The Flame Tree (8 page)

The younger dorm children were grouped in one block behind the Williamses, with dorm parents Aunt Janice and Uncle Jimmy keeping an eye on them. The older dorm kids sat together in their own group halfway down the right side of the church.

There was no formal opening. The song leader moved along from chorus to chorus without a break, as Miss Jane adeptly kept up on the organ, and soon all the congregation was loudly singing along. The Batak lawyer sang the loudest.

But even a Singspiration needs a short homily. The song leader nodded his head at Reverend Biggs, sitting in the front row. He rose and made his way to the pulpit, Pastor Cornelius following behind him to do the translation into Indonesian of Reverend Biggs’s talk. Both wore informal short-sleeved batik shirts. The congregation quieted to expectant silence.

Reverend Biggs did not speak immediately, swinging his gaze across the congregation. The hush deepened.

Reverend Biggs opened his mouth and thundered, “Who are you?”

The congregation shifted in startled surprise. But the reverend was not talking to them—he was addressing somebody in the back of the church whom Isaac couldn’t see. A lot of somebodies, with harsh male voices, making quite a commotion, accompanied by gasps and rapid scraping of chairs as though people were trying to get out of the way.

Heads in the congregation whipped around. More gasps of shock bubbled up to the ceiling fans.

Ruth sounded the loudest and most panicked alarm. Her face blanched. Her trembling hands flew to her neck to take off her necklace.

Too late.

Tanto darted into view below Isaac and grabbed her forearm.
He carried a scythe, the tip of which hovered at her neck. He was dressed in a sarong, a Nahdlatul Umat Islam T-shirt, and a black peci cap.

Other men streamed down the aisles. They were all dressed like Tanto. They carried iron bars, wooden clubs, and scythes. The worshippers on the aisle ends of the pews shrank inward, away from the armed intruders.

Ruth shrilled, “No, this is mine. I worked hard for this—”

Tanto shouted, “Shut up, you apostate bitch.” He and Ruth fought over her jewelry. She was fierce and sharp-clawed in her effort to keep her gold, but Tanto overpowered her and shoved her down onto the pew. He yanked the chain off her neck and was no more careful with the earrings. Isaac noticed a drip of blood on her left lobe.

“You thief!” Ruth shrieked. “You pig!”

Tanto knocked her on the head with the scythe’s handle. “I should use the other end and slit your throat,” he said. “One day I will. Your day of death will come, you apostate dog.”

Ruth began weeping. “My gold, my gold, give me back my gold.”

Except for Ruth’s sobbing, the congregation had fallen into a stunned, disbelieving silence. Reverend Biggs found his voice. He roared again, “In the name of Lord God Almighty, who are you to disturb the gathering of His people?”

Pastor Cornelius leaned forward to the microphone and asked more quietly in Indonesian, “Who are you? What is the meaning of this?”

Tanto jumped up onto the podium and shouted in Indonesian into the pastor’s face, “Who are we? We are the Muslims, the rightful citizens of Wonobo.” He turned and said to the congregation, “We are not rioters. We are not looters. We are not arsonists. We are not murderers. We are the citizens of Wonobo. And we are hungry, our land stolen from us, the sweat of our labor buying us nothing except cassava roots to eat.” He pointed, gesturing from left to right. “You are not Muslims. You have no right to live in the territory that belongs to Allah’s people. You deserve death by the sword, but Allah is merciful. You can live here if you pay
jizyah
, the tax of the infidels, to the Tuan Guru. This is why we are here. We are here to collect the tax that is long overdue.”

Isaac scanned each intruder’s face and blew relieved air when he did not see Imam Ali. He did see scruffy Udin lurking in the back.

“This is a holy sanctuary,” Reverend Biggs said in English, striding forward toward Tanto. “You are desecrating the house of the Lord.”

Tanto raised his scythe. Cornelius rushed forward and stepped between the two men. He whispered urgently to Reverend Biggs. The reverend closed his eyes and began to pray, his lips moving.

Tanto said, “We are not here to hurt anyone, but we will if you resist. We are here to collect the tax.”

