Buka Puasa (Breaking the fast)

We careened through traffic with the other motorbikes as Indonesian faces blurred past, the faces of street vendors, taxi drivers, shopping strangers. A fair share stared as we passed, an Indonesian Muslim woman driving the bike and a blonde American clinging on behind. Somehow, in this city of millions of people, people who look like me are still an anomaly, a proverbial sore thumb. We pass a stadium, a Zoya proudly displaying hijabs in the window, and McDonalds before the street becomes so packed we're forced to pull to the side and park. We've arrived at a pasar takjil, where hundreds of Muslims buy food to break their fast during Ramadhan. 

Muslims in Malang break the fast around 5:30, when the sun sets, so the market is open between 4 and 6. Because of a rainstorm, we're late, so we hop off our motor, find our friends, and hurry into the jammed street in search of food. Vendors line the streets, peddling fried foods of every kind and other merchandise, from clothes to pets. We stop to take pictures with a snowy owl as we buy juice, fried rice, and whole fried catfish. We walk to a temple to eat, sitting among the formidable black statues, as dusk settles over the city. The vendors light the street with neon, and we break our fast with scalding hot catfish and fried noodles. Nearby, children set off fireworks as the call to prayer peals from the nearby mosque, silencing our conversation. We joke in broken Indonesian and English about our plans for the next day and how Sarahann has broken three pairs of her shoes on Indonesian sidewalks. The streets slowly empty.

These moments can't be captured on camera. No art can express how Danny's eyes shined, how Sarahann laughed, how beautiful my tutor looked, how the palm trees waved and the night enveloped us. I could never reproduce how the catfish melted in our mouths and burnt our fingers as we greedily tore them apart in the dark. I lay at the foot of a giant, my head reclining slightly off its pedestal, and saw clouds, dim the the dark, roll over the temple, over the whole city, and into the night. A million hungry people celebrated with me. We spend most of our days in Malang studying, as we ought, but nights like this help me love this city and these people.

Today I'll try to fast with them.