Assalamu'Alaikum Love

The Ribet Storm

It's not the first time I've sat at LPM's headquarters like this and discussed things with LPM's friends.

Really, every week all of us, the members of LPM campus gather in this room and discuss about the discourses or discuss about the writings that we will make the following week. In fact, not infrequently I became so excited that I forgot the time and had to be reminded by Aruna or Tania if it was time to pray ashar.

But this time it felt completely different than usual. I don't know how many times I've glanced at the circular watch on my left wrist since I entered this meeting room fifteen minutes ago. This was exactly like the first time I attended LPM campus to gather with the upperclassmen and I became the youngest member of this LPM.

“That's right, it's your third year at LPM, Za. Why this stuff?” I muttered to myself while taking out a blocknote from inside my black backpack, just as someone entered the meeting room and gave a greeting.

And I grew even more miserable when I realized that the person who had just entered the meeting room was none other than Mr. Gibran, our new LPM supervisor. Really, I didn't know that the feelings that arise from the opposite sex can be this tormenting. Quickly since the first Ummi Usammah always gave me hope to keep the heart from this kind of feeling.

For the three years since I came out of the boarding school I have always managed to control myself from the feelings that arise because a man tries to approach me and treat me as if I were a special person. Even when Iman, one of my seniors so aggressively approached me, I was still able to control my feelings well. I can always think of what Iman did as a last breeze that I don't have to respond to, even if it's not just once I feel guilty for that man.

‘Doesn't that mean that the lecturer is so special that he can make you fog like this, Za?’

I don't know what thoughts and from where they come to such sentences are like crammed into my head. It made me take a deep breath and breathe it back out slowly. Swab the face with both hands and repeatedly beristighfar so that this feeling does not become-so.

‘Akui only if you do put a taste in the lecturer sir, Za.’

Put taste? What kind of feeling can be placed carelessly like that? Really, nothing happened between me and Mr. Gibran before unless I offered him an umbrella the other day. So wouldn't it be an exaggeration if I was said to put some flavor on Mr. Gibran who is my own lecturer?

‘One deed can bring out a taste, Za. And one taste can be transformed into another. Don't you already understand things like that?’

A taste that becomes another taste. Again I am still too layman for things like this to describe a feeling that I am still not able to. Life in a boarding school never taught me things like describing a taste in the opposite sex or something. There I was only taught to keep my heart from falling into things like this. I have only been taught how to keep this feeling to myself and share it with my Lord.

‘No, I respect Mr. Gibran as my lecturer. As the one who passed on science to me.’

At least for now I still see Mr. Gibran as a lecturer who conveys knowledge to me. It was quite like that and there was no need to magnify the strange feelings I felt each time we unconsciously passed each other. Let these strange feelings be left to my Lord alone and taken care of by Him. If the feeling is good for me, of course it will come back to me in a good way.

________

“Faza,”

I just put a blocknote in my bag and waved at Aruna when someone called my name. It made me turn my head and realize that in the meeting room there was only me and Mr. Gibran who looked so relaxed leaning on one of the chairs without intending to sit down. I didn't lie when I said Mr. Gibran looked like he was watching me.

“Ya, sir?”

For a while we just fell silent and let the clock ticking fill this meeting room void. Mr. Gibran who seemed to weigh and I who frowned while waiting for the sentence what exactly the man wanted to say.

Did I make a mistake during the meeting that Mr. Gibran needed to keep me in this room, or did I say something so untrue that this man needed to reprimand me? But I don't think so, because two seconds later Mr. Gibran approached his backpack lying on the floor and pulled something out of his bag.

“Sorry to forget it for too long, Za.” He said flat while putting a folding umbrella that looked worn on the table in front of me. A red folding umbrella whose color has faded and four letters are written on the wooden handle of the umbrella.

F.A.Z.A

I can't help but smile as I touch the handle of the umbrella. I remember that umbrella. The umbrella I bought for me when I returned to Surabaya because I had a week off four years ago. 2013 December. Even my own brother who wrote my name on the handle of the umbrella with the aim that my umbrella is not exchanged with the umbrella belonging to the other residents of the cottage. The red umbrella I gave to a young man who seemed to be in a hurry at Cepu station four years ago.

“Bapak still remembers this umbrella apparently.” That's not a question. It was a sentence I used to make sure that the man standing in front of me remembered the time when a young girl called him ‘pak’ and confidently offered him an umbrella.

“You've known me since the beginning?” ask Mr. Gibran who made me subconsciously take a deep breath.

Of course I have recognized who the young lecturer who just started teaching in my campus is. Two weeks ago, while waiting for a bus at a stop right next to the campus gate. Two weeks ago, when my memory suddenly turned around a moment after the second time I offered Mr. Gibran an umbrella.

“I remembered it two weeks ago,” I took a light breath before continuing the sentence that I accidentally cut. “Not when you first entered my class, but when again I offered you the father umbrella.”

Either this is just my feeling or it is like there is a burden that Mr. Gibran has just tried to release from his breath before stoning a smile at the end.

“And why didn't you remind me then? If we had met four years ago at Blora.”

“I don't think an umbrella deserves to be tipped off after four years have passed, sir.” And the real meaning of my sentence is, how could a student be in a relationship with a young lecturer who had just started teaching on the campus just because of a small meeting in the past?

“However your umbrella saved me that time.”

“Happy to help sir Gibran.”

Through an umbrella. And the feelings I felt were stirred up again that afternoon. I don't know since when exactly I felt this kind of feeling towards Mr. Gibran. Either two weeks ago, or four years ago when for the first time there was a man who made me unable to turn away. When a foreign man I'd been at the station fascinated me.

