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Just weeks before his death last December, Abdurrahman Wahid, better known as former President Gus Dur, insisted on taking a road trip of some five hours from Semarang to Jombang, also known as the City of Islamic scholars, and his birthplace.

On the way, Gus Dur stopped in Rembang, where a friend of his presided over a sizeable Islamic boarding school. Despite his deteriorating condition — he was on dialysis and very weak — he made it to Jombang in what was to be a sort of farewell tour through the North Java plains.

The journey would be his last across his beloved island.

As his daughter, Yenny, explains, “My father knew every road and every railway line on Java. He’d been everywhere. He could describe to you exactly the next town, the next station and even which warung had the best food.”

Gus Dur drew his immense energy from the people. Egalitarian and pluralist to the last, he fed off their enthusiasm, inspiring them in turn. Life for him was an endless flow of meetings, literally from dawn to dusk. He somehow only needed four hours’ sleep.

Indeed, he was always on the go. Even when wheelchair-bound, Gus Dur was in perpetual motion: traveling, giving talks or calling on his fellow Islamic religious scholars, or kyai , in the religious boarding schools known as pesantren all over Indonesia.

When he did stop, Gus Dur was a larger-than-life elocutionist — humorous, witty, self-effacing and insightful. He knew almost instinctively how to entertain and edify the adoring crowds that flocked to see him.

Gus Dur could never be boring, whether in a room of five people or among a crowd of thousands. Ordinary Indonesians, cut off from the Jakarta elite, remember him best for these jaunts.

It was with this final journey in mind that I set off last weekend, traveling across Java in similar fashion from Yogyakarta to Jombang. I found myself traversing a landscape I’ve come to adore, though I will never understand Java like Gus Dur did. Still, I drove through the plains surrounding Solo and Sragen. I crossed the iconic Solo River, skirting the mighty Gunung Lawu volcano, before veering off to Nganjuk and Mojokerto.

I finally reached Jombang after six hours. It had been seven years since my first visit, when I came to write about its pesantren and thousands of students in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings.

Jombang had changed. It was noisier and more prosperous. The shops were refurbished and government buildings repainted.

The lanes of nearby Tebuireng village were crammed with stalls selling refreshments, T-shirts, trinkets and books extolling Gus Dur’s trademark humor.

Shuffling along, I joined the crowd heading to the cemetery. Stopping by the grave, I squatted quietly and read the Yassin prayer from the Koran. My Arabic is horrible and I’m sure people must have been wondering who this large, ungainly foreigner was.

Nonetheless, I persevered because I wanted to pay my respects to a man I’d followed and listened to on many occasions. He didn’t know me but I knew him.

Later, I struck up a conversation with a group of visitors — pilgrims, really — from Bondowoso, some four hours to the east. I asked them why they had come so far.

Mardianto, a 44-year-old journalist, answered: “Gus Dur was a great teacher. He never discriminated between the rich or the poor. He defended the weak and lived with us. He was one of us.”

Watching the hundreds of mourners trooping by and having seen the countless buses parked outside, I realized that Gus Dur, despite his short presidency, may well have been one of the most influential leaders the republic has ever seen.

With his robust yet easy-going manner, Gus Dur had touched people. They all felt they knew him and vice-versa. He was both the former head of the Nahdatul Ulama and Semar, the wise-cracking joker-clown of Javanese lore.

In this, Gus Dur embodied the contradictions, or rather the stunning diversity, of Java and Indonesia as a whole. He saw the country in a way few could, and more important, understood the need for its citizens to feel at home regardless of their backgrounds.

Unheralded and unappreciated by his people, Gus Dur helped Indonesia in its time of need. He stood like a bulwark against religious extremism and violence in a period of great tragedy and turmoil. I imagine that Indonesians are starting to miss him.

I certainly do.

 

Karim Raslan is a columnist who divides his time between Malaysia and Indonesia.