Wine glasses clink and dinner guests laugh in candelit rooms.
Steaming plates of lamb stew and mussels in garlic sauce are brought to the tables. In the remaining white spaces, slogans and graffiti remind diners of the violence that unfolded here last year, when the Burned House Restaurant was just a simple family home in Dili, East Timor. When Ribeira learned her home had been torched, like thousands of others, she headed for a nearby hill town where she stayed until the Australian-led peacekeeping force arrived on September 20. No family was left untouched. But Ribeira was lucky.