Ibu poured steaming tea into our cups. At a trillion degrees with a gazillion percent humidity, sweat was dripping down my back. I would have done about anything for a bottle of ice orange.
Ibu and Bapak smiled expectantly at me.
“Drink, drink,” they said, pointing at the steaming cup in my hand.
Deni eyed me. I felt rude not drinking but remembered his warning: Wait until the second offer.
“Drink, please, drink,” Ibu repeated with more urgency.
Two.
All eyes were on me as I took a sip of…jalapeño sugar water? My whole body flushed as the scalding liquid burned a path down my throat. I choked down the spicy tea and set the cup back onto the saucer.
“Delicious,” I said. Deni was right: it was very, very, hot tea.
“Hungry?” asked Siti, who had been in the kitchen since we arrived. She set bowls of smooth curries, fried fish, and funny-shaped fruits onto the center of the mat. Everything looked great, and I was hungry. We hadn’t eaten since the plane. I tucked my feet even farther under my butt to make sure I wasn’t pointing my toes at anyone. Deni tried to hide his smile. So far, so good.
Ibu disappeared into the kitchen and returned with round aluminum bowls, like the ones in Thai restaurants, filled with fluffy jasmine rice.
“Thank you so much.” I hoped they couldn’t hear my stomach growl. “This looks so good.”
“Eat, eat,” Ibu said, gesturing toward the food.
Wait.
“Eat, please, eat,” she said again.
“Thank you,” I said.
Everyone was staring at me. Deni leaned over and whispered, “Guests eat first.”
I dished up some rice with the serving spoon and covered it with seafood curry. Individual bowls of water sat in front of us to rinse our fingers off between helpings.
“Brothers and sisters in America?” Ibu asked me after we’d all dished up.
I shook my head. “No. I wish I did, though.”
“Siti’s sisters and mother were taken by the wave,” Bapak said. “She is our family now.”
“I thought Siti and Azmi were brother and sister?” I asked Deni.
“No,” he said. “Cousins.”
Azmi explained that their house was built by Habitat for Humanity. They were one of the lucky families, he explained. Many still lived in the tent camps.
“Did you live in the tent camps after, too?” I asked Deni.
Deni shrugged. “Tents were for families.”
And Deni was alone. His whole family was gone.
“Our tent was full,” Azmi said. “Or he would have been with us.”
My heart broke for him. He lost his whole family, and he wasn’t even allowed to stay with friends? No wonder he left.
“Where did you stay?” I asked carefully.
His face tensed. “A different place each night. Mostly I slept on the highest ground I could find, on a dry blanket if I could find one. Tents were hard to find after the storm.”
He read my face and stopped talking. I knew no matter what, he didn’t want me to feel sorry for him. I looked down at my tea, pretending it was the steam misting up my eyes.
“There was not much time for sleep,” Azmi said, “with so much work to be done.”
Deni nodded in agreement, but his brow furrowed and I blinked.
I cringed, flashing on the mass graves. Back to Deni and Azmi hauling bodies out of the muck.
And Deni with no place to go home to after.
Maybe to change the conversation to something lighter, Azmi said, “Many celebrities were here after the tsunami. I forget their names, but they were from a strange religion to do with science?”
“Scientology?” I guessed.
“Yes! They set up booth and tried to convert us to their way of thinking. One of the famous American movie stars was here!”
Deni laughed for the first time all day. “They were surprised when they were asked to leave Aceh.”
I rubbed my head, embarrassed. How obnoxious. No wonder Dad insisted: We are here to help with their PTSD, not to comment about religion, customs, or anything else. Would we want Indonesians coming to El Angel Miguel and criticizing how we live? Always be respectful.
“So many Westerners offered to adopt tsunami orphans that the Indonesia government declared no non-Muslims could adopt the children,” Deni said.
Bapak nodded. “It was very important, especially after disaster, to keep our culture for the children.”
“That makes sense,” I said.
