As I related at the end of my last post, I had two weeks left to explore Indonesia before returning to the States. I had read that the Minangkabau people of West Sumatra were matriarchal Muslims. This apparent contradiction piqued my curiosity, so I booked a flight from Jakarta to Padang, the provincial capital.

By now I was pretty well adapted to the climate. Since both men and women wore sarongs, which are much more comfortable in the tropical heat than trousers, I had purchased two and learned to tie them properly. (One, however, was a pinkish magenta, which I later understood was appropriate only for teenage girls, not for adults of either sex.) I had ridden the third-class train and sat on buses jammed thigh to thigh with the locals, pulling out my bilingual dictionary so we could converse, me learning Indonesian and my seatmates eager to practice English. I had even picked up enough of the language to translate, more or less, for other foreigners. I fancied myself quite the sophisticated traveler.

After five weeks in the country I needed a haircut but couldn’t find a recommendation for a beauty salon in the guidebook. The night before catching the plane to Sumatra I gave myself a trim with the scissors on my Swiss Army knife.

The flight was a little under two hours. I had planned to find a hostel or some such accommodation once we landed. However, to my surprise, my seatmates—two teenage girls who spoke very good English—invited me to stay with their family.

After reading about traditional Muslim hospitality, I shouldn’t have been surprised. West Sumatra, like much of Indonesia, is tropical rainforest, but Islam was born in the desert. A traveler arriving at an oasis already occupied by a different tribe had to rely on a friendly reception. Their life depended on it. This ancient mutual obligation, formed by necessity in a harsh climate, spread across the globe, carried along with the religion itself.

At Padang airport a newspaper on a rack caught my eye. In big black type, its headline read “Zionism vs. al-Koran.” No one in this country had asked me my religion, at least not yet, but I took it as a warning. Okay. In Indonesia, I’m not Jewish, I’m Protestant. This was only the first fabrication I invented about my life while in Indonesia.

The girls brought me to a modest house with a thatched roof. It has been forty years and I can no longer remember their names, or the name of their little brother. The mother, Safitri, was around my height and a bit on the plump side. She didn’t bat an eye when her daughters walked in with a total stranger from the other side of the planet. She smiled broadly and said that dinner would appear shortly. Her English was good, though not as fluent as her daughters’.

The house smelled pleasantly of coconut milk and chili. Safitri showed me to the bedroom where I could leave my belongings. It might have been a guest room, or perhaps one of the family members doubled up with the others so as to accommodate me. Her son was delighted to introduce me to his pet monkey, whose cage swung from the porch roof.

During my travels in the previous weeks around the island of Java, on several occasions a local asked me what I did for a living, and I told the truth—that I was a guru bahasa inggeris, an English teacher. The next question was always whether I was married. When I replied in the negative, the response was a pitying look and a “tsk-tsk.”

I hated being pitied. On the other hand, I wasn’t going to tell these strangers that I was a lesbian. So when Safitri asked, I told another lie, one calculated to raise my status: I was traveling alone because my physician husband couldn’t get away from work. No way was I going to tell her about the illegal apartment I rented, the one I’ve referred to in previous posts as “the hovel on the roof.”

Safitri did ask my religion, and I said I was Protestant. “So you have three gods?” she asked.

Ah, she means the Trinity. “No,” I replied. “One god with three aspects. Kind of like the Hindus.” She nodded, perhaps just to be polite.

At first light I was awakened by the call to prayer broadcast over loudspeakers from the nearest mosque. Perhaps muezzins on Java do the same, but if so, I hadn’t heard it in any of the cities there. I dressed hastily and stumbled grumpily into the living room, where the girls were prostrating themselves on their prayer rugs. Safitri wasn’t doing the same; perhaps she’d already completed her devotions. She noticed my mood, and I explained that such amplified announcements wouldn’t be allowed back home. “They’d wake people who have to work the night shift.”

Safitri’s husband, Latief, arrived some days later. He was an engineer and had been working on Java. He let me know quietly that he too had some status in the world by producing a photo of himself with President Suharto. Over dinner that night he taught me to say the prayer before eating, Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem.

The next day while we were out for a stroll, Safitri suggested that I convert to Islam. (I wrote about this in a previous post about women’s situation in Indonesia.) I would only have to undergo a minor surgery. “They just take a little piece,” she said. I wasn’t sure whether she meant the clitoral hood or the entire clitoris, but I replied by crossing my hands over my crotch and giving her a horrified look. She was amused.

As I reported in that June post, the Minangkabau are matrilineal, with houses and land passing from mother to daughter. The people brag about this custom, saying it protects women. The women did seem more confident than their Javanese counterparts. One day while walking in the countryside I met a rice farmer. She gestured toward her fields, announcing proudly that the property was hers. I couldn’t help compare her attitude with that of the subservient doctor’s wife I’d met in Yogyakarta.

Sons are expected to obtain an education, and mothers mortgage their properties to pay for that schooling. That bit of information gave me misgivings, even then. In today’s world, education—say, in the STEM fields—will give a man a lot more power than his uneducated sister has. Much later I learned that my misgivings were justified. Those educated men’s earnings are bequeathed according to Islamic law: the sons receive twice as much as the daughters. Male relatives are also expected to manage the family’s finances, doling out money even for small necessities.

Polygamy is legal in Islam. Safitri told me that if Latief took a second wife, she would throw him out of her house. Later I wondered how she would support herself and her three children if she dumped her engineer husband. Her only other source of income was a little side business cutting hair.

Speaking of hair, when I told her about trimming mine with a Swiss Army knife, Safitri lied politely and said it looked very nice.

On another day I visited the local museum, which had a statue of Adityawarman, the first king of the Minangkabau. He holds a knife in his right hand and stands on what looks like a corpse atop the skulls of slain enemies. Kingship is the same everywhere, I thought. Always has been. It’s about being the top killer.

One afternoon Safitri showed me a photo of her cousin, a man in elegant traditional female attire, complete with makeup. I asked if it was a problem. She indicated that it wasn’t, and that everyone accepted him. Perhaps I needn’t have made up the story about a husband.

Safitri and I often walked together, holding hands, as is the custom among friends in Indonesia. It had been so long since I felt a human touch!

I had bought an umbrella for our walks—as I’ve mentioned, it rains a lot in West Sumatra. Safitri admired it, so I gave it to her before I left. I had enjoyed her Padang style rendang (a spicy beef and coconut milk stew), so as a going away present she cooked up a pot and packed it for me. The evening before my flight home, I took the family out to a restaurant to thank them for their hospitality.

I didn’t declare the rendang to customs upon re-entering the United States. Once home and unpacked, I invited my friends over to share it. The dish was eye-watering, mouth-on-fire delicious, something I could tolerate better in those days.

For a little while I stayed in touch with Safitri, exchanging letters. But after those lies, what could I tell her about my real life? I wished I did have a big house in California instead of a tiny illegal apartment, so I could invite her children to study here. Did she and her family survive the 2009 earthquake and tsunami, which killed 1,195 people in the Padang area? I’ll never know. But I’ll be grateful to her forever.

*          *          *

I had kept a journal of my adventures in Indonesia, and had it with me when Max and I later went camping in Yosemite as reported in the previous post. The bears tore up our backpacks to get at our food. I think it must have been the littlest one that chewed up my Indonesia journal— the tooth marks were rather small.

I mentioned in that post that I sang “Suliram,” an Indonesian lullaby, to pacify the bears. I tried singing it for my friend Fern, but after hearing my off-key attempt, she said it was no wonder the bears stayed away. Later I sent her a link to Miriam Makeba’s recording.