by Rohini Mohan
‘Are you praying?’ Mugil asked once.
‘You think our house in Point Pedro still exists?’ Mother said in a trance, as if she had not heard her daughter. ‘Remember the coconut trees in the backyard?’ Mugil had walked away, but later she wished she had hugged her mother, or taken part in her daydreams.
At the beginning, Father’s illness had seemed simple to deal with. But their visits to the camp’s primary health centre demonstrated it was much more serious. While the disease was commonplace, here in the camp its cure was not. If the doctor was in, the line wound long and looped through the tent rows. Fights broke out when someone tried to cut in. Please, it is an emergency, someone would always say. This is an emergency, too, another would reply, perhaps adding sarcastically that some people had nothing better to do than stand in line to be treated for a cold or cough. Each would point to their sick relatives and try to outdo the other’s symptoms. Eventually a soldier would appear to end the squabble and throw both families out. More often than not, only half the queue made it as far as the doctor’s office before it closed for the day.
It took Mugil four attempts to get in. Father couldn’t stand in the queue, so she waited in line and, when it was near her turn, she called Bhuvi and hung up before he answered, the signal that he should bring Father fast. As soon as the doctor saw Father, grey and drooping, he wrote a prescription. He handed it over without a word and waved them on.
‘Diarrhoea?’ the medical dispenser asked when Mugil handed her the prescription. In front of her, stacks of tablets and capsules had collapsed on a white table.
‘Yes,’ Mugil said, although what she really wanted was to scream, ‘Can’t you see?’
‘The prescription is not going to help. Give him lime juice and kanji to get his strength up,’ she said. ‘And fruits. Give him lots of fruits. Except mango and banana.’
Mugil couldn’t believe the woman. Lime juice? Rice gruel? Fruits? Who had access to all of that in the camp? Trucks from the Multi-purpose Cooperative Societies were allowed inside camp now, and they sold sugar, tea, biscuits, brooms, plastic mugs, rope and other items the refugees might need. But the inmates had noticed with much consternation that most of the traders—Sinhalese and some Muslim—were selling essentials at a huge profit. A supermarket had opened, too, run by the Sathosa chain of stores, and it sold, to Mugil’s bewilderment, largely ice cream and soda. Vegetables, fruit and milk powder were rarely available, and inmates who somehow managed to get their hands on a banana or some rice resold it—illegally, as they weren’t allowed to set up shops—to make a few extra rupees. This, too, was gone in minutes, its disappearance usually coinciding with the arrival of a soldier. An orange or watermelon, even a lemon, was a luxury.
‘Where am I going to get fruit?’ Mugil snapped. ‘All we give him now is tea. We don’t even have sugar to add to it all the time.’
The lady didn’t seem to care.
‘Just give me the pills,’ Mugil said, the fight in her fading.
‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you … We don’t have the medicine in stock.’
By the end of 2009, more than half of Zone 2 had diarrhoea, triggered by abysmal hygiene and poor nutrition. The toilets overflowed, and the filthier they got, the sicker people became.
Back in the tent, Mugil tried to feed her father watery gruel, but most of it dribbled down his chin. He could not swallow; perhaps he didn’t want to. He mumbled gibberish all night and all day, and cried quietly about being a burden. They bought a tarpaulin sheet from a Sinhalese trader and laid Father on top of it. This reduced the number of trips to the toilet, but the tent smelled of shit and piss. Mugil asked the grandchildren to cheer him up, but he was too tired and bored them. ‘Periamma, is Thatha going to die?’ Amuda’s son asked Mugil. Kalai refused to sit beside him because ‘he smelt of kakka’ and scared her. His gaunt face looked nothing like her smiling grandfather.
Mugil needed to take her father to the Vavuniya general hospital, but as the applications for day passes to the hospital increased, the camp office grew stricter. She looked at the soldiers, busy with desk jobs, carrying firewood, even cleaning the overflowing toilets. Surely when they signed up for the Sri Lankan military, this was not what they had in mind? They would indeed always be the men who defeated the LTTE—they would tell their grandchildren that—but they also sat in the camps for months looking into the eyes of emaciated, imprisoned men and women who loathed them in return.
