Pesantren Al-Imam, Four Years Later

Sukabumi, October 2017

It was October 2017 when I received an invitation to visit a School run by a very dear friend of mine whom I had met in Kuala Lumpur, Ibu Dian and her husband. Those two days also ended in my second book “Sweet Light”, in a short chapter dedicated to them. So I wrote:

“Two days to live in the great Islamic School Pesantren Yatim dan Dhu'afa “Al-Imam” in Cikembar, Sukabumi, in the western part of Java.

The school has existed since 1994, founded by Pak H. Abdul Malik, and hosts more than two hundred poor and orphaned students from many regions of Indonesia, Riau, Sulawesi, Kalimantan, especially NTB and NTT, such as Flores. At least over fifty of them no longer have a parent or both.

The school has twelve teachers, who teach Islamic subjects and a normal course of study. It has a large internal mosque, the “Al-Furqon” mosque, but the maintenance costs are very high, and the boys often eat only rice, wash their clothes themselves, and the girls live on a single floor of the asrama residence for girls. Fifty sleep in single rooms, waiting to build the second floor.

All of them dream of becoming ustadzah, teachers in schools and madrassas, doctors, of traveling a lot, there are those who want to become a photographer.

They have ambitions like each of us, even if they no longer have a family.

They are boys and girls who have fun, play, jump rope and pray a lot. And we with them. For them.

There are some photographs that are symbols, like this one, taken in the Pesantren “Al-Imam” mosque. For a whole day I listened to the stories and dreams of these boys and girls. Their hopes. And seeing this girl find a gap between the bars, it seemed to me as if she wanted to get out of this situation, overcome the bars that imprison her in her uncomfortable condition. Thanks to prayer, study, the love of her teachers, the strength of her friends. With the hope that there are never bars for these lifetimes, and that growing up in difficult conditions is not a lifelong stigma. Things can change for the better, just believe it. Just find an opening.” (“Sweet light – Meraih Cahaya Melalui Fotografi”, Mizan, 2018)

I still fondly remember those two days and the night spent there, especially a funny scene.

I arrived late in the evening on the first day, so everyone was already asleep and I went to my quarters. Early in the morning, I got up with the rays of the sun and a rustle outside the door. Obviously, given the heat of those places, I always slept in shorts and a T-shirt; intrigued by the rustle that came from outside I went to open the door: I found myself in front of six girls completely covered by a thick niqab that left only the eyes uncovered, with traditional Indonesian brooms made of thin intertwined wooden branches in their hand. They were cleaning the space in front my accommodation. As soon as we both looked at each other there was a scream from both sides in embarrassment as I was in shorts – I slammed the door shut and they ran off to the side.

After I dressed better I went out again and they were still there cleaning, I apologized, introduced myself, and took my first pictures.

 

The same day I met all the students for a talk on Photography and my work. Although the school was severely separated by a male and female area, I was allowed to go anywhere.

It was two days that I have never forgotten.

After the impact of my presence passed, I spent the second day almost entirely talking to the young students.

Above all, I don't forget the two hours with the girls. By now accustomed to my presence, they made me sit in the courtyard of their accommodation, even uncovering their faces, and we talked a lot. As I wrote in the book, they showered me with questions and curiosities about the world; they were eager to know.

I did everything to instill in each of them what in the Indonesian language is called “semangat”, a term that is difficult to translate, but which is a kind of enthusiasm, the strength to live, to fight, and never give up.

I really hoped – inside me – that at least some of them could achieve her dreams.

It was 2017.

 

 

A few days ago, on Instagram, I saw someone sharing a photograph of me with those girls that day, writing that it was a memory of the time spent with a photographer from Italy.

So I went and saw and was amazed because the photographs of that girl had nothing to do with what I had seen in Sukabumi.

Indeed, she was even in Turkey, studying at Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakif University in Istanbul.

A smiling girl, well dressed, indeed very elegant, in various places in Turkey. Lestari, her name, 21 years old.

Lestari

So we started talking and, yes, she was one of those girls sitting around me, who dreamed of becoming doctors, teachers, travelers.

I was pleasantly surprised.

She told me that she had now finished school a year and a half ago and that she had managed, thanks to her father, brothers, and sister to find the money to come to study at the university in Turkey: History.

I asked her how it was possible and if the other girls were still there.

Lestari, I guess with a bitter tone in her voice, replied that yes, everyone was still in school and it wasn't easy to find a future.

She was lucky enough to still have her father and that his desire was the same as Lestari's, that is, to be able to study beyond the borders of Indonesia.

A huge dream, if imagined within the walls of the school, but which eventually found her path.

“I still remember Stefano how much semangat you gave us,” Lestari wrote to me.

On a day like many others, pressed by the commitments and thoughts that cloud our minds every day, this little story made me smile, in the purest meaning of a smile and its importance.

Talking about dreams, especially with children in difficult situations, can seem utopian if not mocking, or affected.

Yet I truly believe it. Dreams have no color, race, language or caste.

Dreams are the link with the divine, that invisible and shining thread that connects our souls to the celestial sphere above the clouds.

Making them is our ultimate challenge but believing in them is our daily duty.

 

Dedicated to all the girls and boys of Pesantren Al Imam.

Italian version