Travels with Charlie in… Beers in Pacific Cities that Start with “D” for 200, Alex: Part 5
Travels with Charlie | Charles Rudish
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My friends arrived the next morning, that is, New Years Eve Day (is full capitalization correct here? Does anyone care? Is anyone reading this? Please send me an email if you are! I will appreciate it, wondrous reader), and we set out, almost at once, to see Dili’s sights.
Most prominent stood statues. Pope John Paul II, just outside of town overlooking the city; Nicolau Lolato, liberation leader, in the center of a roundabout by the airport; Some other guy holding a book in the center of another roundabout, this time in town. The latter two looked decidedly Norte-Coreano and, if indeed they had been built by, let’s face it, the statue paragons of Pyongyang, one would suffer to be too surprised: history, didn’t you know, infects the future.
And the present. We next stopped before the arched entrance of the Santa Cruz cemetery where, but a few weeks before the Red Banner crept its final nocturnal passage down a Kremlin pole and upon the shields of millions of television-feeding retinas hope unfurled herself in tricolor, Indonesian forces massacred approximately 250 pro-independence Timorese. History wouldn’t end.
We all needed a beer.
Thus, we stopped at a cold beverage vender-packed seaside park across Avenida de Portugal from the cathedral (in front of which stood perhaps the oddest statue of the Mary and Joseph I’d ever seen. It genuinely looked to be carved by the same young children who’d prepared my pad see ew in Darwin) in which stood another statue (there’s only one further statue, after this, I promise, and it’s a good one so bear with me, you adorable reader you); this one was of two men, one holding the limp body of his mate.
Later, as we walked through the Resistance Museum, we watched a video shot by a British journalist form inside Santa Cruz during the massacre. We saw people running and people shooting. We saw the crowded graves and the unchanged archway over the entrance. We saw the real-world footage of the statue we’d just seen. We learned that the limp man lived.
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About Travels with Charlie
Name a country, city, island, restaurant or ballet performance and you can bet Charles Rudish has been there. Follow along as he documents his adventures around the world with this ongoing series. Charles offers a humorous and insightful perspective on travel, culture and exploring the world around you.
