The Sadness of Geography

by Logathasan Tharmathurai

  Copyright © Logathasan Tharmathurai, 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

  Cover image: istock.com/pilesasmiles. All interior images courtesy of the author.

  Printer: Webcom, a division of Marquis Book Printing Inc.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: The sadness of geography : my life as a Tamil exile / Logathasan Tharmathurai.

  Names: Tharmathurai, Logathasan, 1966- author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190084111 | Canadiana (ebook) 2019008412X | ISBN 9781459745025 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459745032 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459745049 (EPUB)

  Subjects: LCSH: Tharmathurai, Logathasan, 1966- | LCSH: Refugees—Sri Lanka—Biography. | LCSH: Refugees—Canada—Biography. | LCSH: Tamil (Indic people)—Sri Lanka—Biography. | LCSH: Sri Lanka—History—Civil War, 1983-2009—Personal narratives, Tamil. | CSH: Tamil Canadians—Biography | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

  Classification: LCC DS489.86.T43 A3 2019 | DDC 954.9303/2092—dc23

  1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19

  We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country, and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.

  Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.

  Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites or their content unless they are owned by the publisher.

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  VISIT US AT

  dundurn.com

  @dundurnpress

  dundurnpress

  dundurnpress

  Dundurn

  3 Church Street, Suite 500

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M5E 1M2

  To Celia, Eric, and Daniel

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  BOOK CREDITS

  Do you understand the sadness of geography?

  — Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

  PROLOGUE

  I sit in the plane at Mirabel Airport in Montreal, gazing out the window at the snow-covered tarmac. I have been travelling under a false name for six months and living as an exile for much longer. It has been more than a year since I left Sri Lanka, my beloved homeland, which is being torn apart by civil war.

  I am the last passenger to disembark and the last to join the line at immigration.

  Before I left London, my Tamil friends told me that I would have to surrender my illegal passport and declare my true identity to immigration officials at the airport in order to be granted asylum in Canada. It had to be done at the port of entry. If I were to leave the airport with the illegal passport and then try to apply for asylum later, I would be deported back to Sri Lanka.

  I am nervous, torn. Should I declare my true identity or leave the airport as an illegal French national and figure it out later? I am tired of living as a fugitive, but what if I tell them the truth and they arrest me?

  Finally, it is my turn.

  At the last moment, I decide to trust my instincts and take the risk. I approach the immigration officer and hand over my illegal passport. “I am Tamil from Sri Lanka and would like to apply for asylum here in Canada,” I say.

  I am not sure if the officer has heard me. My throat is so dry that I find it hard to speak.

  The officer does nothing at first. But finally he stands up from his chair behind the desk and instructs me, with a flick of his hand, to follow him. We enter a small cinder-block office with no windows and just a few chairs. He motions for me to sit down. He leaves, closing the door behind him. I hear it lock.

  I am alone.

  CHAPTER 1

  Sangkaththaanai, Jaffna District, Northern Province, Sri Lanka

  1983

  “Elumpu! Elumpu!”

  I woke up suddenly, in the dark, startled. Am I dreaming?

  My father was standing over me, his face bent low to mine. He straightened up, then kicked me, hard. “Elumpu!” Wake up.

  “I am awake,” I answered sleepily, although I wasn’t sure why. No lights were on. I could hear smothered whispers as my brothers and sisters moved around hastily in the house.

  I begged my father to tell me what was happening.

  “Aamykarar vaarangal!” my father whispered. The army is coming. “Oodippoi oliyada!” Run away and hide.

  Groggy with sleep, I rose clumsily but quickly from my bed on the floor.

  It was still pitch dark inside the house. I peeked through the window. It was silent. The moon was gone; soon it would be dawn.

  “Now!” my father hissed, yanking me along.

  When the weather was hot, my brothers and I preferred to sleep on blankets strewn across the concrete floors in the front hall of our house, where it was much cooler. My father, however, had his own room and insisted on sleeping on a cushioned bed under the ceiling fan. My mother, my aunt, and my sisters slept on wooden beds topped with comforters.

  I looked for Kanna, my younger brother, but could see only blankets scattered on the floor. Perhaps he was hiding or had run away already.

  “Where should I go?” I blurted out, confused. I rubbed my eyes, attempting to bring my father’s dark silhouette into focus, but he was just a blur. I could hear more panicked rustling and harsh, muffled whispering from my mother and sisters.

  “Be quiet!” my father said. “Go! Run!”

  I blundered forward in the dark but slipped on a blanket and tumbled hard to the floor. It seemed easier and faster to crawl. I crawled as quickly as I could to the kitchen, where I found the key to the back door and flung it open. I ran outside, then froze. I turned back momentarily, looking for my two brothers and sisters, hoping they’d followed. I did not like the idea of being on my own.

