The Flame Tree (5 page)

As if on eerie cue, Isaac’s mother, sitting next to his father, turned and gave him an odd, psychic sort of look. Isaac raised his eyebrows, as though to say,
What?
She smiled and returned her attention to Reverend Biggs.

Later that evening he lay sleepless on the mattress on the floor in Rachel’s room underneath the screened window, staring at the half-moon, which was a baleful yellow. Why did the sky always hide the sun but let the moon appear?

The door opened. For a crazy tilted moment he thought it was Rachel, teleporting herself from the States to complain about him being in her bedroom, but it was his mother who spoke in the darkness. “Isaac? Isaac, honey?”

He stirred to let her know he was awake.

She felt his forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

He nodded.

“But something is bothering you.”

He couldn’t tell her about Ismail being in jail, and he didn’t want to tell her about his bad dreams. “No, not really.”

“Don’t you ‘no, not really’ me, young man. What is it?”

“Mom, is anything bad going to happen to us?” The words surprised him, coming out in a blurted rush.

There was just enough light for him to see the stillness settling on her face. Then a glint of teeth as her lips widened in a soft laugh. “I’d say that is a real big bother, not a ‘no, not really’ bother.” She knelt beside him and took his hand. “No, honey, nothing bad is going to happen to us. We don’t have to worry at all because God will take care of us. We’ll be fine. Okay?” She touched his nose with her finger.

Isaac nodded. “Okay.” And it was, at least for now, really okay. Nothing bad was going to happen to them, to any one of them, Ismail included.

He slept soundly, without once dreaming of crows.

I
SAAC, ALONE IN THE
computer section of the library, fired up the fastest Compaq and clicked on his private encrypted folder. The other day, during a library period, Rhyan Strang had called his sister, Sairah, over to have a look at a picture he’d downloaded off the Internet. Isaac was doing some complicated algebra calculations at a back table. Sairah scowled and said, “Gross.” That got Isaac’s attention, but by the time he got to his feet to have a look himself Rhyan had cleared the screen. “Not something for little boys to see,” he said.

But the Web guardian kept track of the sites that users visited. After the Strangs left, Isaac got the address and downloaded the picture. He stared at it, stunned, and then quickly saved it in his private folder.

He looked at it again now, a side shot of a man kneeling on a patch of dirt, genuflecting toward the front of an unpainted cinder-block church just visible on the left side of the picture. The superb resolution showed the ironed creases in his black trousers and the crispness of his white button-down shirt. His chocolate brown hands rested on the front of his thighs, and his head was bent. He could have been praying, except he wasn’t.

He was being beheaded.

Standing immediately beyond him, facing the camera but looking down on the kneeling man, another man wearing baggy athletic shorts and a soiled T-shirt had just swung a long machete through the kneeling man’s neck. The standing man’s skin was a deep blue-black, glistening with perspiration. His thick arm muscles bulged with the power of the killing stroke.

This JPEG image had caught the precise moment when the blade of the machete, having sliced through skin, bone, arteries, veins, muscle, and gristle, was exiting the bottom of the kneeling man’s throat.

The machete-wielding man was a Hutu, and the man he was killing was a Tutsi. Isaac vaguely recalled something about genocidal atrocities of which this picture was supposed to be proof. But it hardly looked like an atrocity at all. The Tutsi’s hands were unbound, the bend of his neck was unforced—a man, possibly the pastor of the church, submitting without protest to a foreordained fate. On the Hutu’s face was no murderous rage, merely the concentration of a man intent on doing his job as best he could.

The edge of the blade had been honed to such sharpness that the strong sun flashed along the metal like a line of silver. The Hutu had cut so precisely that the Tutsi’s head still appeared attached to his body. Where the blade had entered was marked by only a little notch of flesh, with a thin line of blood.

The photo was accompanied by a Webmaster’s notation:
Cool photo. Maybe a bit disappointing for you Gore Phreaks. You’d think with a little tape and a little glue, the guy’d be walking around again.

On a wire stretching from a crooked pole by the church
hunched three crows, their beaks sharp enough to impale the eyes of a decapitated head.

Isaac thought of Imam Ali.

A few kids entered the computer section just then, startling Isaac. He quickly shut down the Compaq and headed over to the common sitting area of the library.

Rhyan Strang sat at the back corner table, reading an archaeological magazine that he had brought to school with him. David Duizen, another ninth grader who boarded, entered the library for study period, late as usual. He sat down next to Rhyan. “Hey, Rhyan, explain to me again the theory of evolution,” he whispered loudly enough so the other kids could hear, an earnest, thirsty-for-knowledge expression on his ruddy face. “Is it the survival of the fittest, or is it the survival of the fattest?” He poked a finger into Rhyan’s pudgy arm and grinned.

