My Serene Friend

My Serene Friend
By Ron Dihamma

He was thin and looked pale. This man did not look special. He was nothing more than a very quiet guy. At first, I didn’t quite notice it. I considered it normal since I, with my age now, have been acquainted with this type of character. However, I’ve never thought that I would meet such a very shy guy. He must be the product of an old time, I supposed. Or he was raised in an old-fashioned way. Surprisingly, he wasn’t! He was a very up to-date upbringing. He was from a diplomat family and born in Moscow, Russia, the country!

This gentleman walked fifty percent slower than normal people do. You can imagine how slow he walked. While in the David J. Schwartz’s book that I frequently read, Schwartz suggests to walk thirty percent faster than average people do. When I asked him why, he responded that his doctor recommended him to do so. He said that he’d got lung infection and that made him hard to breathe. It would get harder if he did something in a quick manner. I figured it out when he, sometimes after back from his office, had more husky and fibrillated sounds in his word. Anyway, my surprise doubled when I noticed him washing his hands after meals. It was indeed slow too. At a glance he seemed to be thinking something tough. Yet after I paid more attention, he seemed to enjoy washing his hands. Sometimes he smiled staring at the water coming through his oily fingers caused by the food he just ate.

It was Sunday morning. Unlike any other Sunday mornings, he woke up earlier. I got more surprised when I notice him running down the corridor in front of our rooms. He took a peek at my window as though I watched him. I pretended not to look at him and felt asleep. When I then pretended to have just woken up and opened my door, I was hoping that he would immediately stopped his running and smiled to me as nothing happened. But yonder my thought, there’s something changed that time; he didn’t feel awkward when I came out of my room and greeted him.
“Huh…huh…huh… I almost sweat man!” he said. He continued his running.
“Next week we should do that at Hira square Okay!” I yelled to him.

He didn’t listen, or pretended not to listen, as usual. Listening to other’s sayings might be the most uninteresting thing to do for him. I proved this quite many times. It was once, his inattentiveness made me considered missing by the whole people in the house. It was approximately 08.00 p.m.
“Hey, would you mind accompanying me to the telephone booth? I need to call my family in Idi to ask about the Letter of Replacement I asked them,” he said to me.

The Letter of Replacement/Travel/Moving is something crucial to be prioritized when someone intends to move to other place within the same region in my province.
“We cannot be held responsible if you’re taken,” said the Keuchik (keuchik is our term to refer the chief of village) in my village.
“Being taken” that was meant by the keuchik was the reference of some incidents i. e. kidnapping, detention and involuntarily missing people by what so called “unidentified elements” that happened a lot, it really means “a lot” in our region.

“Okay,” I responded.
We walked for about five minutes. The telephone booths were located at the right corner of a four-story one-star hotel. The front yard of the hotel was not so big, it was just enough for a small number of parked cars. I saw my friends’ cars parked in the yard. I had not been seeing them for one and a half-month.

“Hey, I think they’re my friends’ cars, I’ll go check them inside”, I said to him.
I went in and meet the receptionist and asked him if he had information about the guests whose cars parked outside.
“You go knock on the fourteenth room, the guys just got in,” said the receptionist pointing to one of the rooms at his left.

My friends were there. I walked out of the hotel to the phone booths, my roommate was not there. He might have been home, I thought. I went back in and continued chit-chatting with my friends.

“Is Al home sir?,” he asked our house owner.
“Didn’t he go out with you?” the old man asked him back.
“O my dear God, we’re in trouble!” the old man’s wife responded.

“Okay Al, I’ve got to get back to my sister’s, she insisted that I have to stay over hers,” one of my friends that had a sister living in the town closed our conversation.
“Ya, I need to get back too, it’s nine thirty already, say hi to all the guys all right!” I said.
I went out from the hotel. There were still a number of guests and the local young men hanging around in front of the hotel and some of coffee shops around the place. The place was quite safe then. Seldom were there where people dare to go out at night in my place. This made me feel secured. I turned to the left. The village’s secretary, my house owner’s wife with her granddaughter and my other friend were there.

“Oh my wholly gosh, you’re just about to blow my heart Al!” the wife of the house owner came approaching and grabbed my arms.
“You freak us out, you know that! I know this place. If you’re missing, what am I supposed to do. Boss would absolutely spray on me, damned!” my friend from who I got the information about the renting room yelled at me.
Surely he didn’t tell the people at the house that I stopped by at the hotel.

I had actually been knowing him for about three weeks. It was when I first stayed over the house. The house was close to our company’s car pick up point. It only took me five minutes walking from the house to the pick up point. So are to all in-town activities since it was a small town.

Previously, I stayed at the employees housing complex which was only five minutes drive to our office. The accommodation was quite comfortable, just like any other three star hotels in this country. It was located amid other buildings such as the Heavy Equipment Storage, Civic Mission Clinic and villagers houses. It was built in an Indy style, clustered and connected with overlaid pavement.

Every morning, when I was heading to our office, I enjoyed looking at what I passed by. There were school children walking, riding bike, and sometimes teasing each other heading to school. Mothers doing their laundry in the public well donated by our company. And, young soldiers holding guns. The soldiers looked so young, as though they had just finished high school. Most of them looked tensed and tired. Tensed and tired of alerting any possibility of attacks from other soldiers, their enemy that hid behind the forests.

I was kind of freaky about the villagers’ eagerness living in the vicinity. Why would they live poor “away” from everywhere? Isn’t that better to live poor in town or city? By living in town or city, there’d be numbers of opportunities for them to change their poverty. Not to mention the risks they had to take for living amid the conflicting parties.

