The Boat People

by Sharon Bala

  Gigovaz was bent over the booklet, eyes flicking back and forth. The virgin pages crackled against each other as they turned.

  There is a process to be followed, Priya said. Documentary evidence should be disclosed five days before a hearing. She knew she was grasping at straws, but she couldn’t think what other objection to raise. This was not how things were done in a court of law. But then, this was not a court of law.

  Singh said: I agree this is unorthodox. But we only received the dossier this morning and felt the information was too crucial to delay sharing. You will see, on page four, there is a copy of the migrant’s passport. It was taken from him during his capture and is still in the possession of the Sri Lankan government.

  Gigovaz turned to page four and Priya saw the familiar picture. Beard, full face, invisible mouth. A younger Ranga. Before the scar.

  Singh had more ammo: Exhibit L-14, a translated copy of the Sri Lankan medic’s report. I have highlighted the pertinent details. A jagged piece of shrapnel lodged in the upper right shin. It is likely the patient will always have a limp.

  As Blacker translated, Priya watched Ranga, absently rubbing at his leg. The LTTE made us go here and there, he’d told them months ago. They used us for protection.

  Months fleeing through the jungle while the army and the Tigers lobbed artillery back and forth over his head. Ranga, the innocent bystander, caught in the crossfire. A greengrocer. That’s what Priya had thought he was. You lied to me.

  Singh pressed on: We now have international corroboration for the migrant’s true identity. As a long-time arms smuggler, he is known to authorities in India and Thailand. L-15, -16, and -17.

  Singh rhymed off evidence without glancing at her notes, like someone who had spent the last hour committing her lines to memory.

  We cannot possibly comment on evidence we haven’t had time to review, Priya said, feeling wrong-footed and chagrined.

  Hurst said nothing and turned the pages of the booklet.

  Singh said, The direct evidence is overwhelming. This man has engaged in acts of subversion and terrorism for the past decade. Under Article 1F of the Act, these are sufficient grounds to deem him inadmissible. We ask that you issue an immediate deportation order.

  Priya looked helplessly at Gigovaz. Do something! She pressed the button on her microphone, but before she could open her mouth, Gigovaz spoke up calmly. We request a recess to review this evidence and confer with our client.

  Hurst turned to Ranga and asked: Do you have anything to say?

  Blacker, in a deadpan voice: I am not a Tiger.

  Hurst said: You are saying this evidence is false? That it has been fabricated?

  Under the table, Ranga rubbed furiously at his leg. This man, he said, in English. This man no me.

  At any time in your life, were you a Sea Tiger? Hurst asked.

  Singh sat still, hands clasped, as Ranga dug his grave deeper.

  No, Ranga said again in English. This man…this man no me.

  I would request a short recess to speak with my client, Gigovaz said again. We have not had an opportunity –

  We will break for the day, Hurst said. I too must review the evidence and then we can schedule a continuation of this hearing. In the meantime, Mr. Gigovaz, Ms. Rajasekaran, I suggest you urge your client to come clean.

  —

  Don’t jump to conclusions, Gigovaz told Ranga as the guard locked the cuffs on his wrists.

  Charlika translated, her words agitated and quick.

  We can issue a challenge order in federal court or apply for a pre-removal risk assessment, Gigovaz said. Worst-case scenario, we appeal to the public safety minister.

  Priya could hear the alarm in Gigovaz’s voice, his lapse into legal jargon.

  The guard locked Ranga’s ankles together, then stood and said, Okay, let’s go.

  Charlika went with Ranga and the guard down the hallway toward the doors, still speaking in mile-a-minute Tamil.

  Gigovaz turned on Priya. And where was your head in there?

  I –

  He slapped Singh’s booklet against his hand. Too busy lobbying the government for mining execs? Get your head in the game! He stalked off, leaving her standing alone by the empty hearings room.

  This isn’t even my game! she wanted to yell at him. Idiot.

