Little Prayers

"This is my family," Lina smiles and shrugs as she rearranges the already overburdened table to make room for a large bowl of steaming soto ayam.

"They remind me in so many ways of mine," I say, feeling like I'm about to sit down to a Neufeld Thanksgiving feast. Of course here the mashed potatoes are fried in croquettes and called pecel, the gravy is chili sauce and there is no wine, but there is much laughter and smiling as I try to use my smattering of bahasa to express my gratitude for their hospitality.

I can't think of a prayer more sacred or profound than opening your home and generously sharing it with a complete stranger. And so much of peace and civilization depends on even the smallest of these meditations, a reminder that we are all connected throughout time and across cultures, to sit and share this meal seems to me a significant act of remembering singular wholeness.

"Aku sudah kenyang," I protest when offered seconds. I really am still full from the three fresh geblongs I ate for breakfast. I haven't eaten anything remotely bread like in over five months so to eat only one deep fried pastry from cassava dough and rolled in brown palm sugar was beyond the limits of my self control, much to Ibu's delight.

I look out the cafe window at the water evaporating off the rice fields in the midday heat, blurring the mountains that rise up behind them. This is Lina's cafe, across from the flight school where she teaches English. Her mother, Ibu, cooks and runs the cafe while she teaches and  I catch Ibu watching me eye the scenery.

"They are planning on turning that into a runway," Lina tells me following my gaze. "By next spring there will be only planes leaving and landing."

"Pave paradise to put up a parking lot," I say, though the reference is completely lost here.

"What can be done?" she replies. "It's a flight school," she adds shrugging pragmatically.

After dinner we say farewell to Ibu and I hop onto the back of Lina's scooter. She and Indah drive us to the traditional market where the stalls are filled with baskets of chilies, cilantro, lentils and rice. I buy a pint of strawberries for fifty cents and hurry past the overpowering mouldy sea scent radiating from the rows of fish sellers waving lobsters and mackerels in the air. There are baskets of chicken feet beside baskets of beaks and at the end of a lane an old man gesticulates wildly insisting I must buy one of his songbirds for good luck.

I tell Adik to tell him I have no home of my own never mind one to offer one of his birds and he says then I must buy one, make a wish and set it free. I smile, shake my head and he curses me as I walk away.

Adik and I say our thank you's and goodbye's to Indah and Lina and pick our way through the heavy Jakarta traffic in search of a bus to take us to the hills of Baduy. Only when the bus starts to rattle and shake its way down the highway does Adik eagerly pull off her veil making a noise that expresses both annoyance and relief as she shakes free her sweat damp hair.

At the first stop the krikuk and kedongdong sellers crowd onto the already cramped bus, shoving and climbing over each other to be the first to get to their trapped clientele. A musician follows a minute later, pulling out a beaten guitar with only five strings that matches his faded smile and quietly, though sweetly, sings a folksy ballad. I think of my brother, half the earth away on a distant continent, about to set off on his own musical quest and when the song has ended and the musician picks his way down the aisle I toss a bill into his change purse.

I make an offering, a little prayer.