In the south, however, the armed forces were heroes and the 2010 presidential election, just a few months away, was being fought in their name. The incumbent president was riding high on his historic victory over terrorism. His opponent was his former army general Sarath Fonseka, who had led the military against the LTTE, but had been fired for saying that the army had committed ‘war crimes’. Global NGOs and the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora demanded an independent international enquiry.
‘War crimes’ was not a phrase Mugil was familiar with. Sanjeevan said it could be about the attacks on civilian areas, the shelling of hospitals and no-fire zones, maybe even the army’s use of cluster bombs.
‘What about the rape of our women?’ Mugil asked.
Sanjeevan winced ever so slightly. Mugil was a little taken aback herself. The word rape was not usually used, in Tamil or English. Even when inmates spoke openly about it, they used euphemisms like ‘took her honour’ or ‘insulted’ or ‘left our women unable to show their face in public’. It irritated her every time, this dancing around the act, as if it were not a crime but just an embarrassing secret. She had used the English word rape, with the strong r, and it hung in the air. Emboldened and somewhat proud of herself, she prepared to come clean to Sanjeevan about the rapes she had witnessed in the Kilinochchi mango orchard.
‘I don’t think the NGOs will care about rapes, especially of Tiger girls,’ Sanjeevan said.
She hadn’t anticipated this. ‘Why? That, too, is breaking the rules of war, no? Like burning hospitals?’
‘But it was our fault that we had women in our militia. Otherwise this would not have happened at all. See how the army doesn’t have women? They knew that would be a weakness.’
Mugil stared at him, heat rising from her neck. He was facing the other way, stitching a patch on his shirtsleeve, and he continued, his voice unemotional as ever: ‘I am also upset that it happened, enna, but it is distracting us from the real issues. The army is taking our land, men from detention camp have just disappeared, they’re trying to cover up all the evidence in Nandikadal …’
He went on, offering clever, interesting opinions, ideas she had admired earlier. It was Sanjeevan who had once said, ‘I know now how the Muslims must have felt when the Tigers forced them out of the north.’ He had called them the oldest displaced community in the country, expelled entirely from Jaffna, Mullaitivu and Kilinochchi in October 1990 by the Tigers. About 72,000 people were given two hours to leave the homes they had inhabited for generations, allowed to leave with only what they could carry. Most had walked to Puttalam, a Muslim-dominated western town, where locals had taken them in. Many still lived in settlement villages. It was unusual for a Tamil man to mention this, especially one who grew up in the Vanni. Mugil had wondered how Sanjeevan was able to acknowledge the suffering of the smaller minority group at the hands of his leaders when his own community was wrapped up in its victimhood. How had he held onto that unselfish thought? How did he preserve his empathy? Listening to Sanjeevan became Mugil’s way of seeing through the muddle of her own emotions about the movement and the Tigers.
Now she thought, looking at his lean, bearded face, that he was just like a newsreader—just saying things, feeling nothing. Rape was not a ‘real issue’ for him. What if it happened to men, she wanted to ask. Don’t you see that this is also a way of subjugating our community? What if they raped civilian girls? What if someone did that to your sister? There were so many what ifs. But what was the use?
Suddenly all the months of analysis, of
finding out what was happening, what had happened, how many were killed, who was a Tiger, who was a civilian, all of it was irrelevant. All Mugil wanted was certainty. She wanted a roof over her head, a life. She wanted to go home.
Everyone wanted to go home. Protests broke out regularly at queues, where the crowd gave people the anonymity they needed to speak up without direct consequences. Why does the government still lock people up in camps, they asked. By July 2009 only about 4,300 had been sent home, mostly people with specific needs, including the sick, university students, pregnant women and the elderly. Only about 9,000 more were cleared to leave, from close to three million refugees. Politicians from the Tamil National Alliance spoke out in Parliament and even came to Zone 2, in pristine white outfits, bringing cartons of bottled water and food. They patiently heard the inmates’ pleas. But everyone in the camp was aware that the politicians had no power. No one did except the president and his army.