  Priya walked toward the street, exhausted and defeated. She had spent the week before working late and preparing, lining up the evidence, readying her statements, drilling Ranga on his testimony. She’d been so confident walking in, telling herself she’d done the best she could. This man no me. Ranga would be deported. He was as good as dead.

  Charlie was waiting for Priya on the sidewalk, one purse strap hanging off her shoulder, rummaging under her armpit. Are you okay? she asked.

  Yeah. Well, better than him, Priya said. They watched the prison bus push off from the curb and ease into traffic.

  Ranga’s story had been so plausible, had lined up with everything Mahindan and the others said. The Tigers were known to use their own people as shields. Priya had gathered United Nations reports as corroboration. The Sri Lankan government itself had released videos showing the civilian migration. Hundreds of thousands of bodies surging across the desolate landscape, the images grainy but incontrovertible. Watching the footage, it had been possible to believe Ranga was somewhere in the crowd. Now, she just felt like a sucker.

  They left the steel and glass of the financial district behind and headed downhill on Burrard, alongside cyclists and buses, the after-work rush. Straight ahead, Priya could see False Creek, the Burrard Bridge jammed with traffic.

  Where are we going? she asked.

  To my place, Charlie said. I know three people who will be happy to see you. You don’t have plans, do you?

  No, but –

  No, listen, Charlie said. You don’t even know. Hema cooks for me now, like 24/7. Tonight, it’s lamprais.

  Priya chuckled. Of course it is.

  Woman can barely speak English, but she manages to find banana leaf, Charlie said. Don’t ask from where.

  They had crossed into Davie Village, where rainbow flags flanked the light poles and the garbage cans were painted bright pink. Every bar was jammed, everyone cheering the TV. The Winter Olympics had begun the previous weekend, while Priya was trapped in her apartment, held hostage by work. The Games had the whole city in the grip of a rare patriotic fever. Priya had put the live feed of the opening ceremony on mute as she wrote reports for Joyce, glancing up occasionally to see the crowds in red-and-white regalia thronging downtown. Taking breaks to catch up on the medal count while eating toast over the sink, she’d watched her homeless neighbours shuffling about in the square across the street. Alone in their shabby corner of the city, it was just her and the hoboes, the only ones untouched by the festivities.

  She and Charlie walked in silence for a few moments, past tanning salons and payday loan shops, Priya still ruminating on Ranga. Earlier, at the office, she’d gone over the case file one last time and stared at his identity card. His face in the picture was fuller, less lined. Unlike the others, Ranga had not bounced back to his old weight.

  He’d been more hirsute back then, with shaggy hair that concealed his ears, and a generous beard, moustache, and thick sideburns. There was something else that was different about the man in the photograph, something less substantial. Priya had thought it might be hope. The Ranga she knew was gaunt and haunted. Now she realized how naive she had been, to think she could divine a person’s character from a tiny black-and-white image.

  Is it true, arms dealing, all of it? Charlie asked.

  Ranga says no. And I haven’t had a chance to examine the evidence.

  But?

  Priya shook her head. Border Services likes to play games, but this time I think they found something real.

  So it’s true, then. Charlie inhaled with pursed lips as they traversed the faded rainbow-striped crossing.

  Ranga was the last person I’d have
pegged for a rebel, Priya said. Especially in that long-term, committed, captaining-a-ship kind of way. He’s always struck me as…well, the weakest one.

  Who’s to say what a person is capable of? Charlie said. If the government decided tomorrow to start hating on Tamils or Muslims or whoever…if they passed laws that disenfranchised us, limited our access to education, to jobs…if the ’83 riots happened here in Vancouver…

  I don’t know, Priya said, thinking that it was difficult to imagine and that her first instinct might be to run.

  If someone was threatening me, the people I loved? Charlie said. I’d fight back. With a knife, with my fists, M-16s…whatever.

  Priya asked herself: What would I fight with? What weapons do I have? The law seemed impotent.

  Charlie had run out of steam. She seethed in silence, veering around a fire hydrant.

  How are Hema and the girls? Priya asked.

  Picking up English quickly, Charlie said. Especially the girls. We’re hoping to get them enrolled in school. It’s too late for this year, but they can start in September and by then their English will have improved.

