The Rainbow Troops (8 page)

PAPILIO BLuMEI
, the captivating tropical black butterflies with blue-green stripes, visited the tips of the
filicium
leaves. Moments later, they were followed by other species: the pure clouded yellow butterfly and the Danube clouded yellow butterfly.

Only experts can tell the difference between the two similarly named species. Their Latin names, respectively, are
Colias crocea
and
Colias myrmidone
. To the untrained eye, both are equally flawless in their beauty, which is implied by their elegant names.

Unlike small birds with aggressive and exhibitionist dispositions, these mute creatures have a short lifespan and are completely unaware of their own beauty. And even though there were hundreds of them, the flutter of their wings and their sweet mouths were silent as they wandered about, creating a vision even more stunning than the Garden of Eden. Seeing them made me feel like writing poems.

Those butterflies played harmoniously, like a great reunion of angels from the heavens of different religions. If one carefully observed them, their every movement, no matter how slight, was moved by harmony's heartbeat. They were an orchestra of color with instinct as their conductor.

This afternoon, however, the heavenly butterflies weren't the only ones harmonizing. Listen.

"... may my fwag fwutter ..."

"... the howy, stuwdy, symbol ..."

"... waving! Mawching! Mawching!"

A Kiong was "singing" Ibu Sud's
Berkibarlah Benderaku—"May my Flag Flutter
"—as if he were a drill sergeant. It was painful to the ears.

While singing, he stared out the window and focused on the gourd vine on the low branches of the
filicium.
He didn't even glance at us. He betrayed the audience.

His ears seemed disconnected from his voice; their attention had been captured by the boisterous chatter of the stripe-winged, tiny prinia birds shouting over the buzz of female yellow-back beetles. A Kiong didn't even care about the range of his voice and didn't bother trying to sing onpitch. He also betrayed the very premise of musical notes.

Though to be fair, we weren't paying attention to him either. Lintang was engrossed in the Pythagorean Theorem. Harun had fallen asleep and was snoring. Samson was drawing a picture of a man lifting a house. Sahara was absorbed in embroidering calligraphic Arabic symbols on her crossstitch, which read
Kulil Haqqu Walau Kana Murron
, meaning "
Tell the truth, even when it's bitter
". Trapani was folding, unfolding and refolding his mother's handkerchief. Syahdan, Kucai and I were busy talking about the PN School kids' uniforms and our plan to hang the Koranic teacher's bike in the branches of the
bantan
tree. Only Mahar listened attentively to A Kiong's singing.

Bu Mus covered her face with her hands. She was trying very hard to hold back laughter as she listened to A Kiong's howling.

A Kiong finished. Bu Mus looked at me: My turn to take action.

After having been scolded by Bu Mus for always singing the song
Potong Bebek Angsa—
"
Chop the Goose's Neck
"—this time I decided to progress a little with a new song:
Indonesia Tetap Merdeka,
or
"Indonesia Forever Free
" by C. Simanjuntak. When I began to sing, Sahara looked up from her crossstitch and glared at me with blatant disgust. I ignored her insult and continued spiritedly.

"... Joyous cheers ... joy for all ..."

"... our country's been liberated ... Indonesia is free ..."

But as I sang, I jumped from octave to octave. I had no control, and there was absolutely zero harmony. I betrayed harmony.

Bu Mus couldn't take the urge to laugh. Tears ran as she shook in silent laughter. I tried hard to improve my sound, but the harder I tried, the stranger it sounded. This is what they mean by untalented.

I struggled to finish the song. My classmates had no sympathy for my suffering—they too were suffering from sleepiness, hunger and thirst in the midday heat. Their souls were further oppressed by my singing.

Bu Mus saved me by hastily asking me to stop before the great song was over. She looked to Samson.

Samson chose the song
Teguh Kukuh Berlapis Baja—
"
Strong, Firm, and Coated with Steel
"—also by C. Simanjuntak. The song was very fitting with Samson's gigantic body image. He sang it with an earsplitting voice as he bowed deeply and repeatedly stomped his feet.