The men in the aisles held open black plastic garbage bags. The Batak lawyer shot to his feet. “This is illegal! This is extortion! You have a greater duty to Allah to obey the laws of this country and—”

One of the intruders jabbed the sharpened end of his wooden stave into the lawyer’s neck. He used the tip to guide the man back down into his seat.

Meimei cowered between Mary Williams and her mother. Mary had a protective arm over the girl. The other Chinese Christians, knowing that if anyone were to be singled out for harsh treatment it would be one of them, were deathly silent and pallid.

Udin stepped closer to Mary Williams’s pew and leered at Meimei. Mary seemed to swell. She rose off the pew, her eyes ablaze in such aroused warning that Udin backed off.

From behind Isaac came the
click-click-click
of a rotary phone being dialed. He had forgotten about the telephone up here. Herdi whispered for the police.

Graham Williams stood up and addressed Tanto in level, measured words. “And how will this tax you propose to collect be spent? How will it be accounted for?”

“Shut up,” Tanto said.

Gideon Wira not only bounced to his feet, but stepped out into the aisle, his round face red with anger. “How dare you talk to Dr. Williams like that! Don’t you know what he and the hospital physicians and staff have done for you? Don’t you realize the sacrifices they have made for the poor and needy of Wonobo and all of this province? Isn’t that more than enough tax? In whose name do you speak, anyway? You do not represent Wonobo, we are as much citizens of Wonobo as you!”

A murmur rose from members of the congregation. Tanto
reacted instantly. “You Chinese
kafir
,” he said, jumping down and striding toward Gideon. “The Tuan Guru has no place in his kingdom for usurers of shaitan such as you.” He swung his scythe by the handle, the blade slicing horizontally through the air.

Isaac, watching with wide mouth and even wider eyes from the narrow balcony, thought that he was going to witness a decapitation right here in the house of the Lord. Gideon’s head would topple off his body, a great gout of blood spraying from his neck in all directions as the torso stumbled about, hands jerking in lifeless motion.

Gideon calmly held up a hand, and the metal blade of Tanto’s scythe stopped and quivered in the air. Gideon raised his voice and paraphrased Jesus’ words in his own unique style: “Don’t keep yourself treasures on earth, worthless rust and thieves to steal them, but put them in heaven, safe they are there, where your treasure is where your heart is.”

Then he began singing.

He sang loud and clear the lyrics of a familiar hymn: “Rejoice in the Lord always.” As he sang he tugged off his gold Rolex and pulled out his wallet, which he handed over to Tanto, who took them with surprise, almost suspicion. Gideon continued to sing. “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.”

The raiders looked at one another bemusedly, some even nervously.

Gideon sang even more enthusiastically, pumping his arms like a choir director. His wife, Ruby, took off her watch, earrings, and necklace and donated them to Tanto as well.

The Batak lawyer took up the chorus, and then several others joined in. Within moments, the whole church was singing and rejoicing and gladly handing over their watches, their jewelry, their purses and wallets. The rafters of the church vibrated with the booming voices. “Rejoice! Rejoice! And again I say rejoice.”

The gold wedding bands of all the married congregants were freely given. The bag man had gotten to the schoolkids, and they were behaving as if this were a lark, singing songs to the Lord and giving alms to the poor. Dave Duizen stripped off his round black sports Seiko and told the guy, who probably had never gone swimming in his life, “Waterproof down to a thousand meters, man.” Slobert handed over not only his Nintendo Game Boy, but also a spare game cartridge from his other front pocket.

This was the most unlikely, the most joyous, the most glorious tithe that this house of the Lord had ever given.

Tanto stood at the front, frowning with more than a touch of confusion at all these people singing and happily handing over their valuables.

Behind Isaac somebody said, “I want your shoes.”

Isaac turned. Ismail stood at the top of the stairs to the balcony.

“I want your shoes,” Ismail said again, pointing down at Isaac’s new Reeboks. He stared at Isaac with eyes so alien and hostile that it was as though the Ismail whom Isaac had known, with whom he had flown kites and stalked the cane fields and hunted for treasure, was someone else, that this person in front of him was an imposter who at any moment was going to pull
the skin off his head and reveal the green creature underneath.

