Published on 27th February, 2003

 The Vanishing Ladies In Black

By S. Abidin

We often walked along Jalan Tengah, or Middle Street as it is in English. This old Muslim area used to be a Sultanate of Medan, North Sumatra. The Deli Sultans, I guess after New Delhi, maybe originally from India. They have a palace and a graveyard alongside the beautiful Masjid and there is a royal graveyard as well, where the descendants of the Deli Sultans are still buried to this day. Mum was invited to attend a funeral of one of the Deli Sultan’s family members, at the palace and I accompanied her to the palace called Istana Maimun. It was interesting to witness the huge differences in societal levels in Indonesian life, down to the Gang (small lane way) where we lived.

The Masjid, called Masjid Raya, is a central part of this very old Muslim area, off which runs Jalan Tengah, our neighbourhood, where the Qur’an and Adhan would call out five times a day so loud from huge loud-speakers that your ears would ring. If the telephone rang, there was no chance of hearing what was being said. They had to call back.

The Beggar Lady

One night an old lady, I guess she was a beggar, passed me in the gang. She lived behind our house somewhere at the back of the gang and often emerged at night. She passed me at the entrance of the gang where I was standing and she got a fright. Her face looked as though she had seen a ghost, a figure somehow familiar, seen somewhere before. I stood with my black robes and my white face in the moonlight and watched her pass. She quickly scuttled off, bare foot, through the mud and into the gang.

Mum and I spent a lot of time together during that time in Medan. Mum had been poisoned by somebody and was helped out by the Australian Consulate, but she didn’t want to die over there with those Christians, so she came home. If anywhere, she wanted to die in the small house we had in the gang, but Allah (swt) had another plan for her and she is still kicking on. Excuse my Australian slang, you’ll just have to get used to it, just as we are trying to get used to all of the other cultures of the Islamic world.

Bukan Manusia

Lots of unexplainable events occurred up there in Gang Ismail, Jalan Tengah, in the earthly sense. Some good and some not so good. When we first moved into our little house, there was a huge resistant presence that strongly worked against us, which appeared to us in many forms, usually a young Indonesian woman. The locals spoke of “bukan manusia”, which means not human. This term is so frequently used that we have taken the phrase, “bukan manusia” into our language, so here nobody knows what we are talking about. It is worth explaining. We asked the Ustaad from the Masjid about the "bukan manusia" and that “woman” floating around in our house. He is kind of nice, old, fat and quiet, but didn’t know much about Islam. He didn’t have the answers to the "bukan manusias" in the gang.

One really gruesome example of a "bukan manusia" was a domestic argument that we witnessed in the front of our house in the gang. I guess you could say she was "bukan manusia" after her young strong husband kicked her with a karate style kick into her thigh, when the only sound was a kind of thud that you’d hear if you’d hit concrete. Needless to say, his wife walked off without so much as a limp. If it had been one of us, it would have broken most likely the hip, the pelvis and the thighbone and possibly other internal damage.

The Cat

So in Mum’s wisdom, she accepted the gift of a beautiful Indonesian cat. “They can see stuff,” Mum would say. And sure enough, all we had to do, after the cat had finished hissing and her hair had settled down on her back and her ears would return to the upright position, whenever she had seen something, after her usual checking out of the situation, Mum would declare the house safe again. Along with the Qur’an, the dua’as and that cat.

Ladies in Black

We’d often hear stories of ladies in black being seen, however we were the only ladies in black, so we didn’t take any notice. But we were looking for them to make friends, if there were any other Shias in the area. But there was only the ladies with the little bonnets that they wear up there, or multicoloured or nothing at all.

In fact, Mum and I never saw any other ladies in black hijabs and jilbabs, despite the stories. Until one day my sister Maryam came home from work, because she worked up there as an English teacher, and said;

“Did you just get home?”

Mum and I looked at each other and were puzzled, because we’d been home all day on this occasion. My sister repeated the question.

“Did you just get home? I just saw you walking down Jalan Tengah. Wasn’t that you?”

Mum and I looked at each other again, “No”, we said to Maryam, “it wasn’t us. We’ve been here all day.”

But my sister looked frustrated. And said:

“But I called out to you and you kept walking, I was sure it was you.”

Mum said: “Well love. We’ve been here all day, but where did those ladies go?”

“I don’t know,” she said “they turned the corner and just vanished.”

“Ahhhhhh,” Mum said. And Mum just decided to "simpan", that means store, that information for a later time given that we were living in one of those unexplainable societies and anything’s possible.

My Dreams

So back in Australia, after 6 months, my dreams have repeatedly been where someone has been angry with me, saying:

“You told us you were leaving, but you never left. We saw you walking around for months and months after you said you’d left !”

My dreams are back in Medan.

So when the common people spoke of spiritual matters and “seeing” things that other people couldn’t see, it became normal, because we ourselves saw things. Incredible things, that now make me wonder why we left. I told Mum about my dream and she told me, “Ahhhhh, Ibu Agama would see that too. She would see us walking down Jalan Tengah.” And I remembered, Ibu Agama was in the dream too.

So, my mind wanders to the streets and the gangs that Mum, Maryam and I walked on, where someone can “see” us. Maybe the beggar lady, maybe Ibu Agama, maybe just some puzzled visitor at the vanishing ladies in black.

So, just how is it, in Makkah or Medina or Kufa or Karbala and other places where the Holy Prophet ('s) and the Holy Imams ('a) have walked? Do the pilgrims see our Holy ones ('a) there?

"And We are nearer to him than his life-vein." 
Surah 50, Ayah 16