Kiss The Candle Goodnight 4

She was in the lecture theatre, setting up the projector when Gregg came up to her. ‘Hi Jana, I thought I’d drop by for the presentation to learn a bit before the trek...by the way, I can’t find that baseball cap you gave me. It hasn’t been handed in has it?’

She smiled and shook her head. Gregg rolled the presentation hand out into a tube and waved it at her as he bounced over to an empty seat. There were about fifty people waiting for the talk to start, but these weren’t the ones she needed to reach, she wanted to educate poachers and loggers, not middle-class foreigners.

She adjusted her head scarf, walked up to the rostrum, waited for the chatter to die down and introduced herself, ‘Hi. My name’s Jana. I’m an anthropologist and ranger here at the sanctuary. Could we dim the lights please? Thanks. Can you hear me? I’ll take any questions at the end…’

‘As you enjoy the Rehabilitation Centre and the National Park Forest, remember you are entering the habitat of one of the rarest great ape species on Earth…

…To sum up, if the population continues to decline at the current rate, there will be no more Sumatran orangutans left in the wild by the year twenty fifty…

…If anyone would like to donate, please see one of my colleagues at the back there by the tables. Thank you.’

Jana received a standing ovation and hoped she would feel overwhelmed by their generosity. She was. Pledges and cash poured in. She clapped her hands and jumped up and down. There was a very important international meeting coming up, the President of Indonesia was meeting Norwegian representatives and her boss would be there. That journalist Mike would be there too. All in all the perfect opportunity to buy support for orangutan corridors. If they could safeguard enough trees, Jana believed that, maybe, just maybe, her Sumatran orangutans could survive.

Jana half walked, half skipped through the sanctuary grounds back to the chalet she and Darwan had just recently moved in to. Her high spirits dissolved as she opened the front door. Boxes were stacked near to planks of wood, a hammer and some nails lay on the hardwood flooring. He still hadn’t put the shelves up. They had been there two weeks now and Jana was fed up walking around things.

Darwan was sprawled on cushions, as blind as ever to the turmoil around him, he looked up and nodded his head at her as she came in, she sat down beside him and smelt the alcohol on his breath, ‘I wish you wouldn’t drink darling.’

‘It’s against your religion, not mine.’ He pulled himself up, as if to get away from her and said, ‘You weren’t bothered when I drank in England.’

‘That was different. Everyone drank there.’ Plus, as Darwan often said, Muslims were not in the majority in Britain.

‘Everything OK Jana? Nothing you want to tell me?’

‘About the trek?’

‘Yes. OK about the trek. I suppose you heard the rumours after that bank robbery in Medan today.’

‘They refused to connect it to terrorist activity in Aceh...’

‘What price life huh? All for three hundred million Rupiah, about thirty five thousand U S Dollars. I could earn that much in a year in England. But then again, it's easy to bring up children here on almost no money isn't it?’

Darwan stood up and walked over to a small packet on the TV. He said, ‘By the way, I was unpacking one of the boxes and came across these.’ He threw a box of birth control pills at her. She was stunned and watched as he stuffed his shiny leather wallet in his pocket and made for the door. He’d obviously planned this one in advance. As he was leaving he said, ‘A woman’s right to choose? Fine. But at least tell your husband of your decision.’

She shouted, ‘I told you I'd be all alone. My parents wouldn’t help look after them and your parents are on Java.’ But the front door closed before she even finished her sentence. She picked up a big floor cushion, hugged it to her and cried.

She could perhaps tell him she wasn't taking them, that they were an old pack. She knew she should go after him but had no idea where he'd gone and it had started to rain. He still hadn't come home when she went to bed for the night. She was woken later when she heard Darwan’s key in the lock, he had come back. She jumped up to meet him and they hugged. Soon they were lying side by side having just made love. He had his arm around her and kissed her ear, then blew into it to annoy her. He laughed then blew a raspberry in her ear. He was very drunk, but she decided to let it pass.

They met and married when studying in England, two years ago. They should already have started a family by Indonesian standards.

Darwan said, ‘Remember our first time together?’

She laughed. As they were making love in the car, one of Jana’s high heeled shoes had got hooked up on the steering wheel and the horn kept on beeping.

‘You were a funny sight Jana, hobbling half naked down the road after your flatmate.’

‘I got her phone though, before she uploaded the photo of us to Facebook. Wouldn’t that have been disastrous?’

‘I don’t think your parents read Facebook.’ He sighed. ‘Still, someone would have told them. Everything was so much easier in England.’

‘You don’t regret marrying me do you?’

‘No, of course not, but it’s hard. They should accept us, we’re both Indonesians. People are hovering, waiting for it all to unravel at our feet.’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic.’

Darwan laughed and jumped up to shower. Jana thought back to their real argument about the trek, when he was saying it was bad timing to do this trek now. But Jana didn’t share his fears. Sumatrans in the north were exhausted, what with the tsunami, the flash floods and the years of fighting for independence. The national government gave Aceh its autonomy and it was now more stable than ever, even if it did have Shari’a law.

She lay back and relaxed into the cushions, enjoying the music until it cut to the news. ‘…the controversial cleric was found guilty of helping to organise and fund a camp for Islamist fighters in Aceh province…’

She turned the sound down, but Darwan, had already heard and although naked, seemed to wear an ‘I told you so’ expression that covered him from top to toe, that and the crucifix around his neck.

‘See, the Al Qaeda terrorists are looking to revenge Bin Laden’s execution.’

For the love of Allah, why was he so scared all the time?

Darwan sighed, kissed her on her nose and changed the subject, ‘Let’s talk about something we can agree on, we love the jungle, deserve a bit of a break …’

‘…And the trek is a great way to introduce Sophie, to her internship. Yes definitely.’

A week ago Sophie replied to the E-mail they sent by skyping them back from a diving boat on Koh Tao, saying she’d love to go on the trek. She was nineteen years old and would be away from home, alone, for the first time. Jana had spoken at length to Sophie’s mother, reassuring her that during her six month internship she would learn and mature in a safe environment.

Jana’s parents had only ever wanted what was best for her too. They felt they had failed, giving her too much freedom, letting her live a Western lifestyle and go to university in England. She smiled at the irony of how Sophie’s mother worried about her daughter going to Sumatra.