From Atjeh to Mejong Lodaja, part 7 Reading time approx 17 min.
Meutiah liked to sit on the megalith that was close to her house at nightfall. The rock still retained the heat of the day when the sun was setting and the air became chilly. She sat there with her new husband, sipping the coffee Engko brought her, laughing and being content. Not far away stood an old waringin, a sacred tree that protected the two simple houses, and she pointed out to her new husband the birds that built their nests there. The new man was a woodworker. Because of the boengoer trees that grew here in the forest and which provided good timber, he praised Boeyoeng and Engko for their choice of this place of residence in the bend of the river. He too felt comfortable here. Meutiah would not bear him any more children, she was already too old for that, but she warmed his bones in his old age and together they were happy in their house near the two kapok trees. Engko had just brought each of them a cup of kopi toebroek, strong black coffee, piping hot, the grounds of which had yet to sink to the bottom. Meutiah savored the scent and ran her hand over the smooth surface of the megalith as she basked in the evening sun. The stone was not equally smooth everywhere and her attention was attracted by an unevenness that she had not noticed before. She crouched in front of the stone and narrowed her eyes. With her old finger she traced the outline of a shape that seemed carved into the megalith. A tiger! No doubt about it. Someone once depicted a tiger in this boulder. She beckoned to her new husband and asked him if he saw the same thing she did. He was a thoughtful man and she did not expect a thoughtless answer from him. He studied the shape for a long time and then came to the conclusion that it must indeed represent a tiger. She then called her son to show him her discovery. 'Who could have made this?' Boeyoeng mused. 'That must have been an artist who had a special reason for carving a tiger.' He thought about the paw print he and Engko had found when they got here. Was that an omen? They hadn't seen a tiger since they lived here, but sooner or later they would have to deal with the predator, that much was certain. 'Maybe people have lived here before,' his mother said. Boeyoeng looked at her doubtfully. 'That must have been a long time ago, because everything was jungle when we came here.' Meutiah remained silent. She had felt the presence of the ancestors in this place more than once.
One day a traveling storyteller passed by. 'There's not much to be made here,' he said. 'There are so few of you.' Still, he took advantage of their hospitality and in exchange for a meal he told them a story. It was not particularly interesting, Boeyoeng thought that the storytellers from Atjeh could do better. 'I'll come back when there are more of you,' the narrator said as he left, and Boeyoeng was about to say he didn't need to bother, when Engko gently pulled his arm. 'He goes to other kampongs. He will tell about us. About the Atjehnese he found in the forest. Maybe then we'll have company. Then it won't be so lonely here anymore.' And so a bird catcher arrived with a carrying pole full of cages. He came to take stock of those Atjehnese. He looked around, saw the forest and he liked it. 'I will help you build your own house,' Boeyoeng said. 'But other than that, you have to take care of yourself.' The bird man was perfectly capable of doing that. When his house was finished, a young woman came to live with him and they soon had several children. The daughter of Meutiah's new husband also came. She wanted to live close to her father with her children. Then a woodcarver joined them with his wife. Within a short time every yard was teeming with children, chickens and cats and together the inhabitants of the small settlement bought a karbouw, a water buffalo, to work their fields. Engko went to spin kapok with Meutiah and they wove white sheets on the loom that Meutiah's new husband had put together for them. Death rugs. But because no one died, they took them to the pasar and sold them there. They became known far and wide for the good quality of their canvases and soon they were short of resources to fulfill all orders.
The demang, the overseer in the service of the regent, found them when the first rice stalks were rolling on the paddy fields. Sitting on his horse, he looked around from under his round pointed hat. 'This area is the hunting grounds of the regent of Tjiandjoer. I see that you have cleared a lot of ground. Who allowed you to cut down so many of its forests?' 'Here in this land, anyone can use the wasteland that belongs to no one, sir demang,' Boeyoeng said firmly and then added for good measure: 'Blessed be Allah the Most High.' But the demang lifted his chin and looked at him sternly. 'Since the reclamation ordinance of 1870, the population has been denied free access to wasteland.' Boeyoeng felt taken aback by the impressive attitude of the demang. He had never heard of a reclamation ordinance. He feared he could be chased from the land he had come to consider his own. Then all his work would have been for nothing. Meutiah's new husband, the birdman and the woodcarver, they had all rallied behind Boeyoeng together with their wives, but no one dared to speak to the demang. Only Engko dared to step forward. 'Lord demang,' she said, 'tell us what we must do to appease the regent.' The demang spluttered for some time, but eventually he gave them permission on behalf of the regent of Tjiandjoer to stay in their hometown and work the land. But only on the condition that Boeyoeng and his villagers would pay the tax due to the regent. That was a big loss, but it was no different than in all other kampongs. Adooh, that's just how it was. Fortunately, the regent lived far away and they were not much bothered by him. 'We were much more under control in Atjeh,' Meutiah reassured her son.
