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YOGYA: A Flood of Allah's Grace
Posted by M.M. Medeiros on Jawa eGroups
| Upon arriving at the Yogyakarta train station,
silently cursing the low level of Indonesian
train facilities (1st Class Indonesian style
is at or below 3rd Class by Malaysian standards),
I was delighted to find a newly-rebuilt and
much expanded Surau. Within minutes of my
arrival, I was surrounded by the sound of
a very powerful Azan. In the old days, arrivals to this station had been treated to a beautiful Javanese melody played with one finger on a piano. This in itself was unique to the Yogyakarta train station, and many such Javanese melodies have been conceived for the explicit purpose of calming and elevating the feelings. However, it seems that this same purpose is now served by a mosque which is the first sight for arriving train passengers. I asked the Station Master about this and he said the change was made by the Station Master who succeeded the one that played the Javanese melody for his arriving guests. Sitting subsequently in front of the mosque waiting for the hotels to open, an astonishing thing happened, something absolutely typical of the intuitive genius of the Javanese people. A young girl, perhaps 16 or 17 years old, came walking by, did a double-take when she saw me sitting there, came up to me with her right hand extended asking, "Kami siapa?" ("Who do we have here?"). Startled, I replied simply, "Saya Sulaiman", whereupon she raised my hand to her lips and kissed it in the manner of Javanese young people paying respect to their elders. After the exchange of Salaams, she walked on. No city in any of the fifty or so countries of the world that I have visited has ever greeted me in such a way. I can hardly express the many levels of meaning this nameless woman touched in me, and the gratitude she made me feel in having safely arrived to this most gracious of cities. The previous discomforts of the train ride vanished instantly, totally compensated by the deep humanity displayed by this young girl, and by my subsequent few hours observing her people in the train station. She reminds me of Ibn Arabi's "Sophia" -- the young woman who met the saint and enlightened him when he was visiting Ka'aba in Mecca. |