"... Strong, firm, and coated with steel!"

"... chain of spirit tightly bound!"

"... upright fortress of Indonesia!"

But he also knew nothing about the concept of harmony, and he turned the beloved song into one we did not recognize. He betrayed C. Simanjuntak.

Before he could get through the first verse, Bu Mus asked him to return to his seat. Samson froze; he couldn't believe his ears.

"Why am I being asked to stop,
Ibunda
Guru?"

This is what they mean by untalented and oblivious.

To make a long story short, singing was the least promising subject for our class. Not one of us was able to sing, and for that reason, Bu Mus put singing class at the end of the day. Its purpose was to pass the minutes while we waited for
zuhur
— midday prayer, which marked the closing of the school day.

"We still have five minutes until the call to prayer. Hmm, we have time for one more," said Bu Mus. We were indifferent to this news. It was a languid afternoon. Now and again the stripe-winged prinias perched on the windowsill of our classroom, yelling as loud as they could and producing noises that made those with growling stomachs dizzy.

"Let's see ... who is next?" Bu Mus pondered. It fell on Mahar.

"Please come up to the front, my child. Sing a song while we wait for the
zuhur
call to prayer." Bu Mus returned to smiling in anticipation of yet another ridiculous performance by one of her students.

Up until this point, we had never heard Mahar sing. Whenever his turn came up, the call to prayer sounded and he never got a chance to perform.

We paid no attention when Mahar got up. He slung his rattan bag over his shoulder, already prepared to go home.

Once in front of the class, he did not sing his song of choice right away. He stared at us one by one. We were perplexed by his unusual behavior. His stare was long and full of meaning. He then turned to face Bu Mus and nodded with a small smile. After a while he drew his arms together over his chest like someone in prayer. We were saddened as we noticed the backs of Mahar's hands were oily like wax. He had scars all over his fingers and all of his fingernails were mangled. Since the second grade, Mahar worked after school as a coolie, grating coconuts at a Chinese produce stall. Hour after hour, until evening, he kneaded coconut leftovers, causing his hands to develop an oily appearance that never went away. The sharp blade on the grater spun quickly and sliced the tips of his fingers, making his fingernails deformed. The grater puffed out black smoke and had to be turned on by an adult tugging its handle repeatedly. The sound of it was harrowing, a sound of deprivation, hard work and a poor life without a choice. Mahar had to work to help his family survive. His father had already died and his mother was very ill.

"I shall sing a song about love,
Ibunda
Guru, an agonizing love to be exact ..."

My God! We never gave prologues like that, and we never sang songs of that theme. We usually sang three types of songs: nationalistic songs, religious songs in Arabic and children's songs.

What kind of song was this sweet-faced boy going to sing?
We all watched him. Sahara let go of her crossstitch. Harun woke up.

"This song tells the story of someone with a broken heart, his beloved sweetheart was stolen by his good friend ..."

He fell silent and stared out through the window, past the drifting clouds. Love is indeed cruel.

Bu Mus stared quizzically at Mahar. We were curious. Bu Mus, with a few poetic words, let him go ahead with his unusual song choice.

"The road to the field is winding Don't pass through the pine forest Sing your song Let me know your sorrow."

Mahar bit his lip, and gave a grimaced smile.

"Thank you,
Ibunda
Guru."

Mahar got ready. We waited in suspense and were blown away when he opened his rattan sack and pulled out an instrument: a ukulele!

The atmosphere was still. Slowly, Mahar began gingerly strumming the ukulele, an introduction that broke the silence like the rumbling of distant thunder. Mahar hugged the ukulele somberly. His eyes were shut and his face was wrought with emotion, pale from holding back feelings. Then, after a smooth prelude, he glided into the verses of the song with a slow tempo nuanced with anguish, but he sang with the loveliness of
andante maestoso
—words cannot describe its beauty.

