“Vanakkam.” He put his palms together in the traditional Tamil greeting.
“Vanakkam,” I replied. Wonderful to meet you.
The interpreter introduced himself. Then we all sat down, and the interpreter asked me to briefly summarize in writing my case for seeking asylum in Germany. I needed to convince the authorities that if I were to return to Sri Lanka, my life would be in immediate and direct danger. I obliged.
When I had finished, I handed my note to the interpreter, who read it aloud to the officer:
My name is Logathasan. I was born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. I am a student, and my mother language is Tamil. The situation in Sri Lanka is not safe for Tamils, especially for young boys and men. If I stay in Sri Lanka, I will be arrested by the military and will be killed. I fear for my life. I would like to apply for asylum.
The interpreter handed the note to the officer, who stamped and filed the document. He also stamped my passport — “12 March 1985 temporary refugee visa in Nuremberg, West Germany” — and gave it to me. This was the first time since I arrived in Berlin that I was able to keep my passport with me.
“That is all for now,” I was told.
The interpreter said that I would be required to come to a follow-up appointment in one week. My passport received a second stamp — “19 March 1985 Appointment for hearing in Nuremberg, West Germany.” I was reminded that I could not leave Nuremberg. I said I understood.
I had a lot of free time while I was in Nuremberg. For some reason, the older residents of the city were especially kind to refugees, so I would go to the supermarkets and help the older ladies carry their groceries. In return, they gave me tips. I saved most of my allowance and tips and sent the money home to my mother.
At the time, I didn’t understand very much about Western culture. I had no idea what a pub was. I’d never had a beer. Occasionally, back home, my father would go to a rest house in Jaffna to drink stouts with his friends, but I was always told to stay in the car. The waiter would bring out sodas and chocolates for me. But as I walked past the bars and restaurants in Nuremberg, I could see patrons, singing and dancing, holding huge mugs filled with beer. I was curious but scared to go inside. The German people are much bigger and taller than I am. If a fight were to break out, I did not think I could handle the rowdiness. Occasionally I would go to the movies, although I didn’t understand at all what was being said. After a while, though, I managed to pick up a few German words. Danke. Thank you. Bitte. Please. Ja. Yes. Nein. No. Tut mir leid. I am sorry. Guten Morgen. Good morning. But mostly I just said Ich spreche kein Deutsch. I don’t speak German. Back at the camp, I learned some more colourful terms. Arschloch. Asshole. Scheiße. Shit. I didn’t use those terms often. In any case, I found German very difficult to pronounce, so I doubt anyone would have understood me anyway.
I was very grateful to my German hosts. They were generous in helping thousands of refugees from all over the world. They gave us food and shelter and treated us with respect. My only surprise was learning from other Tamils at the camp that refugees were not allowed to work in Germany. Plus, qualifying for and obtaining permanent residency was not easy, and it could take many years. In addition to Selvan, I met several Tamils at the camp who had been living there for more than a year.
I was happy to be in Germany. It was so much better for me there than in Sri Lanka. From what I could understand from other Tamils, the war was not going well for the rebels. Had I stayed, I would have likely been arrested by then. Or even killed.
But I was not accomplishing anything in Germany. I wasn’t happy about wasting months of my life riding buses around Nuremberg and helping old ladies with their groceries for tips. I needed a real job. I needed to save enough money to bring my family out of Sri Lanka. I couldn’t do that without a job. I was becoming very frustrated.
My mother wrote back to me. In her letter she included the phone number and address of my brother Lathy, who was still in France. It was the first news I had heard of Lathy since he had disappeared more than a year earlier.
France! He must be doing well, I thought. It was very exciting to hear that he was still there. I would contact him. I needed a plan for what to do next. Being in France, he would know what to do. Unfortunately, long-distance phone calls were very expensive at that time, and I had no money.
