It was two forty-five in the morning in the Kampung Melayu neighborhood. The moon was high, but the streets were empty. Tung-Tung adjusted his sarong around his waist and looked at his old bamboo kentongan. He took a deep breath and struck it. Tung, tung, tung. 'Sahur, sahur, wake up to eat!' he shouted in his most cheerful voice. He waited for a response. In the past, doors would open, children would run out with torches, and pots would clang. But that night, there was only silence. Well, not total silence. As he looked towards the houses, Tung-Tung saw the pale blue glow of mobile phones behind closed curtains. The children were awake, yes, but they were watching videos in bed, ignoring the call of tradition. Tung-Tung lowered his arms. The bamboo felt like a useless piece of wood. 'It's over,' he murmured. 'The rhythm is dead.' At that moment, a shadow approached from the porch of a dark house. It was Grandpa, the old guardian of the neighborhood. 'The rhythm doesn't die, Tung-Tung,' said the old man in a raspy voice. 'It just changes its song. Don't try to wake their bodies, boy. They're comfortable. Try to wake their hearts.'
Suddenly, a whirlwind swept across the street, kicking up dust. 'Lirili, Larila, fresh news, it's here!' shouted a small figure running in circles around Tung-Tung. It was Lirili Larila, the neighborhood scout, with her winged sneakers. She stopped abruptly, panting. 'Tung-Tung, the world is crazy, no one sleeps.' 'Here everyone sleeps, Lirili,' he replied sadly. 'Here, yes, but not there.' Lirili pulled out a crumpled map. 'In America, it's daytime, in Mexico, it's afternoon, the 2026 World Cup is starting.' 'And why does that matter?' asked Tung-Tung. 'Because the matches are at three in the morning, our time.' Lirili was vibrating with excitement. 'There are millions of people awake, shouting on the other side of the world right at Sahur time.' Tung-Tung looked at his drum. Then he looked at the map. His eyes lit up. 'If I can't wake my neighbors, I'll bring the noise of an entire stadium to do it for them.' He struck the bamboo with force. Tung. 'Lirili, gather the gang. We're going to the World Cup.'
Half an hour later, in the small dirt soccer field of the neighborhood, a group of strange figures had gathered under the flickering light of a streetlamp. 'We need noise, we need hunger, we need that,' said Tung-Tung pointing at the entrance. A wooden fence exploded into a thousand pieces. A huge man dressed as a green crocodile entered, chewing on the remains of the wood. 'Bom-bar-di-ro,' he roared, kicking an empty can that shot into the sky like a missile. 'Hired,' said Tung-Tung. 'And who narrates our glory?' asked Lirili. A man with a top hat and a dented megaphone stepped forward. 'Tralalero Tralala, the journey is about to start, if we don't eat soon, I'm going to faint,' sang Tralalero Tralala, horribly off-key. 'Enough,' sighed Tung-Tung. 'Inside.' Everyone looked up. A cow with an astronaut helmet floated two meters off the ground, nibbling on the leaves of a tall tree. 'That's Saturnita,' said Mak Tupper, appearing with a steaming pot of rendang and three tiers of stacked tupperware on her head. 'She says Earth's gravity makes her hungry.' 'We're missing one,' said Tung-Tung. 'We need someone who understands the young ones. Someone viral.' From the shadows emerged a skinny boy, in neon sportswear, eyes fixed on the ground. He trembled. He looked like he was about to run away. 'Are you the expert?' asked Bombardiro, sniffing him. 'You smell of fear.' The boy didn't respond. He walked to the center of the field. Closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. And then it happened. He jumped. Spun in the air. Perfect 360 degrees. Landed with feet apart and arms tense, like a statue of power. 'Siiiiiiix-Seveeeeen.' The shout echoed throughout the neighborhood. Out of nowhere, he pulled out two signs: zero to zero. Silence returned. The boy shrank again, shy, and hid behind Mak Tupper. Tung-Tung smiled. 'Perfect.'
'Listen well,' said Tung-Tung, hanging the kentongan over his shoulder. 'Grandpa gave me this old bamboo drum. He says it connects hearts that beat at the same time.' Tung-Tung began to play a base rhythm. Deep and grave. Pum, pum, pum. Lirili started running, marking the offbeats with her squeaky sneakers. Chic, chic, lirili. Bombardiro banged on some trash cans. Clang, bom. Saturnita mooed a low note that made the ground vibrate. Muuuuu. And Six-Seven, clapping to the beat, waited for the moment to explode. The air around them began to vibrate. The space rippled as if it were water. The sound of the sleeping neighborhood mixed with a distant sound: cheers, vuvuzelas, chants in Spanish. 'It works!' shouted Tralalero. 'Tralalero tralala, to Mexico we go now.' Tung-Tung struck the magical kentongan one last time. 'Hold on tight, gang. Next stop: Azteca Stadium.' A flash of neon green light enveloped them and, in a blink, the dirt field of Jakarta was empty. Only the echo of a 'siuuu' floated in the air.
