In the year 1991 , author / journalist , Timothy Mo, wrote The Redundancy of Courage , based on the East Timor conflict, set in 1975, the year of the Indonesian invasion , some of the key fictional characters modelled on Xanana Gusmao , Jose Ramos Horta , seen left on a Darwin wharf , and the veteran Australian journalist Roger East - murdered in Dili ... After his recent first visit to the country to attend a large literary discussion , Hong Kong based Mo penned the following view of the young nation , with observations about the role of women in the country today, the geo-political situation and Australia's use of bugs in the oil grab .
On the strength
of my novel The Redundancy of Courage and my review of Luís Cardoso's The
Crossing, which tells the culture and history of East Timor , Sofia Belmonte of the Council of Ministers invited me to attend The
Dialogues of Dili. I had never been to
Dili but it was exactly as I had imagined: to the rear, green hills sharply
rising; to the fore, the winding Praia beach front with the immaculate new
embassies opposite the grubby sand.
Across the sea, 23 miles away, but in good
weather seemingly close enough to touch, loomed craggy Atauro island. I was
warned not to swim. It wasn't a joke: monster salt water crocodiles were
occasionally sighted opposite the Government Palace. Dominating the Dili
skyline stood the cube of the Finance Ministry, easily the tallest building in
town and constructed mostly of glass, presumably as a symbol of transparency.
The
only surprise came out of town. The 10,000-foot mountains were unexpectedly
massive, reminiscent of the Swiss Alps, and impenetrable mists quickly rolled
down them. You could still find skeletons on Mount Matebian or Ramelau where
wounded FALINTIL fighters had crawled into cracks and crevices to bleed to
death rather than endure the Indonesian army's torture chambers. Just out of
Dili, the narrow road East ran past unfenced chasms, hundreds of feet deep.
Our
talks and lectures were ostensibly about the contribution of literature to
identity and reconciliation, the "construction of conscience", as Abé
Barreto called it. The Redundancy of Courage had been hard to write. I disliked
it in the way that a mother has to fight her resentment of the child who gave
her the most painful birth. But, like a runaway child, this novel had been the
one that had a life of its own. It had become a part of the events it purported
to describe, with fact and fiction intertwining till they were
indistinguishable.
My
old acquaintance José Ramos-Horta, the former President and Prime Minister of
Timor-Leste – he survived two rifle bullets to the body in peacetime 2008 – had
visited Mohamed Nasheed, the former President of the Maldives. Nasheed had been
democratically elected but ousted by the army and Islamic fundamentalists. José
recounted in his blog that as they shook hands he said that he expected His
Excellency had never heard of Timor-Leste. "On the contrary,"
retorted Nasheed, "The Redundancy of Courage was part of my prison
reading."The biggest surprise of all was to come. After my lecture a large
and imposing figure blocked my path. It was Virgiliano Guterres, a bear of a
man. "Only now do I truly know you are a real person," he said,
embracing me.
Gil
had been imprisoned by the Indonesians. In jail he had read one of the many
photocopies of my novel doing the rounds of Dili. He and his cellmate had been
convinced it could only have been written by a Timorese. In a Malayo-Polynesian
mouth my name sounds like Team-Uh-Tee-More. In obsessive and claustrophobic
cell debates Gil and his comrade decided my pseudonym of Timothy Mo was a pun
on Timor, Timor. [Mo is Anglo-Chinese.] And just like my novel's narrator, Gil's cellmate had his life
saved by a noble Indonesian boy. He and Gil were convinced I had taken this
true story from life and put it in the book and redoubled their belief that I
was living in Dili. But it was one of those occasions where life follows art,
rather than vice versa.
Timor
occupied a strategic position. It sat on deep water which allowed nuclear
submarines rapid transit between the Pacific and Indian oceans. The Timor Gap
held huge reserves of gas and oil, bitterly disputed with Australia.
Contemporary Dili seethed with espionage and conspiracies. Would the father of
the nation, Xanana Gusmão, Timor's Mandela, resign as he threatened, come
September? Was it an elaborate double-bluff? Under cover of an aid package, the
Australian secret service had bugged Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri's office in
2004 (the spy who blew the whistle had his passport revoked in 2014, preventing
him from testifying at the Hague).
All
Timor-Leste could do was try to play the powers off against each other. The
Chinese had constructed two ministry buildings for free, presumably sans
microphones. Timor went to them for patrol boats instead of Australia. The war
heroes had been male but the strong women of peace-time Timor impressed me now.
Mimi Chungue hosted us. She was from a famous Timorese-Chinese lineage. Mimi
herself had been a highly paid manager at Coca-Cola but come home. It was Mimi
who got us a long audience with President Taur Matan Ruak and the First Lady
and then with the Army Commander, Major-General Lere, followed by the veterans
of the clandestine Dili network.
First
Lady Isabel da Costa Ferreira and the Culture Secretary, Maria Isabel de Jesus
Ximenes, were charmers. The First Lady was sincere, intelligent, and
determined. Typical of the convoluted personal tragedies of Timor, her husband
had commanded FALINTIL whose former political wing FRETILIN had murdered her
father.
The former First Lady, the
Australian-born Kirsty Sword Gusmão, was unassuming and dedicated. Renowned for
her strength of character, as PM's wife, she remained a national asset. So
modest was she, I only realised who she was five minutes into our chat at the
library that bore her husband's name.
Xanana's sister, Armandina, a subtle
poet, also gave herself no airs on the strength of her legendary brother.
Armandina and I shared a tiny public van to meet Luís Cardoso at the airport.
Luis's own lover, Rosa Bonaparte, immortalised in an iconic photograph with
other FRETILIN leaders in 1975, had been killed on invasion day.
Mara Bernardes
de Sá was Portuguese – she worked in the beautiful museum of national
resistance for the Director, the formidable "Hamar", who told me the
trick under electric shock was to reveal only in dribs and drabs rather than
try to stay silent. Mara's three-year-old was already fluent in Tetum. He would
be as Timorese as mountain weave. Among the women, about the children, exists
hope. It flickers perilously above public vendetta and private vicissitude but, just for now, it
lives on.
