by Sharon Bala
An affront
Ranga insisted it was a lost cause. Deportation imminent. Nothing left to do.
He is giving up too easily, Mahindan told Prasad over the telephone. He says they will send him to his death.
Sam says there are options, Prasad said. There is still time.
The phone was mounted to the wall. Through the window, Mahindan saw the slim strip of grass where they took their daily exercise. There was a tall wooden pole carved with creatures Mahindan had never seen in Sri Lanka, fantastical beasts with long bills and giant wings. Prasad had told him once what this thing was called, but Mahindan could never remember the English word and there was no Tamil translation. Sellian would know. He would have learned the word in school. This and other Canadian things.
What is it like out there? Mahindan wanted to ask. He wished he could switch places with Prasad, be barefoot in Sam’s house, open the window and feel the fresh air, and know that after this phone call he could go for a walk. Breathe in the wet Vancouver air and stroll down the streets, anonymous, with all the other Canadians. With Sellian.
Sometimes it overwhelmed him, this yearning for his son. The shower room was the only place he could surrender to his despair, away from the guards. He stood under the piercing spray, water pouring over his face, camouflaging his tears, his frustration at being trapped, the growing dread he’d made an irreparable mistake, his homesickness and grief for every single person he had ever known and loved, the pain of the water raining down like a thousand knives, all of it mixing together. It was the best time of the day, when he let loose his emotions, face contorting under the rain, his sobs drowned out by the rush, the wails of other men. One by one, the taps would turn off and, wet feet sloshing through the puddled tiles, they would pad into the changing room to towel off and dress, avoiding each other’s eyes, each man pretending he was alone.
All is not lost, Prasad said on the phone. Sam and I will come and see you both tomorrow. How is Ranga?
What do you expect? He is depressed.
Stay with him, Prasad said. Keep an eye.
Mahindan was annoyed by the English expression. Who was the man to him? Mahindan didn’t even know his name. And like a fool, he’d gone and got himself involved with this hopeless stranger.
Back in their cell, he repeated what Prasad had said. But Ranga said no. His chance was finished.
So you will go back? Mahindan asked. Just like that?
They have taken a decision, Ranga said. It has gone beyond my limit.
How to help a man who refused to help himself? Mahindan wanted to shake and slap Ranga. All this way you have come, he said. Only to give up?
What would you have me do? Shall I tell them the truth?
A shiver of fear made Mahindan tremble. Tell them you were forced to join, he said. Say it was against your will.
Doesn’t matter what I say. They won’t believe me.
Mahindan turned away, reassured and frustrated by Ranga’s inaction. Anger was easier than guilt.
—
Word spread quickly and by afternoon it was all anyone could talk about.
How did this happen? someone asked Mahindan.
It was the hour for exercise, a dismal grey day, all the colour sucked out of the world. There was a fine mist in the air, gradually settling, rather than falling, over everything. By the time they returned inside, their shoes and socks would be soaked. But it had been like this for days, and still it was better than being locked up indoors, so there they all were, hair pasted to wet foreheads, trying to make out the mountains through the fog.
Normally, Mahindan would be strolling alone along the fence, his fingers poking through the chain links, grazing free air. He liked to repeat English words he had learned. Or listen to the English CD as he walked, repeating sentences under his breath. But today, a crowd gathered around him.
Ranga had some bad connections?
LTTE. That is what I heard.
A man with a beard sucked at his teeth and said, Ah-nay, shame.
How did they find this, how do they know?
They pelted him with speculation, greedy for information. He knew what they were really asking: How can I stop this bad fortune from falling on my head? No one dared ask Ranga directly. He was holed away in their cell and everyone gave him a wide berth, afraid to come too close in case his misfortune was contagious.
I do not think it is true, Mahindan said. About the LTTE.
But then he must go back, someone said. And demand a…what is it called, this thing?
An appeal, someone else said, using the English word.