“That guy, I shouldn't have called him by calling ‘pak’, Nun.” I still remember Ainun's reaction when I told him that. “She's too young for me to call ‘pak’. Isn't that right?” and Ainun, who had been mishuh-misuh-misuh himself since I actually gave the umbrella I brought to others when we both also needed an umbrella, just raised the tip of his lips to respond to my sentence.

“Indeed who cares about such a silly call, Za? What I don't understand is why did you give her that umbrella?”

“He cares, Nun. Surely the man felt very strange when I called ‘pak’ when he was young so.” I even giggled without knowing myself at that moment. Made Ainun pinch my head with his right hand. “Iya, yes, sorry. But I also don't know why I had to borrow him an umbrella. I thought he could take a taxi ‘, right? Why didn't he try it?”

True too, in retrospect, then Mr. Gibran could have taken a taxi and did not have to run to the terminal in heavy rain so with a small red umbrella. But in fact, the man was just misuh-misuh himself at the station that makes me not have the heart to see it.

“I think he needs that umbrella more than us, Nun.”

And the other point of my sentence at that time was that I felt that there would be a second meeting between me and that man. Although after that I forgot the young man I met at Cepu station because it was too busy with my life after getting out of the boarding school and returning to live in Surabaya.

I easily forget the man who charmed me in the rain in December as if I had never met him and forgotten my red umbrella that I lent him. So, who would have thought that in the end I was reunited with the young man four years later? Again with rain and an umbrella.

* * * * *

I just came out of the bathroom when I found out that Wahyu was so comfortable sleeping on my bed and reading the book I had read. Just turned around nonchalantly as I crawled up onto the bed and sat down beside him. Sometimes the two of us can become familiar so often we forget the gender differences between us. As now, I did not even feel strange when I started writing while Revelation was so comfortable with the book in her hands.

At first I thought our closeness would change after I left for the cottage and lived apart from my older brother. Because at that time, I remember very well how the face of Wahyu when he took me to the boarding school. How does the face of Revelation that is like not willing if you have to live apart from your only sister. But in fact, my worries are completely unreasonable because I and the Revelation are still as close as before I went to the cottage. We still often act silly that sometimes makes the mother and brother stroked the chest to see the behavior of his two children. Although we were six years apart, not once did Wahyu seem to intimidate me with his status as an older brother.

“You have seen the data of Arifin who brought me last night, deck?” qanya mas Wahyu after almost half an hour we were just silent and busy with each other's activities. Questions that made me take a deep breath and stop my activities writing on the blocknote that has been busy me ever since.

“Already,” I answered briefly that made the Wahyu mas sit down and close the book in his hand. Sitting cross-legged and looking at me with a gaze that really made me uncomfortable.

“Then?”

Well, even though I don't really want to talk about it, in fact I do have to give clarity about the application the other day I talked about. About a man named Arifin who intends to propose to me.

“I haven't decided yet, mas.”

“Arifin Son, as far as information is concerned, he is a good man.”

Arifin Son. Of course I had read the data of Mr. Burhan's son as soon as I opened the door of the room and found a paper containing the data of a man named Arifin Putra.

And Arifin is exactly what I imagined before. A 27-year-old man who works as a manager at an insurance company in our city. 27 years, and that means Arifin's a year younger than Mr. Gibran. Again, that guy.

“If a good man comes to you with the intention of marrying you, while you know his good character and status, then accept him. Such a thing is better for you.” even the sentence that Ummi Haidar had told me a few years ago suddenly fell in my head without orders.

It was as if supporting me to accept Arifin's application, even though I was still in doubt about the decision I was going to make. Do I have to accept my offer to do ta’aruf with Arifin mas even half-heartedly, or reject it and make you disappointed in his daughter?

It was impossible for me not to think about Arifin after I had read all of her data from where she had studied Junior High to finishing her S1 four years ago. Even twice I have glanced at a piece of photo tucked between two papers containing data self Arifin. A picture of a man sitting on a chair in a room I guessed was the man's office.

“A manager and established. I wonder why mas Arifin would apply for a boy like me who even went to college has not graduated, mas.” I did not forget that also made Wahyu laugh.

But that's not really what's going on with my mind. Of course not all men want a career woman to be his future wife, so I do not have to be that kind when Arifin, who a manager wants to apply to a Faza Aulia like me.

“Mas Arifin blind wife, deck. Partner to reach God's heaven together. Not a competing partner in career.”

“Mas,” called me after a while we just fell silent and Wahyu mas again busy with the book in his hand.

“Hm?”

“If I refuse this proposal..” I do not mean to let my sentence hang just like that, but I stopped because I failed to find a word to connect it. I could not find out what words I could use to convey what I felt in Revelation. I was too scared to just say what I felt to my own brother.

“Abah has already submitted all his decisions to you ‘kan?” This time, Wahyu even closed his book and looked back at me. “Only because mas Arifin is the son of my best friend, does not mean you have to accept this proposal while you yourself can not accept it.”

Is it true that I became like this because I could not accept Arifin's proposal? I don't think it's that simple. Like there is something else still stuck in my heart and I still struggle even if I just say it to the Revelation.

“You who will later undergo marriage with mas Arifin. So no one can force you to accept this proposal, even if it is abah.”

“Not like that, mas.”

“Or is there someone who unknowingly keeps your heart adrift?”

Someone who keeps my heart adrift? Again, I'm not sure about something like that. I was indeed doubtful about what decision I would give to you about this proposal. It's just that I don't know what all these doubts are because I still don't want to be bound or as the Revelation says that without realizing there is someone who keeps my heart adrift?

Rabb, why is it that the issue of feeling that concerns the human heart can be this complicated?

* * * * *