Short Walks in Sumatra / 10

(tenth in a series of ten)

I walked along the path between the dark river and the humming green hillside.

My trouble is I constantly want to compare that hill to a giant wave, which is unfortunate, considering recent history. Still that is always how it felt, a vast lush green wave, towering above me.

In real life, I understand, the wave is low and dark and wide.

But I am thinking of the ordinary waves as they swell on a bright day and you glimpse the seaweed and the fish suspended there for a beat before the wave breaks into foam.

Such was the vast green hillside I walked beneath. The trees and homes and stones were all suspended there; nothing was permanent. The main area of the city was across the river. Along the path were houses and clusters of hard-working banana trees.

Boys on bicycles circled me a few times, shouting and laughing, before speeding off.

Other younger boys played butt-naked in the river and grinned and waved as I walked past. Meanwhile, little girls in dresses played in the dirt. It appears that no age is too young to not require feminine modesty.

As I passed one weather-beaten house, the usual patchwork of corrugated tin and scrap wood, the house began to pulse with techno. I was surprised to find such an unexpected heart and I danced a little, there in the road. A mother playing with her child next door laughed at me.

People laughed at me all day long. Took one look at me and started laughing. Laughed at every word that came out of my mouth and laughed if I didn’t say anything. The laughter was more inviting than mocking, as if to say, “Let’s laugh together at you!”

Big frogs lay flattened on the edge of the street. Cats and roosters dueled for scraps in the orange cement enclosures where trash was burnt. There weren’t any dogs, for which I was grateful. Dogs were believed to be filthy. The Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, kept a cat.

Even with cats it was better to be careful. The proprietress told us that one of the expats had been scratched by her own cat one night when she got up to use the bathroom in the dark. She’d thought nothing of it; soon she was dead of rabies. She’d been the only foreigner, the proprietress assured me, that absolutely everybody loved.

Gray clouds overhead, the five o’clock light turned the mountainside thunderstorm green. A woman walked by and asked me, “What are you looking?” I told her I was looking at the goats, the river and the sky. “You have a beautiful country,” I said.

“You’re handsome too, mister,” she said. And before she walked away, she winked.