The Boat People

by Sharon Bala

  Priya felt nothing, an empty void where pity should have been. Her clients had sapped all of it. She had nothing left for a man she did not know.

  Hey! Rat called. You two layabouts!

  Uncle waved the camera at them. Group photo!

  Priya’s father patted her shoulder and stood. Come, he said. It’s Christmas. Enough of this sad-sad talk.

  Mothballs

  Priya had an idea. Ma’s saris, she told her father. I’ll never wear all of them. She thought, as she made the suggestion, that he might say no. To this day, Ma’s toothbrush was still in the bathroom. But her father agreed, and Uncle, overhearing, offered to help.

  Ma’s almirah stood beside the window, in a shadowed corner of her parents’ bedroom. Photos of Priya and her brother were stuck to the inside of the door – old three-by-fives with rounded edges, so washed out with age they were almost sepia.

  Inside, the almirah smelled of mothballs and talcum powder, Yardley’s English lavender. Clothes were neatly folded and stacked, quality formal saris on the bottom, everyday things on the top two shelves. There was a drawer full of pashminas and another for sari blouses.

  Priya stood, almirah doors wide open, drawers pulled out, undecided for a moment. She touched the pendant at her neck and that made her think of Savitri.

  One of our clients, Priya said. They took her thali away and claimed it was some kind of LTTE symbol.

  Uncle snorted. What foolishness! Then, seeing her hesitate, he added, You don’t have to do this. Or take any decisions now.

  But Ma would have said, Keep all these clothes – what for? So Priya slid her arms under a stack of saris and carried them to the bed. They were the casual ones, nylon and polyester, slippery fabrics that refused to remain in neat piles.

  Ma would want someone to wear these, she said. Hema and the girls should get some, and the Tamil Alliance can have the rest. She regretted not having done this sooner. Why was she hoarding a dead woman’s clothes?

  The formal saris were easier to carry. Starched and ironed after every use, they lay obedient, flat in her arms. These saris were familiar to Priya, yards of hand-loomed silk in rich, outrageous colours, the embroidery so elaborate it dazzled.

  She chose six good-quality saris for Hema, Tara, and Padmini and decided she would keep the rest of the formal ones. It was too difficult to part with these memories – the pink faux-crepe Ma had worn on her fiftieth birthday, a peacock blue chiffon Priya had always loved, with diaphanous fabric that veiled the midsection and a heavy pallu with intricate resham embroidery.

  The casual ones were easier to give away. These were things Ma wore years ago, before she’d swapped saris for slacks and sweaters. Machine-made with simple patterns, most were unfamiliar. She recognized only one – olive green jacquard under magenta paisley, a garish thing Priya had always hated. Seeing it now made her nostalgic. She had a deep, overwhelming need to hug her mother again.

  I’ll just keep this one, she said, carrying it back to the almirah. The rest we can donate. What were you and Hema talking about on the walk home?

  If she dwelt too much on Ma, the day would be ruined.

  Fishermen, Uncle said. You remember those fellows on the poles?

  The family had gone back to Sri Lanka on holiday a couple of times, to Colombo and the tea estates in Up Country, places unlikely to be bombed, during intervals when the situation with the LTTE was relatively quiet. In the south, they’d stayed at a beach resort where Priya watched the stilt fishermen. Bare-chested, in sarongs, they balanced on long wooden poles, waiting for fish to jerk at their rods.

  Do you ever miss Sri Lanka? she asked. Since coming to Canada, Uncle had never gone back.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, one knee angled up on the comforter, and watched her match blouses with saris. He said, Some things I miss. Others I don’t. What I wouldn’t give to taste a proper mangosteen again. But the troubles…

  When her father was dreaming of being a lumberjack and filling out paperwork at the embassy, where was Uncle? Priya knew the details of her parents’ emigration, how they’d scraped together the points and applied to several countries just in case, then waited to touch down before starting a family, ensuring their children’s citizenship was a birthright. But Uncle’s history was fuzzier. He’d arrived by way of Madras, where he’d been studying or working. Before that, he was in Jaffna, taking care of Priya’s grandparents. But at some point, he must have lived in the capital too.

