Differences

Spent a highly enjoyable couple of hours at the wedding of Ahman, the youngest son of our ex-neighbours from the mansion. Apart from the excellent food and company I was fascinated to find out more about the background of Encik Potam, husband of Noraini and father of the groom. He was sitting at our table for most the two hours chatting away to a guy who was obviously a very old friend and it was the friend who filled us in at some length on their shared background as members of the Batak people from Lake Toba in North Sumatra.

I was struck particularly by the fact that the two friends were nominally of different faiths, the friend being a Protestant, yet this obviously meant little if anything to them. Indeed, the Christian friend noted that church and mosque were next to each other in their town and he had spent many nights sleeping in the mosque.

The memories weren't all happy ones, though. One reference to the need to acquire Muslim names in the period of Confrontasi (in 1966, the friend specified) hinted at a sometimes unaccommodating darkness that needed negotiating. But in our present all looked well and I was struck, as I am so often in this Far Place, by the relentless, glorious plurality of the world.