“Well, David,” Rhyan said, turning a page of the magazine without looking up, “if Wonobo ran out of food, I’d survive longer than you would, that’s for sure.”

“No wonder, with all that extra padding you’ve got.”

“Nope. I’d survive because I know how to live off roots and snakes and spiders and scorpions and cicadas and grubs. Grubs are pretty tasty if you like squishy things. You roast them up on a fire and the skin gets hard, but when you bite into them, the insides squirt out. They’re very nutritious. You can live on grubs for a long time. Studies have been done—”

“All right, all right,” David said. “Grubs, jeez.”

Rhyan smiled and continued reading his magazine.

The lunch recess bell rang. Isaac ran home. Ruth had prepared a rice curry with a fiery hot
sambal
. She was just on her way out for her noon break. As she always did before she left the house, she unclasped the thin gold necklace and cross that she wore when working. She folded it in a handkerchief and stuffed the wad down into the bosom of her blouse. She took no chances with the increasingly abundant and brazen purse snatchers.

Isaac said, “Ibu Ruth, do you know anything about Tuan Guru Haji Abdullah Abubakar?”

She turned to face him, her eyes flared in surprise. Then they narrowed. “The Tuan Guru. Who doesn’t? To him, you are an infidel. Either you convert and become a Muslim right there on the spot, or”—Ruth leaned closer and whispered—“or he’ll cut your head off and put it on a pole for other infidels to see.”

Isaac’s mouth opened. Absent from Ruth’s voice was the telltale tone of truth-stretching that adults used when saying scary things to kids. She patted Isaac’s cheek with her free hand. “This isn’t something for a boy like you to fret about. You’re safe enough here.” At that she left.

Typical grown-up
, Isaac thought.
Get you all worried, and then tell you not to fret.

Isaac loved curry and sambal, but he was in a hurry. He quickly fixed himself a sloppy peanut butter sandwich and raced out of the house, not bothering to clean up the mess he had left behind.

Rhyan and Sairah sat side by side at their usual table under the flame tree. Isaac sat down across from them. They stared at him without speaking. His courage nearly failed. He tried to think of
something to say to break the ice. “I’ve been wondering why you are going to school here and not at the international one in Surabaya.”

“It was our choice,” Sairah said, civilly enough. “We would have had to board there. Surabaya would have been so boring. We enjoy working with our parents on their digs.”

Surabaya was to Isaac the world’s second most exciting city, the first being Manhattan, where his grandfather Butch Williams lived in a brownstone building. During the Williamses’ recent vacation in the States, Isaac had visited his grandpa Butch as much as he could, partly because he enjoyed the stories the former secretary of state loved to tell, but mostly because Manhattan had lots and lots of people to make up for the eerie lack of them in Connecticut.

Around a mouthful of goopy bread, Isaac asked the question that he’d really sat down here to ask. “Is it true what you said about eating grubs and snakes and all that gross stuff?”

Rhyan took a bite of his tuna fish sandwich. “Gross?” he said. “A lot of it is delicious.”

“Especially barbecued field rats,” Sairah said.

“You’re kidding,” Isaac said. The way Sairah smiled at him, with those owlish eyes of hers looking quite carnivorous, he thought that perhaps she wasn’t. “Hey, Rhyan, I’ve got something to show you.”

“What’s that, Isaac?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Then why do you want to show it to me, if it’s a secret?”

“I mean, it’s a secret thing that we’re not supposed to know
about. But if I show you, you have to teach me how to eat grubs.”

Rhyan laughed, the first time that Isaac could remember hearing him laugh.

Isaac said, “It’s a pretty cool secret.”

Rhyan glanced at his sister.

“Let’s humor the little genius,” she said.

They quickly finished their lunch and slipped over to the tangerine trees, Isaac leading the way. The Strangs followed single file in the humid shade to the wall. Isaac pointed. “Somebody’s made a secret gate,” he said. He undid the latch and pushed the gate open an inch.

“Cool,” Sairah said.

Rhyan moved in front of Isaac and opened the gate wide enough to stick his head through.

Isaac grabbed Rhyan’s arm. “We shouldn’t go out.”

“Who made this?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s fresh oil and everything. Does your father know about this, Isaac?”

“Nobody knows about this except whoever made it and us.”

Rhyan tugged his arm loose and stepped through the hole. His passage created a vortex that tugged Isaac along so that before he knew it, he, too, was beyond the wall and standing in the patch of scrawny bamboo. He wasn’t breaking any rules; it just happened—one of those mysterious quantum events where you could find yourself anywhere in the universe. Sairah crowded up behind him.

“Are there any grubs here in the bamboo you could eat?” Isaac asked.

Rhyan, his nose wrinkled against the smell, laughed. “Sautéed in piss? You kidding?”

Isaac persisted. “But if you found one, how would you know if it was poisonous or not?”

Rhyan shrugged. “You bring along a sister to try it.”

