Crossing Allenby Bridge

by Michael Looft

  The next day I moved into the little room out back, which was almost an apartment, with its own shower and toilet across a courtyard. I didn’t leave the house, but had the hotel bring over my things on a tuk tuk. Zach’s family was concerned that if I pushed myself I might relapse with an even worse bout of dengue fever. That scared me enough to heed their advice. I would spend the next five hundred nights in that little room, and my days with Zach and sometimes Fr. Jack and the others. Initially, I helped Zach expand the savings clubs to different villages. It was gratifying to look on a map and see these groups spread like a slow-moving salve.

  And little by little, my tenuous friendship with Fr. Jack transformed after he asked me to fill in for a volunteer English teacher that left one of the schools. In fact, it was the same school we went to on that first day, where I met Aulia, the beautiful headmistress. I was reluctant to take on the job as it required a long ride on the moto each morning and I was also a bit scared of her beauty, not to mention I had no clue how to teach English. Over time I began to appreciate the ride where I saw the same people in the same places on my route, waving to most of them each time I passed. My infatuation for Aulia faded once I began to get to know her as a person. It shifted to a deep respect for someone who’d struggled her whole life and felt duty bound to pull as many others out of poverty as she could. I chuckle now at how childish I was that first meeting. In many ways, it was the best year of my life. It was the year I began loving people, especially my young students who found me amusing. They brought out a kindness in me I wasn’t aware I possessed.

  CHAPTER 10 | leaving java

  That year gave me a chance to reconsider my life. I had many talks with Zach and sometimes with Fr. Jack. Zach held an air of optimism, believing that faith in the rhythm of the Universe, likened to honing one’s instrument in life and doing the best to play along with the symphony of life, where God remained an ephemeral conductor, would lead to ultimate happiness. I appreciated his metaphor and he proved its meaning through consistent actions. I could never quite figure out if he was religious or not. For one thing, I knew his wife was Muslim. Although, I never heard him going on about any specific religion. Whenever he did speak of spiritual matters, his language sounded more mystical than anything else. Someone could have told me he was a Muslim, or even a Christian, and I would have believed either, since he seemed to be sitting at the pinnacle of some great mountain gazing down on the paths and recognizing each for its worth. Indeed, he was drawing from a different source, one more pure, than most people I’ve met in this world.

  Fr. Jack was a different story. He spent most of his waking hours defying both man and God. I think he got off on the idea of being a maverick or a hooligan or whatever else he liked to call himself. It was like he got Christ’s message and was on His side, but assumed everyone else seemed to have missed the boat entirely, unless they were poor. Fuck the bastards! was one of his favorite phrases when referring to any hierarchical policy he disagreed with, or just about anyone who got in his way. He moved about like a whirlwind, although crafting goodness in his path instead of destruction. So, I couldn’t fault him for that and tried my best not to drink whiskey with him so as not to rile him up again like that first night. In fact, our paths didn’t cross much. I felt as if he always knew my whereabouts but stayed out of my business. Later, I wondered if he saw me not with an eye of disdain or even competition, but rather as another damaged soul drawn into his monastic heart of darkness deep in the jungle. I kept my distance, but like everyone else, I grew to love the scoundrel.

  For much of the year, I was broke. The big banks got a bailout, but Don’s bank did not, and I saw my equity vanish overnight. I had unwittingly staked my retirement account on the housing market, since my portfolio consisted of high-rated bonds–labeled low-risk, but packed with junky mortgages. I stopped caring after I started living at Zach’s place. It was like a haze of oblivion settled in, cleansing the pains of my past.

  I still thought of Elena, sometimes. Despite the good times in the beginning, I struggled against the tide of memories toward the end when her monster would slip out of the closet and attack me. I never saw her again. Like Zach’s friend Michelle, she came into my life when I needed her and left when we no longer needed each other–raising her own crimson scarf to say goodbye. Now, I have a mountain of exquisite memories to remember her by, all the lessons she taught me–especially how to open my heart.

  Stranger still was losing all concern for being broke because I’d spent my entire life worried about money and making sure I was set up for retirement. Life just seemed simpler not worrying about it. In fact, I worried so little that I’d forgotten the loan I made to the Mongolians. By March, they paid it back in full plus the meager interest I tacked onto it. America was defaulting right and left, but poor Mongolian families were coming through without a single one skipping out on their loan. I’d learned to live on so little that I could survive off the interest and I rolled half the loan back over and invested the other half into Zach’s program, plus an education loan program I set up so poor kids could afford to attend the Academy or one of the other schools around Adipala. I’d heard too many requests from parents the past six months needing help sending their kids to school. Fr. Jack suggested an outright donation, but I still couldn’t see myself going that far when I knew I could recycle that money while holding the trustee accountable.