Most of the Tamils in the camps hated President Mahinda Rajapaksa; they had never voted for him. He became president when the LTTE made the grave mistake of enforcing a boycott on the 2005 elections, which he subsequently won in a landslide, defeating a candidate more sympathetic to the Tamils. Mahinda then launched a three-year-long war on them, and his brother Gotabaya, as the defence secretary, had a blank cheque and the liberty to conduct the battle however he thought best. Surprisingly, in May 2009, after the end of the LTTE, President Rajapaksa’s speeches had stirred many Tamils. They had been startled to hear words few state leaders had ever used before; he called them equal citizens and spoke of inclusion. He recognised the often ignored distinction between the LTTE and the Tamil people. If he seemed sympathetic enough to realise that not all Tamils were terrorists, they thought, maybe things would get better. Father had once even made excuses for the president, recalling that the Tigers had once attempted to assassinate both Rajapaksas. ‘And they took their revenge,’ he had said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
But as the months wore on, apologists like Father wondered if they had been gullible. The president continued to make promises about rehabilitation and resettlement, but as they suffocated under his rule, these words rang hollow. Posters with his photo—a clean face and toothy grin—littered the camp. Mugil felt as if he was physically there, actually turning every knob, pressing every button, controlling every move of the Vanni Tamils.
An emergency had been declared and extended indefinitely by Parliament, and it was the president who now called the shots. The presidential task force directed the activities of Manik Farm and other camps, determining matters such as how aid agencies could engage with the displaced. It was dominated by high-level defence officials and was chaired by another of the Rajapaksa brothers, Basil, who was also the minister for nation building. Tamil- and Muslim-dominated districts were run not by the elected legislators but by the Sinhalese central executive, appointed by the president. On 12 July 2009, Major General C. A. Chandrasiri replaced Dixon Dela, a civil administrator, as governor of the northern province, which included the Vanni and Jaffna. Of the country’s nine provinces, only the northern and eastern ones—where most minorities lived—were governed by retired army officers. These appointees and the president’s office said that the refugees would have to wait until their villages were entirely cleared of mines before they could go home. The army, meanwhile, was moving into these evacuated areas, gradually establishing military bases in Mullaitivu, Vavuniya, Kilinochchi and Mannar.
Mugil felt caged in the claustrophobic half-truths of the president’s rhetoric, which only seemed to intensify following international pressure to resettle the displaced Tamils. With the visits of global leaders, the inmates’ emotions surged in waves of hope and despair. On the days when the United Nations teams came and went, the inmates prepared to chant Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s name in case he approached their tents. But he had visited only the ‘showcase area’, as the inmates named the misleadingly habitable model rows of Zone 3.
Then the politicians from India arrived, mostly from the southern state of Tamil Nadu. They shed tears, recited moving Tamil verses, professed anger at the ill treatment of their ethnic kin. Mother was not just dismissive of them, she saw in their goodwill a bad omen. ‘We will not hold garlands and stand up for the Indians again,’ she said, remembering the late eighties, when the ecstatic welcome of the Indian army into northern Sri Lanka spiralled over the next two years into a bitter war with the LTTE. To the Tamils, the Indian army was synonymous with rapists and torturers, and the Indian government was a selfish and unreliable big brother. They expected more from Tamil Nadu, but it became apparent after 2009 that these politicians were only play-acting an old friendship.
In July, the president had pledged to release and resettle up to 60 per cent of the displaced Tamils in the camp by November: ‘That is our plan. In 180 days, we want to settle most of these people,’ he said, but then clarified, ‘It’s not a promise, it’s a target.’
‘How much they talk!’ Bhuvi said. ‘Words, words, words. If this was food, our stomachs would explode.’ Most Tamils in the camp had been lashed by some moment in the history of racial hatred and discrimination—a riot, a murder, a rejected college application, a whizzing bullet, a death, a lost eye, a dead child or parent—but this now was a whole community trapped together, three million people, with no options. Never before had they felt walled in by indifference like this.