"
I was dancing with my darling to the Tennessee Waltz when an old friend I happened to see
...

introduced her to my loved one, and while they were dancing
...
my friend stole my sweetheart from me
"

We gasped in awe. The song was none other than the famous
Tennessee Waltz
written by Anne Murray.

The vibration of Mahar's voice was flawless, and his total comprehension of the song was incredible; he actually looked as though he were suffering terribly from the loss of his beloved sweetheart. The rhythmic ukulele made the atmosphere all the more romantic.

Verse by verse, the song crept over the old wooden walls of our school, perched on the tiny
linaria
leaves like thistle crescent butterflies, and then drifted away under the thin clouds to the north. Mahar's pained voice penetrated the depths of our hearts. Whatever we had been working on—or not working on—before had been stopped. We were mesmerized, enchanted by the aura emanating from this handsome young character singing not just from his mouth, but from his soul, turning the song into a grand symphony. Sleepiness, hunger and thirst vanished. Even the yellow-backed beetles and their friends, the stripe-winged prinias, stopped their chatter to hear Mahar's song.

Mahar ended the song with a fade out and a tear drop.

"
I lost my little darling the night they were playing the beautiful Tennessee Waltz
"

We gave him a standing ovation for at least five minutes. Bu Mus was trying hard to hide the tears welling up in her eyes. That midday, in the month of July, in the peak of the dry season, while waiting for the
zuhur
call to prayer, before going home from school, a great artist was born in the poor Muhammadiyah School.

ONLY AFTER witnessing his performance of Anne Murray's song did we know who Mahar really was. All this time, he had been acting awkward, dressing eccentrically, talking nonsense and thinking strangely; we—unaware that all those quirks were reflections of his artistic talent—had deemed him a weird, bohemian boy. Our experience with Mahar is proof of the human tendency to focus on others' shortcomings instead of their virtues.

We now discovered that Mahar balanced out the ship of our school, which teetered to the left due to the pull of Lintang's left brain. Lintang's left brain and Mahar's overflowing right brain combined to create an artistic and intellectual set of goalposts in our classroom, and the existence of those goalposts made it impossible for us to be bored.

Lintang was very rational; Mahar was a daydreamer. Mahar was easily inspired by just about anything. Like Lintang, Mahar also was a true genius—just a different kind of genius. This kind of genius isn't easily understood by most people and is rarely considered "intelligent" by ordinary people's standards.

Lintang and Mahar were like a youthful Isaac Newton and Salvador Dali bantering back and forth, demonstrating their enticing brain power and eccentricity. Both were full of innovations and creative surprises. Because Lintang and Mahar sat across from each other, the rest of us often ended up looking left and right, back and forth, as if we were watching a ping-pong match. Sandwiched between them, we were like the dimwits challenged by Columbus to make an egg stand up straight. Without them, our class would have been nothing more than a bunch of deprived mining coolie kids trying to learn how to write in cursive on three-lined paper.

Once during free time between classes, Lintang got up in front of the class and drew a blueprint for how to make a boat from a sago tree leaf. The boat moved by a propeller connected to a motor, which had been taken from a tape recorder. It was powered by two batteries. He made mathematical calculations in order to manipulate the tape recorder motor to push the boat, and explained to us the fundamental laws of hydraulics. His calculation could estimate the speed of the boat based on its mass. I was spellbound by the little sago leaf boat spinning around in the bucket.

On another occasion he showed us a kite design and a glass-coated thread that would render us unbeatable in kite battles. The amazing thing was, he had many technical sketches and plans that remained raw. These seeds included his idea to lift heavy items from the bottom of the river, a plan for a strange building that defied the laws of architecture and civil engineering and, last but not least, a plan to make humans able to fly. Lintang himself did not yet possess enough knowledge to create the mathematical theorems and working papers to undergird and develop these crazy ideas.

