April 27, 2015
Introducing Mr Tom: He's definitely not Jesus
I’d been in Bagan Batu for almost two weeks before I finally heard from Tom that he was done silently meditating and was on his way to join me. It was good news. Life was plodding along and needed something to shake it up a bit, and the long-haired and bearded Tom could be just the ticket, especially with him looking even more like Jesus than me. I think Mr Daniel had given up on my own holy credentials by now, what with my refusal to go to church on the second Sunday and my lack of teaching ability (surely the Messiah would know about past participles!)
It was the afternoon of the 27th of April when Tom, or Mr Tom as he would soon become known, arrived, and to say he shook things up a bit would be an understatement. I first caught sight of him across the street and called him over to the front gates of the school. He advanced towards me, a smile on his pale face upon which were two sunken, dark eyes, that made the man look more like Dracula than Jesus. He wore a filthy grey striped shirt that looked like it was 50% cotton and 50% sweat, and his dreadlocks flailed out in all directions from beneath a similarly grimy cap. He was an extraordinary sight, a sort of homeless hippy on a bike, and that is not even to mention the smell that was wafting along with him, which could only be fairly described as intoxicating.
Tom squeezed his heavily laden bike in through the gate. It was absolutely overflowing with stuff. There was even a guitar strapped to the back of it, in amongst a chaotic heaving mass of bags and bottles, bananas and baby heads. Yes, I said baby heads. And if I were a betting man I would say it were these decapitated dolls that were the main reason for the look of shocked apprehension on the face of poor Mr Daniel as he came out to greet his new visitor as young kids milled around, themselves equally unsure what to make of this sudden bizarre sight.
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To be fair to him Tom did quickly volunteer to go and take a wash, which gave all of us not only a break from the hardy smell but also the chance to regroup and recover. “He’s not exactly my friend, Mr Daniel, I mean I only meant him once before” I rushed to clarify, but the glazed look on the headmaster’s face indicated he was in a state of severe shock and might be hard to reach for a moment or two. He certainly seemed to have given up any hope of finding Jesus.
Fortunately for everyone Tom emerged from the bathroom a changed man. The smell was gone and he was wearing a clean(ish) shirt. He had even tied his dreadlocks back in a sort-of ponytail. I did note that this tying back of his hair had revealed a skull-and-crossbones tattoo behind his left ear, but other than that he now looked much less scary to the children, which seemed a plus given our location. Mr Daniel, composure restored, quickly took Tom on a tour of the classrooms to do some Q&A with the students.
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Whilst that was going on I was requested to sit and talk with one of Mr Daniel’s older students, a 23-year-old girl who took private lessons with him. She had a very young face that peered out from her hijab and, although she was shy at first, we soon got into a conversation which extended beyond the level of the more pre-adolescent students. She told me she worked for the government, as did her parents, and that was why she needed to speak English. She also told me that she was from Dumai. Upon hearing this I asked her if she knew Mr Muchsin. “Yes,” she said, “I was a student of his.”
Now I started to get suspicious. A government worker, a former student of the enemy. She was definitely up to something. A spy of some sort. I shifted nervously on my chair. Muchsin was tracking me. There was some sort of conspiracy afoot. “And do you like Mr Muchsin?” I queried. “Oh yes,” she replied, “he is a good man.” Definitely something going on.
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That evening there was a fierce thunderstorm. The power went out in the school building where Tom and I slept, as well as in Mr Daniel’s adjoining house and, in fact, in the whole town. Loud claps of thunder resonated and reverberated through the walls as we all gathered around by candlelight in Mr Daniel’s kitchen to eat dinner. His two young daughters were terrified by the storm and one of them clung tightly to him, the other to his wife. I myself had my own reasons for feeling scared in the darkness, still suspecting a Muchsin spy on my tail. And every so often a flash of lightning would illuminate the face of the man next to me. The strange bearded stranger who had arrived now so suddenly in my life, with whom I was, for better or worse, going to be rolling along with for the next couple of months. And one thing I could say for sure – life had just got a whole lot more interesting because of it.
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