By Dom Rotheroe
Like a stubborn mantra, Maulindo's feet still trudge through my head. Under star and moon, through sun and shadow, over roots and rocks, up, down and right into paddy, mountain and river, I stomped for a fortnight through the wilds of East Timor with only Maulindo's guerilla heels in my vision.
I went to East Timor to try to puncture the information blockade clamped on the island since the Indonesians invaded in 1975. My assignment: to spend two weeks in the bush with the guerillas of the National Council of Maubere Resistance (CNRM).
Day 2
I am smuggled out of Dili by the CNRM's civilian network — the Clandestine Front — to a safe house not a ricochet from an Indonesian army barracks.
They show me the broken hands, broken feet and unbroken spirit that are the Indonesian legacy each bears. But before I can properly wake up to the risks of my situation, I am whisked out of the house to the base of the local guerillas.
And so the fear comes — my first experience of nightwalking, Timor-style. There is one thing only that matters — the feet of the person in front. Look up, look sideways, just blink too long and you may lose the precise trail being trod. And may stumble. And may make noise. And may be shot at.
You can assume the Indonesian army's pretty close when you have to walk with such care. Yet it's when the dim arm ahead of me points to a spot 50 metres away and the feet get extra cautious that I realise they're much too close and the fear hits.
Nothing happens, and at 3 in the trembling morn I crawl into an anonymous thicket to shake the hands of David Alex, the commander of this sector of resistance, and his merry band of nine.
Day 3
Constantly disrupting the Indonesians' composure with short sharp attacks, David Alex has the reputation of being the most combative leader in the Armed Forces of National Liberation of East Timor (Falintil).
At 49, he's spent 20 years in the bush and hasn't seen his wife or son for 18 of those, though they live, depending on his movements, only 30-100 kilometres away. He is a small, wiry man with intense eyebrows and a quiet disposition.
Fortunately there is an English speaker. His nom de guerre is Tara Leu. He was a student activist, imprisoned and tortured by the Indonesians — "they kept me like this for three days", he tells me as he strings a chicken upside down — and is the virgin amongst these guerillas, having no gun and only one combat experience.
Like everyone else here, he has lost members of his family to the Indonesian terror. He makes clear the relativity of the term "virgin" in Timor when he says that he and a friend knifed an Indonesian soldier to death in Dili.
Days 4-6
Planning the next combat has become the focus of my whole visit. David Alex emphasises that they never attack simply to kill Indonesians, but to equip themselves with guns, bullets, even uniforms. Their arsenal is made up entirely of whatever weapons they can capture from the Indonesian army.
We crouch in the thicket for three days while the attack is organised through messages sent via the Clandestine Front to other units in the sector.
The plan is to ambush an army convoy about 40 minutes' drive away. Forty minutes' drive, but, with detours to avoid army patrols, a journey by foot that will last a week.
Day 10
It's been deemed safe enough to march a bit by day, and the beauty of the scrubby hills makes it all seem easy for a while.
Until we have to climb the bloody things. I didn't expect it to be this punishing. The scariest idea is having to run up one of these with Indonesian soldiers at our heels. In that sheer exhaustion I fear I'd just surrender — shoot me, but let me lie down first.
Safety. Thirst. Those two words define my thoughts. When I'm still, thinking, waiting, it's safety I worry about, though less and less — I'm either used to the insecurity or more blasé because nothing's happened yet.
But as soon as we start to move, the torment is thirst. We cross tauntingly parched riverbeds, and water is scooped from old pools of rain I wouldn't wash my hands in. I've becoming a running joke as I piston away with my small purification pump, but everyone wants to use it, there being bad stomachs all round.
Day 11
We are now 34. We have been joined by Taur Matan Ruak, the Falintil chief of staff, and his men. He is an exuberant, talkative figure, his hair and beard long and corkscrewed to look like a truly 60s guerilla, eyes darting and slightly manic when they're not covered by shades that make him look even more like one of the Grateful Dead.
Day 12
The most punishing march yet — eight hours by night to the place of combat, stomping through rivers, up vertiginous mountains, balancing along the dim rims of paddy fields.
Finally, on top of some cruel mountain, Tara Leu points out lights which can't be more than 30 km away. "That's where we came from", he says. What? A week ago? I can still see where we were a week ago?
Day 13
From 5am to 3pm we huddle in yet another thicket overlooking a road down which an Indonesian army truck or two should pass at some point.
I have a hidden overview from which I can film the first resistance combat recorded by an outsider. There are 34 of them, a hefty number by Falintil standards, comfortably disproving absurd Indonesian claims that there are only 50 guerillas in the whole country.
Through me they want to show the world that they're still alive and very much kicking. But it doesn't happen. Something else does.
Suddenly I'm being frantically ushered out of the thicket. Someone has informed, and we've been surrounded.
Shouting breaks out, followed with frightening rapidity by gunfire. A lot of gunfire. Instinctively I retreat, ignoring the fundamental rule I've been taught — under fire do what David Alex does, stick to him like glue.
Tara Leu shouts me forward and then I do run after Alex — into the middle of a field. Shots are coming from everywhere and I haven't a clue who's firing or what I should be doing to avoid them. Follow David Alex, follow David Alex ...
David Alex has to fight, and sticking right behind him suddenly seems suicidal. As something big explodes nearby, I dive by the only tree in the wide open field and watch David Alex march at full height up to a ridge and fire with purpose at an enemy I still can't see.
I point the camera in his general direction as I try to figure out where the danger is. After David Alex has shot in three very different directions, I realise it's pretty much everywhere.
Tara Leu shouts at me to come and film a dead Indonesian soldier as a guerilla strips the corpse of gun and grenades. Now I'm watching David Alex rally his men and sear himself forever into my memory as he strides up to another ridge, still not ducking, and fire at another enemy.
It's a sight I'll never forget — this frail-looking 49-year-old with bad feet, bad stomach, the constant whisper, heading into the onslaught with absolute indomitability.
The guerillas are clearly on a survival high as we hurtle into the hills, relishing being able to turn up the volume for once and shouting defiant insults about Suharto and his offspring back at the receding enemy.
The final reported tally is two Indonesians definitely dead, two M16s, their magazines and some mortar shells captured, vs one guerilla dead, another missing and two lightly wounded.
One of the wounded guerillas was shot in the stomach. I watch him clutching a bruised abdomen and am told that somehow the bullet didn't enter because his lulik (lucky charm) protected him.
The other wounded is Augostino, who is no longer smiling and has neat bullet entry and exit holes in the flesh at the back of his neck. It's only when I mention that I have some iodine that he seems to get treatment — six hours after he's been shot.
Day 14
Taur Matan Ruak and his men leave us at daybreak. It's a certainty that after the attack the Indonesians are going to be vengefully combing the sector for us.
We learn later that they executed a civilian near the combat site for suspected collaboration, and on the edges of earshot I can hear helicopters. Suddenly the original base seems dreamily safe. We're marching non-stop to get back there.
Day 17
In the early morning hours, when the Indonesians are less alert, I am driven behind tinted windows out of the scared, brave land of East Timor and finally reach a place where I no longer have to hide or whisper.
I know that Indonesia can never defeat the East Timorese. The East Timorese have been too brutalised, bereaved and butchered to ever dream of giving up.
Like Maulindo's feet, the resistance will continue — tired but active, stealthy but sure, occasionally stumbling, always persisting. On and on they tread, through my head, through politics, through the shame of the world, hoping one day to rest in peace.
[Dom Rotheroe was in East Timor late last year.]