A Tamil man at the camp told me he knew a way to make long-distance phone calls for only five Deutsch marks ($1.70 U.S.), which was incredibly cheap. I agreed to try it and went with him to a phone booth. First, he dialed a long sequence of numbers from his head. Once cleared, he let me dial the phone number. “Are you sure this is okay?” I asked. I was paranoid about doing anything, even something minor, to jeopardize my status.
He assured me it was fine. I gave him the money.
Later I learned that the Tamil fellow was using stolen calling-card numbers to make calls. Apparently, this was a big business at the camp. He memorized the numbers so he wouldn’t be caught with the cards. I am glad that I was so naive.
I managed to reach Lathy. He was thrilled to hear that I was in Germany. He said he would send someone to bring me to France so that I could stay with him. It was all set.
The truth is I should have been worried. I had been instructed, in no uncertain terms, more than once, that under no circumstances was I allowed to leave Nuremberg city limits. If I did, I’d been told, I would be deported back to Sri Lanka immediately. But here I was impulsively agreeing to leave Germany for France.
A week later, I received a note from a stranger at the camp. In the note, I was told to wait at the bus stop in front of the refugee camp the following day at 5:00 p.m.
I didn’t tell anyone about my plan — not even Selvan.
The next day, I pretended that I was going for a walk and waited at the bus stop. To avoid attracting suspicion, I carried only my passport, the holy picture my mother had given me and some photos. No extra clothes. Nothing. Everything else I left behind.
At precisely the designated time, a Mercedes-Benz taxi pulled up; the driver instructed me to get in. He was German and seemed disinclined to chat. So I sat in the back seat and kept my mouth shut.
The scenery we passed after leaving the city was mostly forest and farmland. No towns or cities. We travelled for about three hours, and then the taxi dropped me off in front of a house in a wooded area that seemed, as far as I could tell, to be far away from any town. The driver turned his head and pointed to the house.
“Gehen Sie hinein.” I gathered I was supposed to go inside.
I had no money to pay the driver, and he must have sensed my hesitation because he made a gesture with both hands as if to say It’s taken care of. I climbed out of the taxi, and he waved to me and drove away. It was dark, and somewhere around 8:00 p.m. I walked up to the house and knocked on the door.
The door opened, revealing a man who was clearly Sri Lankan. He nodded and smiled. “Vanakkam, ullai vango!” Welcome, come inside!
A woman holding a baby, presumably his wife, smiled at me. I smiled back.
“Have a seat here,” the man said.
It was a very nice house, comfortable. A few minutes later, the man’s wife brought me tea and biscuits. I had not realized how desperately hungry I was, and I made her laugh as I gobbled up the biscuits with both hands. The tea was delicious, and I thanked them. The woman disappeared with the baby, and I did not see her again. The man also excused himself, saying he had some affairs he needed to attend to. “You must be tired. Feel free to rest or sleep if you need to.”
About two hours later, the husband came back into the room. “Your ride is here.”
I said goodbye and thanked him for his generosity. He nodded. Another Mercedes-Benz taxi was waiting for me outside.
This time it was an older German lady driving, and she seemed more focused on her tasks. She was flipping through some papers. As soon as I got in, she drove off. For about half an hour we drove in complete silence along country roads in the dark. I saw not
hing but trees on one side and nothing but trees on the other. For some reason, I assumed the taxi would take me to Paris, where Lathy lived. I figured Paris must be even bigger than Nuremberg. But when she finally stopped, we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, at the side of the road at the bottom of a steep hill. The driver pointed. “Auf diesen Hügel. Sie müssen gehen.” It seemed she wanted me to walk up the hill.
I watched as the taillights of the taxi disappeared along the road. Suddenly it was pitch black. I could barely make out my hand in front of my face. It was also very cold. And quiet. I pulled my jacket tighter around me and began climbing.
The ground was blanketed in snow, even though it was early April. And the hill turned out to be more like a small but steep mountain. With no clear path, I found myself stumbling up the forested mountainside like a blind goat. I climbed for hours.
