Read Online Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (Vintage International) by V.S. Naipaul - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: V.S. Naipaul
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and was also a student there. The boy was very bright, and the mufti loved him.
Ten years passed. The secretary of the sultan, who was something like the sultan’s vizier, and was the second highest man in the land, wanted someone to teach the Koran to his granddaughter. He talked to the sultan; the sultan talked to the mufti; and the mufti sent his servant and student, the old muezzin’s son, now aged seventeen or eighteen, to teach the secretary’s granddaughter. The boy didn’t teach the girl by herself, of course; that would have been improper; he taught her together with some family friends. He was a very good teacher and the secretary’s granddaughter fell in love with him. In due course—no date was given, and it didn’t occur to me to ask—they married. Their son was Imaduddin; he was born in 1931.
By that time the old muezzin’s son, Imaduddin’s father, was truly launched in Landkat. In 1918, when travel became safe again after the Great War, the mufti persuaded the sultan to send the young man to Mecca to study Arabic for two years. After that the young man went for four years to Cairo, to the Islamic university of al-Azhar. His education so far had been like that of Mr. Wahid’s grandfather and father. And the similarity continued even after that: when he came back to Sumatra from al-Azhar in 1924 the old muezzin’s son became principal of a well-known school which the sultan had set up.
It was only when the school principal had to educate his own son Imaduddin that the training pattern changed. When he was six Imaduddin was taken away by his father from Malay-language school where he had spent a year; and—oddly, considering his later religious development—sent for five years to a “Dutch school.” These Dutch schools, Imaduddin said, were usually closed to the children of religious people, because the Dutch were nervous of Muslims’ being educated. Imaduddin could go to the Dutch school in Landkat only because the school there belonged to the sultan.
In 1942 the Japanese arrived. Their rule was harsh. Local food was commandeered. The school was virtually closed. To survive, Imaduddin and his father had to fish and farm and grow their own rice. Though the Japanese to some extent organized the Indonesians for what was to be their war of independence against the Dutch, there remained with Imaduddin from that time a hatred and a fear of the Japanese.
Little of this fear and hatred had come out in Mr. Wahid’s account of the Japanese occupation. His family seemed to have dealt with the Japanese at a higher, almost political, level. Mr. Wahid’s father had founded the Hizbullah militia in 1944; his younger brother had been trained by the Japanese and made a battalion commander; the headquarters of the Hizbullah were in the Jombang pesantren itself. Far away in Sumatra, Imaduddin was only a fourteen-year-old foot soldier in the same militia.
One day in 1946 he was marching his little militia band on the street. (On Sunday mornings now, perhaps in preparation for the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of independence, little semi-military bands like that one could be seen, in varied and colorful uniforms, on the streets of Jakarta: groups of ten, perhaps, moving in formation on the road, arms swinging from side to side, the leader separate from his group, but swinging his arms with the rest, blowing on his whistle, giving the marchers a beat.) Marching like this with his band one day in 1946, Imaduddin was stopped by his old teacher from the Dutch school.
The teacher asked Imaduddin, “Why are you doing this?”
“Because we want independence.”
“After independence what are you going to do? Do you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“How are you going to build this country if you don’t have doctors, engineers? You should go back to school and study. I know that a new high school is going to open in a town near here. I want you to join this school.”
Imaduddin did as his old
Ten years passed. The secretary of the sultan, who was something like the sultan’s vizier, and was the second highest man in the land, wanted someone to teach the Koran to his granddaughter. He talked to the sultan; the sultan talked to the mufti; and the mufti sent his servant and student, the old muezzin’s son, now aged seventeen or eighteen, to teach the secretary’s granddaughter. The boy didn’t teach the girl by herself, of course; that would have been improper; he taught her together with some family friends. He was a very good teacher and the secretary’s granddaughter fell in love with him. In due course—no date was given, and it didn’t occur to me to ask—they married. Their son was Imaduddin; he was born in 1931.
By that time the old muezzin’s son, Imaduddin’s father, was truly launched in Landkat. In 1918, when travel became safe again after the Great War, the mufti persuaded the sultan to send the young man to Mecca to study Arabic for two years. After that the young man went for four years to Cairo, to the Islamic university of al-Azhar. His education so far had been like that of Mr. Wahid’s grandfather and father. And the similarity continued even after that: when he came back to Sumatra from al-Azhar in 1924 the old muezzin’s son became principal of a well-known school which the sultan had set up.
It was only when the school principal had to educate his own son Imaduddin that the training pattern changed. When he was six Imaduddin was taken away by his father from Malay-language school where he had spent a year; and—oddly, considering his later religious development—sent for five years to a “Dutch school.” These Dutch schools, Imaduddin said, were usually closed to the children of religious people, because the Dutch were nervous of Muslims’ being educated. Imaduddin could go to the Dutch school in Landkat only because the school there belonged to the sultan.
In 1942 the Japanese arrived. Their rule was harsh. Local food was commandeered. The school was virtually closed. To survive, Imaduddin and his father had to fish and farm and grow their own rice. Though the Japanese to some extent organized the Indonesians for what was to be their war of independence against the Dutch, there remained with Imaduddin from that time a hatred and a fear of the Japanese.
Little of this fear and hatred had come out in Mr. Wahid’s account of the Japanese occupation. His family seemed to have dealt with the Japanese at a higher, almost political, level. Mr. Wahid’s father had founded the Hizbullah militia in 1944; his younger brother had been trained by the Japanese and made a battalion commander; the headquarters of the Hizbullah were in the Jombang pesantren itself. Far away in Sumatra, Imaduddin was only a fourteen-year-old foot soldier in the same militia.
One day in 1946 he was marching his little militia band on the street. (On Sunday mornings now, perhaps in preparation for the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary of independence, little semi-military bands like that one could be seen, in varied and colorful uniforms, on the streets of Jakarta: groups of ten, perhaps, moving in formation on the road, arms swinging from side to side, the leader separate from his group, but swinging his arms with the rest, blowing on his whistle, giving the marchers a beat.) Marching like this with his band one day in 1946, Imaduddin was stopped by his old teacher from the Dutch school.
The teacher asked Imaduddin, “Why are you doing this?”
“Because we want independence.”
“After independence what are you going to do? Do you know?”
“I don’t know.”
“How are you going to build this country if you don’t have doctors, engineers? You should go back to school and study. I know that a new high school is going to open in a town near here. I want you to join this school.”
Imaduddin did as his old
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