They will find me. They will kill me.
I was crying, but the tears dissolved harmlessly in the mud. I wondered if I would ever see my family again, about what would happen to me if I got caught. How would my mother feel if I didn’t return home? I worried about my brothers. Where had they gone? Were they safe?
As suddenly as the helicopter had appeared, it disappeared, like the sun moving behind a bank of clouds. I didn’t dare move, however, and for hours I lay in the mud, feeling the scorching heat of the sun on my back. It was hard to move. My legs and arms were stiffly encased in the baking mud, but the rice plants were cool. I was desperately thirsty, but the water I managed to lap up was mixed with mud and had an unpleasant mineral sharpness in my mouth and on my tongue.
All that morning and afternoon no one came to the field. There was no sound but the chirring of insects in the tall plants, the sucking noise of the embracive mud as I tried to move my aching limbs, the occasional faraway sound of traffic on the road. I waited in dread-filled silence.
Hours later — I think; I have no idea how long I lay there — I heard the fast-approaching whomp-whomp of another helicopter. My heart sank. It roared overhead and into the distance, only to return a short time later from the other direction. It happened again not long after. And again.
The soldiers must know a boy is missing from the village. They are searching for me. They must know I am in the fields.
I was torn between running again and remaining in the field. I convinced myself the soldiers were waiting for me. Waiting to catch me. I kept waiting.
I was very hungry and badly needed to pee. Too afraid to risk standing up — or even moving more than an inch or two — I stayed where I was hiding and urinated. It wasn’t so embarrassing this time; it actually felt good. I was so tense and tight it was a relief to let go and feel my body flushing itself, purging. Almost immediately, however, the pleasing sensation disappeared. I smelled horrible.
I could feel the sun moving lower on the horizon. My legs were numb. My stomach was rumbling from hunger. All I could think about, however, were the soldiers on the road and in the village.
Deliberately, slowly, I uprooted myself from the mud and turned to stare up at the sky. It had shifted from bright blue to dark blue and orange. It would be dark soon. It had been quite a while since I had heard the helicopter. It was time.
When I attempted to stand up, my legs felt as stiff as boards and I stumbled. The wet mud had hardened on my back and on my legs and shoulders. I could feel my shirt crack as I stretched. I must have looked like a zombie. My hair felt like stiff straw and my head itched.
The sky was empty and serene. I walked to the dirt path that led to the road. I noticed deep ruts — from heavy wheels and tread marks — in the soft ground; there were booted footprints, too, that trailed off in various directions. Had the helicopter spotted me? Had the soldiers waited for me, perhaps fearing that I was a rebel lying in wait to ambush them if they approached?
I stumbled across the tar road, careful to keep watch around me just in case, and headed back to the village. I couldn’t see any military trucks anywhere. Past the temple along the road to our house I heard moaning noises coming from one house. Farther along, I passed by another house and heard more sad wailing. As I walked along the road I saw mothers sitting on the ground, smacking their heads, rocking and sobbing.
“Aiyoo, amma!” they chanted. Oh, my mother! It was a familiar lament in Tamil, a common expression of deep sadness. Aiyoo is an exclamatory term used in spoken Tamil when something terrible happens to someone, when someone feels sorry for something that has happened; it is also uttered when someone witnesses something frightening.
“Aen entai pillaiai kondu pottai?” Why did you take my child?
“Eppa naan entai pillaiai pakka poran? Kadavulai, engalai kappathtu.” When am I going to see my child again? Lord, protect us.
Occasionally I heard screaming: brief bursts, like choking sobs, or long and drawn out like a mournful wind. The mothers were bewailing their sons’ abductions.
It is a tradition in Hindu culture, even among the poor, to wear fresh clothes every day — a sarong for the men and a sari for the women. In our village, women always wear fresh flowers in their hair. Men ritually adorn their forehead with a streak of powder known as thiruneeru, a sacred ash used in religious worship in Hinduism. Women wear the pottu on their foreheads, the familiar red dot, which usually signifies their status as married women but is sometimes worn as an omen to ward off evil.
In the late afternoon, most people in the village would have been on their way to or from temple. But not that day. The men and women I saw in the streets looked haggard and rumpled, dishevelled even. None of the men wore the thiruneeru or the women the pottu. Oddly, despite everything I had seen and experienced that day, it was the unexpected unkemptness of the men and women I encountered on the roads that frightened me the most.
As I reached the end of our road, I could see my father and mother standing by the gate of our home.
“Amma!” I shouted in greeting.
They looked terrified. They must not have recognized me. Bursting into tears, I ran to my mother. “Amma!” I sobbed.
Once they realized that it was me, their faces lit up with happiness. My mother wrapped her arms around me in a big hug. “Rajan, my son! Where have you been?” Rajan is my Tamil nickname. Her tone was anguished but scolding as she hugged me tight. “Where were you? We were so worried the army took you from us.” She would not relax her arms. I thought I might suffocate.
“Amma,” I said, “you’re squeezing me to death!”
Only then did she relax. She was smiling, but tears streaked her face.
