“Sir,” the officer said, “welcome to Canada.”
The other person put down the tray and left the room. I was confused. This is for me? The tray was filled with crackers, cheese, grapes, sandwiches, and soft drinks. It was more than enough to feed three people.
The officer sat down in front of me and explained that the paperwork would take awhile. “In the meantime, please enjoy these,” he said and left the room.
Each time that I had been in this situation, the environment would have a sink, a toilet, and a cement bench cantilevered from the wall. This room was different. I did not feel threatened or like I was going to be cavity-searched as in Berlin. After the officer gave me an explanation, I felt safe and welcome. I was feeling more relaxed than ever before. Usually, I rushed to eat my meals to get it over with. But this time I enjoyed eating the food they provided. About an hour later, the officer returned with a Tamil interpreter and introduced us.
“Vanakkam, naan ummadai interpreter, Sivanathan.” Greetings, I am your interpreter, Sivanathan.
He put his palms together. I did the same.
“Vanakkam,” I replied.
“Ondukkum payappada vendam. Naan umakku uthavi seikirain.” Don’t be afraid. I will help you.
Sivanathan told me that I didn’t have to worry anymore and he was there to help me to complete the paperwork. The officer would ask me series of questions, he said, which Sivanathan would translate into Tamil. Sivanathan would translate my answers into English, and the officer would take notes. When we were done with the questions, the officer gave me a blank piece of paper and asked me to write in Tamil a short statement for my refugee claim. Sivanathan told me not to say anything about living in other countries as a refugee. If I had already applied for asylum in another country, I would have to forfeit any claim for asylum in Canada. He said this in Tamil so the officer would not understand him. The statement was similar to what was written in Germany.
The officer took my statement and inserted it into his file along with my illegal passport. He then gave me what was called a refugee status claimant immigration paper. The interpreter explained to me that I would need to go to another immigration office in Montreal within a couple of weeks. The interpreter asked me if I had a place to stay.
“Yes, I am going to live with my friends here in Montreal,” I replied. They noted the address in my file and then wished me all the best and told me I was free to leave.
Suddy had informed his friend about my flight details. When I exited the airport, Suddy’s friend and his roommates were waiting for me outside. With a big smile on my face, I thanked them for meeting me. We went to their apartment.
My new roommates worked in factories and restaurants. After my follow-up meeting at the immigration office in Montreal, I was granted a temporary work permit. I got a job as a sandwich maker. I continued to remind myself of my ultimate goal: to rebuild the life that I had before and see my mother and siblings again.
I heard that Toronto had far greater job opportunities and higher wages than Montreal. My plan was to complete my education first and then get a decent job. I had learned French in France and English in London but decided to continue learning English, since I found it to be much easier than French; I would also need it to build my future. I kept thinking, Should I stay in Montreal or move to Toronto for a couple of weeks? Finally, I moved to Toronto.
I made the mistake of not finding a place to live before I moved — yet another impetuous decision. Once I’d arrived in Toronto, I called a friend of my Montreal roommate, and he allowed me to stay with him for a couple of weeks as I searched for another place to stay. I had only a small bag in my possession and was accustomed to sleeping on the floor, so frequent moves were no big deal. I lived in four different places in two months before settling in an apartment at King Street West and Dowling Avenue, in a neighbourhood called Parkdale. The apartment, which I shared with nine other guys, had one bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom. The rent was cheap when split between ten people. My share was only forty dollars (CAD) per month — what a steal! Five of the guys worked overnight shifts, so only five of us had to sleep in the bedroom at a time. Unlike in Paris, the mattresses were always set out on the floor for sleeping.
I found a job as a dishwasher at a restaurant in Mississauga. After my shift, I would hang out with the chef and waitresses. They would take me to the bars on the weekends; they drank beer while I had soda.
Now that I could hold a steady job, my first priority was to repay the loan to Prabhu’s mother. Within two months, I had saved the twenty thousand rupees and paid back the money she had so generously lent to me. I continued sending money to my mother back home so that she was able to feed the family and keep them alive. Occasionally, I wrote her letters and sent her pictures to give her some sort of assurance that I was doing okay. She would write me back, and the thoughts and news of my family kept me going.
CHAPTER 24
When I moved to Toronto in May of 1986, the civil war in Sri Lanka was still raging. My mother and I exchanged letters frequently. Due to the war, it would take about a month for my letter to arrive in Sri Lanka and another month for me to receive one back. In the seventeen months or so since I’d left Sri Lanka, I hadn’t received any letters from my father, nor had we spoken on the phone. But in June, soon after I moved to Toronto, I received a letter from my father dated May 9, 1986. I was still very angry with him, so I didn’t open it. I did keep it, however.
In July, I received a telegram from my aunt, informing me that my father had been shot and killed by the Sri Lankan military.
Not long after I had arrived in Montreal, I learned that Lathy had left France and attempted to return to Sri Lanka. This had surprised me. He had actually made several attempts to return to Sri Lanka — he wanted to see our family and buy them a new home — but because of the war, he had been unsuccessful. So this time he had decided to try to enter from India.
