The Rainbow Troops (22 page)

ON MONDAY morning, Bu Mus, Sahara, Flo, Trapani, Harun, Lintang and I gathered under the
filicium
in front of the school. We were waiting for the other members of Laskar Pelangi who had deserted and gone AWOL, leaving the Muhammadiyah village school troops without permission.

Like Mahar said, destiny is circular. Bu Mus was undergoing the same experience that she had had during the wait for the tenth student back when we were about to begin the first grade. She was staring beyond the edge of the schoolyard, her face showing both fear and hope.

It was almost 10 o'clock, and no one else had shown up. We were buried in saddening silence. But suddenly I saw Bu Mus produce a smile. In the distance, A Kiong appeared, riding his bicycle at a frightening speed. He was racing toward the school. His sensei, Mahar, sat on the back; he seemed to be barking orders at A Kiong. They arrived at the school and we cheered a greeting.

Soon, another figure appeared in the distance, striding toward the school like King Kong. In his short time as a copra coolie, Samson's body had gotten much bigger. He strode calmly, strongly and with authority while carrying a small black hairy thing on his shoulders. Only after they got close enough did we realize that the small hairy thing was Syahdan.

That left Kucai, our foul politician. By 11 o'clock, after much waiting, the ringleader of all the desertions hadn't bothered to show his big head.

Finally, Bu Mus ordered us to enter the classroom. She was sad Kucai wasn't there and said we had to do whatever it took to get Kucai back in school. Bu Mus' stance on this matter was extremely firm. Her powerful words made us tremble.

"For me, losing even one student is the same as losing half of my soul."

We thought to ourselves,
Why was one student so important?
But for Bu Mus, it wasn't that simple.

"As long as I can still stand, this class will not lose a single student."

We knew from Samson that Kucai couldn't leave the pepper garden because he had already been paid up front.

That information made the following week's schedule very full for Bu Mus, who took as many sewing orders as she could. She sewed day and night to gather money so she could exchange it for Kucai. She turned the class over to Lintang for that whole week. We didn't mind that our class had turned into a roofless stable. We paid no attention to the tumult raised by PN project vehicles moving back and forth through our schoolyard as the threatening dredges drew nearer. Lintang was full of enthusiasm as he taught, and we were a diligent audience. We had a new outlook: The dredges could crush our school, but we would keep on studying, even if it meant doing so while standing in the open field. We had one and only one choice: to keep studying, no matter what.

After she had earned enough money, Bu Mus again rode her bike to the middle of the forest, to the faraway pepper plantation to get Kucai back.

The school day was almost over when Bu Mus arrived with Kucai on the back of her bike. Kucai's condition was wretched. Picking peppers was very hard forced labor. We took turns hugging him as he sobbed.

Bu Mus gathered us under the
filicium
. Raising her voice to compete with the noise of the machines, Bu Mus said that Pak Harfan would certainly not want to see our school destroyed.

"This is the time for us to stand strong," she said, her gaze falling on us one by one, igniting our spirits.

"We will defend this school no matter what happens. We must defend Pak Harfan's honor!" Bu Mus said hoarsely, trying to keep hold of her emotions. Her hands were shaking. At the mention of Pak Harfan's name, we were struck by sadness. We choked back sobs.

"Wipe away your tears," Bu Mus said with resolution as she attempted to hide her own. "Wipe them away immediately! Outside of this room, don't ever let anyone see you cry."

After saying that, Bu Mus suddenly walked out of the room. We followed her. She moved quickly out into the schoolyard, straight into the roaring noise, and screamed to the heavy machinery operators, "Turn off those machines!"

They were stunned and looked around at one another.

"Turn off those machines! I said turn them off!"

The machines died at once. The operators, drivers and coolies were stupefied.

"Destroy this school if you want, just destroy it. But you'll have to do it over my dead body!"

We instantly formed a human barrier in front of Bu Mus. If PN wanted to knock down our school and Bu Mus, they'd have to knock us down first.

FROM THE beginning, everyone knew we were quietly challenging PN. Everyone also knew Bu Mus had sent a letter rebutting PN's warning that condemned our school. Yet in her screaming at the operators to turn off the machines, Bu Mus expressed outright her intent to oppose the PN kingdom. Throughout their hundreds of years of rule, this was the first time PN was being challenged openly by an ordinary citizen, and she was only a young girl—a teacher at a poor village school.

In accordance with her letter, Bu Mus still insisted on meeting with the head of PN. This was very brave. Never before had anyone acted this way—not even the head of the government establishment whose building had been trampled by the dredges.

