The Tower of Kudus

 

The bedug drum pounded three times from the minaret’s shadow, and Eddie Mahfud felt it in his chest like a fist.

Dang! Dang! Dang!

Not just a sound. No, sir. Eddie had lived in Kudus all forty-three years of his life, and he knew that sound wasn’t just vibrating air. It was something alive. Something that burrowed under your skin and nested there.

The sky above the Menara Kudus Mosque was bleeding from blue to amber, the way it always did before dusk in central Java. Eddie stood at the edge of the gathering crowd, wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief that had been white that morning but was now the color of weak tea. The air smelled of clove cigarettes, of fried dough, of bodies pressed together in anticipation. And something else. Something like anticipation, but darker. Headier.

(like fear)

Eddie pushed the thought away. This was Dandangan. The celebration before Ramadan. Nothing to fear here, for Christ’s sake.

(for Allah’s sake)

For Allah’s sake.

From his vantage point near the warung stall selling soto ayam, Eddie could see the whole spectacle unfolding like some kind of fever dream. Vendors had been setting up since dawn, old men with leathery faces and women with bright headscarves, their hands moving with practiced efficiency as they assembled their stalls. Now as evening approached, the crowd had swelled to something monstrous. A living, breathing thing with thousands of eyes, thousands of mouths.

A little girl in a purple kebaya brushed past Eddie’s leg, her small hand clutching a paper pinwheel that spun madly in the hot breeze. She looked up at him with dark, serious eyes and said nothing before disappearing back into the crowd.

Eddie shivered despite the heat.

Something was wrong tonight. He could feel it the way his grandfather used to say he could feel rain coming in his bad knee. A pressure. A wrongness.

“Hey, boss! You gonna stand there all night or buy something?” A voice cut through Eddie’s thoughts. The soto vendor was looking at him expectantly, ladle poised over a steaming pot.

“Sorry,” Eddie mumbled, fumbling for his wallet. “One bowl.”

The man’s face creased into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “First night of Dandangan. Special night. Been coming to this every year?”

Eddie nodded, taking the bowl of fragrant soup. “Since I was a kid.”

The vendor leaned closer. Eddie caught a whiff of sweat and kretek cigarettes. “You know what they say about the tower, right?”

Eddie shifted uncomfortably. Everyone in Kudus knew the stories. How Sunan Kudus had built the mosque’s minaret to resemble a Hindu temple. A gesture of respect, the tour guides said. Religious harmony, the politicians proclaimed every Dandangan.

But there were other stories. Stories the old people whispered over coffee in back rooms. About what Sunan Kudus had really buried beneath the tower’s foundation stone. About why he’d forbidden the slaughter of cows.

“Just stories,” Eddie said, but his voice sounded thin even to his own ears.

The vendor’s smile widened, showing teeth stained red from years of chewing betel. “Sure, boss. Just stories.”

As Eddie turned away, soup sloshing in his bowl, the second round of drumming began. Louder this time. More insistent. The crowd surged forward like a tide, and Eddie found himself being carried along toward the mosque.

DANG! DANG! DANG!

The sound wasn’t coming from the tower anymore. It was coming from inside Eddie’s head. Inside his chest. Inside his bones.

“They’re coming,” a voice whispered near his ear.

Eddie spun around, but there was no one close enough to have spoken. Just the press of bodies, faces turned toward the mosque, eyes gleaming in the fading light.

The soup bowl slipped from his fingers, splattering on the ground. No one noticed. They were all watching the tower now, where something dark seemed to be moving against the stone. A shadow, perhaps. Or something else.

Eddie tried to push back, away from the crowd, but it was like swimming against a riptide. Impossible. The mass of humanity pushed him forward, toward the mosque, toward the tower with its strange Hindu-Muslim architecture that had stood for nearly five centuries.

The mosque that Sunan Kudus had built after leaving Demak due to “differences in determining the start of Ramadan.”

That’s what the history books said, anyway.

Eddie knew better now. As the crowd pressed closer and the sky deepened to the color of an old bruise, he understood what the real difference had been. What Sunan Kudus had discovered all those centuries ago. What the bedug drum was really calling.

And as the third and final drumbeat echoed across Kudus, he realized the truth about Dandangan. It had never been about welcoming Ramadan at all.

It had always been about feeding what waited beneath the tower.

DANG!

The crowd roared. The takbir began. “Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”

And as thousands of voices rose in praise, Eddie Mahfud felt the ground beneath his feet begin to tremble.

Ramadan had begun.

And so had something else.