Lalith had once seen his sister’s friend Sunitha dance in the back room of their house. He had stood, half-hidden by the room’s curtain, as Sunitha swirled in a green sari borrowed from his mother, the jingle of her anklets keeping time with the music. He had seen in his sister’s face then an awe and possessiveness that he, too, had come to feel. Now that Sunitha performed dances only for him, he took pride in being her only audience. Though he was often drawn, heavier and heavier, toward a seemingly drugged sleep, he willed himself to stay alert, to show his appreciation for her sweeping turns. As Sunitha swayed to remembered melodies in this hidden place far from their village, her green sari melted into the lush jungle thickness.
Of course part of him realized that Sunitha wasn’t really there. Lalith had been in the jungle outside Ratnapura for several weeks now, alone and huddled in a shallow hole of warm earth, his sixteenth birthday just past. The central lowlands were a striking contrast to his own village. Slow-moving creeks cut their way through the thick trees that hid him, filling the air with the ongoing sound of movement. Here, the earth was damp and seemed to slither with leeches. He often awoke with a leech or two fastened to a calf or the underside of his arm, where his skin was the softest, and he kept a jar of saltwater to pour over the flat black worms. As the drowning leeches retreated, Lalith watched his blood mix with the cloudy saltwater and the night’s soot still on his skin.
The landscape of his skin had begun to change where mosquitoes feasted and where he later picked and scratched, leaving bumps, swells, craters. He could drive himself crazy with his constant scratching, so when Sunitha had first appeared, her muted laughter folding into her eyes, he had welcomed his memory’s ghost. Now he looked forward to her company. He spoke with her in the early evenings, when the sky fell over the trees in an electric fuchsia and the bats readied themselves for night hunting. He told her tales of bravery and stoic courage, casting himself and his brothers in the most favorable light and telling very little of the truth.
He told her these stories partly because he was ashamed of his own weakness, but also because he hoped Sunitha would carry the tales back to his sister, Nilanthi, who surely was as alone and frightened as he was. Sunitha was a good listener. She moved in silence and, after dancing, squatted easily across from Lalith, elbows resting on her knees, her chin cupped in her palm. “Tell me a story, Lalith,” she whispered, knowing she had to keep her voice down. “Tell me how you raided the Jaffna pass and turned the army trucks upside down in fiery blazes.”
“It’s true, Sunitha, we did those things,” Lalith answered. “We watched the front tires of the lead truck hit the mine and arc in the air, wheels spinning. The fire sounded like rushing water; we ran and ran away from it, as fast as we could.” What Lalith didn’t tell Sunitha was how he and his brothers, along with friends and strangers from the surrounding villages of Batticaloa, watched from a comfortable distance as a jeep driven by two teenage girls exploded on impact as it rammed into the army truck. How there were no mines set and how the girls wore cyanide necklaces in case the bomb failed to explode. Lalith didn’t explain how the smell of burning flesh made his stomach heave and his nose twitch, how he threw up on the dried-out earth and realized that these young girls were braver and stronger than he could ever be. Sunitha listened and didn’t ask questions, and sometimes, if Lalith looked away for too long, she would disappear into the early night, taking away the silence and allowing the sounds of the jungle to return.
LALITH HAD LEARNED how to find his way in the darkness during his soldier’s training. Now he kept himself hidden only two kilometers from a small farming village. If he was patient and waited for the night to sink low and heavy in the sky, it was easy to steal eggs and bread, slap the cool water of an abandoned well over his muddied skin without being noticed. He had even found a farmer’s secret stash of kassipu moonshine, which tasted of gasoline but created an enjoyably colorful dizziness in his mind. He could continue like this for months—alive yet not quite living—and this idea of extended invisibility frightened him almost as much as the war.
Because he was good at these jungle games—night navigating, sneaking and stealing, staying invisible—his superiors had taken an interest in him. At the rebel camp, when fighting was slow, they played a kind of hide-and-seek for money. Lalith was always the seeker, and he won praise from the commanders. It was hard to enjoy it, though, as his oldest brother, Manju, was always voicing concern about the sudden attention the experienced soldiers were giving Lalith. Manju and his middle brother, Rajit, constantly argued over his participation in the games.
“It may not be such a good idea for him to gain too much notice,” Manju worried after one of Lalith’s victories.
“You should be proud of him,” Rajit countered. “He is winning praise for his family; we will all benefit.”
“They’ll think of him first when they need soldiers for jungle ambush. How proud we’ll all be when he disappears along with the others.” Manju dug at the earth with a gnarled stick.
“You’re just jealous that the youngest is gaining the attention usually reserved for the oldest.” Rajit winked at Lalith while their older brother smoothed over the hole he had just created.
“And you’re mistaking praise for respect and nobility, neither of which will ever be possible in this war.” Manju kept his eyes focused on the ground.
