Crossing Allenby Bridge

by Michael Looft

  “Is there something you would like to ask me?” Aulia asked with a confident air and curious eyes as she caught me gazing at her just a little too long.

  I stumbled with my words at first, but soon found a good rhythm of questions around the various schools she ran. She provided quick and direct answers with a seriousness reminiscent of courtroom testimony, and I took her words down in my little notepad. They served over eleven hundred students at any given time through one of three schools: primary, secondary, and vocational. Some of the students lived in dormitories on campus, though most lived in the nearby community, and many from very poor families. The vocational school was designed to provide older children and young adults with valuable skills they needed to survive and thrive in their communities. The large pools were filled with fish, and the students learned how to farm and sell them. She also took me through the light automotive training shop. I was impressed with that shop, as young men in blue coveralls were busy dismantling and reassembling old Toyota pickup trucks and other vehicles that used to belong to Fr. Jack, as he pointed out. I also spotted a few small motors hooked up to wiring meant for testing electrical systems. The teacher, dressed in a black and red tracksuit, stood underneath a large Yamaha banner, relaxed pride spreading along the counters of his face.

  We passed by a few other rooms, some filled with older computers (the kind I hadn’t seen in years) and others with sewing machines. A student sat at each station deep in thought. I wasn’t sure if they were putting on a show for the guest passing through, but they seemed to know what they were doing. Fr. Jack’s jovial behavior struck a sharp contrast to Aulia’s reserved manner, but I noticed a casual deference to him as he seemed a pleasant whirlwind to all he stumbled upon, showing a paternal love for everyone crossing his path.

  From the vocational school grounds, we made our way past smaller buildings filled with children of all ages, each of them dressed in the same blue and white uniform–a symbol of equalization it was pointed out to me. At one point, we spotted four girls giggling in a corridor and wearing shy faces. They must have been around nine years old. Fr. Jack made a sudden stop, shooting them a stern look. He called out to one of them, who smiled, then quivered in slight fear before approaching him. He curled his hand over her shoulder and asked her something, at which she then smiled and straightened her spine as tall as she could. Though his hulking back obscured part of her, I could still make out her face. With each questioning remark he made in her language, she nodded her head in eagerness. He finished with a sing-song shout and she cried out in joy. It was then that he spun his body back toward me.

  “I was just asking her about her goat,” he said with satisfaction and one eye cast down on her.

  “Goat?”

  “Yes, she is part of a program we have here where she’s responsible for looking after a nanny goat, yeah. She comes in before school every morning and makes sure the goat has enough food and water and so forth. In a few weeks, she’ll give birth and the net proceeds will go toward her education. So, she’s reporting her diligence in looking after the goat, yeah. Can you see the pride on her wee face?”

  “Of course–and yours too,” I answered, and he twinkled at my remark.

  “I have no children of my own–that I know about, at least. So, these are my children, as it were. These girls will one day have kids of their own, so the program teaches them a bit about responsibility, yeah. You might be surprised at how early some of these girls have children of their own. The hope is that this gives them a little perspective and a chance to reflect on the work that goes into caring for another of God’s creatures.”

  When it came time to finish the tour and my questions that all seemed rather dry, we said goodbye and jumped back into the Isuzu. I watched Aulia’s angelic face stare back at me as we drove away, Fr. Jack honking his horn at the throng of children waving goodbye–an apt extension of his personality. It dawned on me looking at her that I found all the women I encountered on Java to be beautiful in their own way, and the men just as gentle in nature. I broached the subject with Fr. Jack on the ride back.

  “This is my first time on Java. The people here seem very peaceful.”

  “Oh yes, that is their nature. Gentle souls, the whole lot of them. You took a shine to Aulia, I see. Difficult to avoid, yeah.”

  “Something about the scarf, I suppose.” I assumed it would be futile to dodge Fr. Jack’s poignant remark.

  “She wears the hijab, the headdress for Muslim women. Some people think it hides a woman’s face, but I believe it only accentuates her beauty. What do I know? I’m supposed to be celibate and not think of such things….”

