Mas Zaini as Imagination

Although I come from the same city, even from the same Neighbourhood (his late brother was our Neighbourhood Head), I never interacted intensely with Mas Zaini. I remember meeting him a few times in a number of alumni activities of academic organizations that were no more than the number of fingers on my right hand. However, from those few meetings, he was present in my mind as an image. This is because he was present earlier in my mind as a figure introduced by my grandmother in a regular gathering between grandchildren, one evening at her house on the weekend.

Like any other ordinary story, my father and mother often took me and my younger siblings to my grandmother’s house during the weekend school holidays. At that time, my parents’ house was only a village away from my grandmother’s house. In the afternoon, we would visit my grandmother’s house, play until night, stay overnight, and go home the next day. What was different was probably because my grandmother was a single parent who supported her family by selling nasi ponggol (a typical Tegal food consisting of rice with stir-fried tempeh as a side dish that is usually served for breakfast) every morning on her porch. So at night at my grandmother’s house, I usually helped cut the tempeh into cubes that would be made into tempeh ponggol.

In between helping grandma, while my younger siblings were playing, I would usually be in grandma’s room because I was enthusiastic about the huge pile of newspapers stored under the bed. The newspapers were next to banana leaves that were also piled up. Grandma used newspapers and banana leaves every day to wrap ponggol. So, before the newspapers landed in the hands of grandma’s customers, I would usually open the newspapers page by page, edition by edition, until I had finished opening all the largest piles of newspapers in Central Java.

That night, as I was intently reading the newspaper, my grandmother approached me and said, “There is the name Zaini Bisri in the newspaper.” My grandmother, who was born around the first year the red and white flag was flying, was literate in Arabic but illiterate in Latin, so she could not point out where in the newspaper the name in question was listed. I searched through the pages and found the name Ahmad Zaini Bisri in the editorial staff.

I, who didn’t know who the person in question was, got an explanation from my grandmother. “He works overseas. His house is here,” explained my grandmother while pointing to the right wall of her house. Mas Zaini’s house was right next to my grandmother’s house, only separated by a pedestrian alley less than a meter wide.

Your figure will live as an image in my head, guiding me throughout my life, to be the pride of my grandmother, as well as my father and mother, just as you have always been the pride of my grandmother, as well as my father and mother.

The short conversation between my grandchildren and grandmothers was like fuel for my unconsciousness by making Mas Zaini an image in my head. When I was in junior high school, my school counselor asked me about the profession that had to be filled in the student’s personal book. I filled it with journalist, while asking the school counselor how to become a journalist. “To become a journalist, you have to go to high school, after graduating, you just apply to be a journalist,” explained the school counselor. How easy it was. Long story short, I fought for my dream of becoming a journalist after I graduated from college. I applied as a journalist at one of the leading print media, but failed during the work speed selection.

Although I have not lived in my hometown since college, the image in my head about Mas Zaini continues to be fostered through my father or mother who have met Mas Zaini several times when he returned to his hometown. “Yesterday I met Mas Zaini, asked how you were,” that’s the story my father or mother told me when I returned to my hometown.

Due to the long distance living, he was in Semarang then Tegal and I was in Jogja then Jakarta, there was no interaction that exchanged news. The only thing I still remember was the long-distance interaction when I, somehow, told him that I had written a book and it was published by one of the biggest publishers in Indonesia. He congratulated me and asked if he had any connections at the publishing institution so that it could be published there? Of course not, and I saw his question more as an appreciation for what I had done.

Once again, there was no really intense meeting with him, a kind of one-on-one meeting that could really clarify his figure as a model for me. Everything just stopped by in my head as an image of a journalist, my grandmother’s neighbor, and also as an alumni of a learning organization. He became an image, not because I have the same abilities as all humans, but he is present in my mind because he was brought to life by my grandmother, as well as my father and mother.

That morning, Sunday, June 1, 2025, my mother sent a message via Whatsapp, “Have you heard that Mas Zaini Bisri has passed away?” Her message was delivered almost at the same time as the message I sent to my mother regarding the same sad news that I received from my colleagues.

Farewell, Mas Zaini. Your figure will live as an image in my head, guiding me throughout my life, to be the pride of my grandmother, also my father and mother, just as you have been the pride of my grandmother, also my father and mother.

Notes

Mas Zaini as … Ahmad Zaini Bisri, former editor and senior journalist of Suara Merdeka, commissioner of the Central Java Information Commission 2010-2014, lecturer at the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Pancasakti University, Tegal

alumni of the academic organization… Ahmad Zaini Bisri was once the Chairman of the Association of the Extended Family of Indonesian Islamic Students for the Central Java region

I was asked by the BP teacher … I wrote a short chat with the BP teacher 17 years ago on this blog. 

but failed during the speed of work selection … I felt qualified to be a journalist because I thought I had the ability to write. In fact, being able to write is easy for someone who is just starting out as a journalist. As William Zinsser said in his book On Writing Well , “ If you went to work for a newspaper that required you to write two or three articles every day, you would be a better writer after six months .”

the same abilities as all humans … Historian Yoval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens says that the explanation that homo sapiens can survive until now is because of its ability to think abstractly, fictionally, or imaginatively.

This article is a Google-translate version of Mas Zaini sebagai Imaji