Stania’s Blog: This is not my life story

     My father bought my mom a talking book. It’s a laptop-like device with speaker and sensor pen. The book serves as a language learning tool and is available in Arabic, Mandarin and English. The one we bought is a talking book to learn how to read Qur’an. My mom who greeted us when we came back from the store couldn’t hide her excitement.
     Both my parents and I were raised on secular families and we don’t learn religious practices intensively. My mom sometimes calls God as Gusti Allah, a mixture of Javanese and Islamic belief. But she always tries to fulfill her obligations as a Moslem. Aside from that, she is a true believer of Jayabaya prophecy, especially about the coming of ‘Satria Piningit’ and the ‘Ratu Adil’ ruling. She always relates current occurrences with the prophecy to support her faith on the present Ratu Adil.   
     Other thing that she trusts deeply is her dreams. She claims to be able to see future through it. One day, she told me that in her dream, she found a dirty baby. She interpreted it as material fortune. It could be money or unexpected wealth. Several days after she explained the dream, someone bought my father’s chemical plant that was sold for quite a long time. It’s a very surprising coincidence, but surely the one we’ve been waiting for. My father’s company needed fast money to pay loans to the bank that always chased us to finish the payment.   
     Long before that, she told me one of her premonition dream. On that dream, she stood besides a beautiful garden which was guarded by an angel. When she wanted to enter it, the angel held her and pointed to the sky. There, an Arabic word written by a cloud hanging up in the firmament.      
“READ!” the angel ordered;
My mom was shaking, “O, Jibril… I can’t read that. I don’t know how to read Qur’an,”
The angel then told my mom to go and only returns when she is able to read it. 
     She remembers it. I remember it. And we both understand the meaning of that dream. So now, I know how happy she is when she opens the book and hears the machine’s voice greets her, “Assalamualaikum, Ad Darsul Awwal…”

~ by stania on December 28, 2006.