The Work Contract Under the Tin Roof: Two Months in the Embrace of Oil and Silence
The class-break holiday became the longest and shortest two months of my life—like a piston caught between intake and compression. Fifty-six days that felt like ten years and ten seconds at once. The agreement under the rusty tin roof, reflecting blinding sunlight at Balikpapan's midday peak, was more than a deal. It was a rite of initiation. The day after I brought home my report card with a barely passing math grade—met by Father's gaze like a judge delivering a verdict—my "practical test" began. Father's workshop, with its triad scent of diesel, hot metal, and used oil, became both my prison and my temple from seven in the morning to four in the afternoon.
Here, time wasn't measured by clock hands but by the rhythm of machines:
- **Morning**: The clink of wrenches greeting the dawn.
- **Noon**: The compressor's roar competing with the Dhuhr adhan.
- **Evening**: The rumble of a revived test engine as the day's closing song.
Our relationship transformed fundamentally. Father was no longer the figure demanding religious obedience but a ruthless, precise maestro of mechanics. Every move I made was watched like a hawk eyeing prey. No praise—only sharp corrections, like a blade slicing through the stifling air:
"Redo it. The nut's off-center—a half-millimeter wobble is a fatal mistake. Precision is your worship here."
"Not that wrench! Get the number 10 spanner—the blue handle, not red! Learning to read symbols starts here."
"Don't let your hands shake. If the bolt's loose, you'll pay for a new seal yourself—a day's work of mine gone for it."
I endured it all. My once-smooth hands turned permanently black, their pores holding stories of oil seeping in like ink into paper. Calluses grew on my palms, a topographic map of experience—each ridge marking days spent tightening bolts or cleaning carburetors. My back ached from hunching under engines, but this pain was different from the ache of sitting long in the surau. This was a meaningful exhaustion.
Amid that fatigue, a primal satisfaction emerged—a sense of being useful, a cog in the universe's tangible machinery. When a wrench clicked perfectly on a cylinder head bolt, or a piston slid smoothly after I cleared its carbon deposits, it felt like cracking nature's secret code. Here, under the flickering neon light casting our shadows, I was no longer a puppet named "Muhammad Rasyid." I was Yid, the mechanic's son, and oil was my anointing.
The Final Test: A Nod Worth More Than a Trophy
Slowly, Father's rebukes dwindled. He began giving me space—letting me measure valve clearances alone or choose piston rings by feel. A trust I plucked like ripe fruit after a downpour.
The climax came in the holiday's final week, when thick storm clouds darkened the sky. Pak Rusli—our neighbor whose warung always flooded in the rainy season—arrived with an old matic scooter wheezing like a tuberculosis patient.
Father didn't move from his weathered wooden stool. The smoke from his kretek cigarette curled gray in the humid air. His eyes met mine, not with doubt but with a silent challenge:
"The carburetor's clogged with bad fuel residue. You fix it—I want to see what you've learned these two months."
He didn't hover. He stayed seated, sipping his thick black coffee, his gaze piercing as if seeing his younger self in me. My knees trembled as I dismantled the carburetor. Each screw, each tiny jet, I cleaned with diesel until they gleamed like new silver. By three o'clock, I checked the float chamber one last time.
The moment of truth:
I pulled the starter lever. The engine growled, stuttered, then—roared to life! Its sound was smooth as a bee's hum in spring, far from its earlier sickly wheeze. I glanced at him, dust and sweat clinging to my face.
He nodded.
Just once. A brief, almost imperceptible nod. But in his eyes—for the first time since the night after the adhan competition—I saw a glint of something other than disappointment: a quiet acknowledgment. No pat on the back, no "good job." Just the engine's rumble speaking louder than any praise. The two-month test ended not with words but in the workshop's universal language: the sound of a healed machine.
A Message to a Captain: Charting a New Ocean
The night before my first day at SMK Negeri 1, the air was humid with the sea's lingering breath in our narrow alley. I sat on a rickety bamboo bench at the alley's end—the same spot where I once daydreamed about passing trucks. The registration form, signed by Father in deep blue ink like engine blood, lay neatly in my plastic folder in my room. I'd won the battle, but the real war was just beginning: a war against the ocean of my own self-doubt.
My new notebook—a technical drawing book with a metallic gray cover—was no longer just filled with engine block sketches but with deeper questions:
*"Can the 0.001 mm precision of mechanical work be a new form of prayer?"*
*"How do I find harmony between a piston's logic and longing for the Unseen?"*
*"Is this path—of wrenches and oil—truly 'less holy'?"*
My old Nokia phone felt cold in my grip. Its cracked screen, like our village's asphalt roads, reflected my half-shadowed face. My thumb danced over the plastic keys, composing a message to the one person who understood my two worlds—Kak Iqbal, the captain of my sea of thoughts:
"Good evening, Kak Iqbal. This is Rasyid. My test with Father is done. The workshop has given its stamp: I'm worthy to dock at SMK Negeri 1's Light Vehicle Engineering pier. But as you said at Jetty 5, the voyage to find my true 'why' is just beginning. Can I learn to read this ocean's compass with you? I bring new supplies: an engine map and a wobbly compass."
As my thumb pressed "send," I looked up. Two lighthouses stood firm on my life's horizon:
1. The Al-Hikmah surau's dome, looming dark at the alley's end, symbol of the straight path I'd walked since childhood.
2. The yellow glow of Kariangau port in the distance—a world of rusty iron, giant containers, and clanging ships, Father's destined realm.
Once, they were opposing magnets pulling me into different chasms. Tonight? They were just two points of light on the same coordinate grid: the coordinates of a Muhammad Rasyid learning to redefine "the straight path."
A Signal Answered: The Ship's Bell Rings
I was about to step inside—the wooden floor creaking underfoot—when my phone vibrated in my pocket. A message arrived. My heart raced as "Kak Iqbal" appeared on the monochrome screen. With slightly trembling hands, I opened it:
"Rasyid, thrilled to hear from you. I'm proud too. Think of SMK as where you build a sturdy ship. But remember, those questions in your head are the ocean you must sail alone.
By chance, next Sunday at 3 PM at Jetty 5, we're discussing doubt. We'll explore Al-Ghazali's idea that doubt is the first step to true faith. I think it's perfect for you.
Come. Bring all those questions. We'll sail together."
I pressed the phone to my chest. A smile bloomed—not of victory, but of a navigator finding the first star in a dark sky. Inside, the Isya adhan echoed from the surau's broken speaker, mingling with the rumble of a barge's engine at the port. Those two calls no longer clashed but formed a symphony of my hometown.
Tomorrow, the white-gray uniform would feel foreign, but its shoulders would carry the scent of oil—the perfume of a journey that had earned its blessing. The school gate was no longer a finish line but a dock. And I was ready to sail.
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