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.