Isaac unlaced his Reeboks and took them off. Ismail snatched them from his hands and darted back down the stairs.

The robbers left swiftly, bags slung over their shoulders. Isaac pressed his face against the small window in the wall. Figures flittered across the footbridge and down the street, among them a boy wearing white Reeboks with red trim that flashed away into the darkness.

The police arrived fifteen minutes later. Aunt Janice and Uncle Jimmy escorted the children back to the dorm, but at the request of Lieutenant Nugroho, the other adults stayed to give statements. Ruth needed no prompting. Upon spotting the first policeman, she began screeching out Tanto’s name and his address and other salient and less salient and some outright insulting facts about him. She demanded that the police lock up Tanto for life for stealing her jewelry and to take off his balls for threatening to take off her head. This she said in Javanese, so it was only Isaac among the expatriates who understood.

Mary Williams told him to go home. Once at the house Isaac lay on his back on the living-room sofa, his arm draped over his eyes. A lethargy had soaked into his muscles and an apathy into his spirit. He’d walked home barefoot, and while the soles of his feet were Javanese and tough enough to take the rough asphalt, each step was like Ismail spitting into his face.

Who am I? What am I?

The phone rang. Isaac let it ring, but it wouldn’t quit. “All
right, all right,” he shouted. He snatched up the phone. “What?” he barked.

A click of a long-distance connection, and then a clipped voice said, “Hello, Isaac, can you hear me?”

The shock of hearing this voice in this house made him exclaim, “Grandpa, is that you?”

“I need to speak to your father.”

Isaac’s shock expanded. His grandfather and father had not spoken to each other for years. “You want to speak to
Dad?
”

“Immediately. His cell phone is not on, and neither is your mother’s.”

Isaac heard in the background of his grandfather’s voice screams and shouts and frantic voices at runaway speeds that he recognized as CNN talking heads reporting on breaking news. “That’s because they’re at church. They don’t take them to church. What’s going on, Grandpa?”

“You’ll find out soon enough. Go. Get. Your. Father.”

Isaac was now astonished and not a little afraid. This wasn’t Grandpa’s voice; this was the voice of Butch Williams, former secretary of state, a forbidding glacier of a man. “He’s still at the church. There was a raid by some Muslim fanatics—”

“What?”

“Yeah, these guys came in with sickles and poles—”

“Isaac, do whatever you can to get hold of your father immediately, and have him call me at once on my secure line. At once, do you hear? I cannot overly stress how urgent this is.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll phone back every ten minutes.” His grandfather hung up.

Isaac turned on the television and clicked to CNN. What he saw was at first bewildering. Then the shock struck like a body slam, the most awful, terrible, fascinating thing being the people who jumped to escape the fire, kicking and flailing, falling one hundred stories. The remote fell from his hands. He ran as fast as he could on his bare feet back to the church. The police were still taking statements. His father was talking to Lieutenant Nugroho out in the church foyer. Isaac was screaming even before he crossed the footbridge, “Dad, Dad, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. They flew planes right into the World Trade Center and the towers collapsed and twenty thousand people are dead!”

T
HE PHONE IN THE house rang constantly that night. Isaac listened in using the upstairs cordless. The conversation between his dad and Grandpa Butch was a terse one about Muslim militants and personal safety that ended up with Graham Williams shouting, “Where is safe? Where? New York, even Connecticut, is no safer now than Wonobo is. I don’t care what intelligence information you have. We’re not leaving.”

The celebration at the Al-Furqon Mosque started around midnight. The speakers blasted festive Arabic music, interspersed with cries of “
Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!
” The celebrants danced and clapped and shouted with a glee that needed no amplification.

Isaac wondered if Ismail was right now dancing in his stolen Reeboks, chanting “
Allahu akbar
,” his lively face all bright and sparkly.

