What do they know?

When they asked about the documents, Mahindan said he knew nothing. The clock on the wall ticked. The ceiling vent exhaled an ambient hum. Mahindan sifted through the photographs they had spread out in front of him – four full-colour eight-by-tens with glossy white borders. He kept his eyes trained on the table, focusing on the margins between the photos. He saw the flecks of dust, the smudged fingerprints of all the people who had gathered here before them.

He faced Charlika and Priya and said, I don’t know anything about this.

They had come without Mr. Gigovaz. Maybe he had more important things to do and had sent them to take care of the small details. Or maybe they thought Mahindan would speak more freely without him in the room.

Listen, Priya said. This business about identity is serious. Border Services is looking for any excuse to deport you.

Deport me? Mahindan repeated when Charlika translated.

Priya waved her hands. Any of you. All of you. They just need one excuse, she said, holding up her index finger. If any of these documents they’ve found can bring your identity, or anyone else’s, into question, you have to let us know.

Mahindan had known deportation was a possibility, but he’d been led to believe – or had he allowed himself to believe? – it was a risk so remote it was safe to ignore. He cast around for assurance and his identification papers came back to him. School certificates, driving licence, birth certificates – the neat bundle he had handed over at the dock. He breathed a little easier, knowing there was no reason for anyone to doubt who he was.

Mahindan, Charlika said. Your lawyers are on your side. Whatever you tell them, they have to keep secret. It is the law.

Priya picked up one photograph and held it under his nose. He could not avert his eyes.

Do you know this woman? Charlika asked.

The woman pictured on the identity card was elderly, with a dimpled face – a grandmother, someone’s Ammachi. In the photograph, she wore a dramatic red pottu, like a third eye, in the middle of her forehead. Ramanan Mahadevi. He had not known her name.

Sri Lanka came back to him: shell-shocked cows on the side of the road, their ribs prominent under emaciated flanks; clouds of dust that puffed up underfoot; the bodies they passed without looking.

Sweat trickled down Mahindan’s temple. The sun, unrepentant, roasted his head. Sellian hung heavy on his back, heels digging into Mahindan’s waist, thin arms clasped tight around his neck. A slow procession of vehicles and livestock and people, all of them limping east on the A35.

People pushed barrows, children and the elderly seated inside, surrounded by clothes and cooking pots and burlap sacks of rice. A toothless man, his palms lifted in prayer at the centre of his forehead. Why has God done this to us?

Outside the meeting room, two guards with loud voices walked by. Their words floated in and Mahindan caught two of them. Weak, yes. Priya and Charlika watched him, waiting patiently for an answer, expectation etched in the rise of their brows.

Priya put another photo in front of him: the driving licence that should have belonged to Kumuran’s wife. What had that silly woman been thinking?

Charlika said: Just tell us the truth.

Mahindan stared at a spot in the middle of the room until everything receded into a blur. A sapling pushed out through the latticed window of an abandoned building, its bushy leaves impervious to the crumbling plaster, the facade pockmarked by bullet holes. The war still raging and nature already reclaiming her landscape.

We knew when the bombs were coming, Mahindan said. He raised a hand and brought it down from overhead, doing a pitch-perfect imitation of the high whine of incoming artillery. Both Priya and Charlika winced. When we heard the noise, he said, everyone took cover. There were ditches along the side of the road and we jumped in. Or just stayed in a doorway. Sometimes there was nowhere to go and people waited under trees like animals.

He remembered the couple on the road, two men with their arms around each other. A bicycle on its side, handlebars mangled. Their duffle bag had been blasted open, all its contents entrailing out in a tangle, a wild dog nosing around. Close your eyes, Mahindan told Sellian, then shooed the dog away with a stick. It was better to come upon a place where the bombs had already fallen. Death had taken its due and moved on.

All the time, we were passing bodies, Mahindan told Charlika and Priya. I tried not to get close, to just go around. But there was one woman, old, under a tree.

She lay fetal in the shade, ending life in the same position she had begun it. The blast had blown up her sari, exposing her bare legs, brown skin wrinkled and puckered, the knobs of her dusty knees, a change purse tucked into the waistband of her underskirt. Her eyes were still open. A better man would have closed them.

It was indecent, Mahindan said in Tamil, and when Priya looked away, he could see she had understood.

Mahindan collected the photographs into a pile and turned them all face down. I do not know these people, he said. That is the truth.

A guard took him back to his cell. It was late morning and the hallway was a line of open doors. Mahindan, walking a little ahead of the guard, caught glimpses of men inside their cells dealing cards, speaking quietly, or lying on their bunks and staring blindly at the ceiling. They had been in this country nearly four months. As time went on, more men were growing lethargic, giving in to despair.

The night terrors – which had died down on the boat as they sailed farther away from Sri Lanka – had recently revived, so commonplace again they no longer sent the guards sprinting. Men screamed in their sleep, reliving old horrors. Names were shouted, or just the word No, indecipherable lamentations. It was a terrifying alarm to wake up to, and every time it happened in their wing, he sat up straight in the darkness, blood pounding in his ears.

Mahindan heard the tap-tap of the guard’s shoes, the squeak of his own rubber soles against the linoleum. They passed under a flickering fluorescent tube and he rubbed his eyes. He was still thinking of the A35, of coconut fronds that hung exhausted in arid fields, bus tires puffing up dust in their wake. How his mouth was always dry, teeth mossy, tongue gritty. What he had not told them: dogs were not the only scavengers.

In their cell, Prasad sat on his bed, a running shoe between his knees. He had the tongue pressed in and was threading the lace, pulling it through the holes like a woman darning a shirt. He paused, lace held in the air, when Mahindan came in.

There are some documents, Mahindan said in Tamil. The lawyers are asking questions.

Documents? Ranga asked, his voice rising. He was at the sink with his back to them, facing the mirror and rubbing his wet hair with a towel.

It was nearly the lunch hour, but Ranga no longer woke up to take breakfast with them. Increasingly, he spent more of his time sleeping, lingering in bed in the mornings and always the first one back to their cell at night. Hope was a dangerous thing to lose.

Mahindan turned toward Prasad and said, Identity cards, driving licences, and things like this. They were found on the boat.

The guard loitered in the doorway, waiting to escort Prasad to the lawyers.

One minute, please, Prasad told him in English.

I don’t know about any documents, Prasad said, returning to his shoe and working the lace through quickly.

That’s what I told them, Mahindan said.

Savitri and the others, those fools! Still, Mahindan would not worry. It was in everyone’s interests to keep quiet. A few meaningless pieces of paper – what harm could they bring?

There was a metal shelf, attached to the wall, where they stored their small collection of borrowed possessions. Mahindan moved to the shelf and picked up the portable CD player. Ranga was in the periphery of his vision, still drying his hair. Anyone could see the guilty sag of his posture. Prasad yanked on the two ends of a lace and crossed them over each other.

Ranga folded the towel in half, slowly, addressing it as he spoke. They want to speak to me also?

Just tell the truth, Mahindan said. You don’t know anything, do you?

Ranga hung the towel over the rack, lining up the two bottom edges. No, he said. I don’t know anything.

Prasad was bent over, making bows with the lace and wrapping them around each other. Mahindan set the CD player down and picked up an exercise book. He flipped it open and saw his own writing. His letters were improving, less shaky, more sure. He repeated the alphabet silently to himself, practising. A-B-C-D-E.

The springs under the mattress creaked when Prasad stood. He brushed the seat of his trousers and thanked the guard for something Mahindan could not fully interpret. English, the dull, tone-deaf quality of its consonants and vowels, was growing more familiar even if he still couldn’t understand much.