Mark Lee - The Canal House

“It’s not that bad.”

“You’re going to get a scar.”

“Come on. Let’s keep moving.”

We remained beneath the colonnade and continued walking. Indonesian soldiers were guarding the building and each time we passed an open doorway they came out and pointed their rifles. Daniel offered a cigarette to one of the men and spoke a few phrases in Indonesian. The man nodded and pointed down the waterfront boulevard. “Interfet,” he said. “Turismo.”

Daniel glanced at his map. “The Turismo Hotel is less than a mile away. Maybe it’s being used by Interfet command.”

We reached the end of the colonnade and looked across the street. The Indonesian army garrison was on one corner facing an office building with black smoke coming out of its smashed windows. Someone was honking an automobile horn and sound came toward us. We stepped back as a pickup truck carrying militiamen raced down the road. Several of the young men had machetes thrust in their belts and they all carried rifles. I saw a flash of bright red when the truck passed us. A teenage boy was kneeling in the center of the truck, blood streaming down his face. A militiaman wearing mirrored sunglasses gripped the boy’s hair. I started to raise my Nikon, then realized that the militiamen were watching me. I lowered the camera as the truck disappeared into the garrison courtyard.

We returned to the waterfront boulevard and walked on the beach side, beneath a line of shade trees. The army garrison was directly across the street and a young Indonesian soldier pointed his rifle at us. Two of his friends were laughing and shouting. I didn’t know Indonesian, but I could guess what they were saying: Shoot them. Kill the foreigners. Suddenly, the young soldier pointed the rifle upward and fired an entire clip into the air. I jerked backward and soldiers laughed.

“Jesus,” I whispered. “That little bastard.”

“Keep walking, Nicky. Don’t look back.”

We passed an empty hotel with a smashed television lying in the driveway, then reached a park with the statue of the Virgin Mary on top of marble pedestal. The local bishop’s residence was next to the park. Two of the buildings had been burned down, but a few Timorese remained inside the compound. We hurried past the looted International Red Cross headquarters to the Hotel Turismo. It was a rambling two-story building surrounded by a low fence.

British soldiers had taken over the hotel early that morning and the Australians had shown up a few hours later. I could sense the tension right away. Daniel and I approached an Australian captain just as he ordered a British lieutenant to move his Land Rover out of the hotel parking lot. “Yes. Sir,” said the lieutenant and there was a space between the two words. It wasn’t much of a delay, more like a slight hesitation, but it was enough to suggest a few hundred years of cultural arrogance. The Aussie captain was so angry that his face was turning red.

“Who’s in charge?” Daniel asked. “We’re looking for Interfet command.”

“We’re in charge,” the captain said, then he glared at us as if we were going to challenge his statement. “General Bates is upstairs, but he probably won’t talk to you.”

We entered a large courtyard filled with tropical plants. You could see that it had once been an outdoor restaurant, but now the tables were stacked to one side and a soldier was digging a latrine pit. We climbed the stairs to the surrounding balcony and met Major Anthony Holden, an older Australian army officer with thinning blond hair. He was soft-spoken and comfortably bland, the kind of officer that had spent his career holding the door for generals and carrying their papers around.

“General Bates is quite busy,” he told Daniel. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

A door opened at the end of the balcony. “I hope that makes things clear,” said a booming voice, then General Martin Bates, the commander of the UN forces, walked out with three Australian journalists. Bates was a handsome man with spiky gray hair and blue eyes. He shook hands with the Australians but frowned when he saw us. “I just gave an interview to three of our journos and here comes some more. Can’t do this all day, Tony. Got a job to do.”

Daniel raised his right hand. “Just four questions, General. Four questions in one minute. You can time me.”

Bates considered this idea, then turned to Major Holden. “Go ahead, Tony. Check your watch.”

We followed the general back into a long room with a bed, a desk, and several folding chairs. There was no electric power and the only light came through the Venetian blinds. A map of Dili and another map of East Timor were taped to the wall, both decorated with pushpins. The Interfet force was here, the Indonesian troops were over there, and the militia was someplace else. I had encountered several pushpin maps over the years. Military commanders loved them, but they had little connection with reality.

General Bates stopped at his desk and glanced at his watch. “What’s your name?”

“Daniel McFarland.”

“Who you working for?”

“ Newsweek .”

The general smiled as if he’d tricked us. “You’ve already wasted ten seconds.”

I raised the digital camera and examined Bates through the view-finder. He had a big head in proportion to his body. Big heads always photographed well. It made Bates look forceful.

“How’s the deployment going?” Daniel asked.

“Very well. The Indonesians have been most cooperative.”

“How long will it take to secure Dili?”

“We need three weeks to deploy our troops fully, then we’ll extend control to the rest of the country. I’m not going to put my men at risk.”

“What about the Timorese being killed by the militia?”

“That’s most unfortunate.”

“But what are you going to do about it?”

“Our soldiers will secure key positions, then we’ll begin to disarm everyone.”

“What happens to the Timorese who are being kidnapped and taken across the border?”

General Bates looked annoyed. “I’ve answered your four questions. That’s all.”

Major Holden escorted us back out onto the balcony and we went back downstairs. “Is it really going to take three weeks to take over Dili?” I asked. “It should only take a few days.”

“This is a UN deployment. He’s not going to take any risks.” Daniel glanced up and down the courtyard. “I’m going to go talk to the Brits, off the record. It’s easier if you’re not taking their pictures.”

“That’s okay. I’ll wait for you outside.”

Back in the hotel driveway, I saw a squad of Asian soldiers wearing dark green berets and camouflage uniforms. It took me a few seconds to realize that they were Gurkhas from the hill tribes of Nepal. The Gurkhas were small, stocky men with smooth skin; they’d fought for England in special regiments since the nineteenth century. Along with the usual army gear, they carried black-handled kukri knives. I tried to think of an easy way to describe them, but the only word I could come up with was clean . It wasn’t the way the word was used back in the States where clean meant spray the toilet and kill all the germs. The Gurkhas seemed calm and disciplined, unencumbered with any goals aside from being good at their job.

I switched lenses on my Nikon and a British officer in a Gurkha uniform approached me. He was a big man with the friendly but firm manner of a successful pub manager.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“I’m Nicky Bettencourt. I work for Newsweek and the Daily Telegraph.”

“Well, I thought it was something like that, but you don’t need to photograph my men. We’re not doing anything important right now.”