Reading Chapter 5 - The Cemetery Shelter

 Jakarta didn’t welcome us with comfort. It welcomed us with reality — harsh, unfiltered, and indifferent. This chapter tells the story of how my family found shelter not in a home, but in a public Muslim cemetery. It’s about survival, dignity, and the sacredness of a mother’s love — the kind that boils noodles like miracles and whispers strength into her children’s sleep. This is not a metaphor. This is where we lived. And this is where faith learned to breathe. 

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Transcript

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Good morning leaders. Today is Thursday at 6 AM. Thank you for joining in. Today we're going to read chapter 5 of God Cannot Be Everywhere. That is why He created mothers. Chapter five The Cemetery Shelter. We did not rent a room. We did not settle into a cramped apartment. We moved into a public Muslim cemetery. That was not a metaphor. That was where we lived. Jakarta did not greet us with opportunity. It greeted us with reality, harsh, unfiltered, and indifferent. My parents walked through the city for hours, carrying two children and three bags, searching for anything that could shelter us. Every door they knocked on a quoted they knocked on quoted a price that made their hearts sink. Every alley they entered led to another dead end. Every landlord looked at them with a suspicion, impatience or pity. By the time they reached the cemetery, they were exhausted, physically, emotionally, spiritually. They were not looking for comfort anymore. They were looking for survival. And that was when they found it. A small bamboo structure stood near the edge of the cemetery grounds. It leaned slightly to one side, as if tired from holding itself up. The roof was made of decayed coconut leaves, brown and brittle, with holes that let in sunlight during the day and rain at night. The walls were thin, woven from rattan strips that rattled whenever the wind blew. The floor was dirt, cold, uneven, and damped. It was not meant for living, but it was standing and it was available. My parents approached the undertaker, the quiet man with deep lines on his face, the kind carved by years of watching grief pass through his gates. They asked if they could rent this space. He nodded. Monthly rent, no questions asked, and just like that the bamboo hut became our home. The noodle ritual. People came to the cemetery to mourn, to pray, to bury, and we lived among them. I remember the sound of footsteps on gravel as families approached graves with flower petals in their hands. I remember the soft sobs of mothers who knelt beside fresh moon mounds of earth. I remember the chanting La Ilha Illa rising and falling like waves, echoing through the rows of tombstones. I did not understand death yet, but I understood silence. I understood reverence. I understood that we were guests in a place meant for the departed. The cemetery became my playground, my neighborhood, my world. The graves were landmarks, the tombstones were boundaries, the Mushallah, the small prayer space beside us was the center of everything. Five times a day the Adan echoed through the air, waving itself into the fabric of my childhood. At night the wind rustled, the coconut leaves above us, the shadows of the graves stretched long and thin across the ground. Sometimes the rain came without warning, dripping through the holes in the roof, turning the dirt floor into mud. My mother would wrap me in blankets and whisper Didor Bobby Besokita Harosquat. Sleep Bobby, tomorrow we must be strong. She said it every night, as if strength was something she could plant in me while I slept. When I was four, my mother began standing in line for free rice and sambako, nine essential ingredients like onions, cooking oils, eggs and sugar. It was a government program meant to help the poor. She woke before dawn, long before the sun rose. She walked four miles carrying a woven bag. She stood in line with hundreds of others, mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, all waiting for the same thing, you know, food to survive another week. But being Chinese in Jakarta came with a price. When she reached the front of the line, someone shoved her back. Balikina Kanapatinga Sini Jakarta Jripano Kanalupada. Go back to China, why stay here? You just made Jakarta full and crowded. She did not respond. She did not fight. She stopped back and waited again. She told me this years later, casually, as if it were nothing. Itubyasa, she said. That's normal. She carried that pain quietly, like she carried everything. She came home with rice, with onions, with oil and with dignity. Dinner was one pack of instant noodles. She boiled water in a dented pot. She tore open the packet. She dropped the noodles in like they were treasure. She added a pinch of oil, a slice of onion, maybe half an egg if we had one. It was luxury food, then the three of us ate. She ate first the smallest portion, then Tommy, then me. I did not know it then, but that was love. Not the kind you say, the kind you serve. She watched us eat with a smile that did not reach her eyes. Her stomach growled quietly, but she ignored it. I slurped the noodles like they were a feast. I did not know we were poor, I just knew we were together, and that was enough. The sacredness of survival that night I slept on a stack of old newspapers laid across the dirt floor. The bamboo creaked with every gust of wind. The coconut leaves above us rustled like whispers. My mother had wrapped me in a thin blanket, kissed my forehead, and whispered her nightly prayer. Didor Bobi Kit Besokita Harosquat sleep Bobby, tomorrow we must be strong. But strength was hard to find when fear came crawling. Somewhere in the middle of the night I felt a sharp stink on my neck, sudden, hot and terrifying. I woke up with a gasp and slapped the spot instinctively. My hand hit something hard and fast, a cockroach. Not just any cockroach, a flying one. It darted across the floor, then lifted into the air like a nightmare with wings. I watched it fly out of the hut, disappearing into the shadows between the graves. I cried silently, clutching my blanket, too afraid to wake my mother. My neck trobbed, my heart raced. I stared at the rotten walls, waiting for it to come back. Since that night I have never trusted cockroaches, not the crawling kind, not the flying kind, not the kind that hide in corners and wait for darkness. I am still afraid of them, because in that bamboo hut fear had wings, and it bit me in the neck. My father was nowhere to be found. He would come back once, then disappear for weeks. No explanation, no schedule, just absence. Sometimes he returned with stories, sometimes with silence, sometimes with nothing. I did not ask where he went. I did not know how, but I saw it in my mother's eyes, the disappointment, the endurance, the quiet ache. She never spoke ill of him, she simply adjusted. She became both mother and father, a cook and a protector, a teacher and a warrior. She did not fill the silence with bitterness, she filled it with noodles. The bamboo hut became our sanctuary. The cemetery became our neighborhood, and the noodle pot became our altar. My mother became my first glimpse of sacrificial love. She did not preach, she practiced. She did not demand, she delivered. She did not collapse, she created. Every meal was a miracle. Every day was a victory. Every moment was a memory. I think about that noodles packet often, how she gave herself the smallest portion, how she made sure we ate first, how she smiled even where her stomach growled. That is what legends do. They do not wait for applause, they serve in silence. They love without limits. They endure without recognition, and they raise dragons in bamboo huts beside cemeteries. That is chapter five, and I'll see you next week on Tuesday at six AM for chapter six. See you next time. Thank you for listening.