Total Eclipse

At night Dili is dark. The streetlights are few, and, looking up into the hills around the city, electric lights are outnumbered by small fires. In the evenings, the moon first emerges from behind the radio towers.

Tuesday was a total eclipse, an event visible, according to NASA from “the United States and Canada as well as South America, the Pacific Ocean, western Asia and Australia.” I looked up diagrams on Sydney observatory and NASA sites, called Mustang, and packed up my spotting scope. That evening we threw down towels and sarongs on her little lawn in Tasi Tolu and stretched out for a look.

I have watched lunar eclipses before; the last one was on 21 October 2004 – a date that was easy to confirm, as it corresponded with the Red Sox’s game-seven victory against the Yankees and the sudden, delirious eruption of Providence onto the streets beneath my dorm’s terrace.

Mustang and I were getting into it, trying to see if parts were getting darker or lighter, talking about Valkyries and musical theater and listening to unforgivable karaoke coming from her neighbor’s house.

Then the banging started. First a steady thump on a pole at some distance, but then echoed on another metal post, closer. A sign of trouble. Upon arrival it was drilled into me that if people start to close shops and if there is rhythmic banging, get the heck out of there. We looked around, saw some kids rushing indoors, grabbed the blankets and hustled inside.

It turned out that there was nothing to be concerned about. This is how it was later explained to me: Some people believe that when the moon turns red, and begins to fade, that it is dying. They hit buckets and bang poles to ‘drum’ it back to life, for, if the moon dies, it will fall into the sea and bring about the end of the world.

On Tuesday, across the city and perhaps the country, people made noise to convince the moon to not give up. Dili is not like New York or London or Jakarta – the night sky is close and clear. The moon lights many streets more consistently than the power stations. Not forewarned and armed with NASA diagrams, I imagine that the rusting of the moon felt unsettling, eerie or at least worth a look. A friend confirmed the latter when told me that she saw two men emerge from brothel just to take a quick peek.