After Lintang's recital, Mahar stole the stage. He bowed his head respectfully, as if he were a palace jester wanting to sing, should the king approve. Then he sweetly read some verses of poems about white birds in Tanjong Kelayang Beach, as well as parodies about Malays who suddenly became rich. He also played that remarkable ukulele. It could rock us to sleep.

Those two boys were both incredibly
rich
. We went to both of them with countless questions. Lintang obtained knowledge from Pak Harfan's book collection, and Mahar had artistic insight—plus he knew about music because he hung out with the local radio broadcasters from
Suara Pengejawantahan
(
The Voice of Manifestation
) AM
.

Because he was so imaginative, day by day, Mahar became an even bigger fan of unreasonable legends and all things smelling of the paranormal. One could ask him about ancient stories and Belitong's mythology, and he knew everything from the fairytale of the South China Sea Dragon to the story of the monkey-tailed king believed to have once ruled our island.

Mahar also was crazy about Bruce Lee. The walls of his house were covered with the kung fu master in various poses. He begged Bu Mus over and over again for permission to hang up Bruce Lee's most famous poster: Bruce Lee posed in a raging dragon move, eyes glaring, with a double stick as his weapon and three parallel scratches on his cheek because he had been clawed by his enemy with a tiger move. Bu Mus always rejected the absurd request.

Mahar firmly believed not only that aliens existed, but that they would one day come down to Belitong Island disguised as male hospital orderlies in charge of giving vaccinations at the PN clinic, school guards, muezzins at the alHikmah Mosque or soccer referees. Sometimes, Mahar was positively ridiculous. For instance, he assumed himself to be the chairman of the international paranormal association that would lead the fight of human beings against aliens using velvet leaves as weapons.

One evening, after a full day of heavy rains, a perfect rainbow stretched across the sky to the west, a half-circle shining brilliantly with seven rows of color.

The right end of the rainbow departed from the Genting Delta like a sparkling carpet. The left end was planted in the dense pine forest at the slopes of Selumar Mountain. The rainbow curved, resembling millions of maidens wearing colorful kebayas jumping down into a remote lake, hiding bashfully because of their beauty.

We soon invaded the
filicium
tree, climbing up and claiming our own separate branches. After every rain we climbed up the tree to watch the rainbows. Because of this habit, Bu Mus nicknamed us
Laskar Pelangi
.
Laskar
means warriors,
pelangi
means rainbow, so literally, Rainbow Troops.

The old tree became engulfed in boisterous commotion as we argued about our own individual assumptions regarding the magical panorama sweeping across East Belitong. Various versions of stories became vehicles for debate. The most entertaining version, of course, came from Mahar. We pressed him to tell the story. He acted shy and hesitant at first. The look in his eyes implied that
this is a dangerous story! You all won't be able to guard this highly sensitive information!

At first he remained mute, but after some serious consideration, he gave in—not because of our begging, but because of his own irresistible desire to show off.

"You know what, you guys?" he asked, while looking into the distance. "Rainbows are actually time tunnels!"

We transpired into silence. The whole atmosphere became hushed, overcome by Mahar's imagination. "If we were to succeed in crossing the rainbow, we would meet our ancient Belitong ancestors and the Sawang's predecessors."

Mahar immediately looked regretful, as if he had just unraveled a deep, dark family secret that had been kept for seven generations. He continued in a strained tone. "But you don't want to meet the primitive Belitong people or the Sawang's forefathers," he commanded in all seriousness.

"Why not, Mahar?" A Kiong asked fearfully.

"Because they were cannibals!"

A Kiong covered his mouth with his hands, and having let go, almost plummeted from his branch. Ever since the first grade, he was Mahar's faithful follower. He believed, with all of his soul, whatever Mahar said. He regarded Mahar as a master and spiritual advisor. The two of them had inducted themselves into the sect of collective foolishness.

Lintang patted Mahar on the back, appreciating his amazing tale, but smirking and faking a cough to disguise his laughter. We continued admiring the magnificence of the rainbow, this time without arguing. We did so in silence until the sun set.