It was a public knowledge that the people became the targets during or after the soldiers fighting each other. Bombings and gun shootings had to be understood why they occurred and also it needn’t to be put in minds for it won’t be talked about the next morning because “something” more advance likely to happen.

I, therefore, decided to stay in town, the relatively safe location regarding the recent security situation. So, about three weeks ago, I moved on to this house. The house belonged to a retired state owned-company paramedic. It was a white two-story house with adequate front yard. The owner of the house, an old retired paramedic, lived with his wife, a son who was about my age, and three grand children whose mother was working in Malaysia and father was seeking refuge in Eastern part of the province.

My room was in the second floor. The quiet guy rent a room next to mine. He worked in a cement packaging factory near a seaport. He was an administration staff in the factory. Sometimes he asked me to help him translating some letters or other documents from Indonesian to English or vise versa.

At first, I was just fine with him coming into my room without bothering to knock it first. I eventually mentioned it to him in a way that I finally regretted of why being so rude and thoughtless to a person like him. Having one’s own privacy was absolutely baseless at that particular time and place. I was too wrong man to be there. Everyone should actually create as vast private areas as they could so that they’ll be accepted. So, it wasn’t really a problem. “Although he is weird, he’s not dangerous,” I thought. For this, I felt that I was too kind to any body.

No one is actually too kind to others. Not even to someone who is just so below average in everything; stumbling when talking, having least ideas on anything, having weakest stamina when exercising, extremely slow in walking and other ‘low’ qualities. Moreover, there’s indeed excitement being with this guy, particularly when he talked about his willingness to marry soon and qualities a woman should have. Regardless his condition, he strongly believed that he should have a good-looking, smart and bubbly woman. Where in the world could he get her? I sometimes felt guilty for discouraging him pursuing his dream. My reason was that I do not want him to be disappointed in what might be a too harsh way for him.

It was for the umpteenth time we discussing his dream girl. I didn't know why I kept persistent saying that he should just find someone in “his level”. Was it just my own word to myself? Sometimes I felt that I was selfish by involving someone else to take responsibility of my wrong idea, and thought and belief.

He then commented on how and why he could accomplish his dream.
“Barely all women nowadays are too easy predicted. Just dressed up in fashionable expensive clothes, ride fancy vehicle, they are all yours. Appearance may bring great changes to them. Or, though you’re not a fashion pursuer but once they knew you’ve got great job and earn pretty good money, you’ll be surprised noticing how they show their great interests in you and give twice thought every time you say or do something with them witnessing it in next days. It’s all because they now got lazier and don’t want to think much on their own. They willingly let us, men, do the thinking and work for them. As compensation, they’ll “serve” us until they finally truly fall in love with us. Not to mention when they’ve given birth to our children. To this point, they’ve got nowhere else to go, but our arms,” he astounded me responding in such fluent way as if he was an expert.

He must have spent some times on it. Still, however, I did not have any convincing stuff that he would be able to get such women nor, it came across my mind though, healed flesh and bone after being dumped by those women. Let alone now that our region is in sort of social confusion mainly because of security unrest. All nice brainy good-looking potential breeders (men and women) have flown away seeking refuge temporarily or leaving our region for good.

Frustrating? Yes it is! The town used to be lovely. Small, but nice. Just a perfect town to have a family and raise children with good education and neighborhood. Now, it looks like a dead town at night. People prefer, most of the time they have to, stay at home at nights. Nights have become frightening moments where shootings, bombings and raiding likely to occur. Surprisingly, during the daytime, people are just like usual, going to market, delivering goods, working in offices or coffee shops, or even just repairing a broken chicken barn.

It was such blessing that we still had this place to go in the town. It was a street restaurant down town. We both liked it. The place was only open and visited by people in the afternoons. It was more crowded during the weekends. The restaurant was actually a joint place of at least eight small coffee shops/food stalls. The chairs and tables were put in front of the buildings. It was located across the Regency office and official residence which was separated by two way street. The restaurant specialties were local barbecue cuisine called sate and boiled oyster. The oyster was mostly liked by men and whenever we saw women having oyster, we always come to a naughty discussion.

Once he told me that he was pretty concerned about his family. He is the oldest in his family. He said that he paid the school fee of his brother and sister and that he sent some money to his mother regularly. He sounded as a very responsible man when talking about his family. He was almost a father! I found out later that his father had passed away a year ago and that he was then responsible for the whole family. Wow! I myself might not be able to do that in the next few years though I earn much more money that he does. Supporting financially and being a man in charge of a family are two different things. From the way he talked to his family I could tell that he was well listened and respected! He said that his concerns over his family were about the safety of their own who were living in a separate town. There, he told me; men are hardly seen for they are hiding from the security forces that frequently raid the area. It often occurs that men are taken away to be interrogated. Those men are usually don’t come back. The men who are staying in the area are just little boys and old ones. The ones reach age 18 to 50 have to move or stay away from the area. Otherwise their lives are at stake. He told me that his brother aged 21 once had to wear veil and make up to avoid a raid in a bus. Somehow, it still made two of us had a big laugh.

He was a friend to laugh with indeed. He might not listen much to what people say, yet I could still have fun enjoying his story. Besides, I don’t expect him to pass what I said to anyone anyway. A lot of confusions might result from that, I believe.

It came across my mind that the uniqueness of this guy must be the result of a weird hidden story that he would never tell anyone or me. However, each day hanging out with him made me realize that the hidden story is no longer important for me to know. However, all that happens to all men in this world are all specifically meant to be. No one might make fun of it nor use it as a turning down point against someone who even does not have any intention nor idea of becoming the meant to be person. It is just enough that he being him, being a meant to be man. No one should bother or be bothered.