Read Online Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (Vintage International) by V.S. Naipaul - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: V.S. Naipaul
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teacher said. He got permission and he enrolled in the new school. It was the big turn in his life. He worked at hissecondary-school studies with the intelligence and application which his father had given to religious studies. He was top of his class, top of the school, and finally, in the special circumstances of the independence war against the Dutch, top of the country.
In 1948 the Dutch occupied Landkat. They were after Imaduddin’s father (as they were after Mr. Wahid’s diabetic father in Jombang), and the family fled in five canoes down the Strait of Malacca to Aceh. There must have been some kind of larger family or community support, because Imaduddin was able to continue with his studies, at first in Aceh until the war of independence ended, and after that in the more important town of Medan. In 1953, when he was twenty-two, Imaduddin was admitted to the Bandung Institute of Technology. This meant that, even with the immense upheavals of the Japanese occupation and the war of independence, Imaduddin had been such a good student that he had lost only four years. When he was thirty he became an assistant professor at Bandung; the following year he went to the United States to do a higher degree.
It was a stupendous career for a man born in 1931 in a small town in the Dutch East Indies; and very little of it could have been in the head of the fourteen-year-old boy marching with his little militia band in Landkat in 1946. Yet the new learning that the little boy and then the young man had mastered had always been kept in its place. There seemed never to have been any kind of cultural or spiritual dislocation in Imaduddin. He had always remained the grandson of the sultan’s muezzin from the last century, calling the faithful to prayer five times a day; and that man’s son, the mufti’s favorite, whose higher education had been in Mecca and al-Azhar.
Mr. Wahid, with his pesantren education and pesantren family pieties, had become more internationalist and liberal. Imaduddin had remained committed to the holy war.
Sitting at the dining table—with the two serving girls in frocks flitting about between the sitting room and the little kitchen—he had become restless. After the flight of his family in five canoes down the Strait of Malacca, his story had telescoped and lost detail. His face clouded; he looked as preoccupied as when he had come out of the massage room.
He said, “How much longer do you want?”
I said half an hour, perhaps an hour.
He said, “Somebody from Oklahoma wants to be a Muslim. He is going to convert today. He is an electrical engineer. I have met him once or twice. He is going to marry an Indonesian girl. I haven’t instructed him,but I have been in touch with the girl’s family. He is waiting for me in the mosque. I should have met him there at eleven-thirty.”
It was now a quarter to twelve, more than time to leave. It was during the good-byes that I heard from Imaduddin or from Mrs. Imaduddin, serene and lovely as always, that they were moving to a new house.
We left in the Mercedes. The driver, Mohammed Ali, was already at his station, in the car, and the well-trained serving girls (one in a plain brown frock, one in a red), with very few words having to be said, flitted out from the low, dark house into the sunlight of the tiny garden to slide back the heavy garage door and to open the gate, and to wait until Mohammed Ali had maneuvered the big car out. The car, and the ceremony its size imposed, overpowered the house and the narrow lane. Imaduddin had outgrown this setting.
In no time we had turned into a main road and were driving past the Heroes Cemetery. Imaduddin was right: his house would have been easy to find if the taxi driver had taken the right road. But that wouldn’t have helped me when I got to the house: the masseur would have been there.
We passed a row of shops with their goods almost out on the road: furniture shops, shops dealing in motor-car wheels.
In 1948 the Dutch occupied Landkat. They were after Imaduddin’s father (as they were after Mr. Wahid’s diabetic father in Jombang), and the family fled in five canoes down the Strait of Malacca to Aceh. There must have been some kind of larger family or community support, because Imaduddin was able to continue with his studies, at first in Aceh until the war of independence ended, and after that in the more important town of Medan. In 1953, when he was twenty-two, Imaduddin was admitted to the Bandung Institute of Technology. This meant that, even with the immense upheavals of the Japanese occupation and the war of independence, Imaduddin had been such a good student that he had lost only four years. When he was thirty he became an assistant professor at Bandung; the following year he went to the United States to do a higher degree.
It was a stupendous career for a man born in 1931 in a small town in the Dutch East Indies; and very little of it could have been in the head of the fourteen-year-old boy marching with his little militia band in Landkat in 1946. Yet the new learning that the little boy and then the young man had mastered had always been kept in its place. There seemed never to have been any kind of cultural or spiritual dislocation in Imaduddin. He had always remained the grandson of the sultan’s muezzin from the last century, calling the faithful to prayer five times a day; and that man’s son, the mufti’s favorite, whose higher education had been in Mecca and al-Azhar.
Mr. Wahid, with his pesantren education and pesantren family pieties, had become more internationalist and liberal. Imaduddin had remained committed to the holy war.
Sitting at the dining table—with the two serving girls in frocks flitting about between the sitting room and the little kitchen—he had become restless. After the flight of his family in five canoes down the Strait of Malacca, his story had telescoped and lost detail. His face clouded; he looked as preoccupied as when he had come out of the massage room.
He said, “How much longer do you want?”
I said half an hour, perhaps an hour.
He said, “Somebody from Oklahoma wants to be a Muslim. He is going to convert today. He is an electrical engineer. I have met him once or twice. He is going to marry an Indonesian girl. I haven’t instructed him,but I have been in touch with the girl’s family. He is waiting for me in the mosque. I should have met him there at eleven-thirty.”
It was now a quarter to twelve, more than time to leave. It was during the good-byes that I heard from Imaduddin or from Mrs. Imaduddin, serene and lovely as always, that they were moving to a new house.
We left in the Mercedes. The driver, Mohammed Ali, was already at his station, in the car, and the well-trained serving girls (one in a plain brown frock, one in a red), with very few words having to be said, flitted out from the low, dark house into the sunlight of the tiny garden to slide back the heavy garage door and to open the gate, and to wait until Mohammed Ali had maneuvered the big car out. The car, and the ceremony its size imposed, overpowered the house and the narrow lane. Imaduddin had outgrown this setting.
In no time we had turned into a main road and were driving past the Heroes Cemetery. Imaduddin was right: his house would have been easy to find if the taxi driver had taken the right road. But that wouldn’t have helped me when I got to the house: the masseur would have been there.
We passed a row of shops with their goods almost out on the road: furniture shops, shops dealing in motor-car wheels.
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