The call for
magrib
prayer echoed among the high posts of stilted Malay homes, crying out from mosque to mosque. The time tunnel was swallowed by the night. We had been taught not to speak while the call to prayer sounded.

"Be quiet and listen attentively to the call to glory," our parents instructed.

We Malays generally are simple individuals who acquire life's wisdom from Koranic teachers and elders at the mosque after
magrib
prayer. That wisdom is taken from accounts from the prophets, the tale of Hang Tuah and
gurindam
rhymes. Ours is an old race. We have heard various definitions of our race, and there are some experts who say that Belitong Malays are not Malay.

We don't put much stock into that opinion for two reasons: Belitong people themselves don't understand such matters; and because we aren't eager to be primordial. To us, people all along the coast—from Belitong up to Malaysia—are Malays, based on a mutual obsession with peninsular rhythms, the beating of tambourines and rhyming. Our identity is not based on language, skin color, belief systems or skeletal structure. We are an egalitarian race.

I mused over Mahar's tale. More than being drawn in by the time tunnel, I was captivated by the part about the ancient peoples of Belitong.

Last week, when the sound system was being fixed, we went to the mosque in order to see the mess of cables, which had been called 'magic new-age objects'. While we were there, our 70-year-old muezzin told us a story that stunned me.

The story was about his great-grandfather who lived in a nomadic group, wandering the coasts of Belitong. They wore clothes of bark and ate by spearing animals or trapping them in tree roots. They slept on the branches of
santigi
trees to avoid being attacked by predatory creatures. During the full moon, they lit fires and worshiped the moon and the stars above. I got goosebumps thinking about how close our community was to primitive culture.

"We've been allied with the Sawangs for a long time. They were skilled sailors living in boats, sailing from island to island. In Balok Bay our ancestors traded mouse deer, rattan fruit, areca nuts and resin with salt made by Sawang women," the muezzin informed us.

Like fish living in an aquarium, we forgot about the water. After all these years living side by side with the Sawangs, we had no idea they were actually an anthropological phenomenon. Like the Chinese, Sawangs made up an important element of our heritage.

Next to the Malays—and even more so next to Chinese—the Sawangs have a very different appearance. They are like the native Australian inhabitants, the Aborigines: dark skin, strong jaws, deep eyes, thin foreheads, Teutoniclike cranial structures and broom-like hair.

PN employed the males of this tribe as coolies to haul sacks of tin from washing stations to ferries in ports. The ferries would then bring the tin to melting factories on Bangka Island. The women were employed as tin sack weavers. The men and women occupied the lowest stratum among laborers in Belitong, but they were happy because they got paid every Monday. It was hard to say if the money would last until Wednesday—not a drop of stinginess ran in Sawang blood. They spent like there was no tomorrow and borrowed like they'd live forever.

Because of their money management problems, the Sawangs often became the victims of negative stereotypes in the circles of the Malay majority and the Chinese. All bad things were, without a doubt, associated with them. These attempts at discrediting the Sawangs reflected the character of a minority of Malays and Chinese afraid to lose jobs because of their own reluctance to perform hard labor. History has shown the Sawangs are a people of integrity, living exclusively within their own community, not sticking their noses in others' business and employing a high work ethic. They never got into trouble with the law. More than that, they never ran from their debts.

The Sawangs were quite happy to marginalize themselves. For them, life consisted of a foreman willing to pay them once a week and hard jobs that no other race was willing to do. They didn't recognize the concept of
power distance
because there was no hierarchy in their culture. People who didn't understand their culture would consider them impolite. The one and only exalted one among them was the head of the tribe, usually a shaman, and the position wasn't hereditary.

PN placed them in a long house with partitions. Thirty families lived there. There's no accurate record of their origins. It's quite possible that they are unmapped by anthropologists. Do policy makers know that their birthrate is so low and their mortality rate so high that there are only a few families of pure-blooded Sawangs left? Will their beautiful language be swept away by the waves of time?