”

    The fellow’s eyes welled with tears, his head shaking slowly in disbelief.

    “He was a good old man, a holy man. We find it so hard to believe, Sir.”

    The fellow sighed, and Bumiputra kindly massaged his shoulders, consoling.

    “We all thought that the ustaz would die old; gracefully, not like this.”

    The fellow wiped his tears with his bare hands; coarse as sand, dry as dust; took a deep breath, exhaled loudly and rejoined the mourning crowd. They were gathering outside the door of a small wooden room, windowless and with a low ceiling, like a makeshift shack, attached to the left wing of the dilapidated kampong mosque.

    From the back of the crowd, Bumiputra observed them in their sadness.

    The ones standing closest to the door kept their heads low and their eyes dry, waiting patiently and quietly for the coffin to be carried out of the small room and placed at the head of the jemaah. They were old men in drab, damp farm clothes, perhaps close, long friends of the good ustaz since the early days; when the terrible news came, they dropped their tools to the ground and rushed bare-footed to the mosque, horrified.

    The ones standing behind the old men were dressed only slightly better; relatives and friends of relatives, neighbors and friends of neighbors; those who heard the news but decided to go back home first, to change their clothes and to tell their neighbors of the horrible news. In dull baju melayu worn with faded cotton slack, they came to the mosque on their Boon Siew Hondas with their wife and children, perfumed, fresh and very sad.

    Bumiputra then turned to those who stood near and around him; a very sparse crowd at the back; two friends from two different parts of the kampong, they met, whispering under their breath, trying very hard not to smile at each other’s jokes. Or perhaps they were merely exchanging anecdotes about the ustaz, and being nostalgic about his death; remember how he circumcised us when we were 13?; you eyeballing his teenage daughter when we studied the Koran at his house?; his splintered rattan cane?

    Then, one of them took out a fifty-dollar note and handed it over to the other.

    Oh, I see. Business as usual.

    Moving away from the crowd, Bumiputra entered the mosque from one of the opened doors at the side of the building; right foot first, and then a short prayer; and he walked across the thick, lush yellow carpet and towards the left wing of the mosque where the small wooden room was attached to. Into the first room, he peered in, and he saw old women and young girls in grief on the floor, sobbing and wailing, and he quickly withdrew his intrusion into their forbidden sadness –-walking away and asking for God’s forgiveness.

    Into the second room, he peered in, very cautiously, and he saw the body.

    The late Ustaz Hambali and his severed head, attached together haphazardly using a bundle of clean, white cloth at his now-absent neck, on a long, wet tin tray placed on top of a long, lacquered wooden bench --the one commonly used in many school canteens.

    “Are you one of his sons, Sir?” asked a burly man, washing his hands.

    “No, I’m not.”

    “Then, I must ask you not to crowd in here. It’s a very small room.”

    Standing at the door, Bumiputra looked at the others who were also in the small room; there were about six or seven of them, mostly adult men in clean, white robes, they looked like operating-room surgeons if not for the heavy turbans and the long faces.

    These must be the ustaz’s family members, Bumiputra assumed.

    Inside the room, he found the air of grief to be too unnerving even for a man of his stature, it hanging desperately onto the men’s hearts, tugging, lurking like a dormant disease, not wanting to let go for fear of falling into an abyss of despair so deep and dark that no one would remember long how important the dead was to their simple kampong lives.

    “Can I come closer to the arwah?”

    Even before the burly man could open his mouth to reply, or one of the ustaz’s family members could react to the request, Bumiputra was already approaching the late ustaz’s body on the tin tray at a rapid speed; he was determined to see the face of the holy man who had caused so much pain and grief in the simple kampong folks, his leaving them abruptly and tragically that way, a haunting nightmare for every man, woman and child.

    The late ustaz appeared serene, the skin of his face as white as a baby’s ass.

    Bumiputra looked down at him, his hands clutching the edges of the tin tray, and in an archaic Malay tongue that was no longer in use, he spoke softly, but clearly:

    “Maka diciptakan-Nya tali itu agar engkau ikat unta tunggangan-mu, Abdullah, kepada pokok kurma yang memagari tanah masjid, sedang kau berhenti daripada hal-ehwal Dunia dan datang bersolat Jumaat bersama-sama saudara se-Islam-mu yang lain.”

    “Bertawakkal-lah”, he continued, “…tetapi bukan dengan kebodohan.”

    And when he stopped, the burly man yanked his arm, seeking explanation.

    “What the heck did you just do?”

    “I was quoting an old Malay parable on fatalism to the late ustaz.”

    The burly man looked at the other men in the room, their faces were as confounded and stunned at the odd man’s unknown behavior as his was, but he had neither the reason nor the strength to add this strange insult to the kampong folks’ already worsening grief for the dead; and so, he reluctantly released Bumiputra’s arm.

    Calmly, Bumiputra straightened up the rumpled sleeve of his long, green robe, politely bade good day to the men in the small wooden room, and walked out through the door and into the morning light to confront the distraught mourners outside.

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