  I was planning a trip home and contemplating leaving Adipala for good. Part of me desired to stay there for the rest of my life–in the jungle and surrounded by good people, but that goodness had already planted a seed in me and I could feel it guiding me towards a new path in life. At first, microfinance had captivated me, and I assumed that my life and investments would follow that course. Though, there was a huge difference between the entrepreneurial loans that seemed to be drawing people into a market that might need something else, and the savings clubs, which seemed more powerful with their grounding in social connections, not to mention the focus on saving money rather than spending it.

  But my work in the school made me realize that most of the people I’d met over the past few years were stuck; and while money for a business was a way out, a solid education was a better long-term path out of poverty for most people. So, I was proud when we launched the educational loan program in April and watched as Fr. Jack’s schools swelled with new students. Perhaps financing their education proved less sexy than other rags-to-riches stories we Americans so love, but I knew this was the right thing to do, especially after drawing a connection to my own life. I’d spent most of my childhood skirting poverty, and the rest of my life doing my best to overshoot that and provide a solid line of defense against slipping back into it. Even the idea of having children gave me a scare when I figured out how much raising one of them (the right way) would cost. Though, none of my successes came about through my sheer will, but rather because of my education, both formal and informal. The Naval Academy got me off that dreary stoop. The connections I made over those four years propelled me to a life of cushion and protection. Education was my ticket out just as it was for those poor kids on Java.

  I’d gotten in the habit of checking my email once a week. Saturday mornings I’d ride up to the same café and open my laptop. I’d kept up with Sarah and Mark. I knew Sarah had finished her website and was headed back to the States to launch her business. Despite the economic downturn that had plunged many people into unemployment and chaos, paradoxically, philanthropic spending in some sectors had skyrocketed. One thing I love about my country is that once that individualism is stripped away, people gravitate towards helping one other. One of the articles I read in praise of American solidarity even referred to a quote from Churchill during the Second World War that likened the country to a pressure cooker that picks up steam the hotter it gets.

  I was glad to hear that Sarah’s venture might take off, and I even introduced her to the few friends I had in the venture capital community who had the cash left to
help during such a rocky time, even though the financial crisis was a year-and-a-half old and most people were still not betting on new horses. It wasn’t clear what role Mark would play in all that, but I assumed he was helping on the technical side. In one email a few months prior she’d not mentioned him once, and I guessed they may have parted ways. So, I was somewhat surprised, and delighted, to see a wedding invitation in my inbox. Even more surprising was the location: Jerusalem. A destination wedding. I’d heard of, and even attended, a few of these in semi-tropical places like Costa Rica and Bermuda, but never Jerusalem. Of course, I’d never met two people like Mark or Sarah. So, in a way it made sense. At least they gave us several months to prepare. Late June might be a good time to go. Couldn’t be much hotter than Java at any other time of year. Zach’s story of Petra stuck with me and I put it on my bucket list. So, I booked a flight to Jordan, with a plan to travel overland to Jerusalem after Petra and the Dead Sea. First though, I would be making a stop along the way in Baltimore.

  I hadn’t seen my father in twenty-five years. Like many a father and son, we had a hard time seeing life from the other’s perspective. Everything was fine when I was seven years old, helping him drop crab pots in the Bay. Back then, all I wanted to be was him, or at the very least get him to appreciate me. Unfortunately, he wasn’t built for the kind of nurturing I needed, and I came to consider myself just a free deck-hand and petty slave criticized for his untalented hands. I couldn’t seem to make them work fast enough, and when I did, I wound up cutting myself or dropping a rig overboard by accident. He never said anything, but would just give me that disappointed frown. In fact, I’m not sure my father ever said more than three sentences at a stretch to me. He was not only a quiet man, but wrapped up so tight no one could get in. As time went on I began to realize that his personal prison kept him from getting out to connect with anyone.

  When I was a teenager I often wondered what in the world my mother ever saw in him. She was a kind person worn thin from years catering to a somnambulist. She once told me that in his youth he’d been different–optimistic, and at times on fire. He wanted to go to college and study to become an engineer, so he joined the Marine Corps to pay for it with the GI Bill. All that changed as the Korean conflict broke out while he was in boot camp. My mother said he came back from that war a different man, a broken man. She didn’t have to tell me that his soul was so damaged that higher education was no longer an option. It was written all over his face. My mother was stuck making meals for this shell of a man, watching him sleepwalk through life, scraping by for his family.

  I was a product of this brokenness, born a few years later. I suppose his melancholy drove me to hide in books. I had my sights set on entering the Academy ever since we had an officer come to the school on career day back when I was fifteen years old. In his smart outfit and outgoing, confident manner, he was everything I wanted to be and everything my father was not. I approached him after his session, along with several other boys who were just as drawn to him. This was at a time when the Vietnam War’s unpopularity meant naval officers took a risk even coming to a school campus, but this guy was different enough that he got people to see past all the vitriol. It didn’t hurt that he was going into a poor neighborhood where we were ready to trade anything for escape. I waited for the throng to thin out and just as he was leaving, I caught his sleeve. He turned and with a smile asked me my name and what my plans in life were.

  “I want to be like you. Be an officer.”

  “That’s great, kid. How are your grades?”

