The Boat People

by Sharon Bala

  The moustached man had a clipboard and a fat yellow folder.

  Sam Nadarajah, he said, introducing himself to Priya. I’m with the Tamil Alliance.

  Gigovaz waved a hand in Priya’s direction. This is my articling student.

  Priya Rajasekaran, she said quickly, before Gigovaz could butcher her name. She didn’t like the way he’d said my articling student.

  An officer came out of the tent, herding a group of Sri Lankan men. Gigovaz, Sam, and Priya quickly stepped out of their way.

  This can’t be only three hundred people, Gigovaz said.

  Sam put his clipboard between his legs and tried to open his folder. His pen fell down. He said, There are more than we expected.

  Priya picked up his pen and handed it to him.

  Romba nandri, he said, thanking her in Tamil, and Priya heard how soft his accent was at the edges.

  No problem, she said in English.

  Right now, it seems closer to four hundred, he told Gigovaz. Maybe five. We knew the size of the boat and we thought three hundred maximum. No one was prepared for this many.

  Have you chosen my clients? Gigovaz said. Has Immigration taken their statements?

  Medical checks, processing, statements, it is all in progress. No way to know…might take some time. Sam glanced at Priya, then added: There are not enough translators and it’s holding everything up. Can you, maybe –

  Gigovaz was already scrolling through his texts. That’s fine, he said. I’ll try to get a few things done in the meantime. Where do you need her?

  The main medical tent, Sam said. There is only one nurse who speaks Tamil.

  Priya opened her mouth.

  It’ll be hours before we meet our clients, Gigovaz said, still focused on his phone. You may as well be useful.

  Priya’s face felt hot. But I –

  Come, Sam said. I’ll introduce you. It’ll be a huge relief for them.

  Wait! Priya’s voice came out high and strangled. I can’t, she said. I don’t speak Tamil.

  Gigovaz looked up. What?

  I’m sorry.

  I thought you were Tamil, Gigovaz said.

  I know a few phrases here and there, Priya said. But I can’t translate. I can’t carry on a conversation.

  Both men stared at her.

  You never asked, she said, wincing at the whine in her voice.

  Gigovaz let out a breath of frustration. How are we supposed to communicate with our clients?

  I thought there would be an interpreter, Priya said. This is not my fault, she thought.

  Sam said, Okay. No problem. We have some people from the Tamil Alliance on their way. I’ll assign one of them to you.

  Someone called to Sam and he shook their hands quickly. I’ll text you, he told Gigovaz. Nice to meet you, Priya.

  I’m glad we’re working together, she said in Tamil. She felt the unfamiliar sounds mangle up in her mouth and was embarrassed. She should have just said goodbye in English.

  While her back was turned, Gigovaz had walked away and she had to race after him again.

  A good place

  There was a tall chain-link fence, barbed wire coiled on top. Two guards hauled back the doors to reveal a sprawling prison complex dominated by an eight-storey building with blue-tinted windows. Mahindan was relieved when they drove around back and stopped at a smaller, friendlier-looking construction.

  He shuffled off the bus with the others and waited as the cuffs around their wrists and ankles were removed. The man with the keys refused to meet his eyes. The building they were led into appeared inflated, a giant bubble that had ballooned out of the ground. Inside, it was all right angles and precise geometry. He blinked several times in the blinding whiteness. Everything gleamed, even the floor.

  It reminded Mahindan of the space station in an old Stanley Kubrick film he had taken Chithra to see before they were married. They had watched, tense in the darkness, as the villainous computer on a spaceship came to life. At the crucial moment, when an astronaut was set adrift, a man sitting behind them thrashed his legs out, flinging Chithra forward in her seat, and she had screamed in shock. The man flailed and foamed, and they’d had to stop the film while someone shoved a set of keys into his mouth. Mahindan and Chithra had boarded the return bus home without seeing the ending.

  Can this really be a jail? Ranga asked, and Mahindan did not reply. He walked a little closer to the newspaperman, who was ahead of him.