They landed in row forty-seven of the Azteca Stadium, amidst eighty thousand people singing at the top of their lungs. The sensory impact was overwhelming. Neon green lights cut through the air. The roar of the crowd was a physical wall. The smell of nachos, chili, and wet grass hit them like a wave. Bombardiro was the first to react. He saw a beach ball bouncing among the stands, mistook it for a real ball, and leaped to catch it. He knocked over six people like dominoes. 'Bom-bar-di-ro,' he roared as he rolled three rows down with the ball between his teeth. Tralalero stood on his seat and raised the megaphone. 'Tralalero Tralala, from Mexico with love, this stadium has a hundred thousand, no, two hundred thousand, well, many warm people.' 'It's eighty thousand,' corrected Saturnita, floating calmly over the heads of the fans, nibbling on a piece of nacho someone had tossed into the air. Lirili disappeared. Three seconds later, she returned panting. 'I've run around the whole stadium. There are seven exits, four taco stands, and a man dressed as an eagle who I think is real.' Tung-Tung didn't move. He was paralyzed. Not by fear. By wonder. Eighty thousand people awake at the same time as Sahur. Eighty thousand hearts beating to the same rhythm. Exactly what Grandpa had said. Then the ball went into the goal. Goal.
Tung-Tung didn't think. His body remembered before his mind did. He lifted the kentongan and struck it. Tung-tung-tung-chak. The rhythm cut through the air like a knife. The nearest Mexican fans turned around. What was that sound? It wasn't a vuvuzela. It wasn't a normal drum. It was something ancient, something that vibrated in the chest. Tralalero didn't miss a beat. 'The ball flew, the goalkeeper cried, and my stomach is empty since the sun came up,' he narrated, completely out of rhythm but with undeniable passion. Six-Seven tensed. He looked at Tung-Tung. Tung-Tung returned the gaze and nodded. The shy boy vanished. In his place emerged a force of nature. He jumped onto the seat, spun three hundred sixty degrees in the air, and landed with arms outstretched. 'Siiiiix-Seveeeeen.' The signs appeared: one to zero. The Mexicans went wild. They didn't understand anything, but it didn't matter. Twenty people were already imitating him, jumping and shouting 'sis-seven' with a Mexican accent. A child asked for a sign. Six-Seven gave it to him, immediately shrank back, and hid behind Mak Tupper. Bombardiro, meanwhile, had found something round under a seat. He put it in his mouth. It was an orange. The man next to him looked at him in horror. Bombardiro smiled with peel between his teeth. Saturnita floated a little higher, as if the goal had given her a cosmic boost. Her rings glowed golden in the darkness of the stadium. For a moment, everything was perfect.
The match continued, but Mak Tupper had other plans. She had set up her operation in the gap between two seats: an open tupper, a ladle, and a look that said you're going to eat and it's not a question. The aroma of rendang rose through the stands like an invisible snake. A Mexican man with a mustache and charro hat turned slowly. 'What is that?' His nose twitched. 'Rendang,' said Mak Tupper, offering him a piece on a banana leaf. 'Three in the morning food. From my home to yours.' The man took a bite. Closed his eyes. And then something happened that no one expected. His eyes welled up. 'My grandma,' he said softly. 'When I was little, my grandma would get up at four in the morning to make tamales on Christmas Eve. The whole family in the kitchen. The smell was like this. Exactly like this.' Mak Tupper said nothing. She just served him more. A Japanese woman two rows down smelled the aroma and came up. She tasted it. Her memory was different: her mother preparing ozoni on New Year's before dawn. A Nigerian man remembered his father cooking jollof rice at five in the morning for the whole family. Tung-Tung watched in silence. Each person who ate closed their eyes and traveled to their own early morning kitchen. Each had their own Sahur. Only they didn't call it that. 'Mak Tupper,' he whispered. 'Your food doesn't just feed. It connects.' She smiled without looking up from the tupper. 'That's cooking, my boy.'