  I really needed to hear that today.

  Things aren’t perfect, Charlie said. Any loud, unexpected noise makes them jump. Hema screams in her sleep. I’ve tried to talk to her about seeing someone, but no dice. And then, of course, there’s still the Refugee Board hearing in July hanging over their heads.

  How are they feeling about that? Priya asked. It struck her that in July she would no longer be their lawyer. It was jarring to think of all these cases moving forward, Gigovaz still struggling on, without her.

  Depends on the day, Charlie said. Last week, Tara spent three days in bed. If one of them gets in a funk, game over. Have you heard anything about Savitri?

  Her Refugee Board hearing is scheduled for late August, Priya said. We tried to give her as much time as possible to climb out of the depression. She needs therapy, maybe drugs…things we can’t force on her.

  Charlie shook her head. I knew this would happen. Didn’t I say? They kept her in there for too long.

  Charlie had a two-bedroom on Jervis Street, on the second floor of a red-brick low-rise that was past its best-before date.

  I have to knock first, Charlie said as they walked down the hallway. Once, I came home early and they were waiting for me, knives out. She wrapped her knuckles one after the other like two plodding feet, five knocks, then stuck the key in the lock.

  The apartment smelled of incense. The only light in the living room came from street lamps and dusk fading through the window. The girls’ faces were lit by the cool glow radiating off the TV screen. They sat on the floor, squeezing their fists and watching men’s curling. Canada versus Norway.

  Priya has come for dinner, Charlie said.

  They waved distractedly.

  Two more weeks of this, Charlie said as the girls chanted: Can-a-da! Can-a-da!

  Don’t speak English on my account, Priya said.

  It’s for them, not you, Charlie said. We only speak English here.

  In the galley kitchen, Hema portioned out rice and curries in the middle of a flattened banana leaf. She flashed a wide, crooked-toothed grin at Priya and Charlie as they hovered in the doorway.

  I tried to do this once, Priya said. But I kept overfilling the packets and splitting the leaves.

  I am many years practice, Hema said. She deftly folded up the banana leaf like wrapping paper around a present, sliding in toothpicks to hold the ends in place. She said, Like a diaper!

  She pronounced it di-ah-per.

  From the other room, the detached drone of the announcers floated in. His final shot. They’re gonna have to drag this one. Will they get the angle? Nice brushing.

  The oven dinged to signal it was preheated and Hema slid the casserole dish in, five neatly packaged lamprais tucked inside. Finishing! she said.

  Finished, Charlie corrected.

  Hema rinsed her hands then held her arms out to grasp Priya’s shoulders. Pressing her cheek to Priya’s, she breathed in once before switching sides and repeating the motion.

  Happy you are here, she said.

  Me too, Priya said, and it was true. For the first time all day, she felt relaxed.

  The match had ended and the girls wandered over. Padmini linked her arm with Priya’s and peeked up at her shyly. Her hair was separated into two braids, each one looped at the end and held in place by a rectangle of cotton fabric tied into a bow. She had a black dot of pottu in the centre of her forehead. Padmini was thin and flat-chested. She was fourteen but still played with dolls. When Priya compared her to the teenagers she saw, hanging on to a bus pole, thong strings sticking out of the back of their jeans like whale tails, an earbud in one ear, a phone pressed to the other, Padmini seemed an innocent. But she had endured horrors the girls chomping gum at the bus stop would never experience.

  Tara stood by her sister, playing with a strand of hair that had fallen loose from her braid. Her hair was long enough now to tie back.

  How are you both? Priya asked.

  They stood silent and bashful until finally Charlie exclaimed: So, she’s here! Talk, will you?

  The girls told Priya in fragmented English about how they were filling their time: English classes every morning; math and science lessons at home to catch up on in the afternoons; long strolls drawing circles around the neighbourhood, each day expanding their circumference of safety. They had gone to Coal Harbour to see the lighting of the Olympic cauldron on the weekend.

