Haji Achmad

In the village of Lanleki on the edge of a narrow, glass-blue bay on the island of Alor I met a man who had seen a dragon.
His name was Achmad. He was an old man, but he still walked tall and straight and upright. He was a Haji, a returned pilgrim, and the only man in the village to have left Indonesia and travelled to Mecca.
In a house of red brick and tin sheets he told me how the dragon had come scrabbling over the smooth-shining boulders at the edge of the surging water beside the path to the village. Its long body was blood-red, and it had the arched horns of a water buffalo. Seven lizard’s tongues flickered from its mouth and it snorted like a bull as it reached the path. Achmad – it was a long time ago, before he made the pilgrimage – turned and bolted through the trees. The aching yellow-blue of the bay glittered to his right and the forest was dark to the left. He heard the dragon snorting behind him as he ran. He pushed himself faster and faster, propelled by the gunshot-force of fear. The broken sunlight of the forest flashed in red-black starbursts before his eyes and his lungs screamed. He could hear the dragon’s long, scaly claws pounding at the packed earth of the path, closer and closer. Achmad ran faster, faster than he thought possible, and burst into the clearing of Lanleki and fell gasping to his knees, glancing fearfully back.
The dragon had halted in the green shade at the edge of the forest. It would not cross the threshold of the village. It swung its heavy head from side to side, snorted furiously, and turned back into the trees.

***

Islands. Islands shattered against the horizon and cast in sunken arcs. Islands where Asia began to drop off the map in a stuttering ellipsis. Islands of long white beaches and banks of dark lontar palms. Islands where half-naked figures paddled offshore in outrigger canoes across turquoise sandbars, and rusting tin mosques stood beneath the trees. Islands where volcanoes smoked against a pearl-lined sky as the old ferries moved slowly over the dull water and girls with black eyes watched me silently sitting in the dust-cut sunlight on the upper deck.
I had come a long way to reach this place, waking at dawn the day before on the deck of a rusting ship that slugged through the low swell of this lost sea. Great mountain-islands lay on the brink of the horizon, cast in primeval silhouettes. There were tiny fishing skiffs running with the morning breeze under blue triangles of sail. The other passengers, village people who chewed betel nut, stared at me.
I saw a whale breach close to the boat.

And then I came ashore in a place of mildewed tin mosques and rotting Makassar schooners, and then, a little while later, I met Haji Achmad, and Haji Achmad had seen a dragon.

***

The air was thick with the heat of the yellow afternoon as we sat in the small guest room of the village house. I was sweating, and the other people – the village elders – were blank-faced and silent. Only Achmad spoke, pushing his white Haji’s skullcap back on his head.
He spoke slowly and clearly, without emphasis, without excitement, but in great detail, sketching out the dragon’s movements – the low roll of its head, the shifting of its dog-lizard shoulders – and the shape of its horned, flared head with his long, weathered hands.
Outside the wind tugged at the lontar palms. I could hear the blue water hissing onto the hot sand of the white beach beyond the village. In the white blank of the doorway the children of Lanleki jostled in a cluster of bright eyes and nervous grins, straining to get a look at me.

Haji Achmad had finished speaking. His face was thin and lined and his cheeks were hollow below sharp cheekbones. He sat with his hands dropped loose in his lap now that he had no further need of them to trace out the lines of his story. He nodded very gently to indicate that he had no more to tell.
The other people in the room sat limply, silently. There was no reaction to the tale of the dragon; it was so well known in Lanleki that it no longer had impact.
The children were still jostling, staring wide-eyed and astonished at me.

“Haji Achmad,” I began, uncertainly, strangling my words a little; “Haji Achmad you have made the pilgrimage…”
“I have,” he said.
“Haji Achmad, you have been to Mecca, to Saudi Arabia…”
“I have.”
“You have been on an aeroplane, Haji Achmad.”
He nodded, gently, blankly, passively.
The long yellow wind ran through the high heads of the lontars and the swell sizzled on the beach. I could hear chickens and distant voices in the forest. The light came in pale and bleached through the open doorway. I mopped my brow.
“Haji Achmad…” I paused, then started again: “But, Haji Achmad, you have seen a dragon…”
He nodded again, passively and without emotion. “I have.”

© Tim Hannigan 2008