I was breathless and exhausted by the time I reached the crest. I was scratched and cut up from crashing through branches, bushes, and spiked brambles. And, frankly, I was grumpy and scared. Had my brother played a cruel joke on me? Had the second taxi driver stolen the fare and left me to die in some godforsaken nowhere? Just another dead refugee. After all, who would know to come looking for me? No one knew who I was or where I was supposed to be.
The moonlight shone very bright on the snow.
I was hungry and freezing. My breath drilled into the frigid darkness like puffs of smoke. I had to pee fiercely. But after a few minutes, once I had caught my breath, I actually felt rather elated at having conquered the mountain. Still, I had no idea where I was.
Suddenly, three people dressed in heavy coats emerged from the gloom. I realized they had been lurking behind the bushes. This is it. They are here to kill me.
“Hello! Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you!” The voice spoke Tamil, and I breathed an enormous sigh of relief. The one who greeted me informed me that he was a guide who had instructions to lead me to safety.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Where are we?”
“You are on the border between Germany and France.”
The other two people introduced themselves. They were a husband and wife. Finally I realized what was happening. I was a Third World refugee with no visa to visit France, and if I were caught outside Nuremberg, I would be deported. I was being smuggled into France.
“Let’s go!” our guide said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
The guide led us down the opposite side of the mountain. When we reached the bottom, he instructed us to hide in the bushes and wait.
I heard a strange howling. “Wolves,” said the guide matter- of-factly.
They seemed very close.
“Do not worry,” the young woman said. “They are not after you.” She smiled reassuringly.
We waited about fifteen or twenty minutes; then out of the darkness about a hundred feet away came two blinking lights. They flashed three times, then stopped. Then again three flashing lights, then nothing.
“That’s the signal.” The guide told us to walk to the lights. “Good luck!” he said. Before I had a chance to thank him, he had disappeared.
The husband patted me on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”
We picked our way carefully toward the flashing lights. A car was parked beside a tree. A man who I assumed was the driver opened the back door and told us to get in. “You must hurry,” he said. “And don’t act suspicious.”
All three of us jumped into the back seat and I closed the door. Within seconds, the car sped off. For the first time, I had a chance to have a conversation with my companions. The husband and wife were Tamils who were also escaping Sri Lanka in search of a better life. They said they had been staying at a camp in Hamburg.
“Here we go!” uttered the driver gravely. We were approaching a toll booth. “Hide yourselves!”
We crouched low, our heads between our knees. The car slowed enough for the driver to toss some coins into the bin, and as soon as the toll-booth light turned from red to green, he accelerated. It was thrilling. I felt like I was in a real-life James Bond movie.
After a while we settled in. The driver asked us in Tamil if we were from Sri Lanka.
We all replied, “Jaffna.”
It was still dark outside. My feet were sopping wet. My toes felt as if they were frozen. I had my jacket on and suddenly felt very warm and exhausted. I could not keep my eyes open. After a while the driver stopped talking, and all I could hear was the sound of car tires on the wet road. I fell into a deep sleep. About five hours later, we arrived in Paris.
CHAPTER 19
My brother was living in a tiny apartment outside Paris with Suddy, our cousin who used to take us to the cinema, and two other guys. There were no proper beds, just two mattresses on the floor. During the day, we would prop the mattresses vertically against the wall so that we had space to move around. The washroom was tiny, perhaps a bit bigger than the average closet. The showerhead was directly above the toilet — a great way to save space, but it made it impossible to use both at the same time. The kitchen had a two-burner stove, a fridge, a sink, and a small table. There was no dining area, so we would sit on the floor in the living area to eat our meals. The owner had divided the tiny house into two apartments and rented both out. Another family was living next door. I doubt it was legal, but who would risk asking questions or making a complaint?
The apartment was located near the Saint-Maur Des Fossés commune, in the southeastern suburbs of the city. Our street was very quiet. There were mostly French people in the area and I did not see any Tamils. At the end of the street were a café and shop, which were busy in the mornings and evenings. During the summer, people would sit outside the café and sip espresso.
I had hoped that here in France, far away from home, Lathy and I might become close. But he didn’t seem to have a lot of time for me. I was lonely for news of home. For family.