The word appeal spread in a murmur through the group. If it happened to Ranga, it could happen to any of them. If it happened to one of them, it was less likely to happen to the others. Sympathy and relief. The unarticulated hope that one sacrificial lamb would suffice.
Mahindan was jittery. Ranga was a bomb that might at any second detonate. What would you have me do? He tried to tell himself it made no difference and reminded himself of Ranga’s own words. Doesn’t matter what I say. They won’t believe me. He wondered about Kumuran’s wife and the others who had thrown their documents. All were already freed from prison. Had they heard about Ranga? Were they grateful about taking their decision? Was there any reason at all for them to point fingers? And if they did…
Mahindan extracted himself from the crowd to begin his usual round. A guard stood near the tall wooden pole. He was the one who used to bring Prasad newspapers. Mahindan practised in his head a single sentence. At the pole, he stopped and said to the guard, Excuse me. Please, how is this thing called?
It’s a totem pole, the guard said.
Mahindan repeated it: Toe-dem Pol. Toe-dem Pol. Thank you.
You’re welcome, the guard said, smiling behind his spectacles.
And Mahindan thought: No, I will not end up like Ranga.
—
Ranga lay in bed, curled on top of the sheets, his eyes blank and staring. He hadn’t moved an inch since morning.
Canteen is still open for another hour, Mahindan said. Please come and eat something.
Let me be. Ranga turned to face the wall.
Mahindan stood for a long moment, staring at Ranga’s back, knobby spine visible through his thin shirt. Everyone else had gained weight, gaunt faces filling out, protruding wrist bones disappearing. Only Ranga remained painfully thin, as if he had never left the boat.
They were not supposed to take food from the canteen, but at dinner Mahindan had secreted a bun in his pocket. He held the bread out at Ranga’s blind back and said, Eat something.
Leave me alone, will you? I have no hope. No hope tomorrow. No hope next week. No hope next year.
Ranga, please –
Don’t call me that, he snapped. His voice was full of quiet ferocity, and Mahindan felt a chill of foreboding. A hopeless man was a dangerous man. He had nothing to lose.
Please don’t, Mahindan said. I didn’t know. How could I know? You have to believe me.
Ranga made no movement.
I have a son, Mahindan begged. Think of my –
Soon, I will be gone, Ranga said. And then you will have nothing to worry.
Leaving the bread on the bed, Mahindan walked out and closed the door behind him.
—
In the recreation room, everyone gathered around the television. On the news, pundits spoke about Ranga.
Deportation orders are permanent, an official said. Once a person is deported, they are barred from ever returning.
The man on television outlined the procedure. Ranga would be sent home in an airplane, a guard at his side to make sure he didn’t run. An escort to facilitate the removal. He would be made to wear handcuffs. For his own protection and safety. He would be released in Colombo, free to go on his way.
What the official did not say was what would happen afterward. How there would be men waiting at the Bandaranaike Airport. Two thugs in uniform. Hello, sir, they would say. Please follo
w us. They would wear boots with heavy soles. Heavy enough to smash in a head. Or they would make Ranga drink petrol, then light him on fire. In Sri Lanka, there were many ways to make a bad death.
The news story ended and the room burst into chatter, everyone returning to the subject of Ranga, wondering when he would be sent back and what might be done to stop it.
It cannot happen, someone said. This is a good country.
But what did this one on the television say about…
Mahindan sat at the back and kept his own counsel. His conscience whispered: This is your fault. But no. Ranga was a grown man. He had taken his own decisions.
Someone switched the channel to a comedy program and Mahindan watched the screen without paying much attention. The words flowed over him and he was surprised to realize how much he understood.
A mother scolded her children for playing on the road. It is dangerous, she said. Don’t you know you could die?
In Canada, they had a different conception of death. When a child was lost, his face was on the news every day. At home, everyone knew where the missing children went; there was no point in searching. In Sri Lanka, death was a fact of life. Here, it was an affront.