Reverend Biggs paced the living room, his countenance shining with an impotent fury. He clenched his fist and shook it at the unseen mosque across the street. “What kind of monsters are they to cheer such an insane crime? Murder done in the name of Islam, murder celebrated by Muslims.” He stopped pacing, faced the direction of the mosque, put his right hand on his heart, and sang, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is
trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…”

Graham Williams made a phone call to Lieutenant Nugroho. A few minutes later the power on the other side of the street went out, streetlamps blinking to darkness and speakers falling silent.

“World’s changed,” Graham said. “This is one of those moments. History divided. A before, an after.”

Isaac tried to understand, but he just didn’t get it. The whole thing was terrible. But why was everyone taking it so hard? Terrible things happened all the time. When he woke up on Wednesday morning, life for him wasn’t a whole lot different than it had been Tuesday, except he was short one friend and a pair of Reeboks and had a headache.

After a breakfast of cereal that he ate alone, Isaac trudged across the back lawn to school. He stepped through the hedge and halted in astonishment. Overnight the whole crown of the flame tree had bloomed a bright crimson red. Isaac stared, squeezed his eyes shut, stared again. After having watched those airplanes crashing into the WTC towers and exploding in fireballs, the sight of the tree unseasonably—unnaturally—in blossom was more than disquieting. He told himself that it was yesterday’s branch cutting that had catalyzed the blooming. The tree was protesting the circumcision of its foreskin branches.

He climbed the tree, barely having the energy to reach his perch. In the glassy morning swelter the mosque was quiet. Five lads in Nahdlatul Umat Islam T-shirts were sprawled asleep on the mosque veranda, possibly drunk, considering the several unlabeled green bottles strewn in the dirt. Two policemen with first
private stripes on their starchy brown uniforms stood in front of the mosque’s fence, hot and bored.

The entrance to the hospital looked like a transplanted flower shop. Dozens of wreaths with varying expressions of grief and condolences for the Americans’ tragedy were stacked beside the gate and under the hospital sign and were beginning to spread down the sidewalk. Some hung from the new barbed wire up on top of the wall.

A public bemo pulled over to a stop just beyond the hospital gates. An old man with a white haji’s cap wobbled out of the vehicle, helped by two attentive young women, perhaps his granddaughters, wearing
jilbabs
and full-sleeved, black dresses. One of the women carried a small bouquet of common flowers wrapped in newspaper and a small, hand-inked sign on a stick that said simply in Indonesian,
WE GRIEVE WITH YOU
. They guided the old haji onto the sidewalk. He took the bouquet, and with one of the young women holding on to his arm, he painfully bent to place the wreath and the sign in front of the others. He struggled erect and, shaking off the woman’s hand, lifted his own, palms up, in the gesture of Muslim prayer, while the two women respectfully bowed their heads. One wiped away tears from her cheeks. The old man finished his prayer and returned to the waiting bemo.

A special assembly was called for first period. The auditorium was more crowded than Isaac ever remembered, with many of the hospital’s staff attending. Occasional sniffles broke the deep silence, as hushed as at any funeral service. The first and second graders were agog with wide-eyed wonder.

Ibu Hajjah Yanti from the hospital laboratory and Mr. Suherman were among the last to arrive, shortly after Isaac. Ibu Yanti spotted Isaac standing at the back. She went over to him and gave him a hug, kissing him on both cheeks, the starched forehead fold of her jilbab scraping across his nose. “I’m so sorry, so sorry,” she said. Tears gathered in the corner of her eyes. “So terrible.” All the seats were taken, but in the back row Mr. Patter stood and offered his to Ibu Yanti, who blinked away her tears and smiled gratefully before sitting down.

Mr. Suherman walked forward to offer his condolences to Graham Williams and Miss Augusta before returning to stand beside Isaac at the back.

Reverend Biggs rose from the front row and faced the audience. His jaw lifted resolutely, his shoulders broadened, his voice deepened. “We are on a crusade against those terrorists who slaughter innocent people and their supporters who celebrate murder. We are in a holy war against the evil forces of fear and darkness that come in the name of Islam.”

Slobert yelled from his middle-row seat, “America should bomb them.”

Ibu Yanti abruptly stood and left the auditorium. Her arctic passage attracted scant attention. Mr. Suherman regarded Reverend Biggs with a mild astonishment.