On the day I arrived, we talked about the family when we sat down to eat.
“Anna, eppadi sugam?” I asked. Elder brother, how are you?
“Nallai irukiran,” he said with a smile. I am fine. “How is our father, mother, Kanna, Deicy, Jance, Vani, Kala, Sumathi, and Sharmilee?”
I told him how everyone was doing and that he was missed. I left the worst news for last. “The situation is bad in Sri Lanka,” I said. “Our father is not doing well.”
He nodded but did not say anything.
“Kanna is working at Indiran’s jewellery shop. He is helping to feed the family now. It is not much, but it helps.” Indiran is my uncle on my father’s side. He also worked in the jewellery business, with the help of my father.
Lathy nodded again, only half-hearing me, and said, “Let’s eat.”
Once, Lathy brought home a fresh baguette for breakfast and made us tea. It was one of the nicest memories I have of my older brother. For the most part, though, he and I hardly spoke. If he wasn’t busy at work — he and Suddy worked at a printing company — he was busy with his friends. On the weekends, he would go to visit friends by himself. He never invited me along.
One morning, not long after I arrived, he said I needed to go to the French immigration office with his friend Tasan. I was alarmed. I had no visa. I was in France illegally. Would I not be arrested?
“Do as I say. You will be fine,” he told me. Then he left.
I accompanied Tasan to the immigration office. Tasan spoke to the officer in French. I have no idea what transpired, but the officer asked me for my passport and stamped it with a temporary visitor permit. Tasan told me to carry my passport with me at all times.
I was grateful that Lathy had done so much for me, but I do wonder whether he did it to get rid of me. Occasionally he gave me pocket money for expenses, and he would buy me a metro pass every month. Some days, I would take a bus from the apartment to the Saint-Maur–Créteil railway station, where I could catch a train in to Paris. The trip took roughly half an hour. From the top of the Arc de Triomphe, I would take in the
view of the avenues and building spread symmetrically around the monument. The scale of the architecture took my breath away. I visited the Louvre and Napoleon’s tomb, and I spent a lot of time at the Champ de Mars, a large public park next to the Eiffel Tower. Some nights, I would hang out on the historic Avenue des Champs-Élysées. I enjoyed wandering among the tourists along the cobblestone street and looking in the windows of the luxury shops. I loved to sample the street food, too. My favourite was a sandwich de Merguez: a fresh baguette with Dijon mustard, spicy ketchup, a grilled sausage, crispy french fries, and leeks. It was incredibly delicious and very cheap.
Policemen with drug-sniffing dogs were everywhere in the Paris metro stations. One day, a policeman approached me. “Papiers!” he demanded.
I handed him my passport, and after a few minutes of careful scrutiny, he handed it back and walked away. This happened often.
Occasionally, Tasan would go to the city with me. He and I took a lot of pictures of us standing next to the naked statues in the park. On the weekends, Suddy and I would often visit the Sacré-Cœur basilica. Walking on the streets near the basilica, we would watch the artists draw and paint.
I had learned to cook at the camp in Nuremberg, so on the nights I stayed home, I would make chicken curry and rice for dinner. During the day, our roommates and their friends would hang out in the apartment, and sometimes they brought over groceries and cooked a meal. Suddy knew them from back home, but I had never met them, as they were about five years older than me.
I lived in suburban Paris for about six months in 1985. During that time, I wrote letters to my family on a routine basis. Mother, of course, was happy that I was living with Lathy. I do not know if or how often Lathy wrote to her, but she answered my letters with letters to both of us. She told us the situation in Sri Lanka was getting worse. In May, seventy Tamil civilians were killed in what became known as the Valvettithurai massacre. The victims were reportedly rounded up by military forces and ordered to enter a library. A short time later, the library was blown up. In July, direct talks between Tamils and the government failed to bring any resolution to the civil war. It was very distressing news, but Lathy never wanted to talk about it.
The Sadness of Geography Page 12