  “I couldn’t agree more. One question I have: if it’s a Catholic school why do you have a Muslim woman running it?”

  He chuckled at my question. “You expected a nun? Not many in these parts. It’s like this, yeah. First off, she’s the smartest student ever to have gone through that school. I watched her grow up and always viewed her as a standout, someone special. One of the most even-keeled persons I’ve ever encountered, yeah. Essential personality trait for a headmistress.”

  “I can see that.”

  “And the other reason is perhaps more political. This is a Muslim country and we must respect that, yeah. No question that having a Muslim running the school, not to mention a young woman, sends a strong message to the community. Now, I catch a bit of flak for this sort of thing. When the assistant general came out and we went up by boat to see the villages he said to me, ‘Jack, when are you going to start converting people?’ I said, I’m not. He said, ‘you’re a missionary.’ Yes, I said. I’m a missionary, but a missionary is witnessing. So, I’m here to witness. If I have an agenda–if I want these people to become Catholics–that’s not really the loving Jesus wants. It’s got to be unconditional.”

  “I heard that you’ve won a few interfaith awards.”

  “A few of ‘em over the years.”

  “What do you attribute that to?”

  “As you can see, I have no trouble picking the best person for a job. Also, in our schools we teach the children about Christianity, Islam, other religions and such. In my experience, the more somebody knows about somebody else’s religion, the less they fear that other person, yeah. I have great relations with the Imams, and so far, they’ve been in support of me as long as I stick to humanitarian work–helping people and such.”

  “How did you get started with the schools?”

  “My first day here they put me in a boat and took me over to villages along the sea. That was over forty years ago. People had no healthcare and most of them were illiterate, and so on and so forth. This one fella came to the door and he was real hungry. He looked like a skeleton. All the villagers looked like skeletons and it was like stumbling upon a concentration camp, yeah. My first thought was to just get food for them, but I saw another thing wrong there, the real problem. They didn’t have a road, and the village wasn’t that far away from the main road. We were just going there by boat because we had no other way, yeah. So, I came upon an idea to build a road.” As he spoke, particularly after he said the word idea, I could tell that the subject had turned to something dear to his heart, like flipping the switch from priest to entrepreneur. Perhaps it was his true talent slipping out. “Well the problem back then, and still today if you know what I mean, was when you wanted to do anything out there people were trying to rip you off. So, the only way I could make it work was to have trucks of my own. I borrowed some money and bought a truck, yeah. That meant we could do what we needed to do without getting ripped off. I rented that one out and with the proceeds and a little more borrowing got more trucks and more trucks and more trucks. To build the road, there’s an old quarry up a ways that wasn’t being used. So, I used it, yeah. Got the rocks from there and dumped them. The villagers come out and done the rest of the work themselves, but that wasn’t the last of the roads.”

  “How many roads have you built?”

  “I’ve l
ost count over the years. All I know is we still have hundreds of villages looking for more roads. So, we still got a lot of work to do, yeah.”

  “That must have cost a lot of money just in fuel and upkeep for the trucks.”

  “Yeah, but we started charging the local governments, so most of the costs are covered. When you’re coming from a developed country you forget the value of the road. It’s only when you don’t have one that you see how important they are, yeah. You see, the further you go into the jungle, the poorer the people are. There’s no electricity out in some of these places.” He waved his hand towards a dense thicket of jungle. “When you bring the roads in, people get electricity. You can upgrade the houses little by little, and haul in materials to build schools, clinics. Some of the roads even serve as dikes to keep the sea at bay and the river from flooding. We’ve been able to reclaim thousands of hectares of land, so families can plant rice. The road is the building block to bringing about economic development.”

  “So that’s how you also got started building schools?”

  “Oh yes, even this road we’re on now.” We had turned off the main road and onto a narrow one paved with the types of stone that seemed like they were taken from a quarry, fitted together to form an eight-foot-wide path through the jungle. “This is one of our roads, yeah. In all we’ve built about thirty schools so far, like the one we just visited and the one we’re headed to now.”

