Dili, Saturday 2 April.
The phones in the Canossian convent at Balide have been ringing since dawn, but Rome is a faraway place. We dodge the inevitable house dogs and head out to Tasitolu before the implacable sun rises any higher.
It’s hazy out on this flat wetland wedged between sea and the guardian hills. Cynics and old hands call Dili a swamp. Here, 8km to the west, on the road to Kupang, the merging of sea and shore has a benign logic. Birds flock here, some flying from as far away as Russia. The tang in the air is salt, not from frying palm oil or open city drains. The hope is that this place of salt lakes and swaying grasses will become a peace park and conservation area.
In 1989, ten years before the independence referendum that bought (dearly) East Timor’s freedom, Pope John Paul II came here. Where the morning winds now blow, thousands upon thousands of people once gathered. The Pope said Mass from the traditional house, or Uma, built for the occasion. The palm roof thatch is now home to opportunistic ferns (in East Timor even stones nurture orchids). The pink and white wash on the walls (a breath of Portugal) brushes off on our fingers as we try to decipher the graffiti that now marks the steps leading up to the Pope’s balcony. FATIN NE SANTO RESPEITO NIA TEMPAT (This is a holy place, respect it) … The balcony is modest but elevated. A breath of the Vatican. But from here you can see clear across deserted lakes and plains to the mountains which were the only refuge in 1999, when the pro-Indonesia militias and military went on their murderous rampage. At the Dili tais (weaving) market some days later a young man in camouflage gear sells me a rust-red shawl from Suai and boasts at the same time of being a freedom fighter.
‘Fretilin?’ I ask. ‘Yes’. He points proudly to the badge on his beret. ‘Where did you go in ’99?’ ‘To the mountains’, he answers, smiling and pointing to the tropical buttress that rises behind the city. He might be telling me about a weekend picnic—the East Timorese smile is beguiling—but we both know he is not.
At Tasitolu, a plain cross stands hammered into the crumbling cement forecourt of the Pope’s open house, its white wood reflecting light like bone