Mahindan imagined the foster people scolding Sellian for running in the road. He would not be permitted to wander on his own or climb a tree in his bare feet and knock down coconuts. No teacher would rap his knuckles with a ruler when he talked back in class. This was the life Sellian would live now, indulged and overprotected. Canada would make him soft. If something happened, he would not know how to survive.
During his trips downtown for detention hearings, Mahindan would stare out the window at the endless lanes of wide highways, the chains of cars, sun glinting off their shiny surfaces. At the spic and span sidewalks lined with trees and multicoloured newspaper boxes, garbage concealed in cans. And he would imagine the city under siege. A civil war raging, rockets shooting from the mountains, glass blown out of houses, buildings gouged by bombs. Trees snapped in half, fires burning in the street, bodies crumpled, a car smouldering, all its doors flung wide open.
Mahindan’s father had grown up in a nice bungalow in Colombo, with a maid who fed and bathed him and a man who came once a week to do odd jobs for his mother. It could happen so easily, in just a moment. The Immigration Building turning into a makeshift hospital. The whirr of the electric saw, blade on skin. A body bucking under Mahindan’s restraining hands.
Sin, no? That poor bugger.
Mahindan startled. A man had sidled up alongside and was now watching him, expectant. His eyes were yellow. His moustache moved when he spoke. What will happen? he asked.
Mahindan scraped his chair and stood. I have to go back, he stammered. Keep an eye.
He left swiftly, bile filling his mouth. Chithra said: Race!
Through the jungle, they had raced, everyone hunched, hands over their heads, while artillery whistled overhead. Run! Run! R – Shouts cut short by a falling missile. Children crying for their parents. Bodies crumpling all around. Don’t look! Sellian, my child. Do not turn your head. Keep your eyes straight ahead, watch the ground, do not trip and fall. Run!
Mahindan felt the coolness of the wall against his back and forced himself to take slow, deep breaths. I am in Canada, he reminded himself. I am here. From the other side of the wall, he could hear false cheer on the TV, people talking over it, being told to shut up. If any of them came out, they’d find him bent double and breathing hard, hands on his knees. He forced himself to walk forward, fisting his hands at his sides, one foot in front of the other.
He focused on the white, unmarked walls, the bright lights overhead, and told himself: I am in Canada. The hallway was deserted. More and more people had been released from detention and the jail was quieter these days, its population thinned out. Eventually, his breathing slowed and his head felt blessedly calm. Passing by open doors, he saw empty rooms – made-up beds, silent sinks. Up ahead, his cell door was closed. The fluorescent light glinted off the handle. He had a fleeting impression of being alone, the last man left in detention.
No, he thought fiercely. I will get out.
Mahindan saw the legs first – the grey track-suit bottoms, elastic gathered at the ankles – then the ribbed white socks. One shoelace had come undone; the two ends hung separate. There was a half second of confusion, and then understanding. A body dangling in mid-air.
Illai! Mahindan screamed in Tamil. The door handle was jammed. His heart slammed in his chest. Illai! Illai! He banged on the window and frantically searched his memory before the English word came to him: Help! Help!
Heavy soles thundered from all directions. Guards shouted into their radios. The corridor was chaos and commotion, but inside, the cell was silent. Ranga’s body was still. Mahindan couldn’t breathe. Invisible hands tightened around his throat. He choked and gasped for breath, still pumping the useless door handle and screaming NO! in Tamil.
Ranga’s head lolled. His mouth was open, tongue hanging out, his last gasp dead on his lips.
Lions and Tigers
May 2009
A United Nations convoy had finally arrived in the village, the first one Mahindan had seen in months: forty covered trucks and aid workers in flak jackets and helmets. They kept their voices low and their eyes on the uniformed cadres circulating among the masses, M-16 rifles slung over their shoulders. The aid workers were jumpy, flinching at every thump and sudden movement, as they handed out packets of rations – rice, beans, a bit of cooking oil – and in return requested information. How long have you been on the run? Are you injured? What supplies do you have?
