A Teacher Preaches

Deep within the Kremil neighborhood of Surabaya, past rows of dimly lit parlors fronted by slow-eyed prostitutes who stir only at the sight of potential customers, there is a two-story green building. On one side is a telephone center. On the other, a doorway marked by a rack piled deep with pairs of small shoes.

This is the Diniyah School, a religious study program for neighborhood kids run by Khoiron Syu’aib, 40, and funded mostly by the phone business. Wearing a white shirt, a white songkok on his head and a blue sarong, Syu’aib looks almost boyish aside from a thin mustache and the wisps of hair on his chin. He leads his unannounced visitors from a cluttered antechamber up a spiral staircase and into a large rectangular room with chalkboards at either end. The second of the evening’s two sessions is in progress, this one for 9- to 12-year-olds. Smartly dressed boys and girls are reciting the Koran, their voices echoing off the tile floor. They look curious and innocent, in the way only children can.

Even these children: Syu’aib estimates that 70% of the students are the sons and daughters of sex workers, raised by other family members. That wasn’t his father’s expectation when he opened the school in 1982, but it became the reality. Women arrive in Kremil from nearby towns lured by the promise of work, or else they’re sold into the neighborhood, which has been known for its brothels since World War II. The number of sex workers had dropped in the past 20 years, Syu’aib says, but it’s rising again in the wake of the 1997 economic crisis. Every Friday, he has a Koran reading for women who have left the business, but now some of them are again selling themselves.

Syu’aib discusses this tragedy with unexpected detachment. He’s not angry, even after years spent watching lives decay faster than Surabaya’s crumbling facades. Besides, his job is not to judge; it is to teach. A sin does not disqualify the sinner from the house of God, he says; the transgressions of a parent are not visited upon the child — theologically speaking.

The difficult questions usually come from the children during the teenage years. Who is my mother? Why am I here? And the answers have derailed more than a few promising students. Syu’aib speaks soothingly in a way that must bring comfort to a child. And while there’s little he can do to stop the sex business, he can keep the children safe within these walls. From the balcony, the teacher points out several nearby brothels, while, behind him, the more hopeful sounds of children chanting holy scripture fill the air.