Because of her behavior, many people thought Bu Mus had gone mad. Every morning, she pedaled past the market as fast as possible because she couldn't take the jeers. But not everyone acted like that. She drew applause from the barbers' union, palm juice sellers, coffee stall visitors and parking attendants.

"Keep it up, Bu Mus," they yelled. "We are behind you!"

A few narrow-minded people started intimidating Bu Mus. Pessimists tried to explain to her that her foolish behavior would get her nowhere. At that time, opposing those in power was taboo. The powerful were that strong. Many critical voices had mysteriously disappeared.

Yet Bu Mus didn't back down. She stuck to her position, that if we really couldn't stop the dredges from destroying our school and plundering the tin below it, we should at least be heard by the highest PN authority first so we could tell him what our school meant to us.

But who was Bu Mus? Who were we? No more than poor, unimportant villagers. Our school wasn't important. There were no officials with children at our school to defend us. Moreover, all this time, our school had been nothing but a bother to the government. The head of PN was too high up for us. It would be beneath him to give us the time of day. He had far more important things to do than deal with an insignificant village school. It was sufficient for PN to delegate this matter to the head of the survey team, the lowest managerial official at PN.

The head of the survey team was a wellmannered, middleaged man. He was not an astute negotiator. He himself was not pleased with the assignment to meet with Bu Mus—perhaps he respected her courage or felt that condemning our school was morally wrong.

"I have been assigned by my office to speak with you about the matter of moving this school to another location so the dredges can operate here," he said, wasting no time with pleasantries.

Bu Mus smiled but didn't reply. He waited for her response, but our teacher remained silent. This team head was wise enough to know that by not answering, Bu Mus had already answered. He thanked her and excused himself.

"I will inform my boss of your decision, Ma'am."

His boss, the lead foreman, was unhappy when he heard what had happened. He snapped at the head of the survey team, who had been opposed to doing this dirty work in the first place. Now, the foreman was on the warpath because his operation was impeded just because a village school was brave enough to stand in the way of the determined path of tin exploration.

Before anything had even happened, out of irritation, the foreman had already blundered, crippling the negotiations by sending his subordinate to summon Bu Mus to his office. Bu Mus furrowed her brow.

"Please tell the foreman that if he needs us, we'll be here. The discussion of this school's fate must be in front of my students, inside of this classroom. They are the ones with the most at stake here."

The foreman finally came. Without much fuss, he took out a big calculator and showed Bu Mus a very large figure.

"This is a lot of rupiah, Bu Mus. You all can buy land ten times the size of this schoolyard; you can build a school ten times better than this one."

He said each sentence with a condescending tone.

"Foreman, this is not my school, it is the people's school. Moreover, I have already said it again and again: We will not sell this school, however decrepit, or the land it stands on, no matter how high the offer."

Her reaction was calm, and by the way she spoke, anyone would know that for someone like Bu Mus, money was irrelevant. Although Bu Mus was dirt poor, she had never been dazzled by money.

The foreman was offended and became spiteful.

"Well, maybe that's because you all are not actually in the position to sell. As far as I know, this is the property of the religious community, not you."

The foreman's point of view was actually valid in the eyes of property law, but it was very flawed as an argument in this case. His own words would bite him in the butt shortly.

"Good sir, indeed this land is held by the religious community, so it cannot be sold. This land has been entrusted to us and we will keep that trust. If you, foreman, are a Muslim, must I explain to you what trust means for a Muslim?

The foreman's face turned beet red with embarrassment.

The head miner, the foreman's boss, was furious. He was very temperamental, having begun his career as the head of PN's special security forces, the guys armed with AK-47s. He was angry with the foreman for not being able to take care of a simple task. Frustrated, and already preoccupied with negotiations with investors in Jakarta and Belitong, he had to come to our village school to take care of this seemingly trivial problem.

Though she knew she would be dealing with an infamously callous official, Bu Mus remained calm. But Mahar was not so relaxed. He assigned Syahdan, our intelligence agent, to do an investigation. Syahdan reported that the head miner had a dull brain and a thuggish nature—a dangerous combination. Mahar gathered the Laskar Pelangi members under the
filicium
tree. He said that the situation could potentially become heated and even out-of-control. We deliberated. Finally, we reached a solution, but it was the kind we had been trying to avoid. The solution came from our politician, Kucai.

"I will invite my reporter friends from Tanjong Pandan," he said.

Kucai's idea was brilliant.

The head miner rushed to our school. It was clear from his body language that he had come with the intention of getting angry.

"Bu Mus," he began hostilely, "need I remind you that PN is owned by the state? There are government regulations that guarantee state businesses operational freedom for the sake of public benefit!"

Bu Mus was a high quality teacher with vast knowledge and remarkable self-control.

"Public benefit?" she asked.

