Nichola Hunter - Ramadan Sky

Two more months went by like this. I had borrowed heavily from my mother, and my sister, who had borrowed herself to help me, and still I had not found any work. Then, one day, Budi came to see me and he was very excited.

Forget about the raincoats – this they will line up to buy from you!

He had begun selling ganja, which he bought from a guy from our old workplace. At first I thought it was a crazy idea and I told him so. He was a very small fish, and would get someone upset with him. But after a while I could see that he was making a little money without anybody bothering him, and I started to think about it more seriously. The problem was that I would have to borrow in order to buy the first ounce. I was still making my mind up when the police came.

In the street, opposite the ojek stand, there is a small petrol shop where they will sell you petrol and also fix your bike. Budi was there drinking coffee while someone was mending his tyre. I was in line at the ojek stand when I heard the alarm ring out:

Plokis ! Plokis !

That is our name for polisi. Straight away I saw three pigs moving quickly towards the petrol shop. I was close enough to see a look of panic run across Budi’s face. The coffee was knocked from his hand, and then I nearly shit as I saw one of them push him onto the road, put his boot down on his face, and pull out a gun.

The street was suddenly electric watching the policeman scream and point the gun at Budi’s head.

Who told you to come here and sell that fucking shit on my street?

He gestured to the two others to stand Budi up and search him. He didn’t have anything in his pockets but a wallet, which they threw on the ground, after removing his money. He was standing there with two cops holding his arms and the other pointing the gun straight at his face. That’s when the silence froze everything for just a second. The whole scene seemed to shrink and get very far away. The little toy policeman pulled back the hammer on the gun and then leaned forward and Budi crumpled to the ground, like he was only a pile of clothes with nothing to hold them up.

It took a minute to realise that the policeman had not fired the shot, and that Budi had only fallen down with fright. The three men laughed in surprise when they realised what had happened. The one with the gun put it back in his holster, and they all returned to regular size and walked, slowly and still laughing, back to their car. Budi was lying down on the road holding his head in his arms.

After that I forgot about the idea of selling ganja. Rhamat told me not to see Budi any more, but I told him to mind his own fucking business and see what he would do if he suddenly found himself without a job.

A man slips and the ladder falls on him.

After the trouble with the job and Aryanti and Budi, I wondered what would come next. It already seemed that my bad luck would last forever, but late one afternoon a small change did come. Like other times before and after, it didn’t seem like anything special. I really only notice it now that I’m thinking about it. The beginning of change is a narrow laneway that opens like magic onto a large field of rice.

2 February

I’ve been upgraded to First Class. That never happens. I’ve tried to sneak in there before, though. A friend’s brother does it all the time. He just walks into First Class from Economy, finds a spare seat and sits in it. The only time he’s ever been moved back to his seat was when he complained about the food. After I heard that story I tried it for myself, the very next time I flew. They frogmarched me back into Economy so fast I didn’t have time to put my seatbelt on. I’ve never tried it again, although I’ve flown to a lot of places since. Anyway, the upgrade today is simply due to an error; somehow they have overbooked and don’t have enough seats. I am choosing to see it as a good omen.

Looking out the window, everything is as empty and clean as I feel. It’s one of my favourite places to be – on a plane at the beginning of a long journey. For once you can focus on one simple objective – getting there – and that’s really the pilot’s job anyway.

But there are still a few things that can go wrong. It seems my good luck has not extended to getting an empty seat next to mine. A man exposes his large hairy stomach as he reaches for the overhead locker, like he’s saying hello in gorilla, and then plonks himself down next to me. He doesn’t look like First Class material. I wonder if he is in on my friend’s secret, or if he just got upgraded as well. He’s wearing shorts and rubber thongs – as though the plane is going to Bali, not Jakarta – and has one of those noses that could be made of soft, red putty. I can tell he’s on for a chat and am happy to oblige, until he spies my unadorned hand and asks:

Are you married, or are you a career woman?

This makes me jump. I have been asked this question in exactly the same words before, by a work colleague.

Are you married, Victoria, or are you a career woman?

At the time, I thought he was trying to insult me.

I give this man a Mona Lisa smile and ask him:

Are there any other alternatives?

Unfortunately he takes my discomfort as a slight. His shoulders stiffen and he shifts his attention to his in-flight magazine. I could try to make it better, but, instead, I decide to look out the window for a while.

To answer his question, I couldn’t say I’ve traded it all in for a career, because, after all, teaching English as a Second Language is more of a joke than a career, especially when it comes to salary, and some of the other people who are doing it. Still, I tell myself, it is a good job if you want to travel. And I do. Want to travel. I love being in new countries and finding out about different people and writing long letters home to people that I dearly miss but don’t seem to be able to live around.

The single most common question I have been asked in the last ten years is that one. Are you married? I can tell you how to say that in five languages. I have been asked this question by taxi drivers, tuk tuk drivers, shoeshine boys, businessmen, women selling me perfume, students, strangers on the street. In South-East Asia the standard response is ‘not yet’, as if it’s just developmental delay or a run of bad luck standing in the way, and that soon, please God soon, one’s luck will change. Sometimes I say, ‘Yes, I am married’, just to avoid the look of disappointment that I know is coming my way, and the feeling that I’ve let the nice, friendly stranger down somehow.

Actually, my parents’ marriage put me off the idea for ever and ever, amen, till the socks do us darn, till the laundry floor do we accidentally flood, till the children do we humiliate and betray, till the hidden beatings and vivisections do we blow the whistle on, screaming, finally, plastic boiling suburban rage and tearing it all down while still in brown school shoes.

I was not like my little school friend Annette Hume, who, despite years of living with her mother’s sour disappointment, spent a portion of her time daydreaming about her wedding day and smiling a knowing smile as she promised to be a bridesmaid at mine.

First of all , I told her, I wouldn’t have that kind of wedding, even if I did get married, which I never would.

I thought having bridesmaids was a stupid idea and a crappy word, even. It sounded like some weird cow-milking virgin from times of yore. If I did get married it would be in jeans, and not in a church and not with all of the hideous frosting, the flouncy dresses, the bows and ribbons, the men standing around in powder-blue tuxedos, hands folded awkwardly over their balls for the photographs.