“You sound like Father.”
Lalith always grew uncomfortable with the mention of his father, who had stamped loans at the Bank of Ceylon, who in Lalith’s mind was linked with memories of home, his mother, Nilanthi, his cricket bat, and other familiar things he missed with an ache and constant emptiness in his gut. He interrupted the argument by saying that both of his brothers were like their father. Manju was wise and Rajit was proud. They were both brave. And to himself, he added, “And I am neither wise nor brave. I’m just a boy treating the war as if it were a children’s game.”
Ghostlike and silent, Lalith played hide-and-seek with his superiors, wandering through brush and dirt, creeping and crouching so as not to spook the hidden men. Sometimes he would watch from a distance as these large, bulky soldiers leapt like frogs from their hiding places, searching out more substantial cover but only succeeding at exposing themselves to the enemy. By watching his superiors’ jumpy mistakes, Lalith learned the importance of patience and commitment to one’s choices. Distrusting oneself led to discovery and capture. He squatted in the darkness long enough not to cause anyone embarrassment, and then he would silently approach a nervous hider, whistle twice to signify capture, and suppress his laughter as the man shook his head in disbelief.
As money changed hands with jests and teasing, the men would ask Lalith how he kept so quiet, how he always captured his man. Lalith answered in ways he thought were soldierly and wise. “I sense heat coming off bodies and I follow it.” Or “I can feel the imprint of your boots as I move over the soft ground.” The truth was impossible to disclose, and remained hidden in Lalith’s mind. I wait until the waiting becomes too much for you, until your own fear makes you weak and susceptible to misjudgment. Lalith never saw any of the money. Instead the superiors would give him extra curd and treacle after the evening meal or provide him with an additional pair of socks.
EVENTUALLY THE PERPETUAL waiting at the rebel camp became too much for Lalith, and the weight of what he had seen and heard dropped like a heavy stone onto his feet. His self-loathing became so strong and paralyzing that he feared if he didn’t leave, some of his fellow soldiers might have to shoot him themselves. So before his suddenly clumsy limbs betrayed him and the others, he decided to run away from the war.
Now Lalith wanted to tell Sunitha all his reasons for leaving his brothers and the other soldiers behind. He would ask her not to tell Nilanthi, because he wanted his sister to be able to imagine courageous things about her brothers, how they were avenging their mother’s death, fighting nobly and honorably. As he waited for Sunitha to arrive, he boiled two eggs in a stolen pot and laid out two flat palm leaves on either side of the hole. Earlier, he had climbed trees, bringing down a bunch of slightly underripe plantains, spiky jackfruit, and a mango. He had washed his hunting knife several times until all traces of blood had been removed, and then sliced the fruit into fractured squares and circles until they looked like the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He had bathed the previous night, stealing some extra moments to scrub his growing beard, behind his ears, between his toes. He closed his eyes and listened for the silence to return to the jungle.
As Manju had anticipated, Lalith was singled out. He was asked to travel with two other soldiers to locate a reeducation camp where ex-Tiger rebels were being held by the Sinhalese army. The Colombo newspapers had reported that there were several such camps where the rebels who had turned themselves in and thrown themselves at the mercy of the government army were supposedly being held in detention, fairly and humanely, until they could be “deprogrammed.” Of course the rebels believed that these “ex-rebels” were being systematically tortured for information, held against their will, stripped of their cyanide necklaces and the means for dignified suicide. One of the camps was said to be in Bandarawela, a hill station thick with tea estates hidden within the rolls of mountains. To get there would take a night of walking, followed by a day of hiding and waiting and another night of walking. The instructions were simple: Lalith and the two soldiers were meant to observe the camp, search out evidence of torture and mistreatment, but take no action.
At first the journey had felt like an adventure, like an old tale from the Bhagavad Gita, where Arjuna and his loyal men sought out Arjuna’s wife, the princess, who was being held against her will in a distant land. The darkness seemed to open itself up to Lalith as his imagination carried him forward through openings in the dense forest and over the muddy tea estate paths. The other men allowed him to lead, one keeping his palm heavy on Lalith’s shoulder so as not to lose him. The third man followed behind, resting his palm on the second soldier’s back. They could be mistaken for a snake, Lalith thought, slithering undetected in the underbrush. Sometimes they crept on their knees, palms pressed into the damp earth. There were moments when Lalith forgot about the reeducation camp entirely. Instead he fantasized that the darkness would lead them home. That in this blind wandering, the pull of Batticaloa would be too strong and would lure him off his Bandarawela route, putting him on a path more intuitive and instinctual. The smell of fish and dry, heated earth would greet him, and Nilanthi would welcome him home.