  They were marched single file down a long hallway of doors. Through the rectangular window set in each one, Mahindan caught glimpses of bunk beds and sinks. Fluorescent lights hung suspended in elongated tubes, a series of horizontal lines passing above their heads.

  He wondered what the women’s prison was like and worried about how Sellian was coping on his own. For nine months they had been inseparable, ever since the United Nations trucks rolled out and everyone had fled Kilinochchi. Now, Mahindan’s hand felt oddly empty at his side.

  The men were taken to the bathroom, where they washed in groups. When it was Mahindan’s turn, he stripped, unbuttoning his shirt and tugging at his waistband so that trousers and underpants both came off in a single yank. It had been months since he’d changed his clothes. Removing them felt like peeling away a filthy layer of skin. The stink wafted up, damp and fungal.

  Standing naked, he felt exposed but also relieved. Now, in such close proximity to a bath, he was very aware of grime in all the creases of his body – lodged in his ears, under his fingernails, in the crack of his buttocks. When he rubbed his arms, tiny balls of grit formed on his fingertips, months of dried sweat and dust mingling up.

  The guard pointed to a garbage bin. Mahindan threw his clothes in, shoes and all. The sandals sank down out of sight. He hoped they would be burned.

  He was given a towel and a cube of soap and padded barefoot with eleven others into a tiled open room. The floor was wet. There were big dials at chest height and hooks for their towels, but when Mahindan squatted, he didn’t see a bucket or a tap.

  The water comes from the ceiling, the newspaperman called from the other side of the room. They were all facing the wall, bare backs to each other. Mahindan saw a spout high up, far above his head. He couldn’t understand the mechanics of this Canadian bathroom.

  Turn the dial, the newspaperman yelled. Mahindan heard rain and swivelled to see the newspaperman standing under a waterfall, rubbing the bar of soap briskly under his arms as if he had done this many times before.

  Mahindan stood to the side and cautiously turned the dial. Water burst out of the tap. He put a hand under the spray and felt it was warm.

  Stand underneath, the newspaperman urged them.

  Mahindan saw the others following his advice and did the same, holding his breath as he stepped under the falling water. It pelted him hard. He swallowed back a yelp. All he could hear now was the loud gushing, hostile and unpleasant.

  He rubbed the soap into his skin, working up a lather of small bubbles, months of blood and war all sloughing off in a black river running to the drain in the centre of the room. Sri Lankan horrors washing away in Canadian waters, disappearing down Canadian drains.

  He worked the soap into his hair, suds dripping off his beard. The guard called something out and the newspaperman’s voice came to him watery, and far away.

  Quickly, quickly, he said. There are others waiting.

  Mahindan stood on one foot to clean between his toes. He rubbed the soap back and forth across his fingernails. It was difficult to manoeuvre all of this with his eyes closed, the water lashing him. He thought of the buckets on the boat, of the luxury of clean water that sprayed out effortless. Already he felt the superiority of this new country, with its disagreeable standing body wash.

  They marched, towels around waists, into the change room. Mahindan exalted in the feeling of being inside his own skin, scrubbed smooth and several shades lighter. They took turns standing beside a ruler on the wall and putting their feet into a metal contraption.
A uniformed guard passed them each a package through a window: grey trousers, a green sweater, and running shoes.

  Mahindan marvelled at the laces, at their clean white length, the clear tubes of plastic at each end. He pulled back the tongue and slid a foot in. It felt snug and warm. He laced up the sneakers, checked the label on the back, and was surprised to find they were not made by Bata.

  He had never worn such shoes and wondered if Sellian was being given something similar, if he had taken this strange standing body wash too, if it had frightened him, if he had cried. He had misgivings about Kumuran’s wife, about how she would treat the boy. The memory of Sellian hiccupping back tears formed a knot in his chest. But Sellian and her son were friendly, he told himself. And anyway, it was temporary. Like sending the boy to boarding school.

  Boarding school, he repeated to himself. Did parents worry all day long when their children went to boarding school? No, they did not.