  Uncle, were you in Colombo during the ’83 riots?

  The curfews and strikes, he said. The problems with the JVP. Shook! The JVP! You know about that?

  The Communist insurrection in the south, she said. I know. But what about in ’83?

  He didn’t answer, and Priya forced herself to be patient, using silence, as Gigovaz had taught her, to draw the story out.

  Why are you bringing this up now? He grimaced and shook his head. These are old-old stories.

  She could see his mind turning, going back over the terrain of whatever had happened, and that under the surface he was getting worked up. Priya fought her unease, the urge to change the subject and give them both an out. There was something going on here – she had not imagined it.

  Finally, Uncle said: I was working at the Ceylon Bank, had just been promoted to assistant manager. I was never a strong student, not like your father. Our teachers would say Raja has the brains and Romesh has the charm. But work was easy – half the job was charming people.

  Priya laughed. It was a long-standing joke that Uncle couldn’t buy a paper at the shop without making a new friend. He wasn’t gregarious, but he was a good listener and an unselfconscious joiner.

  I was happy in those days, Uncle said. I was helping my parents, setting money aside, going to films and on holidays with friends. Once, a big group of us, boys and girls all, we hired a van and took it on safari in Yala. We were so busy watching for a leopard – I was hanging out the window trying to snap a good picture – we didn’t notice the elephant until it was almost on top of us!

  Uncle sighed. You know, Priya, we really were innocents. I could never have predicted what happened, even though there were signs. Big talk about the Buddhist nation, Sinhalese supremacy. They had changed the country’s name. Made Sinhala the official language. But I thought, what of it? Of course there were quotas, limited places at the universities, in the civil service, what we would now call discrimination. We knew that as Tamils we had to work twice as hard. But the thing is, I could. I spoke all three languages. I had a good job, and so did my Appa. We were middle-class, not rich but very comfortable. There was no reason to think this would ever change. The riots in the fifties, the JVP, strikes and curfews – troubles were a part of life. In these situations, when the temperature is turning up, turning up, slowly, slowly, you never think you will be affected, not directly.

  So he was there. Priya carried a pile of saris to the almirah, keeping her back to him. If she didn’t force him to meet her eye, to acknowledge her presence, maybe he would keep reminiscing.

  Behind her, the bed shifted and for a moment Priya thought he would get up and leave.

  Instead, he continued: I was coming home from office. From the bus, we could see fellows were fighting. They were coming on and demanding to know who was Tamil. The girls at least could cover their heads and pretend to be Muslim. But the rest of us – God help you if your Sinhala was poor, if someone knew you had a Tamil name.

  Priya could picture it. The bus crowded with people, heaving and close in the thick July humidity. A woman with her shopping, fish in a dangling plastic bag. A schoolchild in uniform, his father in a sarong and rubber slippers. The angry young men climbing the stairs at the front, sleeves folded up, forearms bared. Everyone shifting uncomfortably under their scrutiny, wondering who on the daily commute was going to turn them in.

  My Sinhala was good. When they asked my name, I said I was Rupert Lakmanarachi. He was a Sinhalese friend from the office, first name that came to mi
nd. They didn’t ask for papers, thank God. I got down and took the lanes behind the buildings to Wellawatta. You know Wellawatta? he asked.

  Little Jaffna, she said.

  All the fellows had run away, Uncle said, flicking his hand in the air. Just left their kades and stalls and gone. The Sinhalese – young guys, they would have been my age – were looting, throwing rocks through windows. The doors weren’t even locked. Mobs of thugs were arriving by train, getting down at every lane. Understand, this whole thing was organized. These godayas from the countryside, who had never met a Tamil before and only knew to hate us, they were being brought in on purpose.

  But what about the police? she asked.

  Oh, the army soldiers were there, Uncle said. Just looking up and waiting, cheering the devils on. All of Colombo was burning. I was thinking only of Amma and Appa and rushing to get home.

  Outside, the unploughed street was indistinguishable from the sidewalks – the whole of it buried under ten inches of unlikely snow. The neighbours were out, taking advantage of the last of the dying daylight. Priya heard shovels scrape against sidewalks, everyone calling Merry Christmas to each other.