My father was a man who never expressed his emotions — at least not with me — and when he saw that I was safe, he simply nodded and turned to go back inside the house. I asked my mother about my brothers and sisters: Lathy, Kanna, Deicy, Jance, Vani, and Kala.
“Kanna was hiding in the chimney,” she told me. “Lucky for us the soldiers arrived before breakfast!” My older brother, Lathy, she said, had run away to our grandmother’s house a couple of blocks away. “I suppose the soldiers assumed that an old woman living alone in a small house had no family,” my mother explained. “Or maybe she was not worth bothering about. Your sisters are unharmed. They are safe.”
She led me to the house, but at the front door she stopped, looked at me, and pinched her nose in disgust. “Rajan, you must wash immediately. You stink!”
I burst out laughing and did as she said.
After showering and changing into clean clothes, I was suddenly overcome with fatigue. For supper my mother had prepared sweet roti, my favourite. We did not talk about what had happened, and after dinner we all went to bed. As tired as I was, I did not sleep.
CHAPTER 2
In the days that followed the raid, I would learn that many boys from my village were missing. Families with sons who had been captured by the soldiers were confronted by a wall of bureaucratic silence when they attempted to track them down. The military authorities would not even admit to having raided the village, much less acknowledge stealing innocent young men at gunpoint at the crack of dawn. And if a boy had been taken and a reason had to be provided, the explanation was simple: He was a member of a guerilla group responsible for the murder of innocent civilians. After a time, the families just gave up. It was safer that way.
It was not uncommon, either, for captured young Tamil men to be sent by the army to the military garrison Poonakari, in the Northern Province, for detention or torture. In order to understand the Tamil sense of nationalism and its experience with self-exile, history helps underscore the irony of this: Poonakari was built by the colonizing Portuguese in the eighteenth century to “protect its possessions.” It was later expanded by the conquering Dutch to do the same. The British, in turn, took it over and held it until Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948. After the outbreak of civil war in 1983, the Sri Lankan Ar
my established a garrison at Poonakari to put down the Tamils.
Either way, whether a family’s son had just vanished or had been sent to Poonakari, he was lost.
A lot of young boys and men disappeared from our village that day. Some of them were captured by the Sri Lankan soldiers and others joined the guerilla groups. One of my cousins, Manikanna, was captured. I never heard from him again.
It was the most terrifying day of my life. In many ways, the happy life I had known ended that day.
The effects of the raid on the other people in the village were plainly evident, too. Everyone was afraid to leave their homes. Parents continued to bemoan the loss of their children. People who used to go to the temple early in the morning, before their daily chores, stopped going. The temple bells in our village ceased ringing. Buses stopped running. Schools were shut down frequently. Our famous Chavakachcheri market was left deserted. Shops were closed.
My father did not discuss this with us, but I know it troubled him. He hated being forced to stay at home, doing nothing. He became restless and started drinking in the mornings.
Curfews were put in place randomly. The Sri Lankan military started to penetrate our villages and towns. Initially, we would see three or four trucks, but within a month of the raid, I began to see not only many trucks full of soldiers but also armoured vehicles with machine guns mounted on the top. The military forces were building up in the Tamil- occupied areas.
Nothing would ever be the same.
I had to leave.
CHAPTER 3
[S]ome men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace.… They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence
Sri Lanka is a beautiful, mango-shaped island in the Indian Ocean. I have heard it described as pear-shaped, which, for the literal-minded, is probably more accurate. For me, however, and for many Sri Lankans, our nation has the shape of our favourite fruit, the mango. And so it does.
When I was growing up in Sri Lanka, I thought it was the only place on Earth. I am proud to have called Sri Lanka home. The country is blessed with diverse landscapes: rainforest and dry plains, highlands and gorgeous sun-drenched sandy beaches. The colour of the ocean is like no other in the world — more like a shimmering jewel than a colour. As a boy, nothing was more beautiful to me. I still recall with fondness the abundance of beaches, forests, temples, forts, historical sites, and magnificent birds and animals.
I grew up in Sangkaththaanai, a small village in the Jaffna District of the Northern Province. A short distance away was a larger town, Chavakachcheri, known as the second-largest business hub in the Northern Province (Jaffna being the largest). People from other cities, towns, and villages in the province came to Chavakachcheri to trade. It was where my father had his jewellery shop.
Every Friday when I was a child, my father would take us to Jaffna Muneeswaran Temple, a Hindu place of worship located adjacent to Jaffna Fort. When I was a little boy, my mother often sent us off to sleep with bedtime stories, and one I enjoyed in particular was the story of the fort. According to my mother, the fort was built in Jaffna by the Portuguese in 1618, following their invasion. Later, in 1658, the Dutch captured and then expanded it. The British took control of it in 1795, and it remained under British control until 1948. More than the history lessons, though, I enjoyed my mother’s ghoulish tales as we walked past the fort about the prisoners who were kept inside. I would shiver when she pointed out the tower where the prisoners were hanged in the old days.
My siblings and I loved to go to the temple with my father but not necessarily to worship. My younger brother, Kanna, and I loved to run and play around the grounds. But what my brothers and I enjoyed most was watching the horses parading in and out of the adjacent fort. More than half of the fort was surrounded by swampland; later, when I saw pictures of Alcatraz, the island prison off San Francisco, I felt a sense of déjà vu.