  The guard signalled and they turned in unison, all of them seeing one another at the same time. Twelve men in identical uniforms, beards dripping, wet hair pasted to their foreheads.

  The room erupted in laughter. Mahindan bent double, racked with the convulsions. After everything – the baby wailing at her dead mother’s breast, the shredded tent, the days at sea – here they were. In a country with indoor rain and matching green sweaters. He straightened, clutching one side, and saw the guard staring at them, bewildered.

  They returned to the long corridor, rubber soles squeaking against linoleum, pausing at every room while the guard motioned three people inside. Some of the men still chuckled to themselves. Mahindan rubbed the fabric of his sweater. He felt his arm inside the sleeve, the soft cotton against his skin. I am not an animal, he thought. And for the first time in a long time, it felt like the truth.

  He was assigned to a cell with Ranga and the newspaperman. There were three narrow metal beds – one bunk bed and a single – with grey blankets and white pillows. The walls were concrete.

  They chose beds wordlessly, Mahindan climbing to the upper bunk and falling in sideways. His legs hummed with relief and exhaustion. He felt the soreness in his feet. His whole body gave way, abandoning itself completely to the bed. The door suctioned closed.

  The cell was open at the top like the stall in a public toilet. Mahindan gazed at the pneumatic tubes over his bed until his vision grew unfocused. He heard the muffled sounds of the line trooping on, his roommates moving in their beds, the rustle of sheets, the joints of the bunk creaking. It was the creak of the ship, the rustle of palm fronds overhead. A coconut fell to the ground, and Mahindan was asleep.

  —

  The tent shook. Mahindan trembled. He opened his eyes and a hand was on the ball of his shoulder.

  Some lawyers have come, Ranga said.

  Mahindan sat up quickly. Sellian! There would be news. He and his roommates followed the guard. They walked single file, Mahindan at the end, behind a limping Ranga.

  Mahindan tried to recall his dreams. He saw images that were more like vague feelings and was surprised to recognize some as pleasant. He recalled embroidered blue silk, deep purple threads, the feminine scent of sandalwood.

  There was a sign overhead, black with red lettering. Mahindan examined the exotic characters, all squared off and linear. This was Canada – clean with straight lines. A promising country to make a new start.

  He was sorry to have been assigned to a room with Ranga, this barnacle who had latched on from the first and refused to be shaken off. But surely this was temporary. Only for a little while, the nurse had said. Good thing was, the newspaperman spoke English. Mahindan could pick up some words from him. Learn English, get a job, find a small place to live.

  Sellian was a bright boy. They would teach him English in school, and in the evenings they could practise together. Mahindan reached out instinctively, but there was no small hand to hold.

  They were approaching a trio – a big white man and two ladies with dark skin. The lawyers. Hope buoyed his spirits. They would know about Sellian.

  One of the ladies spoke. Her Tamil was fluent and unaccented. She was the interpreter, a member of the Tamil Alliance. There were thousands of Tamils in Canada, she told them. Hundreds of thousands. So many Tamils, they had their own organization to represent them. What luck, Mahindan thought. He would have taken a one-way ticket to anywhere, anywhere at all, just to get out of that godforsaken country, but now, to find they had come to a place so full of their own, this was good fortune indeed.

  The interpreter explained that Canada had known about the ship and had been expecting them for weeks. Their arrival had been foretold. To Mahindan, it felt auspicious. A deity paving the way, all these unknown Tamils coming to their aid in a foreign land.

  The newspaperman introduced himself as Prasad. This was all planned? he asked. With the people in Sri Lanka who arranged our passage?

  No, she said. The government had seen the ship with its satellite systems.

  For what do we need lawyers? Ranga asked. He sat apart from the group, angled to the door as if ready to bolt.

  This is the thing, the interpreter said. As far as the law is concerned, you have no status. To stay here, you must first become a refugee, and this is a little complicated.

  But we’re refugees, no? Ranga asked. Otherwise, what else?

  What did these people think? Mahindan wondered. They had got on a rickety ship and nearly killed themselves crossing the ocean for a holiday?