  Not that we could see anything, Charlie said, emerging from her bedroom. She had changed into a skirt and a button-down plaid shirt. Her feet were bare, pleasantly plump and rounded, ten toes gleaming with red polish and a very thin gold chain circled around one ankle.

  Such people! Hema said, bustling out with a stack of plates. How many are seeing this Olympic flame!

  You are going? Tara asked Priya. Also to the flame?

  Priya said she had spent her weekend working.

  Hema patted her shoulder and said, Saving the people.

  Priya didn’t want to tell her that most of her time had been commandeered by the Newtown Gold takeover. Instead, she asked about their English classes.

  Once the women started getting out of detention, the Tamil Alliance stepped up the schedule, Charlie said. Some retired schoolteachers have added daytime classes. And there are conversation groups around the clock. I met your dad and uncle, she added, answering the question Priya had not wanted to ask outright.

  She learned that they were leading parallel Saturday conversation groups. Like Appa, Uncle had come to Priya in private and asked about volunteering. But neither had raised the subject again and Priya, following their lead, had also kept quiet. It was confusing to think of them driving there and back together, comparing notes on how their groups fared.

  Ah! Hema said to the girls, waving a hand to the dining table. Clean, clean.

  A Singer sewing machine sat on the table, surrounded by spools of thread and scraps of cloth. A pair of jeans hung over the back of a chair.

  Hema got a job, Charlie explained.

  At clean and dry, Hema said.

  A dry cleaner, Charlie said.

  Dry cleaner, Hema repeated, then mimed stitching and said, I am making hems, buttons, shorter, longer.

  Alterations, Priya said. That’s great.

  We are helping, Padmini said, throwing the jeans over her shoulder and picking up the sewing machine by its handle.

  The woman at the dry cleaner’s can’t understand how Hema gets work done so fast, Charlie said. Meanwhile, we’ve got a full-on sweatshop going here.

  This was evidently a recycled joke, because Hema, Tara, and Padmini all laughed. A familiar intimacy hung cozy over the group – the way Padmini reached across her mother to gather up the spools of thread, the hip bump Tara and Charlie shared as they passed through the kitchen doorway.

  Over dinner, they teased Charlie about a guy at the Tamil Alliance.


  Hema won’t rest until I’m married off, Charlie told Priya.

  Engineer, Hema said. Very nice boy.

  You know the word engineer, Priya said. Of course you do.

  Charlie shook her head at Priya, then whispered: Too bad he’s gay.

  True or false

  They were speaking quietly in their cell, waiting for Ranga to return from his hearing, Mahindan loitering in the open doorway while Prasad made his bed. Mahindan yawned loud and wide and a passerby who had turned to nod at him did the same. For the past two weeks, a recurring dream had been shattering his sleep. Every night, he ran through the jungle in maddening slow motion, the thunder of Kfir jets overhead, hunting frantically for Sellian.

  Prasad smiled to himself as he shook out the bedsheet. Three days earlier, he had received good news: his detention release was granted and he had passed his admissibility hearing. On Friday, he was going to start living with Sam Nadarajah.

  Just until I get on my feet, Prasad said, using the English expression, already thinking like a Canadian. He slid his fingers under the mattress to tuck in the sheet and said: But first I must find a job.

  What jobs will you apply for? Mahindan kept his voice bright to mask his envy. When the first men were released, the mood had been celebratory, but as more were set free, those left behind grew increasingly bitter.

  With one knee on the bed, Prasad leaned across to secure the flat sheet on the other side. I will work anywhere, he said. Just take any job washing plates or making french fries.

  Mahindan snorted. These were not jobs for a graduate of the university.

  Prasad folded the top of the sheet neatly over, forming an envelope into which he could slide. Don’t make fun, he said. In these Western countries, our doctors drive taxis.

  But don’t you want to work at a newspaper?

  Journalism was not my first career choice. Prasad shook out the blanket in Mahindan’s direction, indicating he needed help. He said, The troubles at home, I thought someone has to speak the truth.

  Mahindan bent to take hold of two corners of the blanket. And so now? What?