MUGIL HAD BEEN in the camp seven months when the presidential election was announced, a choice between two candidates who filled her with dismay. The Tamil National Alliance strategically threw its weight behind Fonseka, the former army general, in exchange for guarantees to end military rule and relieve those affected by the war. Most Tamils wanted to cast their votes in favour of the TNA, the only Tamil alliance in the fray—other than the largely mistrusted pro-government Eelam People’s Democratic Party—but they didn’t expect a free or fair election. The state assured the inmates that it would install voting booths inside the refugee camps; the men who robbed the refugee Tamils of freedom now wanted to bestow upon them the right to vote.
Only a few thousand internees had been sent home, largely to the north of Mannar. The largest contingent from the Vanni remained in the camp, wading in knee-deep water. Mugil’s tent leaked, and while they were allowed to cook for themselves now, dry firewood was hard to come by. A throbbing headache had lasted so long she had forgotten how she felt without it.
Tamizh’s bronchitis worsened in the damp tent, and he had wheezing attacks every other night. Mugil had nightmares about waking to find her child’s body cold and blue in the morning. In her row, five out of ten children had died of respiratory tract infections in the previous month. Amuda had managed to get some medicine from the camp dispensary for her own wheezing and shared half the tablets with her nephew. At this rate, neither would get well, Mother said. Every time someone in the camp said, ‘Oh at least your children are alive,’ Mugil bit her tongue, crossed her hands to her ears, as she would at a temple, and hoped that Pullaiyar hadn’t entirely forsaken them.
But divine compassion was in short supply. Almost every week some Tamils were arrested, sometimes dragged out of the camp, for allegedly having served in the LTTE. Young men simply disappeared. ‘There are eyes everywhere,’ Bhuvi would say. Inmates informed on each other to the army or police in exchange for small freedoms: a few weeks of unmonitored peace or an extra packet of rations. Bhuvi’s cousin had been taken away by the TID. He said a woman in his tent had betrayed him so she could speak to her husband in the detention camp.
Mugil was sure she’d be disappeared, too, any day now. She had been careful not to reminisce aloud about the Tigers or let on that she had the skills of a trained combatant. To keep the lie as close to the truth as possible, she admitted to being a photographer in the communications wing. ‘Those who recognise you,’ Amuda consoled her, ‘are probably hiding themselves, so there’s nothing to be afraid of.’ But the fear of being fou
nd out remained. One day, when Mugil hopped over a puddle without breaking her stride, Bhuvi quipped that she was as agile as a tigress. Her heart started to thud loudly, and she made a bad joke about being a lame tigress. How much did Bhuvi guess?
Mugil was concerned about Divyan and Prashant, too. When they surrendered, the army said they would be taken to a special camp for ex-combatants; but there had been no word since then. In July, along with hundreds of others, she had submitted a request for information about surrendered relatives. Every week, when the army produced a list of ‘surrenderees’ held in detention camps, Mugil returned disappointed. She was now afraid that her comment to Divyan about being shot point-blank had been too close to the truth.
IT WAS MARAN who discovered that grandfather was dead. He had gone inside their tent to look for the steel cup he liked to play with. The old man lay on his mat, turned to the left like always. As Maran stepped over him, his foot hit a hand, and something in the way it fell made the child scream.
It was 17 November and no one else was in the tent. Mother was outside, picking out lice from Kalai’s hair. Amuda was in the water queue. Bhuvi had been admitted to the Vavuniya hospital for jaundice a week earlier and had not returned. Mugil was returning from the camp office with a letter that gave her Prashant’s location in a Vavuniya detention camp. Her family would be reassured by this rare good news.
She was near her row when she heard Maran shriek. Her mind immediately conjured up an image of Tamizh’s dead body, lying in the sewage. She ran into the tent. When she saw her father, relief and guilt fought within her. She cried for hours. Grief, irritation, nostalgia and so many things burned away in her mind till all she was left with was rage. In another place, in another time, he could so easily have survived.