  CHAPTER 3 | akademi maritim

  Fr. Jack and I “knocked about” that next school and another one, as he liked to say in his thick brogue and swagger exaggerated from what appeared to be a slight bowlegged limp brought about either through injury or age. Both schools were much smaller than the first, and one of them was a one-room concrete building for primary school students. I was touched by how polite the kids were, and how they sang to us and smiled and giggled at everything he said. His love brimmed for each child, and I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed the level of adoration they had for him in someone else. It was beyond paternal, and almost took on a mystical quality. All this despite a playful clowning around that would never have flown in the schools where I grew up. I chalked it up to cultural differences, but also the sly way he was able to skirt the edge of silliness without engendering contempt. Perhaps it all came down to how much they knew he fought to make their lives and communities a better place, but I also saw him as just a big kid having a lot of fun as they tapped into his jovial personality.

  Before heading back to Adipala, we stopped at a roadside restaurant. Not much of a restaurant, but rather a simple bamboo hut where a skinny old woman stirred a large cauldron of stew she served out into small bowls for pedicabs and other passers-by. As we sat down to a small table, I watched the slow and deliberate way he ate, like the way he’d eaten the previous night. This was all in sharp contrast to the speed at which he drove the Isuzu, walked on foot, and generally got from point A to B. It was only when he stopped and spoke to people–looked them in the eye–that the world began to slow down, and he seemed to have all the time in the world. I suppose he made time for people and food, but not much else. We ate in silence, enjoying the sounds of everything else around us.

  Thirty minutes later and we were on the road again and he was back to his usual, convivial self. As we approached Adipala, he grew more animated. When I caught sight of the building we were headed to, a flash of Superman returning to the fortress of solitude blazed through my mind. In a land where no building stood more than a few stories high, I was not prepared for the monstrous edifice that was taking him the better part of a decade to build. It was as large as a ship. I counted nine stories in all.

  “This is it,” he said with an impish grin, turning the wheel with his massive arms and braking so hard in front of a set of glass doors I wasn’t sure we would stop in time. A hefty young man in khaki pants and a red floral print shirt emerged from the backdraft of dust, pulling my door open for me and offering a hand to help me out.

  “It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Academy, Pak Harry,” he said in a congenial tone and a warm smile. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but then again, I often underestimated the age of men in this part of the world, who seemed to retain their youthful appearance much longer than in other places. “I am Father Michael. At your service.”

  “Nice to meet you, Father Michael.”

  “Did you enjoy visiting the schools with Romo?”

  “Who?”

  “That’s just their nickname for me,” Fr. Jack shouted out as the three of us went through the glass doors inside the building. I wasn’t sure what Fr. Michael’s role was, but he seemed to dress like Fr. Jack and did a fair job emulating his gregarious personality, though he had his own gentle way and seemed more eager to please rather than evoking the same devil-may-care coarseness of Fr. Jack.

  The lower two floors of the building housed a maritime academy, which Fr. Jack had set up to train cadets. The academy provided merchant vessels around the world with talented crew, and thus perpetuated Indonesia’s long history as a maritime people. The building had been a decades-long goal of his, and every time he got a little bit of money he would erect another story. The topmost story contained an exact replica of a ship’s bridge, enveloped in windows and equipped with the same controls found on real ships, along with electronic simulators. The bridge looked out over the sea, and when I asked Fr. Jack why he hadn’t just bought an old ship he responded that ships in the water needed maintenance to prevent rust and so forth. So, keeping everything on land made sense. We stood at a railing around the seventh story inside the building, looking down three floors into a huge atrium–ready for banquets and whatever else a thousand people could do together. While the construction looked local, complete with shiny white tiles fastened over concrete floors and pillars, the overall design smacked of an overt attempt to replicate Roman architecture. I was astounded at the scale of everything–as if Fr. Jack had built a monument to either himself or to the Indonesian people that might last several lifetimes.