Saturnita began to blink. Her rings, which had glowed golden all night, now pulsed red. Lirili noticed first. 'Lirili Larila, alert, the rings, red, red,' she shouted, running in circles so fast she left a mark on the cement. Tung-Tung understood immediately. Ninety minutes. Like a soccer match. That was the limit of the kentongan. He looked at the clock painted on the stadium's giant screen: minute eighty-eight. 'Gang, we're leaving, now.' But Bombardiro was in row twelve, trying to take a giant Mexican flag as a souvenir. Tralalero was narrating the eighty-ninth minute to a group of fans who didn't speak Indonesian but clapped anyway. Six-Seven was doing the pose with fifteen Mexican kids shouting 'sis-seven' in chorus. Lirili was the first to act. She ran to Bombardiro at supersonic speed and pulled on the tail of his costume. Saturnita descended over Tralalero and lifted him by the suspenders of his pants. Mak Tupper closed her tupper with a definitive clack that made Six-Seven come running back by instinct. Tung-Tung lifted the kentongan. He struck it three quick times. The same rhythm as the beginning. Tung-tung-tung. The air rippled. The stadium blurred. The eighty thousand cheers became a distant hum, then silence, then the crowing of a rooster. They opened their eyes. They were back in the dirt field of Jakarta. Four thirty in the morning. The sky was starting to pale in the east. Bombardiro had the Mexican flag wrapped around his neck. Tralalero had chili sauce on his hat. Six-Seven trembled with excitement, hugging his signs. And Mak Tupper, sitting on the ground with her tupper empty for the first time, smiled like she hadn't in years.
The next night. Two fifty-five in the morning. Tung-Tung looked at himself in the broken bathroom mirror. The dark circles were worse than ever. But the look was different. He went out to the street with the kentongan. This time he wasn't alone. Bombardiro dragged two trash cans like improvised bongos. Tralalero carried his megaphone and a sleeping cap he refused to take off. Lirili was already racing around the neighborhood at top speed, leaving trails of light under the streetlights. Saturnita floated behind everyone, silent, with her rings in calm blue. Mak Tupper had been cooking all afternoon. She carried three tiers of tupperware stacked in impossible balance on her head, and a ladle in her belt like a sword. And Six-Seven walked at the end, silently, with the signs folded under his arm. Tung-Tung struck the kentongan. Not to open a portal. To call his neighbors. Tung, tung, tung. Sahur, sahur. Silence. The blue screens still glowed behind the curtains. Bombardiro, impatient, banged a can against a door. The door dented. 'Too much strength,' whispered Saturnita. Tralalero tried to sing a wake-up serenade. A shoe flew from a window and hit his megaphone. Lirili ran from door to door shouting 'Lirili Larila' until a cat chased her for three blocks. Nothing. Tung-Tung lowered his arms. Silence again. Mak Tupper put a hand on his shoulder. 'My boy, the food doesn't arrive if you don't serve it.' She opened a tupper. The aroma of rendang rose through the narrow street like a smoke signal. Sweet, spicy, deep. It slipped through the window cracks, under doors, through the holes in the screens. They waited. One minute. Two. Then, a light turned on.
The door of the yellow house at the end of the street opened with a creak. A boy about six years old came out barefoot, rubbing his eyes. He wore a football shirt three sizes too big and had pillow-flattened hair. 'What smells so good?' he asked. Mak Tupper was already on her knees, offering him a plate. The boy sat on his doorstep and took a bite. He chewed slowly. Smiled. 'You're the ones making all that noise every night.' 'Not every night,' said Tung-Tung. 'Only when it matters.' The boy's mother appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a batik. She looked at the group with suspicion: a man with a bamboo drum, a huge guy dressed as a crocodile, a floating cow with an astronaut helmet, a man with a megaphone and a sleeping cap, a tiny figure that wouldn't stop running in circles, a woman with impossible tuppers, and a neon-clad boy hiding behind everyone. 'What is this?' asked the mother. 'Sahur,' said Mak Tupper, offering her a plate. 'Like before.' The woman sat next to her son. They ate on the sidewalk, under the stars. They weren't a hundred people. They weren't eighty thousand. They were seven crazies and a family of two. But it was a start. Tung-Tung looked towards Grandpa's house. The window was open. The old man was there, with his old sarong and his 'I knew it' smile. He raised a hand and placed it over his heart. Six-Seven, sitting cross-legged on the ground, raised a trembling sign. Zero to one. He leaned towards Tung-Tung and whispered, for the first time without shouting: 'six, seven.' The softest of all. But the one with the most weight. Tung-Tung smiled. He lifted the kentongan and struck it one last time. Softly. Like a heartbeat. Tung, tung. And they say, from the next street over, another drum answered.
