THE MIRAGE OF TIME by Peter Nolan Smith

The Gulf War had scared away the tourists from Bunaken Island and I had the coral cliffs all to my self. I was the only traveler at the dining room. After a week of desolate free diving with sea turtles I returned to Manado to catch a Pelni liner rounding the Northern Arm of Sulawesi.

I was the only 'Mistah' on the liner traveling 2nd class and had a four bunk cabin to myself.

I drank beer with the lower classes and dined alone in the state room, as we cruised along Sulawesi's desolate jungled shore. Sea, beaches, coconut trees. I was good to be on the Malakkar Straits. My family had whaled off these islands throughout the 1800s. My Uncle Dave had served on a destroyer in the Pacific. He rarely went ashore.

That evening the ship stopped at Balikpapan, an oil port in East Kalimantan. The people here were Bugis, famed pirates, and head-hunting Dayaks from interior of Borneo. I didn't get off the ship. It was safe. I knew no one ashore. Nowhere. No one.

After sunset the ship pulled out of port and we were soon out of sight of land with only the stars to guide us through the night. I drank beer at the fantail and smoked kretik cigarettes laced with cloves. A young man from Ambon gave me one. I inhaled and coughed slightly, thinking why am I smoking, since I've never smokeed before. Probably because everyone was. Indonesian music from a radio drifted on the wind. We were following the path of the Milky Way overhead. I felt a thousands of miles and decades away from my life in New York. Happy and returned to my cabin to be lulled to sleep by the sea's gentle hold on the ship.

The ship engines changed speed. I rose from my bunk and walked onto the second-class deck accompanied by my Nelles map. It was still night in the tropics. Black as the ace of spades and the silhouettes of the coastline marked our impending arrival at Palu, the largest city and port of Centreal Sulawesi. I pulled out anpother kretek and dreamed of living in the times of the Bugis pirates. They were fierce and travels throughout the archilego owing allegiance to the wind.

Thinking about it seriously, it was better to be living now.