Fired up by the freaky people next door

Santi W.E. Soekanto, Contributor/Jakarta

Dear house renters, some words of advice.

Never live next to a kleptomaniac. If you have to, install strong bars on your window frames as well as good locks, and be sure to have only one set of keys.

And never, ever live next to a kleptomaniac who is also a terrorist in the making.

These tips, like other well-grounded pearls of wisdom, come from having to live almost all my adult life renting one house after another, as money is always too tight to even place a down payment for a house of our own.

You get to meet all sorts of people. You do not usually have to get along with all of them, you need to just endure them until the year is up and again you have to pack up and hunt for a new place.

Once in a while, you meet nice people who make you feel sorry about having to move again. Once in another while, however, you would be better off living next to Count Dracula.

Shortly after we moved to Depok, outside of Jakarta, we began to know our neighbors. There is Lady, a dignified woman caught too soon by widowhood, who sometimes looks wistfully at couples passing by.

There is Aisyah, an IT graduate who spends her days now chasing after small kids and who seems to fall pregnant if someone so much as blinks. There is Mrs. Azzam, a political party activist who never wastes any time in her effort to rope in new supporters, distributing party stickers and other insignia.

Then there was Mutiara, a young mother of two and a short-time house renter, who came to me fortnightly to borrow some money. I think it was because I wear a head scarf that Mutiara usually peppered her pleas for a loan with statements that she was a new Muslim convert, and that her "still-Christian" parents would supply her with untold wealth if only she was willing to return to them and reclaim their faith.

I stopped paying attention after checking with her husband and landlady and finding out she was not a convert, and that her mother was born Muslim.

There is also Bang (Brother) Ucup, the plump ojek (motorcycle taxi) driver, who seems to become rabidly jealously if I choose to use the service of another ojek to transport me to places too near for a bus, but too far for me to walk the distance.

Paijan, the former chicken seller who drives his motorcycle more carefully so that naturally I find his service more preferable, once had to endure the inquiry from Ucup as to why I always choose him.

"Because I drive more carefully," Paijan answered truthfully.

"Bah! Excuses, excuses!" Ucup said.

My husband was rather upset.

"Did Ucup say that? Excuse me! What other reasons could you have for preferring Paijan over Ucup?" he demanded heatedly. "It's not like you are choosing ojek drivers based on their looks!"

"Well, no," I said, trying to placate him. "Otherwise, I would have asked you to become my ojek driver. You are the best looking man in the neighborhood."

The neighbor who later became my most compelling reason to find another place was Sheila, a young mother of one and the daughter in law of our own landlord.

Shortly after we moved in, small things began to disappear, including my new, unopened bottle of face cream. When we spoke to neighbors about the incidents, it was Sheila's husband who told us that he suspected his wife was the culprit because she had stolen from his family several times in the past.

We confronted her and, weeping, she begged us to forgive her.

"You see, Ibu, my husband has threatened to divorce me again. He keeps on watching blue movies at home. He speaks for hours on the telephone with his ex-girlfriend ..."

How did she enter the house? Well, she kept a set of keys from before we moved in. So, we installed strong bars onto the window frames and changed the locks, and let her off the hook. However, she broke in again and stole a few times whenever she had disagreements or felt in anyway insecure in her relationship with her husband.

But even those were nothing compared to what we later had to learn -- that our plump neighbor was actually a terrorist.

A strange sight greeted me on my doorstep one evening upon reaching home from work -- a small, gift-wrapped box. It was at the time when reports of terrorist bombs abounded.

I was at the time working for this newspaper, and had covered stories about journalists being murdered because of their reporting. But I thought, "Who would ever, ever send a mail bomb to moi? I am nothing!"

I begged Allah for protection, and gingerly opened the package. Inside were two small rocks and lots of razor blades.

Someone is stupid enough to want to hurt me! Naturally, I went next door. Sheila emerged still wearing her prayer veil, and told me in a worried tone that a man on a motorcycle wearing a helmet had come in the afternoon looking for me. He had left the package, she said.

"He was tall, his voice was deep, he was wearing dark clothing and a helmet, so I didn't get a good look at him," she said.

Looking back, I realize how stupid I had been in not pressing her further for details.

Finally, a telephone call: "The second...package...will...cause...you...more...trouble!"

I knew that voice. I hung up and ran next door to confront my neighbor. "It's been you all the time!"

Suddenly, she crumpled. Weeping, she pulled me in by the hand, sat me down on her sofa and tried to place her head on my lap.

"Please Ibu, forgive me. Please don't tell my husband or my parents in law. They will make my husband divorce me!"

I sighed. Another house hunting session was in store.