One foe the Road: An Irishman with a beard…

Almost all the best qualities I possessed as a child have long since been robbed of me by the big bad world, leaving me with only a few remaining relics of the wee boy I used to be.

I said farewell to my capacity for unselfconscious creativity before I left primary school.

As for my natural curiosity, it went bye-bye by first or second year.

Vivid visual imagination – it was slán go fóill by third or fourth.

And, of course, the one I miss most, the ability to be comfortable with public nudity in both myself and others, disappeared long before all the rest. Sayonara, my old friend. It was good while it lasted.

However, like the last dying embers of a dwindling fire, some of my younger self still survives. Relevant to this column is the puerile part of me that continues to enjoy asking arbitrary questions like the following: How many times in the last fortnight have you been told you look like a Muslim?

And the winner is, with a fantastic total of three random people in the last two weeks having inquired whether he subscribes to the teachings of the Quran, Mr Emmet McElhatton. Now come on up here Emmet and claim your prize, you bushy-bearded, religiously (and perhaps racially) ambiguous man of mystery.

(Crucial context to make sense of this column: 87 per-cent of Indonesia’s 281 million inhabitants identify as Muslim, making it home to more followers of Islam than any other country.)

The first time I was asked whether I belonged to the two billion-strong legion who are loyal to the world’s second most popular religion, I was under a tree taking refuge from the Jakarta rain.

“Not a good place if it gets heavier,” said an older man, who, having just given up his spot in a cramped nearby bus stop to inform me of the structural inadequacies of my chosen shelter, now approached. “If it gets bad the branches and leaves will not work.”

I nodded and thanked him for his advice but declined his invitation to join him and the forty or fifty other people competing for cover beneath the small bus stop roof.

Before he left, he gave me a ‘suit yourself’ shrug and asked my name.

“Emmet,” I said.

“Ahmed?” he exclaimed, suddenly grabbing my hand, his demeanour going from that of a kind stranger to an old friend. “You Muslim?” he asked, his eyes lighting up.

“No,” I answered, at which his face visibly dropped a little.

Not great with letting people down, I rushed to undo some of the damage my admission of being an infidel had clearly done to his spirits.

“But we do have some Muslims in Ireland. It’s just, uh, I’m not one of them,” I said.

He smiled wistfully, slowly pointed at my face, and said, “The beard, it’s like Arab,” before slumping off back into the drizzle.

The second time someone queried whether I was a devotee of Allah and his holy messenger Mohommad, I was moseying down the street when, all of a sudden, some bucko started walking beside me.

Fearing he had an agenda that involved me giving him money that I would rather hang onto, as he commenced a-talkin’, I kept right on a-walkin’.

Eventually though, I capitulated to the sheer power of his soundness.

After telling him where I was from, where I was heading and what I thought of his city of Yogyakarta, he said, “Thanks man. Great beard, by the way. Are you a Muslim?”

To avoid a repeat of the disappointment aroused by announcing I was an unbeliever during the previous counter, I was tempted to say, “Oh aye, biggest Muslim in Ireland. Sure ye know yourself, no pork, no drink, up prostrating and praying every morning from cockcrow. The whole works.”

But instead, just on the off-chance Allah is real and was listening in, I decided honesty was probably the best policy.

“Nope,” I said. “Just an Irishman with a beard.”

He laughed, told me that Indonesians struggle to grow facial hair and away he went.

Anyway, the third and most recent time I was misidentified as man of the mosque occurred yesterday, but it was less funny than the other two, so I will spare you the details. Suffice to say, a taxi man in a pink hat laughed when I got into the car, looked at me quizzically for a few silent seconds, before finally saying, “Man, you gotta be a brother with a beard like that!”

Anyway, though I cannot stand racism, identity-based bigotry or group prejudices of any kind, I am taking the trimmer to my face fuzz tonight.

At home, my ma would usually be the first to tell me when I am in need of a tidy up. In the absence of her better judgement, I am going to take being mistaken as a Muslim three times in two weeks to mean the same thing.

Mae alsalama!