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authors' comments, acknowledgements & dedication:
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At one level, the story of Francisco Pires is one of personal tragedy: a young man, gentle and loving, and much loved, is haunted by demons which eventually destroy him. His brief life, in which he experienced hope and horror, courage and fear, truth and deceit, stands as a metaphor for the tragedy of his homeland, where he spent the first eleven years of his life.
Although Quito, aged 11, had escaped to Australia just before the brutal Indonesian invasion and occupation of East Timor, it profoundly affected him in many ways. No wonder, for members of his family who had stayed behind experienced unspeakable horrors: his sister Fatima, for example, who witnessed senseless massacres and endured great hardship, lost two children while on the run from the Indonesians and a third in hospital in Dili. It is conceivable that the illness that plagued him - schizophrenia - was made more severe by the personal traumas that he, like many others, inevitably suffered, albeit second-hand. In any event, one cannot fully appreciate Quito's tragedy without appreciating the other, and thus we juxtapose the two stories. They have much in common. Timor since 1975 must seem to its inhabitants to be a country presenting the common symptoms of schizophrenia: voices in the head, delusions, shattered logic, mental distress, and invasion by alien forces. Quito suffered, struggled, resisted, loved, despaired, hoped, and was eventually humiliated and overwhelmed. His death may be the one point where the stories diverge: East Timor seems to be hanging grimly to life, and may even recover. Schizophrenics sometimes do. Quito will not: he submitted to the invaders, and is at rest. Requiescat in pace, Quito. But it is the repose of the grave, and we can wish no such resolution of the Timor conflict.
We could not have written this piece, or turned it into its present form, without an enormous amount of assistance from many people to whom we owe a comparably-enormous debt. The list includes Ines Almeida; ATN Channel 7; The Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Australian Music Centre and its then Director, Dick Letts; AustraLysis and its director Roger Dean; Ross Bird; Louise Byrne; Steve Cox; Fatima & José Gusmão; Xanana Gusmão; Rosemary Hesp; Rob Hirst and Midnight Oil; James Kesteven; Dr Kathryn Lovric; Kia Mistilis; Agio Pereira; Emilia Pires; Laurentino & Maria Pires; Qantas Airways and its secretary, Les Fisk; Rik Rue; Charlie Scheiner; Gil Scrine; The Song Company; Max Stahl; Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney; Sydney Metropolitan Opera and its Director, John Wregg; the late Michele Turner; watt; Belinda Webster; and, most of all, that rat-bag activist and human rights campaigner Rob Wesley-Smith. Our thanks to all - and apologies to the many deserving souls who could not be acknowledged here.
In 1994 a cousin of ours, anthropologist John Draper, died of cancer. His last letter to family and friends contained the following pertinent quote from R. D. Laing:
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What we think is less than what we know; what we know is less than what we love; what we love is less than what there is to love; and, to that precise extent, we are all much more than who we think we are.
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What we have done is less than what we could have done - but through the skills and dedication of its performers, and of the production team, it became much more than we thought it was. We dedicate Quito partly to John's memory and to his work assisting people in various parts of the world. We dedicate it also to the memory of those who in our lifetime have suffered terminal invasion, particularly the "emotionally and mentally disturbed people" of East Timor, Quito included, who died during and since Dec 7 1975.
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