It was a rhetorical question that clearly demonstrated the
public
the head miner spoke of didn't include the native inhabitants.

"Sir, need I remind you that there are laws that guarantee a citizen's right to education? That law is written in this country's constitution. As far as I know, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Shall I cite the article for you?"

The head miner was stunned. He had underestimated Bu Mus. And now it was if he had been hit by a brick. He should have learned from the experiences of the head of the survey team and the lead foreman.

"If you insist, sir, we will tie ourselves to this school."

The head miner wanted to let his anger boil over, but he was aware of the reporters off in the corner ready to snap a photo guaranteed to make the next day's front page. Printed above the photo, the headline would read:

PN Official Acts Cruelly toward Small Community
or
Head Miner Doesn't Know Constitution!

The head miner was in a tight spot. He had to admit that Bu Mus was correct. He was also afraid of becoming headline news. The reporters could read his intentions from his cursing and behaving without manners under the roof of an old Islamic school. We knew that there are two things in this world that couldn't be opposed: God and reporters.

The next day, news of our resistance appeared in the local papers. And just like that, our copra warehouse of a school became famous. All over the place, people were raving about the young girl brave enough to challenge the king, and her eleven students who suddenly shot up in rank to "exemplary heroes." The articles brought out huge amounts of sympathy for us and also ferreted out all sorts of public judgments, already brewing at the coffee stalls.

Within no time at all, through the coffee stalls of course, stories spread that Bu Mus was in fact a state governance lawyer who graduated from a top university in Jakarta, disguised as a Muhammadiyah village schoolteacher. Purportedly, in order to perfect the disguise, she also pretended to be a seamstress. And it also turned out Pak Harfan was a bicycle technician professor who for 51 years had disguised himself as a poor teacher. In order to perfect his disguise, he also pretended to plant cassava in his garden.

The students were actually the children of wealthy people. Our parents disguised us as poor children. We allegedly did all of this to reveal PN's unjust treatment of the people of Belitong.

Along with the buzz of the story, our school—never visited or given the time of day before—became very crowded.

Politicians, party members, and members of the legislative assembly took turns visiting, along with high government officials. They were suddenly very interested in our plight. All this time, they had surely passed our schoolyard along the main road on the way to their luxurious offices and had never given it a second thought. It was as if they had just found out that a school lay on the edge of the yard. The news, the large amount of tin beneath our school, and the opportunity to take on the image of caring for the little people had cured their blindness. As the old Malay saying goes: the noise of honey brings noisy bumblebees. Because so many people sympathized with our school, the politicians, party members, representatives and officials suddenly swarmed around us.

There were those who came ready to represent us and to speak on our behalf for free. And suddenly, everyone became generous. Someone wanted to pay Bu Mus for her years of unrewarded service; organizations and institutions were ready to fix our school.

Because all of that was for personal gain, Bu Mus politely declined all the aid. One institution wanted to donate a water pump and was repeatedly turned down by Bu Mus. But they were determined, and late one night, they installed it in our well without permission. After installing it, they took a photo near the pump with our school as the background.

Bu Mus had many interviews with reporters. I was even interviewed and photographed a few times. Each time I was questioned, I trembled. I didn't know what they were asking or how I should answer. The important thing was that we were photographed. The happiest to be photographed, of course, was Harun. Each time he was photographed, he held up three fingers.

In the meantime, Kucai was laughing to himself. He was elated that his political career was running smoothly. He may have been sly, but this time we had to salute him. The attention had spread so far that it finally disturbed Taikong.

Taikong was directly above the head miner. He was second only to the head of PN. It was a rank to be proud of. Because it was such an esteemed rank, people often carried the title,
Taikong
, over into their retirement years—take for example our Koranic studies teacher, Taikong Razak.

Taikong spoke differently than those below him—the head of the survey team, the foreman, and the head miner—because he was very well educated. He did not carelessly mete out orders and threats.

"It is not PN that I am challenging. And it is not this school that I am fighting for, but thousands of Malay village children," said Bu Mus.

Taikong nodded.

"This building is not just a school, Taikong. It has become a symbol, a symbol of hope for poor people to study. If this school comes down, village children will be forever stuck in pepper gardens, copra factories, boats that need caulking and Chinese produce shops. They'll believe even less in the usefulness of village schools and cease to believe in education itself."

Taikong stared at Bu Mus in amazement. He said that he supposed if the decision was in his hands, he would cancel the condemnation.

"But the power lies in the hands of the highest official, Bu Mus."

We cheered when Taikong said he would arrange a meeting between us and the head of PN. While the possibility that our school could be saved was very slim, at the very least, our persistence had made our request to meet with the head of PN come true.