Malang Sengosari jerked awake and sat up. The high riding sun reflected off the waves of the inlet and stabbed deep in his eyes.
They had slept far too late. His head was exploding and his mouth was foul as a week dead fish. Mahmud was sitting up in the bow, looking haggard and somewhat green under his seaman’s tan.
Something had happened. Something had come out of the sea – and there was the girl … the blue-skinned girl who had smiled and whispered …
Allah and all his Prophets, what had happened?
Malang took up a gourd of rainwater and drank off half its contents. Mahmud
moved aft and took the gourd from his hands, draining off the other half. For a
full minute they crouched in the bottom of the prahu, looking at each other.
Finally, Mahmud said. “I’ll get the anchor up. It’s late.”
Malang nodded. “I’ll get the engine running. Let’s have another look at the anchorage before the pinisi comes.”
Eventually, when he was a gray-bearded clan captain yarning with his respectful
crew, Malang would tell the tale of a night spent in the arms of a beautiful
sea jinni. But not today and not for many long years to come.
The Temple of Pura Luhur Batukaru
Northern Tabanan Regency, Bali
1200 Hours; Zone Time, October 25, 2008
Located deep in the cool, mist-streaked rainforests at the foot of the sacred mountain Gunung Batukaru, Pura Luhur Batukaru is the ancestral temple of the Tabanan princes.
As it is dedicated to the deities of mountains and lakes, every other temple in Western Bali, in turn, has a shrine dedicated to it. Legend says Pura Luhur Batukaru was founded in the eleventh century by the Hindu sage Kuturan, but ancient stone monoliths have been unearthed that indicate the temple site has been a place of mysticism and veneration since prehistoric ages.
Flanking the main shrine complex, steps guarded by demon statues lead down to a small square pool with a tiny island in its center, a symbolic microcosm of the Hindu Mount Miru. Placed on the tiny island are two platforms, one dedicated to Gunung Batukaru, the other to the deities of the Three Lakes – Tamblingan, Buyan, and Bratan. Nearby, sacred hot springs bubble and steam on the moss-sheathed riverbanks.
It is a place of great spirituality to the followers of the Science of the Holy Waters, and a place of great power.
That was what had brought the four Muslim teenagers to the temple.
Likely they meant no true harm. They were city youths, the sons of Javanese government officials and businessmen from the regency capital at Tabanan. Heir families were well-to-do for the island and, as is frequently the case with privileged adolescents all around the world, the boys were cursed with an excess of energy, time and hubris.
As youth elsewhere might have fallen into the trap of drugs or alcohol, they had fallen into the pit of excessive religion.
Islam in Indonesia was, for the most part, a far different thing than the militant Wahhabism of Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. The beer-sipping or bikini-wearing Indonesian Muslim generally had a far mellower and more tolerant world view.
Therefore, to this small band of restless, callow young people, Islamic radicalism was a road to individuality. It was a way to feel “special,” to stand out from the crowd, and it provided a moral high ground from which attacks on parental authority could be launched. The responding parental outrage only made the forbidden fruit sweeter.
These youths were far from the suicide bombing stage, however. Today’s long planned expedition to the temple of Pura Luhur Batakaru was more an act of public defiance, a personal pledge of dedication to Allah and a slap in the face of public propriety.
They did not intend to die.
The aged Imam in their school of religion who had encouraged them in this act did not mean for them to die either. He was an embittered, intolerant man who did not know the Balinese Hindus and who did not want to know them. He did not understand that he was blindly flicking ignited matches at a spilled pool of gasoline.
In due course, he would die for his ignorance and bigotry as well.
The four Muslim youths left their battered Toyota in the small parking area below the temple. Carrying their prayer rugs, they swaggered up the lichen-covered steps to the broad terrace in front of the gates, pretending not to notice the cold stares aimed at them from the scattering of other temple visitors, but secretly relishing them.
With exaggerated meticulousness, they oriented their rugs toward Mecca and knelt. Loudly, they began their noon prayers, brandishing their sacrilege of one of Agama Tirta’s holiest shrines under the nose of propriety. They were young, they were immortal, they were the favorites of God. Besides, the Hindus were a race of pacifists.
Were they not?
Deep in their devotions, they didn’t notice the crowd gathering on the steps of the terrace, a silent, staring throng that filtered down the paths to cluster around the interlopers. The Muslims had no way of knowing that they were not the first to intrude at Pura Luhar Batakaru.
During the previous night, one of the subsidiary shrines in the forest around the temple had been viciously vandalized. The shrine’s pemangu had been beaten and left for dead, and these villagers had spent their morning washing animal filth off the representation of the gods and picking up shattered bits of sacred tablets and artwork.
The four Muslim youths had played no part in the vandalism – more calculating minds than theirs had planned the desecration – but none of the outraged present particularly cared. The crowd pressed closer. There was no sound save for the words of prayer and then they trailed off into silence.
The Muslims looked up to find themselves walled in by a solid mass of stone-featured Balinese: grim, silent, impassive, totally unlike the islanders they had known. Now they sensed the building wave of wordless implacable rage. Again, the Muslim teenagers prayed – this time wordlessly, not out of bravado but in terror.
A child, an eight-year-old girl struck the first blow, hurling a stick at the quailing youths. Then the crowd swept forward.
One of the Muslims momentarily broke free of the mob. With his shirt and most of his skin clawed from his torso, he fled to the temple parking lot, a hundred silent people on his heels. His hand closed on the door handle of the Toyota just as a multitude of hands closed on him.
And through it all, there were no outcries of fury, no curses, no yelling. The
only sounds were his screams – and the other noises produced when a human being is torn literally limb from
limb.
Point Man Base
The United States Embassy, Jakarta.
1743 Hours; Zone Time, October 25, 2008
“What have you got?” Christine Rendino demanded, trotting into the Op Center from her interrupted dinner in the Embassy dining room.
“Some kind of trouble on Bali, Commander,” the watch officer replied, looking up from his workstation. “We’re getting heavy traffic on the Ministry of Defense taps from police command in
Denpasar, indicating an outbreak of large-scale violence in Tabanan regency.”
“Define ‘large-scale’ and ‘violence’,” Christine said, donning her command headset and clipping the palm-sized receiver box to her belt.
“Denpasar isn’t too sure itself, ma’am. The trouble appears to be centered around the regency capital but it’s spreading. And it’s not conventional civil disobedience or rioting, but systematic bloodshed in the streets, apparently directed against the Muslim minority.”