Sairah swung a fist at her brother.

“No, really,” Isaac said.

“First rule, if you’re allergic to shrimp or dust or chocolate, never eat any critter raw. Second rule, avoid any critter that is brilliantly colored. That’s evolution’s warning not to mess with them. Third rule, take a nibble and wait at least six hours to see what happens.”

“Could you show me how to cook a grub sometime?”

“Nothing to it. Fire. Grub. Eat. If you’re hungry enough, you won’t be fussy, I tell you.”

They filed back through the gate. Rhyan latched it shut. “I wonder if we should tell somebody about this,” he said.

“No,” Isaac said.

“Something isn’t right about this, though. What if some Muslim fanatic leads his army through here?”

Isaac hadn’t thought of that. He should have thought of that, he realized, as the stern visage of the Tuan Guru filled his mind. It was something to worry about, all right. “No,” he said after a moment. “Don’t tell.”

Rhyan studied Isaac. “Okay,” he said. “You’re the one who sleeps here at night. Not us.”

The day’s last class was Indonesian culture. The classroom’s overhead fans sluggishly stirred the air around twelve wooden desks. These teak desks had been made years ago by Wonobo’s finest cabinetmaker, now deceased and his business gone to plywood. They bore the markings inflicted on them by years of doodling students, the hieroglyphs of the American Academy of Wonobo, hearts and arrows and unknown initials, loops and figures. Isaac had left his own mark in the left rear desk, surreptitiously carved only last year, an all-seeing, almond-shaped eye.

When the class had settled in their seats, Mr. Suherman stood behind his desk. He held up a book. “Can anyone tell me what this is?”

“A Bible,” Slobert said. “New International Version.”

“That’s right.” He held up another book, with Arabic writing on the front. “Now, can anybody tell me what this is?”

Slobert frowned. The kids looked at one another. Isaac raised his hand. “It’s a Qur’an. The Muslim Scriptures.”

“That’s correct. We Muslims revere the Qur’an as much as you Christians do your Bible.”

“Yeah, but the Qur’an is wrong,” Slobert said. He pronounced it “Core-ann.”

Mr. Suherman arched his eyebrows. “Do you know what is in the Qur’an, Robert? Quote me a verse. Arabic is best, but an English translation is fine.”

Slobert shifted uneasily. “Don’t know any.”

“Don’t argue beliefs out of ignorance, Robert, for that surely leads to enmity.”

Slobert colored, staring down at his hands.

Mr. Suherman said, “Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation. To understand its various cultures, most of which are Islamic, it is necessary to understand Islam, both the religion and the history of it. And the beginning of Islam is actually recorded in the Bible.” He handed Slobert the Bible and asked him to read Genesis 16. Slobert reluctantly did so, the story of Sarah and Abraham, how Sarah had borne Abraham no children and so gave her maidservant Hagar to him to build a family. Hagar became pregnant, and Sarah grew jealous, despite the fact that this had been her plan. Hagar was afraid of Sarah, but God reassured her of His will. Hagar bore a son whom Abraham named Ishmael.

“And now Genesis 21,” Mr. Suherman said. Slobert dutifully continued, reading aloud the story of how Sarah finally conceived and bore her own son, Isaac, when Abraham was one hundred years old. She then demanded that Abraham send away the slave woman Hagar and her fourteen-year-old son, Ishmael. Abraham did so. When Ishmael was near death in the desert, God heard Hagar’s and Ishmael’s cries and rescued them, making a promise.

“Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.’” Mr. Suherman repeated the verse that Slobert had read. “And that nation is, through the blessed prophet Muhammad, the great nation of Islam.”

“Sheesh,” Slobert muttered.

Mr. Suherman ignored him. For the rest of the period he presented the pre-Muhammad history of the Arab peoples, a bunch of idolatrous, feuding tribes.

Isaac listened with intense interest. Ishmael and Isaac. Ismail and Isak. Of course he’d been aware of the coincidence, but that was all it was. Coincidence. But now, jeez, it was like he and Ismail were the Bible story come to life!

Slobert, making a show of being bored, sprawled in his chair. He sneered at Isaac’s absorbed attention. “Teacher’s pet,” he whispered.

When the bell rang, Mr. Suherman said, “Tomorrow, the birth and life of the blessed prophet Muhammad.”

Isaac lingered to ask Mr. Suherman if he’d gone to see Ismail’s parents. Isaac hadn’t had the chance to ask earlier during his Esperanto lesson, for his teacher had been summoned out of the room by Miss Augusta to help her plan next semester’s curriculum. Mr. Suherman told Isaac now that not only had he visited the Trisnos, but Ismail was already back home.

Isaac skipped out into the hallway, hugely relieved. Slobert, lounging beyond the doors, said to the others, “Are we in an Islam class now? Maybe Miss Augusta should know about this.”