After a Friday temple visit, my father would take us to a fancy restaurant for dinner and then to the ice-cream café for dessert. My father generally ate first — and my mother would stand next to him and serve the rest of his meals. After he finished eating, my mother would serve my siblings and me dinner. Only after we had eaten would my mother eat. Thus, Friday nights at the fancy restaurants in Jaffna were the only time we ever really ate as a family.
Subhas ice-cream café was one of the best and busiest in the city of Jaffna. The ice-cream bar had air conditioning — an enchanting luxury in those days — and was illuminated with eerie blue neon lights that cast an otherworldly glow over the patrons. It felt to me like an ice palace.
I always ordered a sundae that had nuts on the bottom, then ice cream in the middle and jelly on top. After dessert, my father would take us all to watch movies. Because he was a prosperous businessman, he could afford a private booth at the cinema with butler service, and the butler would bring us an unlimited amount of chocolates, peanuts, and sodas. It didn’t matter how much ice cream I had eaten for dessert; there was always more room for Kandos chocolates at the cinema.
Although my siblings and I looked forward to these Friday evenings, we had to be careful not to say the wrong thing to my father. It was the only time we ate together, but out of respect we didn’t say a word as we ate.
CHAPTER 4
By serving the father with regularity, one may cross this world. By serving the mother in the same way, one may attain to regions of felicity in the next. By serving the preceptor with regularity one may obtain the region of Brahma. Behave properly towards these three, O Bharata, you will then obtain great fame in the three worlds, and you will be blessed, great will be your merit and reward.
— The Mahabharata
My father, Tharmathurai Rasiah (in Tamil culture, the family takes the father’s first name as their last name), was born in Sangkaththaanai, too, as was his father. Most of my father’s large extended family lived there as well.
When I was growing up, our house was by far the largest and most modern in Sangkaththaanai. My father was very proud of that and always made sure he was the first to have any modern convenience. We were the first to have running water and the first to have electricity. My father bought the first automobile in the village.
When mail was sent to our house, it was not necessary to put a number and street name on the envelope, or even the name of the village; it would simply read Tharmathurai Rasiah, Chavakachcheri. Everyone from miles around knew who my father was.
There could not have been more than three hundred families living in Sangkaththaanai back then, and a large number of those were of my father’s clan. Other houses tended to be built around ours. The poorest houses — hardly more than huts — were home to the lower-caste villagers — fishermen, farmers, and common labourers — with whom we did not associate. I remember as a child playing with my cousins from my father’s family; I do not remember playing much with the village children.
Of course, in a big city we would have been looked down upon, but in Sangkaththaanai, my father was like a king, and we lived in conspicuous luxury.
It was my grandfather who had started the jewellery business, and as the eldest son, it was my father who took it over. The shop my father managed in Chavakachcheri had been built by my grandfather. It was larger than the other jewellery shops in town, and under my father’s management, it was enormously profitable.
My father did not have much in the way of a formal education, but he had a gift for numbers and bookkeeping. He was also strict and suspicious that workers in his employ were cheating him. It was a common gambit for wholesale gold to be mixed with copper, so he was always scrupulous when it came to judging the jewellery delivered to the shop.
Besides being rich, my father was a very handsome man — light skinned with
jet-black hair and brown eyes — and was considered a most enviable match. He was also extremely fastidious about his appearance. I suppose it had a lot to do with his success. Every day, he shaved and combed his hair neatly, and he never left the house without attending to his clothes. He always dressed the part of the successful businessman.
Studio photo of Aiya (Father) taken in Chavakachcheri when he was around thirty-five years old.
Most days after closing up the shop, my father would meet up with his friends and business colleagues at an upscale bar in town. He was respected and well liked in our town, and he was known for being generous when it came to hospitality. In other words, he liked to stand his friends free drinks.
As far as I know, he never asked my mother to accompany him on his forays into town. Every now and again they might go to the movies. My father liked showing her off, I think, at fancy restaurants. But he also had a roving eye when it came to women.
I came to understand that my father was — besides handsome and successful — a charming and fun-loving man. He also had, I was to learn, a selfish understanding of what was fun. But I remember him mostly as a rather stern and impatient father who was not much amused by the antics of small boys. He never played with us or seemed interested in anything we were up to.
In Tamil culture, only the elders are allowed to initiate a conversation. Because of this, we rarely talked to our father; we only replied when spoken to. My father did not often ask my opinion on any topic. My father was always — and remains — an enigma to me.
I do vividly remember following my father around when we visited stores. He was so proud of his success that he refused to check the price of items. He liked to carry a big bundle of cash in his pocket, and if he saw something he liked, he would say, “I want that.” The vendors, of course, knew that he was rich and often jacked up the price. My father did not care. In fact, I think he was flattered. It was a sign of his stature. He would casually hand over a stack of bills, making sure the vendor and anyone watching understood he was overpaying — often lavishly. The vendor would bow and grovel in an ostentatious display of gratitude and my father would nod regally and walk on. He never asked for change.
The Sadness of Geography Page 2
