Ameena adjusted the laptop and read the editorial for tomorrow’s paper one last time. Her ex-husband had been right about her. She loved the thrill of finding stories in dark places and forcing them into the light. She loved the feeling of the early morning’s first copy, still warm in her hands, its ink permeating her skin.
He had also been right to leave her and take the children with him. She had put herself, and therefore all of them, in front of a loaded gun. Five years after their separation, she would have told him that—if he still spoke to her.
She saved the document again and closed the laptop. Tomorrow’s piece was about the children being slaughtered in the north or forced to flee from one makeshift camp to another, walking for months through the jungle, their bare feet cut by the shards of splintered palm trees. Bombs falling from the sky, sent by President Rajapaksa, paid for by the Chinese, and ignored by everyone else.
The Sri Lanka Army had orders to find and kill the Tamil Tigers wherever they were. How were they to know which person was a refugee and which person was a Tiger? They didn’t care. Things happen in the chaos. Things are hidden in the jungle. Things are forgotten in time.
The President of Sri Lanka and his cousin, Dilshan Perera, relished their power. They abused it with impunity.
‘See, we told you. These Tigers are monsters. What kind of freedom fighters hide among their own people for safety?’ President Rajapaksa declared.
‘What kind of President bombs his own people?’ Ameena wrote in return. ‘You know they are innocent. You know they have no choice. And still you bomb them.’
Every day she had to write about this.
Had she chosen her job over her children, as her ex-husband had accused her? It wasn’t a choice. Her job might kill her, but if she could write about other people’s children, then she would have life beyond her own.
She shuffled the laptop and last documents into her leather satchel. One of the buckles had broken weeks ago, but she never had time to fix it. Her fingers still reached for the heavy brass, trying to thread the strap through its missing bridle.
From her study window, she could see the crows perched on the high brick wall around their home. The birds weren’t afraid of the broken glass cemented to its rim. It rose like peaks of discoloured ice that defied the heat. A barrier of glass and a guard—these were her only concessions to the death threats. She didn’t want a security system in her home. They were already being watched enough.
Sathyan stood at the door of her study. ‘Are you happy with the editorial?’ he teased. They had been together for a couple of years, so he knew she was never truly happy.
He kissed her lightly. Everything about him was light these days. It was good to see him like this, finally.
‘Can I get a lift with you to Jeya Books? They’re having a genre sale this weekend,’ he said.
‘Which genre?’
‘Dystopian fiction.’ He laughed at her expression.
She tried not to roll her eyes. ‘I don’t know why you love that stuff so much. We are living in a dystopia. The Road is hopeful compared to Sri Lanka.’
He nodded. ‘The lift?’ he asked again, checking the money in his wallet.
‘I’m sorry, Sath. I’m not going that way. I need to drop documents over at Shirani’s house first,’ she said, putting her car keys in her pocket.
She rarely lied to Sathyan, but she was going to meet her source, not Shirani Dennis, her deputy editor.
She greeted the guard in Sinhalese, inched the car out of her driveway and surveyed the street. It was empty, save for the white van parked thirty metres down the road. Closer than usual today.
She cleared the gate, watched the rear-view mirror and made sure the guard bolted it shut before she began her journey.
There were many potential routes to the city. Sathyan had asked her to vary her journey. Her ex-husband had begged her to vary it. She ignored them both. She paid her taxes; these roads were hers too.
She slowed down at the corner of Saunders Avenue and Beira Road, approaching Kutty and his little stall. The old man sold cashews, toasting them with salt, honey or chilli. Usually he had a bag of chilli cashews ready for her.
Ameena ran a tab with Kutty and gave him reams of old copy paper. He preferred it to the newspapers other street vendors used to package their food, which bled ink into his cashews. Even The Lanka Herald wasn’t good enough for his fare.
He wasn’t there today.
She held out a 100 rupee note to the young man she didn’t recognise. ‘Is Kutty okay?’ she asked.
‘Kutty’s fine,’ he replied, revealing well-cared-for teeth. He gave her too much change and the right packet of cashews. She hadn’t asked for anything yet.
She accepted the warm packet and returned a few coins, squaring her debts as she had been taught to do. The safest route was to continue down Saunders Avenue. Instead, she turned the corner into the side street which would take her past a small mosque and a Buddhist temple. She urged herself not to overthink as she checked the vendor in the mirror one last time.
At the next intersection, she noticed a new billboard. Dilshan Perera, the Under Secretary for Defence, smiling smugly down on them all, presiding over an image of the new port in the south that the Chinese government was constructing. Sri Lanka didn’t have the wealth or military power to rival the countries next door, but it did have the geographical position of the nosy neighbour who sits in his living room and watches all the comings and goings of everyone else on the street.
Thinking about the new port, Ameena didn’t notice that the white van had closed the distance between them. She didn’t notice the two motorcyclists who met at the cashew vendor’s stall immediately after she’d left, or the municipal garbage truck that blocked the traffic behind her, or the final two motorcyclists who cordoned off the street one hundred metres ahead with construction signs. All four of them on expensive bikes, with proper leathers and darkened visors, now converging on her.
She spotted the garbage truck first. The white van pulled away. Then she saw the motorcyclists behind her and the ones in front.
She cursed herself for not noticing them sooner and braked hard, skidding her silver Mazda to a stop. She heard the thud of a bullet against her windscreen, spidery lines reaching out across the glass from its epicentre, like the fault lines of an earthquake.
Her hands clenched pale against the steering wheel’s black vinyl. Flecks of broken glass salted her hair and face.
Three motorcyclists hung back while the leader dismounted and walked towards her. She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to. He possessed the unhurried gait of a man who had thought of everything. Who knew the roads were blocked. Who had done this before and would most likely do it again.
Another bullet shattered the driver’s side window, spraying hot needles of glass into her. She ducked towards the passenger seat and the bullet cut past her ear, lodging in the torso of the passenger seat.
The window was wide open now. The sounds of angry horns and chaotic traffic drowned out the heave and splutter of her own breath. Her chest was wet. She looked down and saw the bloom from her right pocket like a fountain pen leaking red ink. She reached for it but couldn’t make her hand connect with her body. Pain bolted from her chest, propelled by the last defiant beats of her heart. She tasted blood on her lips, every laboured breath delivering a little more.
She met her own eyes reflected in the polished visor of the stranger’s helmet. She saw her tears. Angry tears. She wasn’t ready. She wanted more time.
She didn’t know who this man was, but she knew who sent him.
One bullet: Dilshan.
A second bullet: Perera.
A final bullet, then no words.