  She imagined Uncle hurrying through side streets, dodging stray dogs and rubbish piles and erratic trishaw drivers, checking left and right before emerging onto a main road. How did you get home without getting caught up in it, the mayhem? she asked.

  I played along. A few times, passing the goons, I yelled, Sinhala first! Sri Lanka for the Sinhalese! This kind of nonsense.

  Priya had never heard Uncle speak Sinhala before. From his mouth, the language was contemptuous, dripping with sarcasm. When he translated, she was surprised to find the English words almost harmless.

  He continued: There was a petrol shed at the top of our road. They were giving fuel to the thugs. I got hold of a tire iron and cheered them on. Then I ran like a devil, fast as I could, to the house, waving the tire iron like a bloody maniac. Our neighbours refused to hide us. Would you believe it? For how many years did we know the Pereras? I’m telling you, the Sinhalese are friendly, but only to a point.

  Priya didn’t think this was necessarily true. Prasad had told her how often his Sinhalese colleagues protected him, how, when he was kidnapped, they’d paid the ransom and smuggled him out of Colombo. But she just played with the edge of a crochet wrap, rubbing a loop of lace.

  We put all the valuables into a box, Uncle said. Amma’s gold, all the money, car keys. We closed the shutters, locked the doors, and waited. It must have been hours. All the time, we could hear the looters getting closer. My God. It was so hot with the shutters closed. You know what is worse than violence?

  Six months ago, she would not have been able to answer. But now she said: Waiting.

  Uncle said, There were many moments when I wished I had already been killed, that it was finished. I still had the tire iron. I thought I could use it. Make it to be over.

  This was a man she did not know. She idled by the window, rubbing a finger along the line of dust on a venetian blind, then tugged on the string to make the slats fly up.

  We off-ed the lights, Uncle said. We had just a hurricane lamp on the floor, and we sat and waited. We heard helicopters and gunshots, big noise. Finally, they came for us. I could hear them calling from down the road. Kottiya, kottiya. You know this word?

  Tiger, tiger, Priya said. She could imagine it, the young men with jerry cans and tire irons, voices soft and taunting.

  Kottiya, kottiya, Uncle said. I made Amma and Appa hide under the bed. Amma was crying. In ’58, they cut women’s ears off. That was considered having a near miss. I went quickly to the front gate. There were three men and they had galkatas, homemade shotguns. The ringleader was a boy I had tutored in maths. Fellow by the name of Suresh. Elder brother was my batchmate at St. Thomas’s. Amma used to make us onion bhaji after school. I gave them the car keys, jewellery, money, everything. Some of the neighbours were standing at the windows and watching. The De Silvas. The Wickremasinghes. As if it was a tele-drama!

  Priya wrapped her arms around herself and leaned a temple against the ice-cold window. Down below, Rat had both hands on the wide handle of a shovel, forcing it down the walk, snow gathering into the giant scoop as he pushed. Across the street, Mrs. Nowak raised a mittened hand and waved at him. Later, she would bring over a plate of amaretti and they would reciprocate with some of Priya’s gingerbread.

  I saw that Suresh did not want to know me, so I played along, Uncle said. If my father had been there, he would have said, Good evening, Suresh. How are your Amma and Thatha, are they well? Maybe he had even tried to pass by our house, but one of the other boys had the list. I could see it. Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslims, Burghers. We all lived side by side. But they knew which houses to torch and which ones to leave alone. Kandasamy – my old school chum – his house was on fire. Later, I came to learn they had burned him inside. Meanwhile, that fool De Silva was standing in the window with his mouth gaping. One thing we did not hear that night: no ambulances, not a single siren.

  I told them I was the only one home, Uncle said. One of the boys tried to push me aside. He said, Let us see for ourselves. He was filthy, big sweat stains. I don’t think he even realized he was covered in blood. It was very hot that night.

  The cast-iron radiators clicked to life. Tick. Tick. Tick. The street lamps had come on. Christmas lights winked. Windows glowed warm, each one a tableau of happiness. Decorated evergreens, families playing charades. The snow made the street brighter.

