Excerpt from The Flame Tree by Richard Lewis, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Ah, that's just for crazy Muslims like the Taliban. Look at this." He tugged on a leather thong around his neck, which was strung through the hole in the Chinese coin they had found at the river. "Maybe we'll find one for you next time."

The band members took their places on the stage and warmed up with drumrolls and flute warbles and electric guitar twangs, now and again melding together for a few bars of the blood-itchy dang dut dang dang dut rhythm. The crowd on the plaza had thickened considerably. The teenage kids pressing toward the stage were held back by a phalanx of private security guards.

The MC, a portly man wearing a red bow tie and green suspenders, rattled through his opening speech. Isaac still couldn't figure out the purpose of this festivity -- it wasn't a special holiday, and no political campaigning was going on. But so what?

The first performer, the girl in the black tights and red tube top, sang to a hot and spicy dang dang dut beat that set the air to quivering. Most of the crowd danced in place. This wasn't the ridiculous hopping and jerking that his sister Rachel loved to watch on MTV, but a slower-paced movement of shuffling feet, rotating buttocks and waist, undulating shoulders and arms, the hands occasionally high over head. The singer's movements were so languid as to be sultry, putting the crowd on slow boil. A lad old enough to sport a tiny mustache ducked underneath the security guards and jumped up on stage. The guards let him be, for this was part of a public dangdut show. The singer fluttered her eyelashes at the lad, and the two danced together as she sang.

The pretty bencong bent down to Isaac's ear. "You know what she's singing about?"

"No, not exactly, what?"

"Losing her virginity. You know anything about that?"

Isaac gave her a grossed-out look. She laughed and clapped him across the shoulders. "You will, you will. Oh, our turn."

The bencongs minced up on stage to roars of laughter. Their lyrics Isaac understood, about a man falling in love with a woman who was a man. The pretty bencong, mike in hand, stepped halfway down the stairs and extended her hand to Isaac, who went rigid in alarm. She wiggled her fingers. Ismail, laughing, pushed Isaac toward her. She clamped her hand around his wrist and dragged him onto the stage. The crowd momentarily hushed upon seeing a blond-haired, blue-eyed bulé boy on stage and then cheered in delighted surprise. Isaac's stage fright eased. Something strange began to happen to him. The infectious beat pouring out of the speakers vibrated along his spine and loosened his muscles. He started to dance, really dance. The bencong's eyes widened, the band members grinned at him, and the crowd doubled its roaring, with cries of "dangdut bulé, dangdut bulé." Several photographers rushed forward to take his picture. When the song ended and Isaac descended from the stage, he was flush with a new, grand feeling. Who cared if he was in no grade, with no classroom friends, when he could have an audience?

"That was great," Ismail said, slapping him across the back. "I didn't know you could dance like that."

"I didn't either," Isaac said breathlessly.

Other performers took the stage. On the sidelines Isaac danced with Ismail. The tree shadows lengthened across the field. The crowd at the mosque across the boulevard had grown as well and began to stream down the white marble steps, a tight nucleus of men at the center. Isaac spotted Imam Ali at the front of this nucleus, and his feet stopped dancing. His inner glow turned into alarm as the robed men strode across the boulevard to the stage. But nobody else was perturbed. Many in the tent craned their heads to see the new arrivals.

The MC got up on stage. He cracked a joke and thanked the performers, giving time for the nucleus of men to gather at the bottom of the stage steps. Imam Ali stood on the first step. The MC grandiloquently said, with rising volume and inflection, as though he were announcing a Las Vegas boxing match, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, good Muslims all, the patron of this afternoon's entertainment, the Nahdlatul Umat Islam!"

Copyright © 2004 by Richard Lewis