But the pull of his orders must have overpowered his homesickness, because in the early morning of the third day, Lalith guided the men to the camp. The previous night’s darkness had protected them long enough to find a hiding place in an abandoned tea factory, where they slept under old burlap sacks until the night could disguise them again. Lalith woke as the sun drowned beneath the mountains. The game was over and it was time to wake the men.
Lalith didn’t know what he had expected to find at the camp. He hadn’t really allowed himself to imagine the “arriving there” part of the adventure. Though darkness enveloped the surrounding landscape, the camp was illuminated by towering lights, as if this tiny space of land was burdened with never-ending day. With binoculars pressed against his eyes, he focused and refocused until shadows became forms.
And he saw what he hadn’t allowed himself to imagine—that the superiors had been right. Through magnified clarity, he saw things that he knew would never be washed from his memory. There were half-naked girls turning and turning in listless circles. There was a boy with a dislocated shoulder who held a limp arm against his belly. There was an immobile slump of a form leaning against the barbed-wire fence, long-dried blood a patchwork of stains on her back. And flies. Thousands of flies. As Lalith lowered his binoculars, he felt his boyhood drain from him and understood that he would never be happy again, not happy in the way he had been at home with his family, or in the games of hide-and-seek at the rebel camp, or even listening to Manju and Rajit’s arguments.
Lalith and the men returned to camp four days later. The heavy weight of soldiers’ hands smacked his shoulders in congratulation. After offering the three soldiers praise and several rounds of arrack rum, the commanders asked them to report their findings. Lalith forced himself to swallow the cloying rum and willed himself to steady his voice. He began his sentence twice in silence before he muttered, “They were all teenage girls and children. Some ten years old, maybe others were fourteen. The oldest were my sister’s age.” Lalith half listened as the other men described the evidence of torture and starvation they had witnessed. They used precise words that carried an indisputable clarity, but to Lalith the words had suddenly lost their meaning. He sank into memory and felt abandoned by language. He saw braids woven into barbed-wire fences, having been separated from the girls’ scruffy scalps. He saw bruises thicker and longer than leeches along cheeks, thighs, backs. He saw bones jutting out of yellowed skin. But his voice wouldn’t return. He had crept away from the reeducation camp, weakened and ashamed, and now he wasn’t even strong enough to tell these stories.
Lalith had expected outrage. He expected retribution and calls for heroic revenge and rescue. He wasn’t prepared for the orders that came. An ideal opportunity to get our fellow Tamils enraged. A chance for more money, improved weapons from abroad. The foreign papers will hear of it and there will be international support for our struggle. Girls and children. Perfect emblems for compassion and aid. They will and must hear this. These were the motives given as the superiors selected the soldiers with the fairest skin, those who could pass for Sinhalese, and tossed stolen government uniforms in their direction. The heavy khaki material fell at Lalith’s feet and at his brothers’. The crumpled material smelled of other men’s sweat and fear, the stained creases holding the mysteries of capture and death. You will storm the reeducation camp and execute everyone you find there. You will make it bloody and inhuman and tragic. You will leave behind proof of Sinhalese government guilt, and our friends’ deaths will not be in vain. They will have strengthened the movement.
As the orders gathered around him, Lalith knew he would let the jungle swallow him. He was not strong enough; he did not possess the necessary wisdom to understand the logic of this plan, nor did he have the bravery to combat his own dread. Like a boy, he still clung to words like good and bad, fair and unjust, right and wrong. He distrusted his simplicity and all its weaknesses. What he was good at was making himself invisible, and there was no room for heroism in that. He did not want to smell death again, not in the heavy cotton of an enemy’s jacket, nor in the fires that would envelop the reeducation camp. And so as the evening meal ended, Lalith took small steps backward, away from the fire, away from his brothers, away from duty and responsibility. Manju, perhaps sensing something, looked up and nodded at Lalith as he teetered backward, on the edge of still being seen. Manju’s nod carried the finality of a good-bye. It would be the last time they saw each other, and Lalith hoped that in that slight gesture, there had been an older brother’s blessing.
LALITH OPENED HIS eyes. Sunitha was crouched across from him, her head in her palm. Against the silence, Lalith heard her speak. “You talk in your sleep like a little boy. I listened to your story, and I will not tell your sister, though I know she would forgive you.” Sunitha winked as she stood. “Shall I dance for you once more before I go?” Lalith smiled and the green fabric began its sweeping movements. He felt the breeze of the whipping silk across his mouth and neck. He smelled the cardamom-and-curry smokiness of his mother’s kitchen and the powdered sweetness of Nilanthi’s handkerchiefs. He smelled Batticaloa’s fish market and the temple’s incense. As she spun and twirled, Sunitha’s dancing sari blended into the thickness of the flat and heavy leaves. Her anklets clinked and jingled, growing softer until both she and the music of her dancing disappeared, carrying Lalith’s story into the silence of the jungle.