The Infidel

I finally broke through. For the past few days, I have been hanging out with a beautiful woman named Nina. Once again helping me out in a pinch, Klub Bali, my fitness center/pool/social nexus, was the scene for our introduction. Last week, after finishing some meatheadish activity like benchpressing or deadlifting, I approached Nina, with whom I had been playing eye tag for the past few days. In a hybrid English-Indonesian conversation, we made small talk and she introduced herself. She is a twenty-five year-old of mixed Javanese-Chinese and Dutch descent originally from Madiun. After graduating from Jatmaiah University with a degree in economics, she stayed in Jogyakarta, Java’s throbbing center of culture, art, and youth, where she worked as a model and waitress for two years. Following her parents’ wishes, she returned to Madiun this past June after the May 26th earthquake in Jogya. She was uninjured, but she and her family were severely spooked.
In any case, Nina has been teaching me Bahasa Indonesia and Javanese while I help her with her English. We meet after our workouts at Klub Bali and share dinner or iced tea while laughing off people’s slack-jawed stares. She is absolutely gorgeous, and together with my recent drinking session in the back of the rice delivery Fukuda, has ignited within me a newfound enthusiasm for Madiun.
Over the past two weeks at Klub Bali, I also met a rather beefy individual. I didn’t learn his name, so I’ll call him Pak Meathead here. Through our garbled conversation between squats, he told me that he is in the military. Pak Meathead is only five foot six or so, but he has the physique of a professional bodybuilder. He wears military fatigues, a see-through camo-green mesh tank top, a Nike baseball hat, a black pleather fanny pack, and a pair of Ferrari-themed Pumas every day when he works out. He obviously likes to be the center of attention, and it seems like he makes a concerted effort to slam down the weights whenever he finishes with a set. He also grunts. A lot.
This evening, when I arrived at the fitness center, Nina greeted me with a hug and requested a peck on the cheek, which I obliged. I am leery of public displays of affection here, which I have not seen anywhere. However, I had often witnessed Nina giving European-style double cheek kisses to both men and women. After all, she did spend two years living and working in a very progressive and culturally hip city. As the request came from an Indonesian, and a very attractive one at that, I felt that the innocent kiss was perfectly within bounds. Apparently Pak Meathead thought differently.
While Pak Meathead didn’t say anything directly to me – I wear a tank top when I work out, and between my height, girth, and voluminous amount of sweat, I reckon that I have him as equally intimidated of me as I am of him – he did harass Nina, and start making trouble with others.
I failed to notice at first, but Nina approached me with a very concerned look on her face. “Nick, I’m worried. He’s talking about fighting you and calling you an orang kafir,” an infidel. “I know he’s just jealous, but be careful, OK?”
I took a look in Pak Meathead’s direction, and saw him chest bumping and grunting with an even more massive beef steak friend of his. “Hey, tidak apa apa, don’t worry about him,” I told her. I didn’t think that Pak Meathead would be dumb enough to make a move in the gym, but I picked up a two pound dumbbell and carried it with me around the gym for the rest of the workout. I wasn’t taking chances with a military man, and a very scary one at that.
At one point I asked him if he was using a barbell and bench, and despite not having touched the equipment for ten minutes, he replied brusquely, “Saya pakai,” I’m using it. For the remainder of the evening, Pak Meathead made exceptionally loud grunts, and slammed weights around the gym like they were pillows. I avoided all eye contact, and he did the same, especially when in close proximity.
I didn’t really mind his testosterone driven animosity. After all, I had, in a way, invited it by kissing Nina’s cheek. I played rugby for three years in college, and hung out in fraternities, and am well acquainted with the type of guys like Pak Meathead who need to prove their virility by intimidating the world. He is obviously the type of man, if you can call him that, who gets his kicks by proving to everyone else how tough he is. He started harassing Nina as well, grabbing her arm and blocking her path when she was trying to move around the gym. I asked her if she needed help, but she said she could handle it.
What really gets me though is the fact that he called me orang kafir, an infidel. Pak Meathead was not defending Islam, and I was not posing a threat to his religion. I had seen him on past days trying to hold Nina’s hand. She had always rebuffed his attempts, or played along awkwardly if the situation was unavoidable. The fact that he used my non-belief in Islam as a pretext for his hostility is one hundred percent unacceptable, and is what angers me almost as much as his abuse of Nina.
Throughout this blog, I am trying to limit the breadth of my extrapolations. But then again, that is how sociology, cultural anthropology, and many other social sciences are conducted – by using instances and anecdotes from the day-to-day to paint a larger picture of a culture and society. I was trained as a geographer, and university level human geography courses are often focused around scalability and deduction.
I want to take Pak Meathead and draw some – admittedly generalized – conclusions from his actions. If Pak Meathead is a viable indicator, it can be deduced that the largest underlying rationales that drive individuals to turn to radical Islamism are jealousy and fear.
Fundamentally, Islam did not play into the situation at all. Yes, it is possible that his religious sensibilities were inflamed by my and Nina’s greeting. However, if his past actions are any gauge, it is much more likely that his hostile response was a reaction to his having failed to succeed. (I mean no offense here to women, and I hope that readers understand that by defining Nina as an “objective” of sorts, I am not being macho chauvinistic, but simply making a parallel.) Just as Pak Meathead looked around the gym and saw me cavorting with what he takes to be “his woman,” I posit that a large number of radical Islamists are driven towards hatred when they look around their surroundings, and then compare them to what they see on TV and in advertisements. They see Westerners, and particularly white Westerners, occupying their world.
This discussion requires much more space, and may become the backbone for future research and work that I pursue. I would like to hear your comments.
Also, rest assured, I will keep a cool head, be careful, and if Pak Meathead’s rage cannot be mollified, be the first one to find a new health club.