  “Well, they weren’t the best last year, but this year I hope to bring them up.”

  “Bring them up. If you want this life, you must be disciplined in both body and mind. Don’t forget that.”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes, sir. You mentioned in your presentation that tuition at the Academy is free. Does that cover food, too?” When I said this, I could see him looking deep into my eyes and for the first time, taking a real interest in me.

  “Everything, son.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card with his name on it. I still remember seeing Commander Barnes on the card and wishing I would someday have a card on it that had that title before my name. “Here, take my card. Why don’t you put your head down this year and get straight A’s and make sure you exercise every morning. Do you think you can do that?”

  “Yes sir!”

  “Send me your report card in June. If you get straight A’s, let’s talk again. Maybe I’ll have some extra-curricular work you can do with us in the summer. I coach the sailing team and if you’re interested, we might have a spot open to help with the gear and scrubbing and repainting the hulls.”

  I often think back to that day and the moment where I hesitated. I almost didn’t reach out for his sleeve, wondering if he’d take a messy-looking kid seriously. That fateful day, meeting Commander Barnes, led to three years of straight A’s and sit-ups, along with spending my summer helping the sailing team. I would join that team when I became a Midshipman. So, my life turned on a three-minute conversation with Commander Barnes in that old brick high school, giving me the hope and encouragement I needed to chart a course through life that sent me sailing to places I never imagined.

  My father never got that. He tried to talk me out of the service, and I knew why, though he never said it. He was worried that I would wind up like him, a broken soul. Of course, we never had a real relationship, so I didn’t listen to him. Over the years I managed to avoid contact with him altogether. My mother would write or call every now and again and invite me out to the house, but I was always too busy–even if I wasn’t. It was just too painful to think about his sour face and dashed hopes or whatever it was that drove his depression. At least he didn’t drink much like Thomas’ uncle or some of the other fathers in the neighborhood that made life even more miserable for everyone else around them.

  I couldn’t place the urge for wanting to go back and see my father. Why now? Maybe it was because I’d just spent over a year watching a few loving fathers in action. It made me nostalgic for what could have been, I suppose. There were times throughout the years I wanted to go and show him how successful I had become–but I knew even if he was proud of me he would never show it. So, it was no use. I had been angry with him all those years, but that anger had morphed into empathy and in a way, I just wanted to go back and thank him for doing the best he could. Even if I couldn’t muster the courage myself to say it out loud, I’d think it in his presence and perhaps those brainwaves would be picked up by what was still left of his brain, if he hadn’t already degenerated into a vegetative state.

  I spent another month with Zach and Fr. Jack and the rest of the people I’d grown so fond of. A week before I left, Aulia told me she’d gotten engaged to “someone nice from her village.” I was happy for her. Happy that she’d found someone the way Mark had found someone. It made me think of Elena and what could have been with her had our hearts not soured. Some relationships are just karmic lessons, I suppose. When it came time to say goodbye to everyone, I told Fr. Jack I’d be back and he looked me square in the eye and said dryly, “No you won’t. God’s got other plans for you.” At that everyone laughed, and we passed around a cup of wine to celebrate my departure. Magda the Gibbon was cradled around Fr. Jack’s neck, as usual, and she looked at me with what seemed like a triumphant sneer.

  The person I had the most difficulty saying goodbye to was Zach’s daughter Lily. She loved to storm in my room every morning and get tickled by me. Many people use the trite expression that someone has the face of an angel. Indeed, she had a glow that rivaled the angels and a smile that radiated for miles. I would miss that smile, and I still often look at a picture I snapped of her smiling up at me during one of her morning rampages and I would sing her a song I made up repeating the lines consider the lilies of the field. She loved that silly song and cried when I told her I was leaving, asking when I’d be back. I told her I didn’t know, but that I would write
to her and send her presents on her birthday. It’s been over seven years and I still do that, though she may not even remember me anymore and wonder who the guy is that keeps sending her bits of jewelry once a year.

  I flew to Washington, DC on the cheapest trip I could find. Fr. Jack insisted on driving me to the airport. “I picks ‘em up and drops ‘em off,” he muttered when someone asked who was taking me. I think he just liked driving that Isuzu of his–knocking about, as he would put it. In fact, we stopped at a school on the short trip out there and I got to see him in action one last time: patting the heads of children as they gathered around him. It was just the two of us on the drive and I was nervous since he and I hadn’t been alone or talked more than half a dozen times after that first week. It turned out to be one of the more meaningful conversations I had with him and part of it was that I had learned to listen without butting in with questions or commentary or even restless mind chatter in the background. I chalk that up to keeping up the meditations Elena taught me, along with a few other practices that Zach taught me that were much simpler. More than anything, Fr. Jack wanted to be heard. Which is true of most people, I suppose. When we reached the airport, he went to grab my bag and I beat him to the punch.

  “I’ll take it this time, Father.” He grinned at me like I’d tried to steal his pot of gold.

  “Well, young fella. I guess this is where you get off and go on back to your world. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face; the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”