HOPE
Marina and I walked back from school via Rua de Caicoli.
The afternoon sun was bright and harsh. We hopped together on little diamond-shaped patches of shade, a daily ritual, a game we played on our way back home.
We were alert when walking on our own on the streets. Dili was not a safe place. In my lifetime of 14 years, I had seen shootings, people hungry, mothers dying, sons and daughters disappearing. It was the survival of the smartest in this city.
My older brother, Jose, walked ahead of us. He had his headphones on, listening to music I did not understand. I could hear him whistling tunelessly.
“Come, Marina, let us race him,” I ran ahead.
“Don’t run so fast, Dina, please.” I could hear the sob in my baby sister’s voice. She struggled to keep up with me.
Just as I gathered momentum, I heard a pop. I came to a halt by instinct.
My brother slowly slumped down. I ran to him. My brother was shot. He was still breathing. There was a pool of blood around his head. Theblood was spreading on the pavement covering the weeds in between the cracked stones.
I could hear Marina crying as she slowly sat down on the pavement with her knees grazed and bleeding. I looked around in panic.
What would amma and appa say?
I went down on my knees, hid my face with my hands, and repeated…
“O My Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are most in need of Thy mercy.”
The sun shone brightly on Jose, giving me one last glimpse of him as I looked back. I grabbed Marina’s hands and ran home.
***
“I had witnessed my brother’s death and walked away Sheena,” I sobbed.
The studio where I am talking to Sheena is quiet. Just the hum of the air-conditioners in the back. I am bent over the table, trying to compose myself.
“How can I forgive myself? I am sorry. I got emotional,” I tell my interviewer from Al Jazeera.
“It is OK, Dina. It must be tough even after all these years,” Sheena passes me a tissue. “I lost my entire family in the war, in Gaza,” she states simply.
We both take a sip of water and I continue.
The next day, we left Dili. My mother, fresh from her hysterectomy, walked behind us carrying a sack of rice. My father, asthmatic and angry, herded my two younger sisters and my baby brother. I was now their eldest surviving child, carrying the guilt of having abandoned my brother. I dragged my feet carrying our meagre belongings. We walked up the hills of Dare surrounding Dili.
This was the journey my mother and father had taken before, 24 years ago, in 1975, when Indonesia had bombed Dili for the first time.
Only this time, over a thousand militia sanctioned by the Indonesian occupiers, had arrived in Dili. They looted and burnt everything. They chopped and hacked the heads and bodies of those who fought them. Operation Darah Merah, Operation Red Flood, was the name given by the occupiers to this carnage.
We huddled on the hillside, crouching around bushes and shrubs along with other families from Dili. We shushed our children and whispered our fears to each other. We heard that battleships from Australia were nearby, coming to rescue us. The hills of Dare were rife with rumours that pierced through the night. We heard that my brother’s body had been removed by the militia.
Under the cover of trees and bushes that night, my mother slept on a sack laid over the rocks moaning softly in pain and grief. I fed my sisters with the biscuits and bananas we had brought with us. My father and I just drank water. My baby brother slept deeply in my arms, smiling in his dreams.
My father was a stubborn man. He had insisted that we stay in school and get on with life despite the longstanding conflict with the Indonesians. He did not like our occupiers, nor did he agree with the Catholic church, our allies. He was a practical man whose eyes were on the horizon and the freedom his children would enjoy someday.
My mother was part of a community that mourned the occupation and collectively prayed for salvation. Together my parents made a formidable pair surviving one onslaught after another with stoicism and hope.
I never saw my mother and father shed one drop of tear for my dead brother.
The Australian battleships arrived the next day. We returned to Dili once the militia was cleared out. And then the search for my brother’s body began. Someone told us he had been burnt when the militia set fire to the buildings near the Presidential Palace on Rua de Caicoli.
My hands clutch my purse tightly as I speak to Sheena.
Memories wash over me, pricking my conscience.
“Shall we meet tomorrow same time at the studio?” Sheena asks.
Enough of the past for one day, we both agree.
***
Dili was festive in the lead-up to our Independence Day. It was like Christmas. We brought out our fairy lights, adorned our doorways with flags and flowers. We cleaned our homes and wore our Sunday best that day. May 20th, 2002. All of Dili, perhaps all of Timor was there in Tasitolu, by the sea. Our first President, Xanana Gusmao, stood proudly among world leaders. So many important people flew in from all over the world. Even Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, was there. It was a special time in our living memory.
We were the poorest country in Asia but had the enthusiasm and commitment for several lifetimes. Many of the Timorese did not even have a roof over their heads. We had not completed our education. But we helped each other, to rebuild our broken and burnt down homes, our schools, our health centres and our country.
