Aliyah will be seven tomorrow

By Chairil Gibran Ramadhan

Should I pick somebody's pocket and be a pickpocket, at least just today?

I fixed my eyes on a bulging, gray, wallet in the right back jeans pocket of a guy with shoulder-length hair standing in front of me on the bus. Now and again covered by his black backpack, the tip of his wallet tantalizingly revealed itself many times.

I imagined what it contained: lots of money was surely there, as I expected. Yes, it's just money. I needed no love letters he got from his girlfriend. No pictures of bikini-clad chicks he clipped from trash tabloids. No lottery tickets he bought the previous night. No warning notes from his landlady, reading: "Pay this month's rent immediately, it's already two weeks late. Otherwise, just move without your belongings. You can collect them after payment." Nor did I want stacks of ATM cards from various banks as they are no use unless the young man was kind enough to tell me their PIN numbers -- hah.

But then I thought the other way round.

If he caught me taking his wallet and shouted, PICKPOCKET!, to all the other passengers, what would happen?

Ah, I couldn't imagine it. I would certainly get an ugly beating from the bus I was on, and those from other buses, and from passers-by: jobless youths, fired workers, students, parking boys, taxi drivers, bus conductors, sidewalk vendors, food sellers, hoodlums, street musicians, paper boys and even other pickpockets.

Ah!

They would pour gasoline over my bruised and bloodied body, before setting me alight. My dead body would be totally consumed. My unidentified charred body would be delivered to a mortuary. TV stations and newspapers would report: "Another pickpocket burned alive." The barbaric men who murdered me would just go on living peacefully thereafter as has happened thousands of times in the just the last year here.

Ah!

My remains, treated as scrap, would be buried in a graveyard of unknown people in some area without any gravestone, flowers or prayers.

Ah!

Later, how would my wife and three daughters live? How would she pay our rent? How would she pay for the kids' school fees? How would they feel my loving care? How would they respond to the neighbors' curiosity about my disappearance? Who would lead their dusk, evening and dawn prayers?

Ah!

I would be proud if my family thought I was away making a big fortune. But if they thought I had left to evade supporting them, to be free of the boredom of domestic life, to seek a different pleasure with another woman, what would become of me?

But I was sure they wouldn't think that way. They would assume I was pursuing a larger sum of money for the whole family. I was convinced they wouldn't claim otherwise, as they knew how much I loved them.

Yes!

But it would be very unfortunate to be burned and buried without any gravestone and anybody recognizing me. It would be horrible for my family to live without me, for my parents in the village to be worrying about be. It would be awful for my five younger brothers and sisters to be searching for me. It would be just as bad for my twenty-five cousins, twelve aunts and uncles to be thinking of me and also trying to find me.

But if they were informed of my death by burning as a pickpocket, what would happen?

It would be crushing for my wife and children to be scoffed at by their friends and schoolmates. It would mean the end of all respect for my family to be scorned by their neighbors, for my parents in their village to be hopelessly ashamed about their son, the dead pickpocket. It would be just as bad for my five younger brothers and sisters to be embarrassed to find me dead as a burned petty thief. It would be a sense of helpless embarrassment for my twenty-five cousins, twelve aunts and uncles as they would also be disgraced and looked down upon.

And I would be the only one in my family who turned out and died as a pickpocket. Sudino picked somebody's pocket. Sudino died as thief.

Ah! ***

I was not worried about anybody else witnessing my thievery, they would not shout out if they saw me do it, because I knew they would certainly think that I had other thug friends as accomplices also on the bus and would definitely be afraid of being beaten themselves. They would know my gang would accuse whom ever witnessed it and they would be beaten and burned. Such is the code of life these days.

I know how others think, they would want to avoid any problems and just protect themselves by silence. No one cares about strangers anymore, or for that matter, proper justice. ***

Should I pick somebody's pocket and be a pickpocket, at least for today?

All the riches I imagined the first time I saw the bulging wallet came back to me again.

But then I mused on it differently.

If the man wasn't aware of my wallet snatch, and I calmly got off the bus while swinging my arms and whistling along the road, only to find the contents devoid of money except the love letters, photos of bikini girls, lottery coupons, warning notes from the landlady and various banks' ATM cards, what would become of me?

Ah, I wouldn't be able to imagine it. How unlucky, foolish and embarrassed I'd be.

But I could just see that gray wallet. No others were jutting out from the back pockets I observed. People seemed to realize secure places were nowhere to be found. They would undoubtedly cram their money into their possessions in bags, or use no wallets and put banknotes in their front pockets, socks or underwear instead.

Ah!

I wish I'd snatched the wallet. But .....

"Stop! Salemba stop here!" The young man exclaimed repeatedly while knocking on the door glass sheet with his knuckles. He got off the bus hurriedly through the back door, penetrating the crowds on the roadside and was gone.

I took a deep breath, turning my head to the right, with my hands still gripping the rail support near the ceiling. The wind blew in, freshening the stifling room inside the bus.

The sun was high. The sky was cloudless. ***

I was back on a bus. Again I offered notebooks for sale by telling passengers their use and price. "You can write the names, addresses and phone numbers of your acquaintances. Just a thousand rupiah a book. The price is double in the bookstores." I was telling the truth. I got only five hundred rupiah profit per book.

I put the books on the laps of all the commuters except those who were asleep. After repeating my offer, I collected the books. Some returned the books while looking at me, or at something else, others left them on their laps without a glance, and still another gave me a thousand while pocketing the book. Only one was sold!

Other buses got their turns. ***

I stopped a rather long way from the end of the road leading to my house. I didn't want to reach home too soon. I had many things to consider, to question and to find answers for.

I was just walking slowly.

Several people who knew me greeted me. I smiled to show my hospitality. No, they did not need to understand what I was thinking about, asking the questions I was to myself today. They only needed to know I was friendly and had no problems. I had to pretend I was all right, that everything was fine with my wife and three children, and that today many commuters had bought the notebooks I offered.

The Muslim call to prayer could be heard on all sides and I was still at a distance from the small house I had been renting for three years.

I was sure my wife would be leading our children's prayers this sunset. "The imam (one conducting prayers) isn't back from work yet." So my wife would tell them.

Then, I was convinced, my youngest kid would ask: "Tomorrow we'll have special meals, mama? We'll enjoy delicious food, won't we? Papa said he'd bring along a lot of money today for the party tomorrow, mama. He said I'll be seven tomorrow, is that right mama?"

I was sure, too, my wife Rabina would only smile, a smile that always made me want to go home.

But today I had only my deep love for them, and 42 unsold notebooks. There is nothing else. At least I felt grateful for being able to take them home, instead of having them burned by the mob that overwhelmed me. And I am grateful that today I did not pick somebody's pocket, nor did I die the miserable death of a pickpocket.

I had to apologize to Aliyah. Today I could only bring home five thousand rupiah. Only five people had bought the notebooks your dad offered. Pray for me so that a lot more bus passengers would buy all the books I carried, and my bag would be packed with money. A thousand, two thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, five million, ten million rupiah. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Pray for me, please.

I believed Rabina would be ready with my cap, shirt, sarong and prayer rug for me.

Translated by Aris Prawira