When my father heard that Lathy was in India, he decided he had to see his eldest son. He arranged with the rebels to smuggle himself across the sea to India via a rebel outpost at Mannar Island, off the northwest coast of Sri Lanka. My father waited there all day, and when night fell, he boarded a small boat and headed across an open stretch of ocean about twenty-five miles wide to Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu, India.
Not long after its departure, the boat was spotted by the Sri Lankan Navy. The boat was ordered to halt, but the captain decided to try to outrun the authorities. The navy vessel opened fire on the boat, and the rebels fired back. More shots were fired. Clearly outgunned, the rebels hastily turned the boat around and roared back to Mannar Island. My father had been shot through the shoulder. When the boat reached shore, the captain and everyone else onboard jumped into the water and ran up the beach. My father, bleeding profusely, was too weak to run away. But he managed to make it to the beach, where he crawled into some deep bush.
The next morning, a priest who was walking along the beach found my father in the bush. The priest dragged my father to the church and hid him there. Medically, there was nothing he could do. The nearest hospital was many miles away and there was no way to get my father there without arousing the suspicion of the authorities. Most of the hospitals had been shut down due to a lack of staff and medical supplies. Some were destroyed in heavy bombing. A few days later, my uncle back home in Chavakachcheri received a note carried by the rebel underground: “Tharmathurai is injured by the navy and he is in Mannar.”
My uncle wrote a message on the back: “Kanna, who is carrying this note, is his son. Please allow him to help his father.”
It was up to my younger brother, Kanna, to travel to Mannar Island and find our father. He was only seventeen at the time and he was terrified. When Kanna found our father, he was in very bad shape. His wound had been wrapped up with a piece of cloth, but the bullet was still inside him. There was no hospital available to treat him. Kanna wanted to take him back to our village, but my father was stub
born. He insisted Kanna take him to India so that he could see Lathy.
How was Kanna supposed to get our wounded father to India by himself? My father had already tried and had been shot! But Kanna managed to make arrangements with the rebels to once again take a boat across the sea to India that night. He carried our half-dead father to the boat and helped him aboard. Miraculously, the boat reached Rameswaram without incident.
My father, however, had lost a lot of blood and there were no facilities in the area equipped to deal with a gunshot wound. The hospital staff said my brother would have to take him via ambulance to Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu, about an hour’s drive away. On the way, my father fell unconscious and lapsed into a coma.
They managed to reach the hospital and Kanna stayed with our father there for seven days. A medical student named Nirmala would hide milk from her breakfast and give it to Kanna, as he had no money for food and nowhere to sleep. He slept by my father’s feet the whole time. A week after arriving, my father died.
Kanna wrote a letter to Lathy informing him of our father’s death, but the letter was returned: no such address.
It is customary in Hindu culture to cremate a body, but Kanna had no money for a cremation. Instead, he asked the hospital to bury my father in a paupers’ cemetery near the hospital.
Kanna will not speak of this even to this day. Everyone in our village remembers my father as Chettiar Tharmathurai. Chettiar is a caste term that dates back ten thousand years in South India. It denotes a businessman of some achievement and distinction.
When I learned this news, I regretted that I had not talked to my father. And I thought of the letter I had received from him but refused to open because of my anger.
CHAPTER 25
I had completed grade ten in 1983 in Sri Lanka, but apart from the language classes I had attended in Europe, I had not been in school for about three years. I was now twenty years old, and although I was worried that I might fail the high-school assessment tests, I decided to give them a try. At Bloor Collegiate Institute in Toronto, I wrote tests for general math and for English as a second language, both in English. Studying English in England helped me comprehend the tests. The math was straightforward, mostly calculations, formulae, and some graphs.
A week later, I received a letter from Bloor Collegiate Institute informing me that I had been accepted into grade twelve. I was thrilled. The education was free for refugee students.
I started my schooling in September 1986. My first class was Grade 12 English Literature. Oh man, that was a tough one. I was baffled, and I didn’t understand a thing. I left the classroom and went to see the counsellor. I asked him to transfer me to grade eleven because I couldn’t keep up. My request was granted.
In 1986, the Canadian immigration system was clearing refugee backlogs and giving landed immigrant or permanent resident status to refugees who had come to Canada before the summer of 1986. I took advantage of that opportunity and applied for permanent residency while going to school and working. Within six months, I had gone for an interview and I received permanent resident status on April 10, 1987.
Things were finally moving in the right direction for me, and I decided it was time to sponsor my family to come to Canada. To sponsor my five immediate family members (my mother, three sisters, and brother), I had to prove that I had an income of at least thirty-one thousand dollars (CAD). At the time, I was making only seven dollars an hour working as a dishwasher and had just started high school. I didn’t want to quit school just so that I could take another job to earn a higher income. Instead, I worked seventy hours a week at the restaurant and went to high school at the same time.
I would wake up at 7:00 a.m. and go to school. School ended at 3:30 p.m., and I would commute to work by 5:00 p.m. I did my homework during my commute. During the week, I would work eight-hour shifts and get home at about 2:00 a.m. On the weekends, I would work fifteen-hour shifts, starting at 10:00 a.m. and finishing at 1:00 a.m. the following morning. With overtime, I managed to meet the required income level — just barely — and sponsored my family on October 5, 1987. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.