My brother Jose would have been so happy on that day. Without a body to call it closure, my mother placed a headstone for him next to where my grandparents were buried in the Santacruz Cemetery with just his name and the inscription ‘Viva Timor-Leste’ on it.
***
Sheena and I wrap up the interview in the TV studio after three exhausting days. I hesitate to ask her about her life in Gaza, lest I trigger old wounds.
“Come over to our house tomorrow before you fly out. We usually go to the beach on weekends and have a barbeque. You will get to meet my family.” I want to show off the scenery and introduce Sheena to my family. I wanted her to taste the freedom that we enjoy now.
Joachim is busy frying fish and beef. Next to him, my father is stirring a large pot of soup with a wooden stick.
“I met Joachim when I was working at the national hospital as a janitor. He worked at the office there,” I whisper to Sheena.
“He studied mostly in Indonesia but came back to Timor as soon as we became independent. Unlike most Timorese men, he can really cook, not just barbeque,” I tease him.
Joachim hands over plates to us, with crisp, fried fish coated with sambal and a cup of fish soup and rice, my father’s specialty that he had learnt to make from nothing when he was in the jungle fighting for independence.
We then take a dip in the warm, blue ocean in the afternoon. I hug Sheena and we bid farewell, promising to keep in touch with each other.
***
Four years later, I am in the UN Mission Compound in Dili, crouched in between two rows of UN offices, with 200 others, trying to take shelter from the shooting that is ongoing overhead. My phone rings. Sheena’s voice sounds distant.
“What’s happening Dina?”
“Sheena, we are caught in a crossfire. There is fighting going on between the Timorese police and the army. It is a civil war. Timorese fighting the Timorese.”
I am tired. I sob.
It starts raining heavily that evening. A melancholic mist encircles the naked streetlights around the UN Mission. Wet and miserable, we all huddle together, men and women, of different colours, heights and dispositions united by fear and frustration. Bodies of policewomen andmen shot dead by their own countrymen are brought into the UN Mission compound. The body bags are lined up in the rain — a mother, a brother, a sister, a father.
My people are hurting all over again.
And then the exodus begins.
Women and children carrying their meagre belongings arrive in droves into makeshift camps. Fleeing violence and arson, they run from their homes and communities into nunneries, churches and schools and towards the UN compound. Their men have been forced to choose sides once again.
Everyone is confused. With whom are we fighting?
There is no occupier now. Who is our enemy this time?
I am stuck inside the UN compound and have no idea where my family is. Everyone around me is in the same predicament. After Sheena’s call, the mobile network goes down.
We share bare loaves of bread and bottles of water from the UN commissary and lie on torn cardboard and newspaper laid over our office tables. Sleepless in our makeshift beds, we lie silent in deference to the dead lying outside in body bags. The next morning we share the few rolls of toilet paper among us, rinse our mouths, straighten our hair and are back at our tables to work.
The Australian soldiers have landed again. They clear the roads and create a safe passage. We are given the allclear to leave the next evening.
I rush home. Everyone is safe. The violence has not affected our area.
“Do you think things will get worse?” Joachim asks me.
He is fearful, like me, for the children. Less than 24 hours ago, I was dodging bullets. How can I say with surety that things will return to normalcy?
Mario is driving me around the next day to check on the women and children. It is day three of the conflict.
Tanks trundle up and down Dili’s streets and helicopters hover over our heads giving us a false sense of security. Body bags have been cleared overnight from the compound. The mobile network is active again. Things are almost back to where they were.
Mario is upbeat. I admire him. This is not the first time he has seen conflict.
My radio crackles.
The UN Security Command Centre asks us to return to base immediately. Mario’s family is under attack. A mob is surrounding his house and threatening to enter. They are searching for an enemy that neither Mario nor his family knows. His daughter, wife and son are hiding under the bed and begging for protection.
We enter the UN security control room.
Mario’s daughter is shrieking hysterically on the phone. Pale-faced, Mario rushes in behind me.
“Sandra, listen to me. Do not panic. Australian soldiers are coming to your house just now. They will rescue you, your mum and your brother. Stay quiet and together,” I try to calm her.
Everyone in the room knows there are no Australian soldiers close by. In fact, there are very few reinforcements even to reach the camps with supplies. We have to rely on our local networks for their goodwill to keep the families safe. I continue talking to Sandra softly. After ten minutes, Sandra seems to be sufficiently calm. The panic in her voice has subsided.
I go home that night feeling shaken. If the mob had entered Mario’s house… I feel a chill all over at the thought.
I am grateful that day four of the conflict has remained incident-free. We reach the camps and dispatch the water trucks and food supplies for the women and children. I leave for home that evening, cautiously optimistic. Maybe the worst is over.
