School Rooftop & Friend

pict from google

It happens when I was in high school. I had a memory that I couldn’t forget with my best friend. We were almost together all the time, we live in a dorm that has rules to wake up at 3 am and study together after Maghrib prayer. Every time we went to our school we’d walked together from the mosque till school, it plays the same way when we back to our dorm. Our schedule was tight, at night it will be Mosque then eat dinner following with study Alqur’an with teacher & the next one was to study for our school lessons by ourselves. 

That was the perfect time for us (I and my other 3 friends) to move to another room to study by ourselves. But we will always end up playing some unnecessary games when our study has finished. Ok ok, I will just cut it to something I wanna tell you here. We were in a condition where we don’t have any communication tools such as a mobile phone, a wired phone, or any tools like that. We were someone who will always come whenever we had such promises to each other.

Someday, I & one of my guy friends did not come back to our hometown. We live in a dorm where we would come back to our hometown once in a while, for example, we will back to our home town every 2 weeks. Usually, it was timed for us to take our allowance for the next 2 weeks in the dorm from our parents. As you know, in my 00’s we still didn’t have any bank cards. Even, one of my friends needs to come to the post office to take his money from money order because his parent lives in Jakarta.

Yup, that day I and my friend still doing our responsibility to pray in the mosque and eat dinner in our school. Even though it was a weekend, our school canteen will always open to prepare their student meals who didn’t back to their hometown. After we finish our dinner, I ask him to come with me to the library rooftop. He was someone who will never reject my invitation, so we hang out together at the rooftop.

pict from google

Our rooftop was a new build and there were no stairs who can help us to the rooftop. But there was a bamboo ladder that we can use to makes us upstairs. We set it up and we did it. We were so happy until we lay down and look up at the sky. The night sky was so clear that day, the stars the moon the shooting stars were so beautiful. I remember how the wind softly slaps my face and bring that smell of tobacco plants near our school. The smell of the tobacco plants was so addictively and without consciously, I breathe it so deeply and it makes me relax afterward. Maybe my friend felt the same because he was not someone who smokes.

Then we sat and looked at the view of the mountain's night. The light of houses on the mountain starts to blink, it gives us the light night view from where we sat. Our school was located in a region which has 2 mountains, we can see the mountain views clearly from our school every day. Also, when the night comes the blinking light was so nice to see from our school. Sometimes, there is a thing we need to see it from far away to see the beautifulness of it.

pict from google

Our night hour was over, we had to end our time and goes back to our dorm. We managed to get down safely and back to our dorm with a smile on our faces. We repeated that moment again and again afterward, until the bamboo ladder that helps us was gone. Yeah, we couldn’t go upstairs without the help of the bamboo ladder. Until finally, our graduation comes and we never go to our rooftop school again.

We lose the addictive smell of tobacco plants as well as the atmosphere up there. I still can not find another place that has the same atmosphere as our school rooftop. But yup, that how our lives are. We can not remain in one place, we have to move forward and that atmosphere will become and stay as our memory. 

I wonder how my friend’s life now. We never communicated as frequently as for how we have in the past. I hope he is doing well with his life and his family now. I hope our moment will last forever as of how our friendship last, I still remember how our expression when we couldn’t help but smile to the universe at that rooftop. We build our teenage days with something positive which will never irreplaceable.