The Tale of Maling

The other night I was awakened by a sudden loud noise. I was not sure where the noise had come from. I opened the door to the living room with my heart pounding. I was quite relieved to see nobody there and the quiet room with no sign of having been broken into. Then another noise arose. This time I was sure it came from the roof. I ran to my husband to wake him up. He grabbed a golf club and strode out to the yard. The noise was not as big as before but was still going on. He called out the name of our housemaid, thinking it could have been her who had made the noise. The street was strangely quiet for a while. Then all of a sudden shouting and yelling filled the street followed by a lot of running foot steps.

The tale of the thief ("maling" in Indonesian) was a big topic among the people on the street the following morning. The thief had climbed the roof of my house from the rear to walk across roofs, and broken into the house a few blocks away from my house. He had left a tape recorder and some other electrical appliances on the roof.

We were fairly shocked by the event and locked all the windows and doors with great care for a week or so. But gradually began to lose our fears and became a bit lazier about locking up.

#60 Parkway Vol.7 No.3 June 1993