And then Azmi asked randomly, “You know Arnold Schwarzenegger?” He dipped his fingers in the water bowl and then pantomimed someone shooting a machine gun.
I laughed. “Well, I don’t know him personally, but he was also our governor.”
“America!” Azmi said and everyone laughed.
After dinner, we took a walk, Deni, Siti, Azmi, and me. Like always when we were together and unable to touch, I was completely aware of Deni’s hand swinging closely to mine as we walked. When we passed a tall, smooth tree with hairy twigs and huge yellow and orange flowers, Deni stopped short. I stayed back with him as Azmi and Siti kept walking.
“It is a jeumpa tree. Jeumpa flowers.” He picked a flower and held it close for me to smell. “You remember the song the little girls sing at the pesantren?” Deni asked, his eyes lighting up. “It is the song of their homeland. See?” He stroked the smooth bark of the tree. “The song is about this flower. It only grows here. In Aceh.”
I breathed in the sugary scent, taking a mental picture of this moment, this place. I paused on Deni’s face, memorizing the way he was looking at me for when we weren’t together anymore.
He moved a swath of my hair and tucked the flower behind my ear. “They like you, my friends. I can see that.”
I smiled, relieved they liked me. But would they hate me when I went home, leaving Deni all alone again?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
So this was a refugee camp.
After the jeumpa tree, we reached a field dotted with hundreds of canvas tents spread out on a flat piece of land that must have been dozens of acres. Six months after the tsunami, people were still living like this, like they were camping in a graveyard.
Deni, Siti, and Azmi pointed out a bunch of construction sites beyond the camp, telling me stories as tractors moved mud and trucks rolled down the road carrying long pieces of wood. Hammering and sawing buzzed in the distance.
“It looks so different,” Deni said, looking around in amazement. “So changed since I left for Yogyakarta. The reconstruction had not yet begun.”
As we walked, canvas tents ran along side of us, some big, some small, sort of like the tent village in Yosemite Valley. Children played, running in and out of their temporary homes. A skinny boy led a goat on a rope leash. I thought about the goat at the pesantren, the one who survived the storm only to become dinner.
A chicken squawked. I squinted at several coops stacked next to one of the larger canvas tents. “Wait, those aren’t chickens.”
“They are doves,” Deni said.
Do they eat them? I wanted to ask. I wrinkled my nose. I really hoped not.
“Some birds have beautiful singing voices and enter competitions,” Deni told me. “My ibu kept doves when I was a boy. She would buy cassette tapes of famous doves singing and play them for our pets so they could learn to copy the beautiful voices.
“No way, how cool.”
“Yes. Very ‘cool.’” He chuckled. “We have a folk story that says, ‘A man is only considered a man if he has a house, a wife, a horse, a keris—a dagger—and a singing dove in a cage.’”
I nudged him in the side. “Well, if you take one of these doves, you are almost there.”
“I would never take a dove,” he said, seemingly appalled.
Oh no. I offended him. Stammering to fix it, I said, “I know you wouldn’t. I was just kidding.”
He smiled, dimple and all. “I know. I was…what do
you say, messing with you?”
“Deni!” I slugged him, and then frowned as I scanned the long row of filthy cages filled with noisy birds in various states of health. Bird flu: one of Bev’s many warnings the week before I left, and here I was in the heart of it! I asked Deni about the outbreak.
He grinned. “We will stay away from the bird market if you worry, Rambut Kuning.”
Azmi waved for us to catch up, and Deni made his way toward them. I lingered behind, watching the doves, thinking about Deni’s words about “all a man needs,” but then I caught a group of guys staring at me, and I rushed to catch up with him.
When I did, he looked at me seriously. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I think we should start asking for my father.”
Please be here. Please don’t disappoint Deni, I silently whispered to Deni’s missing dad. Then cheerfully answered Deni, trying to get his smile back. “Right. We should. Now is the perfect time. Maybe Azmi and Siti could help us?”