Graham Williams stood up from his chair. The dark circles under his eyes looked as though they’d dug all the way into his cheekbones. “I’d like to amend that a little, Brother Maynard. We all know that most Muslims are good Muslims. Each one of us
here has good Muslim friends in Wonobo. This is not the time to back away in suspicion. Condemnation. If anything, this is the time to be deepening our friendships. Affirming our common humanity. Sharing our sorrow. Together seeking justice.”

Most nodded in agreement, including Mr. Suherman. Reverend Biggs’s silvered head was not one of them. Isaac noticed brimstone burning under his skin. Without further song or speech, he asked Miss Augusta to close the devotional with a prayer for the victims of the terrorist attacks and their families. Mr. Suherman lifted his hands with open palms upward, staring down at a spot on the green cement floor beyond his polished shoes. His lips moved silently.

After the devotional, Dr. Azakian, the hospital’s psychiatrist, remained behind in the auditorium with the junior high students. Miss Augusta told Isaac to join them. Dr. Azakian pulled one of the folding chairs to the foot of the stage and told everyone to gather in a semicircle. Isaac sat in the outermost arc of students.

Dr. Azakian wore a long-sleeved powder blue silk shirt and a bow tie printed with tiny Komodo dragons. He sat on his chair with his right leg crossed over his left, his slim hands draped over his round little belly. He had soft brown eyes that drooped at the corners and rarely blinked. They fastened themselves on other eyes in a poultice of attention that drew out of people more than what they had intended to reveal.

So it was with the students. The discussion circled like a slowly forming whirlpool, centering itself closer and closer on the awful
images of people jumping to their deaths. The tragedy as a whole, from the planes crashing to the buildings coming down, had been broadcast as a generic sort of disaster. The falling people had made it horribly human.

“The guy was doing a swan dive with his head down and his arms back like this,” Slobert said, standing up to illustrate. “I mean, can you imagine standing there on the edge and the fire coming closer and closer? I don’t think—” There Slobert stopped, blinking rapidly, breathing harshly. “We oughta nuke ’em,” he said.

Isaac wondered what Ismail had thought when he saw the man coming down like a delta-winged fighter plane.

“Isaac? What do you think?”

Isaac was startled. Dr. Azakian had fastened his poultice eyes upon him.

“Yeah, Isaac, what do you think?” Slobert said. “You’re the one who loves these Mussies.”

Dr. Azakian said softly, “Robert, that’s enough. Isaac?”

Isaac started to shake his head and then stopped and sat up straight. “The other day somebody wanted me to convert to Islam. And, of course, I can’t become a Muslim. So if I don’t want to convert to Islam, then why should I want Muslims to convert to Christianity?”

All the other kids stared at Isaac with varying expressions of shock. Slobert, his eyes and mouth gashes on his plump face, hissed, “Mussie lover.”

Dr. Azakian said, “Robert, one more ‘Mussie’ and you are
seeing Miss Augusta.” His gentle gaze and voice didn’t change on the outside, but Slobert sullenly ducked his head. Dr. Azakian turned his attention again to Isaac. “Tell me exactly why you can’t become a Muslim.”

Isaac, already regretting that he’d spoken up, said shortly, “Because I’m a Christian.”

“You mean you believe in Jesus Christ.”

Isaac nodded.

Dr. Azakian leaned back in his chair with a little shrug. “I don’t see why that would stop you from becoming a Muslim if you wanted to. I don’t see why you can’t believe in Muhammad at the same time you believe in Jesus Christ.”

The kids, Slobert included, now gaped at Dr. Azakian. He raised his eyebrows and said, “Why are you all so surprised? You should know that true Christianity isn’t really a matter of beliefs. A lot of people believe in Jesus Christ, and it doesn’t do them a damn bit of good.” His use of the mild oath was deliberate, a titillating shock. He paused, looking at each child, ending with Isaac. “You see, Isaac, it’s
faith
in Jesus Christ that makes the difference. If you have
faith
in a living Christ, then, yes, I agree, it’s not possible to become a Muslim. Do you have faith in Christ, Isaac?”