Drones hummed overhead. From the A35 came the din of artillery, the army and the Tigers exchanging fire. A child ran in a looping figure eight, her arms held straight out like an airplane. Mahindan stepped out of her way to avoid a collision.
The government had dropped flyers, a warning written in clumsy Tamil that they should move, with directions to the No Fire Zone, and Mahindan and his family had arrived here three days earlier. They had come from Puthukkudiyiruppu with thousands of others, trudging on foot, pushing barrows and cycles bundled high with belongings, Tiger cadres marching grimly beside them, everyone heading east together, ducking and jumping into ditches at the whistle of incoming fire.
The village was tiny, two dozen concrete bungalows and a pockmarked temple. A tiny carving of Ganesha riding his mouse lay upside down at the temple door, no bigger than a stone. Sellian had picked him up and kissed his elephant head, then slipped the little statue into his pocket for safekeeping.
They were hemmed in on a narrow spit of land, the Indian Ocean on one side, a lagoon and the army in the jungle on the other. Every day, more people surged in, with their tractors and their cows and their last resorts. They slept in fields and coconut groves, in tents along the sides of dirt roads. They squeezed in where they could, occupying spaces left empty by the dead.
The village heaved, swollen with the fears and exhaustion of thousands upon thousands of refugees. The sun burned, relentless, day after day. Those without tents constructed shelters out of sticks, plastic tarps slung overtop. Others had only a mat, not even a tree under which to shelter. Saris had been cut up to make bandages. Scraps of fabric were used to patch tents and sewn into sandbags, bright splashes of pattern and colour against the mud-brown landscape.
Mahindan balanced a saucepan over a fire and squatted in a circle with his family. When the meal was cooked, they passed the pot around, eating straight out of it with their hands. Ruksala had one plantain left. It was big enough for everyone to take a bite.
They had a bottle of silty water from the lagoon that they used to wash their hands and another of drinking water from the well that they shared between them. Mahindan let Chithra’s mother have the last drop and ignored the shooting pains in his gut.
Some people had set up camp in the playground around the tiny infirmary and Mahindan felt fortunate to have found a space for their tents here. The clinic
’s coordinates had been transmitted to the army. A red cross was painted on the roof. In its shadow, they would have some safety.
The Tigers had mobile artillery units: long-nosed cannons mounted on wheeled planks that fired off blasts of orange-grey smoke. The army had multi-barrel rocket launchers. The Tigers shot off five shells; the army hit back with forty. But by the time they returned fire, the Tigers had hitched their howitzers and rolled off to a new location. The horizon exploded in shellfire flashes and smoke plumes. Every day, the shelling crept nearer.
The last food packet had been doled out and the United Nations convoy was leaving, the vehicles snaking away like a slow-moving caterpillar, down the highway and back toward safe government territory. The field beyond glowed, lit up by a thousand cooking fires. In the playground, people swarmed all around, their legs brushing by the small family circle. They called to each other, groaned over injuries, and soothed crying babies. A murder of crows soared overhead in a sweeping circle then settled in the trees. Men wheeled out barrows through the back doors of the infirmary. No one had strength any longer to dig proper graves.
The playground equipment was dented and rusty. A little girl stood on the rubber seat of a swing, squealing, her plait flying out behind her. Boys swung like monkeys, reaching past the missing bars. The children shrieked and yelled. They tripped each other in jest, fell, and jumped back up unhurt. The children were indestructible.
Sellian had been eyeing the see-saws, and the moment one was free, he and Prem jumped up and ran to it. A Tiger cadre toured the perimeter of the playground with a megaphone. She wore fatigues and a cropped haircut. Her tone was calm and even, a soothing cadence. There is no reason to worry, she called out. Our line is secure.
There was a burst of machine-gun fire in the distance, an angry retort. The army, relentless, had finally chased them here, to the eastern edge of the island, penned in a cage with the soldiers bearing down. From the aid workers, Mahindan knew the army had used the United Nations convoy as cover to move their line forward. They were now reportedly closer than ever.