“They will look and ask, too,” Deni said. “But still they say they have not heard that my father is alive.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Well. We’re not giving up yet.”
The hint of a smile made Deni’s eyes crinkle at the corners.
My arms fell to my side. “What?”
“You,” he said. “You do this for me even though you do not really believe he is still alive. I am a very lucky man.”
I looked everywhere but at him, flustered by his use of “man” instead of “boy” or “guy” remembering he thought of me as a “woman”. I hoped I hadn’t disappointed him. I was trying to be mature, to handle all of these new feelings, but it was getting harder and harder.
All he needs is a dagger, a dove, and a wife…
“Of course I would do this for you,” I said. “And I didn’t say I didn’t think he was alive. I just don’t want you to be hurt any more than you have been.”
“I am happy you are here,” he said.
What else could I say but the truth? “I’m happy I’m here, too.”
We stared at each other like love-struck goofballs.
I took a deep breath. “C’mon. The NGO tents start over there. What should I be asking?”
“Rhamad—father of Deni,” he said, letting our fingers brush over so slightly. “Terima kasih, Sienna.”
The first tent was bright yellow and big. Deni opened the canvas door flap for me, and I slipped underneath.
A woman, dressed in a powder blue sari and black pants, was sitting behind a small counter. She smiled warmly at us, and Deni asked her something in what I assumed was Acehnese. People were lined up on the floor, but instead of sitting in chairs, they were resting on bended knees. A woman nursed a young baby, a man held a cloth on his bleeding hand. A couple of kids looked kind of woozy, like they might throw up. I leaned as far away as I could without being obvious while their mother fussed over them. This was obviously a medical tent.
Then a woman came in that I instantly recognized. “Hiya, Sienna, hello, Deni. What are you doing here?”
Oh, thank God. “Amelia! I was hoping we’d run into you.” Truth, even if I knew she was suspicious of Deni and I traveling alone.
“Did you connect with your dad yet?” she asked glancing from me to Deni, her eyes shining with questions, but again, warm and pleasant.
“Soon,” I said. “He’s probably on his way.”
More truth. I shrugged the thought away of just how angry he’d be when he caught up to us.
I glanced over at Deni, who was still talking to the woman behind the desk. She was digging through papers.
“Deni’s looking for his father. Well, he’s asking around to see if anyone has heard from him.”
“His father?” Amelia’s eyebrows lifted. “Does he have reason to believe his father is alive?”
I nodded. “That’s the reason we came,” I whispered, smelling her vanilla perfume. “Someone is looking for him here. Don’t say anything to him, please. I don’t think he wants to talk about it. I mean, unless he asks you about it first.”
“I haven’t heard anyone asking for a Deni but will keep my ears open, and I won’t say a word.”
“Thanks.”
“While you’re here, would you like to have a look around? You can show off the place to your dad when he arrives.”
My face flushed. “Sure. Okay. Deni? I’m going with Amelia. You want to come?”
“I will soon,” he said.
I hated leaving him—what if I never found him again?—but I was curious about the NGOs that I’d heard so much about from Dad. I followed Amelia to the green tent next door, a feeding tent, which wasn’t much more than a line of people waiting for food. A few people worked behind a long table scooping cups of porridge out of huge tin pots into bowls. A woman handed out one hard-boiled egg to each person in line. A man handed out one biscuit each.
“We try and get fresh fish, fruit, and vegetables when we can,” Amelia said. “Today was a bad day.”
I thought about the delicious meal we had back at Azmi’s and felt guilty.
Back outside, a Land Rover, just like Azmi’s, screamed by, blaring a siren.
“That’s the ambulance,” Amelia said. “They’re bringing in a new patient. I’ve got to dash—please stop by later if you get a chance, and good luck finding Deni’s dad.” She waved over her shoulder as she ducked back into the medical tent.
A few minutes later, Deni met up with me, Azmi, and Siti outside. “The Land Rovers are ambulances?” I asked.
“Yes,” Deni said. “They were donated after.”
