My Life, I Guess (A Memoir)

Chapter 9

Ever since I was little, I was taught that the salah--or the "sholat" as it's called in Indonesia, AKA the Muslim player--is the most important, mandatory thing you should do as a Muslim. Five times a day, every day. If you miss one on purpose, you are committing a horrible sin.

The sholat is not just lifting up your hands and praying. It's a process with many different movements, and you're required to recite the right words in Arabic, as well as scriptures from the Quran with each movement. You can absolutely do this by yourself, but according to my family, it is mandatory for males to do this en masse, at a mosque.

Women can be excused from doing the sholat if they are on their period or with child. They are also excused indefinitely of having to go to the mosque to sholat. They are free to sholat at home, since women are expected to tend to their household duties, such as taking care of the children or cooking and cleaning. The usual tradwife stuff.

As my family grew more and more religious, the men were more expected to pray at the mosque. I was able to get away with not doing it for a long time, until recently when my parents sat me down and essentially guilt trip me into having to do it every day.

Guilt is my family's favorite weapon of choice. My sister Elly loves to tell me that my parents are getting older and we don't know if they could die at any time soon. My parents also tell me the same thing, making their sadness and disappointment in me abundantly clear. And of course, I told you about how Islam has that shared accountability thing. I sin, they sin. I get sent to hell, they're gonna be right behind me.

So that's how they get me. I can't question anything about Islam or refuse to do what they tell me as it pertains to religion, because it would be a sign that I wasn't religious enough for them. That I wasn't taking things as seriously as they wished I did.

Obviously I never did sholat in private when they let me skip the mosque for all those years. I just pretended to. But there came a point where my family began to pressure me to pray at the mosque. They started giving me the spiel of how it was mandatory, and how I "shouldn't lose" to my nephews who were so diligent with going. Yes, they compared me to my much younger nephews. As if I needed to be in competition with them.

They don't even realize that my nephews only go to the mosque because they're forced to, just like me. The difference is that, for them, it started young. My family is only forcing me now, at 27, because better late then never, I guess?

As much as I'm an expert in worming my way out of stuff, getting out of mosque time is more difficult to do. I can't keep using the "sick" excuse, because eventually they're gonna want to take me to a doctor, who can definitely tell if I'm lying. I can't keep using the "going to the bathroom" excuse, because they would get suspicious if I just happened to be using the bathroom at the exact time for prayer. 

However, these are the only acceptable excuses I have. There's also me being tired, which is actually not a lie. I'm always tired now because of this. Physically, mentally. Having to make the long trek to the mosque, doing all those moves over and over again with a bunch of men around me--who often have an ungodly stench on them--and feeling just how hot and humid the area inside the mosque is, being surrounded by all these people on all sides, and then having make the trek back to the house, covered in sweat, panting.

I'm not a strong, athletic person. I'm pretty unhealthy, I have terrible eating habits, and I can barely get my sleep schedule under control. Being forced to go to the mosque by my family is draining, and sometimes I have to be honest with them and say I just need to rest. 

My mom always stresses to me that going to the mosque to sholat for males is mandatory. It's "wajib", as it's called in Indo. But I always counter that fact by saying, "In that logic, then even if you sholat at home as a male, you're committing a sin all because it's at home, and not at the mosque."