Free Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (Vintage International) by V.S. Naipaul

Imaduddin—as though, because he was now close to power, he had to explain what we were seeing—said the shops shouldn’t have been there, but it was hard to regulate them.
    A minute or two later, as though the unregulated shops might in fact have made him think of evictions, he said, “The sultan’s palace in Landkat was burned down in the war against the Dutch. Not by the Dutch. It was Sukarno’s …” He fumbled for the words.
    I said, “Sukarno’s scorched-earth policy?”
    They were the words he wanted. And again I wondered at the extraordinary events Imaduddin—barely a year older than I was—had lived through. Extraordinary events, but he talked of them easily, and did so without affectation: the events appeared hardly to have marked him. “He is
himself,
” his diplomat disciple had said. And there was a quality of completeness about Imaduddin, a strange innocence that appeared to have protected him right through.
    He said he had had Adi Sasono that morning on his religious television program. They had talked about the importance of the current independence anniversary celebration and its relation to Islam. It was actually very important, he said. “Islam is for freedom. It is anti-colonialist.”
    Once upon a time the government was nervous of the faith, and Imaduddin was a rebel. Now the government, though unchanged in itsruler and its political forms, said it served the faith, and Imaduddin had no trouble in making the faith serve the government. The faith was capacious; Imaduddin was learned; he didn’t violate himself.

    The Oklahoman was waiting in the Sunda Kelapa Mosque in Menteng. Menteng, though traffic-ridden and polluted, was the diplomatic and fashionable area of Jakarta, and the Sunda Kelapa Mosque served the best people.
    The name—from the Hindu kingdom that existed here—was on the wall of the mosque in large fanciful letters. The big open courtyard, full of glare, was made of concrete blocks. It was after twelve, and Imaduddin said—as if it was a stroke of luck, an unexpected blessing for being late—that it was time for the midday prayer. He intended to do the prayer and then he would do the conversion. There would be no hardship for the Oklahoman and his party; they would no doubt be doing the prayer too.
    If salvation could be compared to a banquet, prayer was for Imaduddin—from the excitement and pleasure with which he went at it—like a tasty preparatory snack taken five times a day, a kind of paradisal fast food, never cloying, always sharpening the appetite. So now, tight and belted, a thick wallet showing in his back pocket, a man completely at home and private in the openness of the main mosque, Imaduddin, after his ablutions, with a slightly tilted walk that made me think of his back and the masseur, padded to the front where the men were lined up, facing the wall, now standing, now squatting, now bowing. Far to the back, thirteen or fourteen women in white headdresses and long gowns stood in their own line.
    Among the men the Oklahoman was noticeable, even from the back, by his greater size, his height and middle girth, and by the flat black Muslim cap he was wearing, like Imaduddin’s masseur.
    Afterwards, when the prayer was done and people had left the main hall, and the Oklahoman was sitting in the sunlight on the concrete steps, pulling on his socks, Imaduddin went to him and said—with an excess of joviality, perhaps because I was present—“It’s amazing how you’ve changed. You don’t look like an American. You already look like an Indonesian.”
    The Oklahoman, straightening a sock over a foot, and looking down at it, said in a voice that didn’t carry far, “Still white.”
    After Imaduddin’s joviality the words had an ambiguous ring. They might have been defensive, from a zealous convert, or they might have been a way of letting Imaduddin know that he wasn’t to go too far. For thefirst time I saw Imaduddin momentarily uncertain. His smile