Musings

My long-time driver, Mas Ismudi, insists I have lunch each day, even as he fasts. He drops me off for the local dish of soto ayam (chicken soup), and the sweet hijabed young woman serves me with shy eyes, spellbound by my banter in Indonesian, asking for more condiments and no sugar in my coffee. If one eats during Ramadan daylight, we sit discreetly behind curtains blocking us from the street, as I do, totally alone in this unusually empty food stall. And yet, I still feel guilty—but what good does this do if I am supposed to let go of such bad feelings? Pivoting, I inhale the limey chicken soup quietly with delicious gratitude.

On the train ride into the city, we passed bright green swaths of rice fields sprinkled with bustling neighborhoods. Seeing all this open land, it is difficult to remember that Java is top of the list of the most populated islands in the world, with half of the 280 million Indonesians on only 7% of the country’s land mass, or more than 2,600 people per square mile. Mind boggling. Across the aisle from me sat an exquisitely beautiful Javanese woman in a full black head to toe Jilbab, something that almost all Americans judge as a very repressive sign of the Muslim world. Yet, after years of living in Indonesia, home to the largest Islamic population in the world, I respect these beauties and the way they move with such grace and confidence. Who am I to judge? My seatmate snakes her hand underneath her hijab (head covering) seamlessly to put on her earbuds as easily as an American teenager with a pixie cut.