The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims (30 page)

83

I have a new friend. His name is Yudhi, which is pronounced “You-Day.” He’s Indonesian, originally from Java. I got to know him because he rented my house to me; he’s working for the Englishwoman who owns the place, looking after her property while she’s away in London for the summer. Yudhi is twenty-seven years old and stocky in build and talks kind of like a southern California surfer. He calls me “man” and “dude” all the time. He’s got a smile that could stop crime, and he’s got a long, complicated life story for somebody so young.

He was born in Jakarta; his mother was a housewife, his father an Indonesian fan of Elvis who owned a small air-conditioning and refrigeration business. The family was Christian—an oddity in this part of the world, and Yudhi tells entertaining stories about being mocked by the neighborhood Muslim kids for such shortcomings as “You eat pork!” and “You love Jesus!” Yudhi wasn’t bothered by the teasing; Yudhi, by nature, isn’t bothered by much. His mom, however, didn’t like him hanging around with the Muslim kids, mostly on account of the fact that they were always barefoot, which Yudhi also liked to be, but she thought it was unhygienic, so she gave her son a choice—he could either wear shoes and play outside, or he could stay barefoot and remain indoors. Yudhi doesn’t like wearing shoes, so he spent a big chunk of his childhood and adolescence life in his bedroom, and that’s where he learned how to play the guitar. Barefoot.

The guy has a musical ear like maybe nobody I’ve ever met. He’s beautiful with the guitar, never had lessons but understands melody and harmony like they were the kid sisters he grew up with. He makes these East-West blends of music that combine classical Indonesian lullabies with reggae groove and early-days Stevie Wonder funk—it’s hard to explain, but he should be famous. I never knew anybody who heard Yudhi’s music who didn’t think he should be famous.

Here’s what he always wanted to do most of all—live in America and work in show business. The world’s shared dream. So when Yudhi was still a Javanese teenager, he somehow talked himself into a job (speaking hardly any English yet) on a Carnival Cruise Lines ship, thereby casting himself out of his narrow Jakarta environs and into the big, blue world. The job Yudhi got on the cruise ship was one of those insane jobs for industrious immigrants—living belowdecks, working twelve hours a day, one day off a month, cleaning. His fellow workers were Filipinos and Indonesians. The Indonesians and the Filipinos slept and ate in separate quarters of the boat, never mingling (Muslims vs. Christians, don’t you know), but Yudhi, in typical fashion, befriended everybody and became a kind of emissary between the two groups of Asian laborers. He saw more similarities than differences between these maids and custodians and dishwashers, all of whom were working bottomless hours in order to send a hundred dollars or so a month back to their families at home.

The first time the cruise ship sailed into New York Harbor, Yudhi stayed up all night, perched on the highest deck, watching the city skyline appear over the horizon, heart hammering with excitement. Hours later, he got off the ship in New York and hailed a yellow cab, just like in the movies. When the recent African immigrant driving the taxi asked where he’d like to go, Yudhi said, “Anywhere, man— just drive me around. I want to see everything.” A few months later the ship came to New York City again, and this time Yudhi disembarked for good. His contract was up with the cruise line and he wanted to live in America now.

He ended up in suburban New Jersey, of all places, living for a while with an Indonesian man he’d met on the ship. He got a job in a sandwich shop at the mall—again, ten-to-twelve-hour days of immigrant-style labor, this time working with Mexicans, not Filipinos. He learned better Spanish those first few months than English. In his rare moments of free time, Yudhi would ride the bus into Manhattan and just wander the streets, still so speechlessly infatuated with the city—a town he describes today as “the place which is the most full of love in the entire world.” Somehow (again—that smile) he met up in New York City with a crowd of young musicians from all over the world and he took to playing guitar with them, jamming all night with talented kids from Jamaica, Africa, France, Japan . . . And at one of those gigs, he met Ann—a pretty blonde from Connecticut who played bass. They fell in love. They got married. They found an apartment in Brooklyn and they were surrounded by groovy friends who all went on road trips together down to the Florida Keys. Life was just unbelievably happy. His English was quickly impeccable. He was thinking about going to college.