  “What do you plan to do with this part of the building?” I asked.

  “Once it’s completed, we can hold our graduations and other ceremonies here. We’re a bit short of funds on it, so it’s a work in progress, yeah,” he said while Fr. Michael’s servile smile brightened the air between us.

  “This has been Fr. Jack’s dream for many years now. It is slowly coming into fruition,” Fr. Michael said in a smooth voice, adding, “you will dine with us at the parsonage this evening, yes?”

  “Absolutely, that would be great.”

  On our way back down the stairwell, we stopped off on one of the lower levels that contained several open-air offices. Fr. Jack introduced me to his gang of lieutenants, friendly locals who cleansed me with warm smiles and gentle bows. Each person headed some tentacle of Fr. Jack’s extensive network of community development programs. One of them, an old man, had been working for Fr. Jack for thirty-five years, now managing a program dedicated to helping people obtain artificial limbs. A younger man with an obvious spitfire temperament and a quick mind to go along with it oversaw all the computer systems. All but one of them was local, and he looked like an American in his early thirties. As I passed through each person, I took a special interest in him.

  “You look like you’re from my neck of the woods,” I said as he beamed kindness at me. “I’m Harry. Where are you from?”

  “Monterey, California. I’m Zach.”

  “That’s pretty close to me. I’m in San Francisco. Now, is that Zack with a ‘K’ or with a ‘CH’?” I asked.

  “Actually, this man’s full name is Zacchaeus and not Zachary, if that’s what you’re after, yeah.” Fr. Jack said with pride as he laid a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “He’s named after a biblical character–the chief tax collector who gave away half his possessions to feed the poor. An astute father giving you that name knowing you was to someday help the poor. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”<
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  Sometimes people with an odd-sounding first name had a certain look to suit the name. Even ordinary names fit so well that it was hard to imagine them having any other, as Fr. Jack alluded to the instincts of some parents knowing how their children would turn out. Back in the day, I met a lot of guys named Earl with greasy slicked-back hair, tattoos, and a pack of smokes rolled up in their shirtsleeve. In fact, I never met an Earl in a suit. I also learned that Mitches tended to pick fights. Walters were uptight. Graces were the nice ones. Jessicas, Nancies and Colettes almost always had a sexy quality to them.

  Zach looked about as normal as anyone. Average height, brown hair, brown eyes, and a winning smile, he looked like an all-American with a cheerful glow. Italian roots, maybe. He had a trustworthy air about him as though he had no secrets other than a name cut short. No shameful family history to hide or personality defect repressed below the surface like the rest of us. It was obvious the first time I met Zach that what you saw was what you got. He got all the hugs and love from his parents growing up that the rest of us didn’t get. I only spoke with Zach that brief moment before we finished meeting everyone and left the office, but I knew right away I wanted to spend more time with him.

  As impressive as the building and its maritime school was, with its students, both male and female, crisp uniforms and flashing broad smiles wherever we went, I could not help but feel how out of place it all was. Fr. Jack was attempting to disrupt the natural order of life, at least an invisible, but entrenched status quo that mandated the servility of a poor population. I asked him about this later during dinner at the parsonage–that is, why he was enduring such a Herculean task. He responded after careful thought, “When Jesus said that we will always have the poor with us, he did not mean that we should turn a blind eye to their plight or even blame them for being poor, as many people do. People forget that in the very same passage, he went on to say that you can help the poor any time you want. See, you must look at these things in context in which they happened, yeah. In that story, Christ was protecting a woman who was pouring an expensive ointment on him while he was sitting round a table in a leper’s home. Remember, this was just days before he was to be crucified. The disciples criticized her for wasting money on the ointment, instead of spending that money on the poor. Yet, Christ was reminding them that the mission of helping the poor is ongoing, and that people can still be generous with the poor yet extravagant in their worship of God. So, to those people who go on and on about the poor having to put up with their lot in life, I say they’ve got it all backwards, yeah.”