  “Lathy!” I called back into the house, hoping my older brother would appear. “Kanna?”

  Where are my brothers? Should I wait?

  I squatted in the darkness of our backyard for just a moment, one that seemed like an eternity, wondering what to do.

  Where can I run?

  I could hear the soft rustling of the wind passing between the leaves on the coconut tree, a soothing hush that be
lied the terror of the moment. My body felt like ice and my heart was pounding so hard it felt as if it would burst through my chest.

  In the distance, a rooster was crowing. With the coming of the sun, the soldiers would appear and I would be caught. I had heard stories of what the soldiers did to Tamil boys. I was just a teenager and I could easily become their prey. They would murder me — or worse.

  I could hear another sound: trucks on the main road outside our small village.

  “Lathy! Kanna!” I called out again.

  Nothing.

  I couldn’t wait for my brothers; I needed to go.

  I stumbled through our backyard garden and crept along the high cement wall at the edge of our property. It was at least seven feet high. Even if I could climb it, the razor-sharp broken bottles anchored to the top — meant to keep intruders out — dissuaded me from even trying.

  My mind was racing. Could I risk going through the front gate? There was no place to hide on the road, and I could not outrun the trucks. The soldiers would see me, assume I was a rebel.

  I had no choice.

  I propped an old piece of discarded lumber against the wall to hoist myself to the top. I had one hand on top of the wall when the piece of wood snapped. I crashed to the ground.

  “Ennada saniyan!” I swore.

  I jumped to my feet and circled the yard in a panic. There was nothing else to help me scale the wall.

  I willed my heart to stop thumping long enough for me to listen. I could hear the trucks coming closer: the deep-throated sound of shifting gears, the revving of the engines, the shrieking of brakes.

  By this time, the stingy early morning light was bringing the flat contours of our backyard into relief. I felt unbearably exposed.

  I’m trapped!

  I had no choice but to use the front gate. If there was a soldier on the road, however, there would be nowhere for me to hide. My knees trembled; suddenly I felt a warm dribble on my leg. I felt my sarong with my hand, ashamed to discover that I’d wet myself. How Lathy would make fun of me if he knew! In my shame, thinking of how he would tease me was almost as bad as my fear of the soldiers.

  All I wanted to do was disappear, but somehow I convinced myself to creep around the side of the house. Our front gate was made of iron bars. In fact, it was the only iron gate in the neighbourhood. Most of the families in our neighbourhood were too poor to afford iron gates, which is probably why my father had insisted on having one. In our village, fences were usually woven from coconut leaves and affixed at intervals to the trees that lined the street. My father was a proud, prosperous, and well-respected businessman; exhibiting and maintaining his status was very important to him. He insisted the gate be locked every night against intruders. After all, the driveway was wide enough for two cars — even though we never had two cars. Most families in the village didn’t have even one car. The majority had bicycles or scooters, or simply walked.

  In any case, the gate was no obstacle. I was barefoot, which made climbing it easier.

  At the top, I looked up and down the road but did not see any soldiers or military trucks. I jumped.

  The road in front of our house, like all the roads in our village, was unpaved. Luckily my feet were tough from walking barefoot; otherwise, landing on the sharp stones would have been painful. Even so, I winced and hopped before starting to run.

  I stayed low, sticking as close to the side of the road as I could to remain inconspicuous. After just a few steps, I skidded to a halt. A military truck had stopped at the top of the road. Soldiers dressed in green and brown camouflage and carrying submachine guns were jumping from the back of the truck and fanning out in groups of three or four along the road. At each house, a group of soldiers would duck into the laneway.

  Except for the faint crunching of boots on the gravel, the soldiers were eerily quiet, like ghosts. Suddenly the silence was broken by shouting, first in one house and then another, and another, like slowly toppling dominoes. Orders were being barked. Rough male voices, then women’s screams and wails.

  Get off the road!

  I ran into my neighbour’s yard. Unlike our large, modern house, many homes in the village were crude and very small — several of them no more than improvised shacks or huts. Most had a tiny porch at the front and one big sleeping room for the family. The kitchen was cramped and had firepits made of clay for cooking. Toilets were located at the back, separate from the house. Some houses had a well, but none, except ours, had running water. Anyone who could manage it had a modest garden to grow vegetables and some little cages in which to raise chickens.

