The Antidote stories

What's in a Name?

Salamah Pope (Indonesia)

One of the absurd things about me (and there are several) is my name. So religio-centric are both Christians and Muslims, though, that no one I know has ever remarked on it. In fact the only time there has ever been any appropriate response to it was when I was paged once at Kennedy airport, and a group of immigrant workers from Pakistan burst into huge guffaws and thigh-slapping delight.

I was actually born Jennie Stewart, in a quiet suburb of London. Respectable, was what they called it; nothing eventful ever happened there. I left school, became a secretary, got married, and became Jennie Pope.

Two years later we were opened by Bapak and his wife Ibu, and things began to happen. We emigrated (with borrowed money) to the States, and met Bapak there again. In San Francisco my husband went upstairs to Bapak's sitting room and bravely (this was before it became fashionable) asked for a new name. He was pronounced Thomas. 'And what about Jennie?' asked Bapak. Primed beforehand, Thomas explained that I did not want a new name, thank you Bapak.

Pause.

'It is necessary,' said Bapak briefly. So when Thomas came downstairs again I was Vivien Pope.

Over the next few years I became aware that having the name Vivien was changing me. A hard and somewhat bitter shell around me was softening, and I began to feel more feminine.

Two countries and some seven years later, sitting at home in New Zealand one day, I knew in a quiet moment that I was no longer Vivien. Whatever the 'necessary' reason had once been, it no longer was. 'So what do I do now?' I thought, 'I'm not Jennie, and I'm not Vivien.' I came to the simple conclusion that it didn't matter all that much; I knew who I was inside, and what's in a name, anyway? So I forgot about it.

A few months later, Thomas had to return to Indonesia for a two-week visit which, perhaps inevitably, was extended. While I waited for him to come home to New Zealand he in Indonesia embraced Islam. This time it was he who didn't want a new name. However, he duly became, reluctantly, Abdullah - Muhammad Abdullah. Pope.

I arrived a month or two later and, feeling wifely, embraced Islam, too. I had been brought up as a mildly socialist atheist and, even with the Subud experience of God's existence (and constant interference) in my life, I had never considered becoming a Christian. I could not have let my father down. But becoming a Muslim was different; and besides, I would get a new name. So I made my Confession of Faith and became, officially at least, a Muslim: easily, without thought. After all, religions must be OK really, as God had sent them all, hadn't He?

Thus, in 1967 I became Salamah, 'Siti Salamah' Bapak gave me. And I liked that. It confirmed my intuition that the 'necessary' effect of Vivien had already done its job - changed me - because, if it hadn't I would have been Faridah, or Fatimah, the nearest vocal equivalent of Vivien.

I am still Salamah, but that wasn't the end of the story though, not by half. When I asked Bapak what Salamah meant for me, a message came down the pipeline that it would help me with my bad temper, and that it would help me 'to feel like others, not better.' Bad temper I admitted to, cheerfully; but 'to feel like others'! What did that mean? It took me three months even to see what Bapak was getting at. And when I saw, I realised that, ah yes, I was British, wasn't I, in spite of all our traipsing around the world. And as I was British, of course I naturally felt I was better than other people. Of course.

That, and some other similar insights, were not among my most pleasant experiences in Subud. Salamah, I kept repeating to myself in agony, Salamah, Salamah, 'Peace'. You're worse than everyone else, because the whole thing is a sham. You're just as bloody-minded as they are. (It took me even longer to start thinking in terms of 'we' rather than 'they'.) And so, what with one thing and another, and the relentless non-stop action of the force of the latihan, I came to see my natural arrogance and realise its total vacuity. My past, ingrained, assumptions paraded themselves before my eyes and horrified me; but I suppose because they were aired, like that, they gradually faded. I have rarely felt 'British' since then.

But for now, following a religion for the first time in my life, I began reading about them, their origins, development and history. Someone lent me a book on the essence of Christianity. The author had been demoted as a priest, but his book had a depth and a quality that moved me - and I went through, first, a period when I felt devoutly Christian. I felt the birth of the holy baby, I wept for Christ, and rejoiced with Mary and her purity and her Grace. But, even as I was considering revoking Islam and becoming a Catholic I knew that this somewhat fervent Christianity was simply a part of the total process, of my own, internal, spiritual, development. Thanks to those inward experiences of Christianity, I learned what it meant to be a woman, and what it felt like; and I knew that at last I had become one, inside .

As that faded, that conviction: that knowledge, of Christianity, I found myself, almost without volition, becoming a Muslim in earnest. I experienced, as utterly true, the global brotherhood of man, and our equality in the sight of God, and the masculinity of the prophet Muhammad. I felt reborn. re-ligio - retied to the Source, to the path of the prophets and the direction of God. Then the sword of Islam, the Spirit, became for me a living symbol of ethical striving, for truth and eternal values. My 'Christian experiences' had taught me, perhaps for the first time, Love; but as Bruno Bettleheim once said, 'Love is not enough'. Paul Tillich capped that nicely when he said, 'The highest form of love is Justice'. Two black American Muslims gave me insight into the fact, shocking, unknowable, and ineffable as it is, that the essence of authentic Islam is justice, democracy, and truth.

And Siti Salamah, my name, a derivative of the same root as the word Islam, reminds me that I, once little Jennie Stewart of no-man's land, suburbia, am now a faithful member of the brotherhood of those, from all religions, who surrender willingly to the One, Almighty, God.

What's in a name:, Quite a lot, it seems. After all, if I have my right name, perhaps I will be able to answer God when he calls me.

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