“Were we driving in an ambulance all day?”
“Ibu works for the clinic sometimes,” Azmi said. “I asked if we could use it. It is very exciting Deni returned. People that left Aceh do not return.”
Everyone went quiet, and I shifted uncomfortably. “So, um, did that lady at the desk know anything about your father?”
“No.” He shook his head, frustrated. “After all that, no.”
I looked down at the row of tents. If we went together, it would take too long.
“Let’s split up. Me and Siti can take the right side of the street, you and Azmi the left. Okay?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes shining with hope.
I had my script ready to go.
“Rhamad—father of Deni?” I asked at the next tent. The woman dug through papers, just like in the medical tent, and shook her head no. No luck at the second tent, either, or the third, fourth, fifth. After a dozen or so, Siti and I met back up with the boys. The sun cast a shadow across Deni’s face. He must not have had any luck, either.
“We should go toward home soon,” he said regretfully.
I wanted so badly to try and make him feel better. “Don’t give up yet. There are still two more to try,” I said.
The four of us walked together through the crowds of people, past chickens and bicycles, in the dusky heat toward a bright orange tent that read Reproductive Health.
The boys went across the way into the Red Cross tent, and Siti decided to wait outside. I ducked under the yellow tent’s simple flap.
I squeezed my fists tight. Come on, be the one.
A few girls walked in after me, one carrying a toddler on her hip. They joined a line of women and teenage girls kneeling along the canvas. The tent was set up much like the medical tent. A sleepy-looking woman sat behind a card table.
I waited my turn in line. When she asked me if I needed help, I said, “My friend is looking for his father. Rhamad, father of Deni—does that sound familiar?”
She blinked, suddenly wide awake. “Rhamad? Father of Deni?”
“You know him? My friend Deni…he’s been living at a pesantren in Yogyakarta. Someone called him from an NGO here, we just don’t know which one.”
Her head tilted to the side as she looked me over. “He is your age? He is from Aceh?”
I nodded. “About my age. A little older. And yes, he’s from
here.”
Her lips closed tightly before she permitted them to open again. “Come back tomorrow.”
Wait. That was it? “Do you know something about him?”
Her eyes flashed wildly, but she said in a calm voice, “Tomorrow, you return.”
I didn’t know what to tell Deni. The woman hadn’t told me anything, but it was obvious she knew something. But what if it turned out to be someone else? He’d be devastated if I got his hopes up, and it’d totally be my fault. I could just see him marching into the tent to demand answers the woman clearly wasn’t going to give. What would happen if he made her mad?
No. I’d just go back tomorrow like she said and hopefully get a real answer.
It was late by the time we walked the long way back to Siti and Azmi’s house, and everything was dark and still. I had felt Azmi and Siti’s eyes on us as we walked home in the dark, and again now in the front room. Siti excused herself, and then Azmi and Deni spoke intensely.
I stood there awkwardly while they talked, staring at two thin mats that had replaced the bamboo tea spread on the floor, the yellow moon glowing outside the open window.
Azmi finally left the room, shooting me his standard hang loose.
I raised my eyebrows at Deni. “What was that all about?”
“He is wondering about you. About us.”
Oh, crap. “And what did you tell him?”
Raking his fingers through his hair, he shrugged, his eyes sparkling like There’s Way More To It But I Don’t Want to Fess Up.
I pretended to be shocked. “So that’s it? I’m just a shrug to you?” Secretly, though, my insides were spinning. He’d said something about me to his best friend. That was huge! That was like me telling Bev about him.
He gave in to the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth and grinned. “Yes. That is all.”
“Sure, sure,” I said, “Whatever you say.”
We grinned at each other.
The room was steamy hot. I really needed to look at something other than Deni or I’d probably overheat and pass out.
Clearing my throat, I plucked at my shirt and seriously considered yanking off my hijab. As soon as the lights were off, that thing was gone. I gestured at the bamboo mats. “Who’s sleeping here?”
Where I Found You Page 19