  The shouts from the soldiers grew louder as they got closer. From the houses I could hear the shrill, terrified cries of women and girls. I zigzagged from one backyard to another until I reached a railway crossing. From behind some bushes I could see military trucks driving along the main road, known as the Kandy–Jaffna Highway. Soldiers were moving from house to house, searching. My only hope was to reach the rice paddies beyond the highway. Our house was only a short distance from the highway; the fields, however, were about four miles away, and I had no way of knowing if I could make it that far without being seen.

  What if soldiers had been stationed at the fields to watch for boys and men making a run for it?

  I waited by the highway, hiding behind the bushes until a short convoy of military trucks had passed. Then, crouching low, I ran as fast as I could across the tar-paved road toward the Sangkaththaanai Kanthasamy Kovil, a Hindu temple in our village. Years later, I can still recall the soft sound of my bare feet slapping the tar road as I ran.

  I passed the temple and kept running, away from home, toward the paddies. The fields at the edge of the paddies were lined with mature trees with enough foliage to help obscure my movements.

  I was panting, breathless, and slowed down to catch my breath. What a beautiful morning, I caught myself thinking, as if in a dream. I would never forget the image of the fiery edge of sunrise in the distance and the blue sky arcing above the green rice fields.

  Just as suddenly as before, more trucks appeared nearby and my sense of security instantly disappeared. I hurried down a narrow path that split the rice paddy into two sections and was soon surrounded by rice stalks — bright green at that time of year — that reached to my shoulders. It was midseason, and the ground was still wet and muddy from a heavy rainfall the night before. It was early, but the sun would soon be a torch in the sky. I was alone. I had no idea what was happening to my family. There was nothing I could do but hide. And wait.

  The rice paddy was strangely peaceful. The contrast was overwhelming and deeply disorienting. As frightened as I was, the coiled tightness in my chest began to ease, like ice melting. My heartbeat slowed to something more like normal. I am probably safe for now, I thought. I figured it was unlikely the soldiers would enter open ground in pursuit of Tamil guerillas — especially in my village, an area of northern Sri Lanka known for being sympathetic to the guerillas. It was said by many Sinhalese that a favourite tactic of the Tamil guerillas was luring soldiers into ambushes.

  It had only been a few months since the terrible eruption of the Black July attacks and violence against Tamils, and tensions between Tamils and Sinhalese were at their peak. The majority Sinhalese government was cracking down hard on the minority Tamil population for alleged attacks by armed guerillas. Most Tamils were not guerillas; all Tamils, however, were under suspicion, especially young men and boys. It was well known that teenage Tamil boys — boys like me — were eagerly recruited by the guerillas.

  It is true. I should know. I would eventually be recruited, too.

  All my life I had lived exclusively among Tamils. Of course, I had seen Sinhalese now and again but had never had any real contact with them. I used to wonder what they were like; I wondered, too, why they hated the Tamils. How can you hate someone so much even though you have never met them?

  In the previous few months, we’d begun seeing Sinhalese soldiers all the time.
They never smiled; they obviously hated us, and they treated us as if we were less than animals. There was nothing we could do. So why not join the rebels? The rebels wanted respect for the Tamil people. They promised the Tamils that we would be treated fairly and with justice. The Tamil people had been in Sri Lanka for centuries — at least since the second century BCE — but we were treated by the Sinhalese as if we did not belong, as if we had no roots in the country, as if it were not just as much our home as theirs. They claimed that we only stole and begged, that we had made no contribution to the country.

  As I walked through the field, I could not stop thinking about what might be happening at home. About what they were doing to my father and brothers, to my mother and sisters.

  All of a sudden, I heard an unfamiliar sound in the distance. It was a sort of whomp-whomp sound, weak at first but getting louder and louder. I searched the sky, and in the bright early morning sunlight something appeared as a glowing silver bullet, moving very fast but low — and coming directly at me.

  A military helicopter!

  I started to run. The rice plants were tall and green and the sprouts were yellow, and as I brushed past them they reminded me of tiny bells attached to a long stick. As I ran deeper into the field, my feet began to disappear into the muddy ground; each step became harder and harder as I sank deeper and deeper into the mud. I knocked aside the tiny bells as the whomp-whomp approached, closer and closer. As the helicopter swooped overhead, I dropped face down into the mud.

  The helicopter was flying low enough that I could feel the thumping of the blades like punches to my body. I dug myself into the mud, but it wasn’t deep enough. I wallowed in the earth, twisting and turning, slathering myself in mud, trying to sink in farther.

  The helicopter swung around for another pass and I lay still as death. Between each pass, I tried to dig myself deeper and deeper into the mud, to obliterate myself. With each pass, the thumping blades created powerful gusts of wind that sent the tiny bells into a chiming frenzy.

  I lay face down in the mud for what felt like hours, my heart pounding so loud it almost overpowered the deafening whomp-whomp of the helicopter.