It had been a long night of waiting for the Indonesian troop convoy to pass. Two of us then crossed the border into East Timor clandestinely, through a forest of dead, petrified trees that appeared as silhouetted needles around which skeins of fine white sand drifted, like mist. As the sun rose, there stood the surreal crosses.
They were almost everywhere; great black crosses etched against the sky, crosses on peaks, crosses in tiers on the hillsides, crosses beside the road, overlooking white slabs. They littered the earth and crowded the eye. As we trudged through dense scrub, we came upon them: on a riverbank, an escarpment, commanding all before them. The inscriptions on some were normal: those of generations departed in proper time and sequence. However, the dates of these were all prior to 1975, when proper time and sequence ended. The majority revealed the extinction of whole families, wiped out in the space of a year, a month, a day: “RIP Mendoca, Crismina, 7.6.77 . . . Filismina . . . 7.6.77 . . . Ada- lino . . . 7.6.77 . . . Alisa . . . 7.6.77 . . . Rosa . . . 7.6.77 . . . Anita . . . 7.6.77.”
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