  I remember looking Suresh in the eyes and saying, I am alone here. The third boy was counting the rupees. He said, Come, let us see. He might have a pretty sister or a wife. I thought of your Amma then. Do you know, I was angry at your father when he left.

  Priya turned to face him. You were?

  I thought, if all the Tamils run away like rats, we’ll only be giving the Sinhalese exactly what they want.

  Uncle clenched and unclenched his fists, as if flexing for a fight, and Priya had an inkling like a shiver down her spine. For months, she had heard nothing but horrors – Ranga having his leg treated without anaesthetic, Savitri running zigzags in the jungle with her son on her back. Had the inoculation prepared her? Uncle stared into the middle distance, seeing something that wasn’t her. Something that happened long ago and far away. Priya readied herself for the story, whatever it was.

  Uncle’s eyes unfocused and he shrugged. The thugs continued on, he said. And next day, three of us got on a cargo ship and went to Jaffna. I never saw Colombo again.

  Priya had known they had moved north. But she hadn’t known it had been like this, in a panic.

  That was their plan, you know, Uncle said. The government. They wanted us to leave the capital. They were the ones who arranged for the boat. They wanted all the Tamils in one small corner, trapped like animals.

  Priya was confused. She had expected something else. This seemed anticlimactic. What is wrong with me? she wondered. Refugee law had made her morbid.

  After we left, who took our jobs? Uncle asked. Who came to stay in our houses?

  What do you mean?

  Priya, what do you think happens when you terrorize a people, force them to flee, take away their options, then put them in a cage all together? Will they not try and break down the bars?

  Okay. Yes.

  He said, It is very convenient, no? These labels. Terrorist.

  A pleasant smell wafted up from the kitchen, browning turkey, the skin starting to crackle and crust. Downstairs, Rat slammed the front door shut and stomped his boots on the mat. Water gushed out of the tap. Someone rummaged in the pots and pans cupboard.

  You think the Sri Lankan government planned to turn the Tamils into Tigers? Priya asked. They wanted the LTTE to form?

  Uncle stood up and Priya knew that now the story really was over. These buggers are all terrorists, he said. Only the innocent suffer.

  Enemy aliens

  The twins sat at the dining table surrounded by binder
s and pencil cases, their noses buried in books. Grace caught a glimpse of one of the covers and frowned. A blue-green dust jacket with a title in a garish orange font. The Enemy That Never Was. Thumbing through, she found reprinted photographs of pre-war Vancouver. A tram on Powell; the Japanese Language School with its windows open; children playing double dutch, a girl mid-jump, hair and skirt flying. There was a silence in these images. The muted past in black and white, waiting for the future to impose its own interpretation.

  What’s all this?

  Brianne tapped the side of her nose with one slow finger, a gesture she had picked up from Kumi, and said, We’re following our noses.

  She was slipping photocopies of old wartime notices into clear plastic sleeves. Under British Columbia’s emblazoned crest, bilingual headlines screamed: NOTICE TO MALE ENEMY ALIENS. TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE RACIAL ORIGIN. Grace grimaced as she read them.

  Gran says they had to put these in the windows of the laundromat, Brianne said. She wiggled her fingers as if casting a spell. Ooooo…the yellow fear!

  Don’t say that! Grace snapped.

  Mumsie, Brianne said, wide eyes aggrieved. I’m only being sarcastic.

  It’s an ugly thing to say, Grace said, her initial shock turning to dismay.

  The girls exchanged a glance and Grace read its unsaid meaning. She knew she was being irrational and had been for weeks. She was enveloped in a gloom she couldn’t understand, a churning, unspecified angst upending her usual equanimity. She’d been looking forward to the holidays, baking and family cheer, a break from war stories. And instead, she’d spent Christmas weekend in a funk, which she passed off as illness, too heavy-limbed to change out of pyjamas most days.

  The night before, the whole family – even Kumi – had gone to see a holiday comedy and Grace had stayed behind, wandering the rooms aimlessly. She’d sat on her mother’s bed, surrounded by Kumi’s things – the hand-me-down furniture, the framed photos on the wall – and sobbed for no reason, the flowered counterpane clutched tight in her fist.