“Yeah, Isaac,” Slobert said. “Do you?”

Isaac said stubbornly, “But you haven’t answered my question. Why can’t we let Muslims be Muslims?”

Dr. Azakian said, “But we do. We preach the gospel to the kingdoms because Jesus himself has commanded us to, but we
don’t force people to listen. We don’t save souls. The Holy Spirit does. God is almighty, omniscient; He calls whom He wills.”

Typical adult hand waving
, Isaac thought, but he didn’t say anything more.

When Isaac went home for lunch, Ruth still hadn’t shown up. His mom was in the study, crouched in front of the open safe, going through the family’s passports and documents.

Isaac didn’t have to ask what she was doing. The Williamses had been through this once before, several years ago when Suharto the Strongman had been toppled from power by widespread riots. The U.S. embassy had advised Americans to be ready to leave the country at a moment’s notice and to make sure such things as exit permits were up-to-date. Mary Williams had pretty much laughed off the embassy’s warning then, but she clearly wasn’t doing so now.

Isaac grew alarmed. “But Dad told Grandpa we’re staying,” he said.

“That’s just your father’s automatic feather ruffle,” his mom said. “He never agrees with your grandpa on anything, you know that.”

Isaac didn’t say anything.

His mom looked up at him. Her smile died. “Isaac, honey, your safety comes first. Even if we stay, we might put you in boarding school. Now, you want me to fix you some lunch?”

Boarding school? The thought made his stomach all sour, but he dutifully ate half a toasted cheese sandwich, one of his
mom’s hurried doctor specials. “Where’s Ruth?” he asked.

“Don’t know.” His mom put down her own uneaten sandwich, staring out to an inner horizon. “I should stop by her place.”

“She’s probably out tracking down Tanto to get back her jewelry,” Isaac said. “That seems to be all she cares about.”

His mother shot him a look. “She’s received several death threats over the past few months for apostatizing. She carries a burden that we don’t.”

During his seventh-period Esperanto lesson Isaac asked Mr. Suherman whether Muslims really did put backsliders to the sword. He was sitting beside Mr. Suherman, behind the teacher’s desk, the Esperanto lesson spread out before them. Mr. Suherman rotated in his swivel chair and stared out the window for such a long time that Isaac worried he’d unforgivably insulted his favorite teacher. But when Mr. Suherman at last swung back around, his smile was warm, his gaze gentle. “Even after growing up here, running around town with your Muslim friends, you can still ask me that question?”

Isaac said, “I haven’t thought about Islam as a religion until the last few days.”

“After yesterday I daresay that’s going to be true of the whole Western world,” Mr. Suherman said. He leaned forward, curiosity in his eyes. “What do you think about the terrorist attacks in America?”

Isaac opened his mouth to say what everyone else was saying—they were horrible, terrible, insane. But instead he said, in a small voice, “That’s far away from here. What’s worse is my best friend
Ismail telling me we can’t be friends anymore because he’s a Muslim and I’m a Christian.”

Saying those words was like lancing a festering heartsickness. Isaac found himself blurting out the whole story, all the way to Ismail taking the Reeboks, telling this Muslim teacher what he had not told his Christian elders or his parents. Mr. Suherman listened without interruption, his sympathy a pressure to Isaac’s pain, squeezing the core of it to the surface.

“And now my parents are thinking of sending me away to a boarding school,” Isaac said as he stared down at the desk, his voice cracking. Tears came, but this time he did not fight them. It was okay to weep in front of Mr. Suherman.

Mr. Suherman let him cry and, when the tears subsided to sniffles, reached out an arm and hugged Isaac close to his side. He murmured,
“Patro nia, kiu estas en la cxielo, Via nomo estu sanktigita. Veno Via regio, plenumigxu Via volo, kiel en la cxielo, tiel ankaux sur la tero.”
He released Isaac with a smile and said, “You know what that is? That’s the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer in Esperanto. I’m a Muslim, but I, too, pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” He plucked a couple tissues from the box on the desk and held them out.