On September 11, Yudhi watched the towers fall from his rooftop in Brooklyn. Like everyone else he was paralyzed with grief at what had happened—how could somebody inflict such an appalling atrocity on the city that is the most full of love of anywhere in the world? I don’t know how much attention Yudhi was paying when the U.S. Congress subsequently passed the Patriot Act in response to the terrorist threat—legislation which included draconian new immigration laws, many of which were directed against Islamic nations such as Indonesia. One of these provisions demanded that all Indonesian citizens living in America register with the Department of Homeland Security. The telephones started ringing as Yudhi and his young Indonesian immigrant friends tried to figure out what to do—many of them had overstayed their visas and were afraid that registering would get them deported. On the other hand, they were afraid to
not
register, thereby behaving like criminals. Presumably the fundamentalist Islamic terrorists roaming around America ignored this registration law, but Yudhi decided that he did want to register. He was married to an American and he wanted to update his immigration status and become a legal citizen. He didn’t want to live in hiding.

He and Ann consulted all kinds of lawyers, but nobody knew how to advise them. Before 9/11 there would have been no problems— Yudhi, now married, could just go to the immigration office, update his visa situation and begin the process of gaining citizenship. But now? Who knew? “The laws haven’t been tested yet,” said the immigration lawyers. “The laws will be tested on you.” So Yudhi and his wife had a meeting with a nice immigration official and shared their story. The couple were told that Yudhi was to come back later that same afternoon, for “a second interview.” They should have been wary then; Yudhi was strictly instructed to return without his wife, without a lawyer, and carrying nothing in his pockets. Hoping for the best, he did return alone and empty-handed to the second interview—and that’s when they arrested him.

They took him to a detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he stayed for weeks amongst a vast crowd of immigrants, all of whom had recently been arrested under the Homeland Security Act, many of whom had been living and working in America for years, most of whom didn’t speak English. Some had been unable to contact their families upon their arrests. They were invisible in the detention center; nobody knew they existed anymore. It took a near-hysterical Ann days to find out where her husband had been taken. What Yudhi remembers most about the detention center was the dozen coal-black, thin and terrified Nigerian men who had been found on a freight ship inside a steel shipping crate; they had been hiding in that container at the bottom of that ship for almost a month before they were discovered, trying to get to America—or anywhere. They had no idea now where they were. Their eyes were so wide, Yudhi said, it looked like they were still being blinded with spotlights.

After a period of detention, the U.S. government sent my Christian friend Yudhi—now an Islamic terrorist suspect, apparently— back to Indonesia. This was last year. I don’t know if he’s ever going to be allowed anywhere near America again. He and his wife are still trying to figure out what to do with their lives now; their dreams hadn’t called for living out their lives in Indonesia.

Unable to cope with Jakarta’s slums after having lived in the first world, Yudhi came to Bali to see if he could make a living here, though he’s having trouble being accepted into this society because he isn’t Balinese—he’s from Java. And the Balinese don’t like the Javanese one bit, thinking of them all as thieves and beggars. So Yudhi encounters more prejudice here—in his own nation of Indonesia—than he ever did back in New York. He doesn’t know what to do next. Maybe his wife, Ann, will come and join him here. Then again—maybe not. What’s here for her? Their young marriage, conducted now entirely by e-mail, is on the rocks. He’s so out of place here, so disoriented. He’s more of an American than he is anything else; Yudhi and I use the same slang, we talk about our favorite restaurants in New York and we like all the same movies. He comes over to my house in the evenings and I get him beers and he plays me the most amazing songs on his guitar. I wish he were famous. If there was any fairness, he would be so famous by now.

He says, “Dude—why is life all crazy like this?”

84

“Ketut, why is life all crazy like this?” I asked my medicine man the next day.

He replied,
“Bhuta ia, dewa ia.”

“What does that mean?”

“Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.”