I drive home along the beach road for the first time in many days with the window down, the gentle breeze blowing in from the sea. It is dusk, the evening is beautiful and the horizon crimson red. The silhouette of the statue of Christ on top of the hill in Hera is comforting.
I slow down to take a bend in the road where the waves almost lap onto the road when I spot the five young men. They emerge from the shadows, carrying crowbars and concrete blocks and aim for my car. My immediate instinct is to jam the breaks and reverse the car. But there are potholes behind me on the road and a bend. The move will land me in deeper trouble.
The men close in on me. I keep driving towards them as the first iron rod comes crashing against the car, narrowly missing the windscreen and smashing the glass on the left side window. I feel a million minute shards of glass raining on me. Another rod crashes into my back windscreen.
But I have managed to leave the men behind. I press the accelerator towards home.
Joachim rushes out. He has seen the shattered window of my car. I stumble out avoiding looking back at the car. I close my eyes and all I can see is broken glass and shattered memories. I can see my brother lying on the pavement, bleeding. Still alive.
My father comes out with a pan and a broom. No one says a word to me. My mother herds the children away. Joachim and I stand there, holding each other, saying nothing. Darkness descends on us.
***
Sheena flies in on day seven of the conflict. I greet her at the airport, with a lingering hug, crying. She holds me comfortingly.
“This will blow over, Dina. Everything will be OK. Behind all this violence, there is life. There is hope.”
We drive back into the city through deserted neighbourhoods. A soldier stops our car at a UN checkpoint.
He waves us across after checking our IDs.
We reach the makeshift camp outside the gates of the UN mission compound. It shelters displaced women and children. We start walking towards the expansive tent put up by the Red Cross. Vendors peddle bottles of water, sweets and lollies, mosquito repellent creams, tissues, toilet rolls, air pillows.
A woman comes towards us, crying. Her house was burnt down by young men she had never seen before. She does not know why they did this. She has barely managed to escape into the camp with her three children. Her husband died of asthma two months ago.
An old woman, just skin and bones, lies in a makeshift cot close to the entrance to the tent. Women, children and other objects fill the tent. A young woman sits in one corner, spreading butter on a slice of white bread. A mother breastfeeds her baby, seated on a metal drum. A mattress is tied to a pile of household goods and marked as belonging to Filomena. Wet clothes are draped over the metal frame of a cot. Children run around playing catch up.
I am struck by the absence of adult men. There are a few young boys. Older ones are probably playing war games in readiness for choosing sides when they get to adulthood. There are only women nurturing and giving care, attempting to restore order, normalcy and dignity in this mayhem.
A volunteer with a Red Cross armband escorts us to a smaller tent. It is filled with children of various sizes and ages, clapping and cheering at a large screen where a cartoon is being screened.
“Ice Age, my favourite cartoon,” Sheena exclaims.
A young Australian soldier is glued to the screen, with his mouth open and his machine gun pointing to the ground.
“Sid the sloth makes everyone happy.” Sheena giggles along with the kids in the tent.
I look around. The children are relaxed, laughing. A child tugs at my skirt. A little boy whispers something. I bend down to hear him.
“When animals can help each other, why are people fighting?” he asks.
I struggle to answer him.
We move towards the next tent.
Four women stand in a corner holding the edges of a large sheet. A young woman is in labour behind this makeshift wall. She is lying on a thin cloth over the mud and earth that served as the UN Mission car park until two days ago. Two women are with her, wiping her forehead. Someone has produced some cotton, gauze and a basin of hot water.
We are welcomed into this intimate setting.
“Celia went into labour last night. Her first baby. It has been over eight hours. We cannot move her to the hospital because of insecurity. There are no ambulances or taxis.”
I stand there helpless and numb taking in this scene. I forget I am there to provide a solution to these women.
Celia is exhausted. Beads of sweat line her forehead. The sheet that covers her body is drenched. One of the women strokes her hair and holds her hand as she moans through the next contraction. She pushes. Underneath the light cotton lungi draped over the woman’s legs, in between her thighs, the baby’s head is visible.
One of the women steps forward and urges the woman to keep pushing. After a few tries, she delivers the baby, cuts the cord, slaps her bottom, wraps her in an old cotton sarong and hands her over to me. The baby is crying, with her face screwed into a tight redness. I take a peek at her.
The camp, the strife, my sorrow everything recedes into the background. It is just the little one and me in this universe. The baby slowly opens her eyes and looks at me. I think of my brother’s face, his love for us and his courage. Holding the baby close to me, I try to remember his face.
Sheena walks across to me and puts her arm around me.
“It is fine, Dina. Look. There is life. There is hope.
Always.”