I received permanent resident status in Canada on April 10, 1987.
On school days, I skipped lunch and ate at night at the restaurant where I worked. The food was free, which helped me save money for my family’s travel expenses. I would send money to my family back in Sri Lanka when I could.
As excited as I was that my family would eventually be joining me in Canada, I was exhausted. It wasn’t easy working seventy hours a week and maintaining good grades at school. Whenever I felt low or was tempted to give up, which happened a lot, I reminded myself of what I had been through and what I had promised my mother and myself that I would accomplish. I was weak and tired, but thinking about the future made me stronger. Mentally, in fact, I was tougher than I had ever been, and the bouts of depression that had plagued me on and off for most of my life began to fade away.
One day, around three in the morning, I received a call from Sri Lanka. It was my mother. I was ecstatic to hear her voice after so many years. My mother, brother, and three sisters had arrived in Colombo for a medical checkup, a requirement for a Canadian visa.
We talked for about an hour before saying goodbye. She told me that the situation in Sri Lanka had deteriorated badly. Chavakachcheri had become a ghost town. Most of the buildings had been damaged by bombs, and bullet holes could be seen on the walls and doors everywhere. The once-popular market was empty. No one walked the streets. My mother said she would visit neighbours at home and buy vegetables from them. It was not safe being outdoors.
She said young boys and men who had been shot by the army were hung upside down from trees along the streets as a warning to others. Sometimes they were still alive when they were hung upside down with their hands tied behind their back. Dogs would gather in hungry packs under the bodies to lick up the puddles of blood in the street.
Whenever they heard the army trucks on the road, my mother told me, she and my sisters would hide inside a bunker in the backyard of our house. One night they stayed in the bunker all night, surrounded by complete darkness. They were terrified of leaving for even a second. She said that during the night they heard screams coming from a neighbouring house. Fighting then broke out among the soldiers, followed by silence.
The next morning, they crawled out, tired, hungry, and thirsty but unharmed. When my mother went next door, she discovered the neighbour’s young daughters had been raped and murdered by a gang of soldiers. It could so easily have been them.
Two months later, I received another phone call from my mother. She had good news: their Canadian visas had been approved.
They were coming home. To a new and better home.
Monday, July 25, 1988, was one of the happiest days of my life. I had been waiting for this moment for more than three years. That day, one of my work colleagues drove me to the Toronto airport, where we waited for my family’s arrival. First, I spotted my mother walking with my sisters Jance and Vani, holding their hands. Then I saw Kanna and Deicy following behind them, carrying the luggage. I ran to my mother and hugged her. Emotions welled up inside everyone, and we all started to cry. It had been so long since we had seen one another, and it felt so right to be together again. We were all overwhelmed with joy as we left the airport.
In anticipation of their arrival, I had rented a one-bedroom apartment in Scarborough. Most of my earnings went to pay the rent, so I had very little money left over to feed the six of us. Since I had sponsored my family, we couldn’t seek help from the government. Because we couldn’t afford to buy beds, we slept with comforters on the floor. My mother and sisters slept in the bedroom, and Kanna and I slept in the living room. I bought a dining table and four chairs from the Salvation Army store — three subway trips saved the delivery fees. We went to a Goodwill store and picked up some clothes to keep us warm during the winter.
Half a year later, my mother and my bro
ther found jobs in a factory, which helped to cover the expenses. My sisters, aged twelve, sixteen, and eighteen, were going to school. During the day, I worked as a computer operator for a company in Scarborough, and at night I went to Centennial College to study computer programming. Slowly, life started to get better and better, day by day. I no longer had to worry about my family getting killed back home, nor about living as a fugitive. I began to forget the past and started looking forward to the future.
CHAPTER 26
Although my family was safe now in Canada, it was still hard for me to accept the fact that my father was dead. Many months after he was murdered, I finally brought myself to open his letter. The case he refers to in the letter involved Lathy. When my brother travelled to India from France, he carried with him a rather large sum of money, which was seized by customs officials at the airport. In order to have the money returned, Lathy was required to petition the court.
9-5-86
Dear son Rajan:
Your dear Aiya [father] is fine. I am curious about you?
Amma [mother], Kanna, Deicy, Kala, Jance, Vani, Sumathi, and Sharmilee are very fine.
Anna [Lathy] is in Madras [India] and sends some things via Pappa [Suddy’s younger brother]: two sarees, five dresses and other things.
Once his case is over, they will return the money. He may come here otherwise he may go back to France. I prayed to the goddess Sri Meenakshi Amman. Once he wins, I promised to do the Abhishekam to goddess Sri Meenakshi Amman [Hindu ritual of thanks].
If Anna comes back, the lenders will be after us. Therefore, he needs to live here secretly.
Pappa came here on a boat. I lost my identity card. Without having a job, I am going crazy at home. Ask Indiran uncle [father’s brother] to open a shop for me. He is delaying it. I believe he refuses to help me. Perhaps, if Anna comes here, I am hoping to open a shop. Otherwise, I am going to go outside the country.
The Sadness of Geography Page 16