This was a familiar idea to me. It’s very Indian, very Yogic. The notion is that human beings are born, as my Guru has explained many times, with the equivalent potential for both contraction and expansion. The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us, and then it’s up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth—the virtues or the malevolence. The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being’s difficulty in coming into virtuous balance with himself. Lunacy (both collective and individual) results.

“So what can we do about the craziness of the world?”

“Nothing.” Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. “This is nature of world. This is destiny. Worry about your craziness only— make you in peace.”

“But how should we find peace within ourselves?” I asked Ketut.

“Meditation,” he said. “Purpose of meditation is only happiness and peace—very easy. Today I will teach a new meditation, make you even better person. Is called Four Brothers Meditation.”

Ketut went on to explain that the Balinese believe we are each accompanied at birth by four invisible brothers, who come into the world with us and protect us throughout our lives. When the child is in the womb, her four siblings are even there with her—they are represented by the placenta, the amniotic fluid, the umbilical cord and the yellow waxy substance that protects an unborn baby’s skin. When the baby is born, the parents collect as much of these extraneous birthing materials as possible, placing them in a coconut shell and burying it by the front door of the family’s house. According to the Balinese, this buried coconut is the holy resting place of the four unborn brothers, and that spot is tended to forever, like a shrine.

The child is taught from earliest consciousness that she has these four brothers with her in the world wherever she goes, and that they will always look after her. The brothers inhabit the four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one)
poetry.
The brothers can be called upon in any critical situation for rescue and assistance. When you die, your four spirit brothers collect your soul and bring you to heaven.

Today Ketut told me that he’s never taught any Westerner the Four Brothers Meditation yet, but he thinks I am ready for it. First, he taught me the names of my invisible siblings—Ango Patih, Maragio Patih, Banus Patih and Banus Patih Ragio. He instructed me to memorize these names and to ask for the help of my brothers throughout my life, whenever I need them. He says I don’t have to be formal when I speak to them, the way we are formal when we pray to God. I’m allowed to speak to my brothers with familiar affection, because “It just your family!” He tells me to say their names as I’m washing myself in the morning, and they will join me. Say their names again every time before I eat, and I will include my brothers in the enjoyment of the meal. Call on them before I go to sleep, saying, “I am sleeping now, so you must stay awake and protect me,” and my brothers will shield me through the night, stop demons and nightmares.

“That’s good,” I told him, “because I have a problem sometimes with nightmares.”

“What nightmares?”

I explained to the medicine man that I’ve been having the same horrible nightmare since childhood, namely that there is a man with a knife standing next to my bed. This nightmare is so vivid, the man is so real, that it sometimes makes me scream out in fear. It leaves my heart pounding every time (and has never been fun for those who share my bed, either). I’ve been having this nightmare every few weeks for as long as I can remember.

I told this to Ketut, and he told me I had been misunderstanding the vision for years. The man with the knife in my bedroom is not an enemy; he’s just one of my four brothers. He’s the spirit brother who represents strength. He’s not there to attack me, but to guard me while I sleep. I’m probably waking up because I’m sensing the commotion of my spirit brother fighting away some demon who might be trying to hurt me. It is not a knife my brother is carrying, but a
kris
—a small, powerful dagger. I don’t have to be afraid. I can go back to sleep, knowing I am protected.

“You lucky,” Ketut said. “Lucky you can see him. Sometimes I see my brothers in meditation, but very rare for regular person to see like this. I think you have big spiritual power. I hope maybe someday you become medicine woman.”

“OK,” I said, laughing, “but only if I can have my own TV series.”

He laughed with me, not getting the joke, of course, but loving the idea that people make jokes. Ketut then instructed me that whenever I speak to my four spirit brothers, I must tell them who I am, so they can recognize me. I must use the secret nickname they have for me. I must say, “I am Lagoh Prano.”

Lagoh Prano
means “Happy Body.”

I rode my bicycle back home, pushing my happy body up the hills toward my house in the late afternoon sun. On my way through the forest, a big male monkey dropped out of a tree right in front of me and bared his fangs at me. I didn’t even flinch. I said, “Back off, Jack—I got four brothers protecting my ass,” and I just rode right on by him.