Black People

Black People

By Sori Siregar

With their disheveled colors of brown and reddish yellow, the
fallen leaves along Suitland Parkway heralded the coming of fall.
Sooner or later, trees in the woods fencing a hidden skyline
would have their leaves fall one by one, and apartments dotting
the street would come in to clear view.

Iftikar stopped his car and took photos of leaves glinting in
the sun. After aiming the lens at different angles, he looked
around him, transfixed. He came from Indonesia, a country that
does not know four seasons, and he had never seen such beauty
before.

Suitland is about 10 kilometers from Washington, D.C. Iftikar
has lived in Suitland for three months now. He had come from a
world away with his wife and two children. Fila, the oldest of
the two, is studying at a kindergarten not far from their
apartment building, while Vori, the two-year-old, stayed with her
mother in the apartment.

Accepting a good job opportunity so far away from his country
was challenging for Iftikar. He had to prove that people from his
country were as good at work as those from other lands. It was
the sole reason he signed the five-year contract with the
broadcasting company here.

While Iftikar stood lost looking at the beautiful colors of
the season, a little black boy approached him and asked, "Are you
lost?"

Iftikar turned his head towards the sound of the voice, and
saw a pair of clear, sincere eyes offering help. Iftikar smiled
and patted the boy's head.

"No. I'm just taking pictures. I find these colors very
beautiful."

The boy looked at Iftikar, perplexed. He looked around him,
but did not find anything out of the ordinary. The sights that
had enamored Iftikar did not seem new to the boy, who had seen
colors of fall every year.

Iftikar squeezed the boy's shoulder and said goodbye. The boy
looked on confused as Iftikar sat in his car and drove off.

That same morning when Iftikar was cleaning the car, a young
black woman, returning from shopping errands, came up to him and
stood right by his side.

"Were you the one who called the police last night?"

Iftikar did not know what to make of the strange question, and
just shook his head foolishly. The woman, carrying her brown
paper bag, chuckled.

"Next time just knock on my door and tell me to lower down the
music if it's too loud. It's really no bother. I ask the other
neighbors to do the same. All right?"

Then the young lady walked off. Iftikar was confused, riddled
with questions in his mind while still working on the car.

He told his wife about the incident and she laughed.

"Clotel told the police. She knew I wasn't feeling well and
was resting. But our neighbor was playing rock music so loud
Clotel could hear it all the way in her apartment and she was
just lazy to go down and tell her. So she called the police," she
said with a laugh.

"I actually saw the police knocking on the door and peering
into the viewer hole. Next thing you know, Clotel calls me up and
we both are laughing our heads off at the whole episode."

Iftikar nodded his head slowly, understanding for the first
time. Clotel was the neighbor living upstairs who often baby-sat
the two kids when Iftikar and his wife had functions to attend.
Clotel, like most of his neighbors, was black.

Still nodding away, Iftikar then listened to what his wife had
to say.

"See, I know Emma was wrong to be suspicious. From the
beginning I knew, wherever we would be, we would find our own
people, our friends, peers, whatever you call them. The important
thing is that we get along. I mean, look at the black people
around us. They are so good to us. They have accepted us quite
well. We have never been considered immigrants, trying to take
away their jobs away from them."

She continued: "Emma advised us before that we should stay in
an apartment where lots of Vietnamese live in the same building.
She said that since we were Asians we would get along with them
better. Black people were deceitful, she said. But I never
believed her.

"On the contrary, if we had lived with the Vietnamese as our
neighbors, we would have been taken as immigrants."

"It's the same thing," Iftikar cut in. "Here or there, it's
the same thing. If we had rented an apartment there, we would
have adjusted as well, made friends, peers or whatever you call
them, or maybe found something that makes you feel safe instead
of lonely."

The phone rang, and Iftikar picked it up. It was Powell,
telling him that his baby was delivered safely without a
caesarean section.

Iftikar looked at his wife as he put down the phone.

"I am the first person he told about his newborn. And I am his
newest subordinate. That is one black man who truly cares about
me, even as his subordinate," Iftikar said proudly.

During winter, not a single leaf was seen on the trees. There
were just patches of grass in the woods that usually hid Suitland
Parkway from sight.

Four apartment buildings were clearly visible on the other
side of the road despite the heavy traffic.

Every time Iftikar crossed that road, he would see children
bundled up against the cold, running around the grounds near the
apartment buildings.

Looking at the people quietly standing at the other side, one
realized they led very simple lives, and that most of them were
poor.

One could also see several cardboard boxes lying strewn on the
terraces of those apartments. There were bicycles and old
mattresses as well. The terraces looked like attics, where people
kept their necessities. The conditions and the neighborhood
itself were distinctly black.

"If we lived in those apartments, we probably would save a lot
more and I could reach the office faster," Iftikar told his wife
one evening while driving through the area.

His wife turned her head to look at him. She knew her husband
was joking, so she answered in the same manner.

"Yep, and we would probably be the richest folks to live
there, too."

Both laughed. Both their children were sound asleep on the
backseat.

"Seeing the conditions of these black people in these kinds of
apartments, I can understand why they do not like immigrants like
us, something that Emma used to say, too," Iftikar said. "They
must feel that immigrants are working in the jobs they should
have. And so, they end up being jobless."

"That is not the problem," said his wife.

"They feel the pinch of the minimum wage they earn. After
working so hard, they obviously expect more but, instead, they
get minimum wage. So they prefer to be jobless. They get their
food stamps and support from the government, which is not much
different from the wages they got when they worked. They are
quite rational," she laughed.

Iftikar was quiet. He knew that there was truth in her words,
but what she said applied only to a minority. There were so many
black people who were successful and occupied important positions
in both government and private companies in the country.

The main determinants of a good life were education and
ability. Connections and relations did not play any role
whatsoever in competing for jobs in the field. Iftikar believed
this, and he felt that when one learned to develop and grow with
a job, opportunities would always be open.

He believed this because he was one of those people. He was
recruited for his current position in the U.S. as his job back
home could be given to an expatriate as well. He passed his
screening and selection with marks far better than the other
candidates selected from the U.S. It was the sole reason he was
picked to work here.

"I find you have too great a sympathy for the blacks," his
wife said.

"I have always been sympathetic towards people who are not as
lucky as we are, who are trampled upon, discriminated and not
allowed to voice their opinions," he replied. "People who are
living on the streets and who are abandoned.

"There are so many in our country who are fated to live lives
similar to those people living in these apartments."

"I know what's on your mind," Iftikar's wife said when she saw
her husband reading an article in their Jakarta home.

It was about a huge meeting attended by half a million black
people at the open field called the Mall in Washington. The
meeting was conducted by the controversial Louis Farrakhan.

He was a man known for screaming out his frustrations over
discrimination against blacks. He often said that the blood of
the black people was being sucked dry by Jews, Arabs, Koreans,
Vietnamese and other races.

But this meeting seemed different.

Farrakhan was instead advising, speaking of a reconciliation
and the building of brotherhood among all races.

The man always confused Iftikar, who found his attitude and
opinions as changeable as the weather.

"If I were still there, I would have been there at that
field," he said as he put down the newspaper.

His wife looked at him with seasoned understanding. She knew
he would start playing old records, which would make him
nostalgic about the U.S., and the people who had left such a deep
impression on him. Particularly the black people, the people he
cared most about.