What they didn't have yet was a doekoen, a medicine man. There was also no doekoen bayi, no traditional midwife, although many children had already been born in the kampong. Fortunately, there had been no complicated deliveries so far and the women had been able to support each other very well. Engko also looked forward to the birth of her first child with confidence. However, when the child was supposed to be born according to her calculations, nothing happened. She watched it unconcernedly for a few days, but as the days turned into weeks, Boeyoeng became concerned and insisted that she visit a doekoen. Meutiah took her to a magician in the kampong where she had lived. The man was scrawny and very old. There was a gray film over his eyes and his mouth was a dark red hole, his few remaining teeth eroded by the sirih chewing, leaving him in a constant daze. The visit to the doekoen became a frightening experience, because his predictions were downright disturbing. He didn't so much talk about the baby as he talked incessantly about a major natural disaster that would kill thousands of people. Shocked, Engko left his dark cabin. She was grateful for Meutiah's connections in the kampong who ensured that the wanita obat, the herb woman, who was also a midwife, was willing to accompany them to their own settlement and stay with her until the baby arrived. The child was indeed born on a particularly stormy night, as the magician had predicted. Far from their living area there was a huge volcanic eruption, which despite the distance could clearly be heard and felt for miles around. The midwife's presence had a calming effect on Engko during that tense night and fortunately the woman stayed afterwards to care for mother and child. And even when it was no longer necessary. 'Shall we build you a house, mother?' Boeyoeng asked. Building became more and more easy for them. Engko and Boeyoeng named their son Tau. It was a healthy and sturdy baby. When he could walk, a puppeteer came to the kampong, a dalang, and Tau was hooked on the man's wajang puppets from day one. He wanted to know what the dolls were called and he couldn't keep away from the dalang when he cut a new doll out of wood with his special knives and gouges. 'This child wants to become a dalang,' the puppeteer stated to Boeyoeng. 'I'll have to stay here to train him.' Rakiman's house, the dalangs, was the next house to be built. More children came and Engko thought there should be a school. Not everyone saw the need for it. Boeyoeng pointed out to her that her own mother, Tjoet, could neither read nor write and yet she had been a wise woman. But Engko was happy that her father had hired a missionary in Atjeh to homeschool her. She had learned to read and write with great pleasure, and although her education was far from sufficient to be able to call herself a teacher, she started a primary school in the hope that a real goeroe, a teacher, would come along to take education to a higher level. That happened surprisingly quickly and it was the goeroe who one day said: 'This kampong must have a name.' But there was more that the kampong needed. The demang pointed this out to them when he came to his next inspection to check whether enough tax had been paid. 'Who is the loerah in this village?' 'We don't need a village chief here,' Boeyoeng said. The demang pointed out to him that he was the founder of the settlement and therefore should take on that task, but Boeyoeng did not want to be a loerah. 'I will discuss it with the regent,' the demang said sternly. 'There must be a loerah here.' Boeyoeng and Engko watched him in silence as he left on his horse. They were not comfortable with it. But nothing special happened and soon they forgot the words of the demang. Their attention was occupied by the tiger tracks found outside the pagger. Boeyoeng had the fence of the village reinforced and built a gardoehuisje, a special guardhouse, between the two kapok trees. The men took turns keeping watch. Yet the tiger managed to kill the karbouw in broad daylight and drag it away into the woods, a major blow to the small community. But a new karbouw came along and life went on.
As he had promised, the traveling storyteller returned. He nodded happily as he watched all the activity, as if he had personally overseen the settlement's growth, and perhaps he had. 'You become our loerah then,' Boeyoeng suggested. But the traveling storyteller shook his head. 'That's not my profession.' He sat down in the aloen-aloen, the clearing, near the megalith and gathered the inhabitants around him. Now he had a story to tell. For the first time they heard the story that gave the kampong its name. 'A people already lived in this region in ancient times. The central stone is proof of this, because the image of the tiger was made by human hands. But were they ordinary people? Or were they forest people and had they made an alliance with the ancestors and the spirits who populated their own domain in the forest? It is also possible that they were afraid of the forest with all its wild animals. Maybe they made a pagger around their houses to protect themselves, just like you do. And what could have happened to this village that caused the residents to move away?' 'Are you going to tell us something or are you going to keep asking questions?' cried the birdman impatiently. A few other men joined him. 'Well?' Engko admonished them to silence and the traveling storyteller continued unperturbed. 'It is certain that a tiger has always lived here. As can be seen on the stone, it is a king tiger, the most dangerous of all tigers.' The people huddled a little closer around the fire. It had been a while since the karbouw had been eaten and they were not really afraid, they were used to the proximity of wild animals, but they liked to be carried away by the tension that the traveling narrator created. 'You know: mejong lodaja, that is a king tiger. Perhaps he had a stranglehold on the kampong and the people lived in constant fear. It may be that he devoured their buffaloes and their children, perhaps they no longer dared to cultivate their land for fear of the great predator. But it is also possible that he had made friends with the people. That still happens sometimes. In earlier years, people roamed the land in search of fertile land that they could cultivate for a while until the soil became exhausted, then they moved on. Life was hard and the soil was unruly, because there were no irrigated sawah's yet. The yield of the harvest was uncertain and in the good years, when the rice goddess Dewi Sri was favorable to them, there were always privateers on the coast: wild pigs that came to steal the food, monkeys on the raid, elephants and rhinos that destroyed the fields. The people needed a protector. It's entirely possible that was the king tiger. Tigers are known to sometimes protect a settlement from other large game that threatens the community. That is a precious covenant. It can benefit a kampong for generations if people and tigers live close to each other in mutual respect. But there are rules attached to that. They probably had a doekoen who could talk to tigers and who could explain to them the conditions for such an alliance. In such a case, people must observe the adat very precisely, because the tiger is the guardian of customary law, as established by the ancestors. And they must respect the tiger and honor it with sacrifices. The tiger in turn protects the village. Until the treaty is violated. What could have happened? We can only guess. We know that ancestral faith came under pressure due to the rise of Islam. There was resistance to old traditions. Perhaps there was a haji that forbade people to make sacrifices to the ancestors or to sacred animals. Either way, the covenant has been violated. Perhaps a tiger plague occurred when people stopped honoring the tiger with ceremonies. It has happened before that an entire village has fled from man-eating tigers. But the stone remains and so we must assume that the king tiger is still the guardian of this area. You can show him respect by naming your village after him. From now on, let the name of this kampong be: Mejong Lodaja.'