  The interpreter said it was all very complex, to do with legal definitions and bureaucracy. But not to worry, because the Tamil Alliance had hired lawyers to sort everything out. Mahindan saw Prasad nodding and this made him feel a little better. Of course there would be forms to fill. The Canadians must have their own special procedures. Good thing they had lawyers to help them navigate the formalities.

  The big man was in charge. Mahindan could tell by the comfortable way he sat, legs spread out. He had uncombed, wispy grey hair that stuck out in all directions and two days of stubble.

  The other lawyer was younger, in her late twenties, he guessed. She sat upright and at attention, as if at any moment she might be called on to perform some complicated action. When they had first sat down, she had written something at the top of her pad and then kept her pen in her hand, poised with the point leaking a stain of ink on the paper. Mahindan was disappointed not to see familiar Tamil script.

  He asked about Sellian, then watched the two ladies confer with each other, saw how their hand gestures matched the big man’s, heard the way their voices sounded like those of the guards, the officers who had boarded the ship. They had dark skin and hair. The interpreter had a gold stud in the side of her right nostril. The lawyer wore the pendant of a thali close against her throat. They looked Tamil but carried themselves like Canadians.

  This would be Sellian, Mahindan thought, a Tamil and also a Canadian. He would wear clothes like these and move through this world with ease, and Canada would be his country.

  The women’s prison is not far, the interpreter said. I will arrange a visit.

  He doesn’t like to be away from me, Mahindan said. He gets very scared.

  He thought of Kumuran’s wife, the hatred in her eyes. All those weeks on the ship, their boys sometimes playing together, and not once had they spoken. Would she avenge herself on his son, would she mistreat him?

  This woman who is taking care of him, Mahindan said. She is a stranger to him.

  He’s being watched by a Mrs. Savitri Kumuran? the interpreter said.

  Mahindan blinked and sat back. No, her name…

  The interpreter conferred with the lawyers while Mahindan, bewildered, tried to square what he knew with what had been said.

  Yes, the interpreter said. It is Mrs. Kumuran. Good news is, you both have the same lawyers. We are going to meet her next. Listen. This is not Sri Lanka. I promise you, the boy is safe. Already, he will have been given food and a wash. About your son, she said, bobbling he
r head from side to side, there is nothing to worry.

  Something about the way she said this and the certainty on her face made him believe her. This is Canada, he thought. Never mind about the woman. I can trust Canada.

  How long are we to stay in jail? Ranga asked, and his hand briefly rose to touch the scar on his cheek.

  When Mr. Gigovaz answered in English, he addressed them all equally, speaking with hands and mouth both.

  The first step was to prove their identity. The government would inspect their documents. There were many forms to fill. There would be a review to decide if they could leave jail, then a hearing to determine if they could ask for refugee status. And then another hearing to see if they would be given refugee status. It was a process, and the process would take time. No one could say how long.

  Can my son not stay here? Mahindan asked. He’s still small…only six.

  You must be patient, Mr. Gigovaz said. Women and children will be given priority.

  It all sounded convoluted and exhausting. Mahindan could not understand the difference between one hearing and the next. The whole time they were running in Sri Lanka, then later in the detention camp, all of his efforts had been focused on staying alive and getting out. He had not given much thought to what would happen after the boat docked, had only a vague notion that they would disembark and be free to go on their way. Now, it seemed, arriving was just the beginning. His optimism dimmed at the prospect of another long journey ahead.

  The interpreter must have sensed the deflation in the room. Try not to worry, she said. You have come to a good place. There is room for you here.

  Negotiations

  April 2002

  Race! Chithra yelled, and they rose off their seats, speeding down the dusty red lane. Mahindan slowed to veer around a dog and Chithra overtook him, the bells on her anklets tinkling.

  The April sky was cerulean, the paddy fields lush and green. Elephants plodded in the distance.

  Mahindan caught up with her at the reservoir. A herd of water buffalo cooled themselves in the shallows, plunked down among the weeds, water lapping at their flanks.