Sathyan opened his suitcase and pulled out the gifts from Canada. The plastic canister of maple syrup had made it unbroken through the flight, a long road north and four Army checkpoints. This time, he had even managed to bring in a Lego Technic set for Gajan.
He had divided the paracetamol, Ventolin inhalers and batteries across his three bags. He couldn’t bring much more into the north without raising suspicions at the checkpoints. He opened the lining of the suitcase into which he had sewn small packets of money for his mother to buy goods on the black market.
‘I want you to speak to him, son,’ Amma pleaded. ‘Speak to him right way.’
‘Amma, give me some time. I can’t just come back and order him around. He’s a young man.’
‘He’s a boy. He’s fifteen years old.’ She started to cry again.
‘He’s been a man since Appa was killed,’ he replied. He felt the familiar tightness around his chest when he thought of his father.
‘The Army is watching all the young people, checking every week to see if any are missing or have joined the Tigers.’
‘And the Tigers?’ Sathyan asked.
‘They can’t come into Jaffna right now, but we know they are asking each family for a fighter.’
‘Do they ask, or do they demand?’
The Norwegian ceasefire, brokered in 2002, was failing. The Tigers were recruiting again and the Sri Lanka Army was restocking. The Norwegians were determined to resurrect the fragile peace, but the rest of the world had little tolerance for terrorists or freedom fighters after 9/11. Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lankan Prime Minister, was campaigning for the presidency on a mandate of ending the Tigers’ claim to a separate homeland, whatever the cost.
His mother wiped her face. ‘I know he wants to join them. He wants to fight; he wants to defend our homeland. He’s so angry, Sathyan.’
He nodded. He understood his brother’s motivations and they terrified him.
•
Sathyan picked his way slowly through the scrub, carefully pushing aside the mesh of thorny karai bushes, his bare feet seeking the dirt path beneath. The heat radiated through the earth into his skin.
Gajan was sitting on the bank of the creek. A jute fishing line dangled from the branch of a tamarind tree, bobbing with the occasional current or curious tug of a catfish under the cloudy surface of the water.
‘You’re not going to catch anything like that,’ Sathyan said, taking his place next to his brother.
‘I know,’ Gajan turned towards him and smiled. His eyes were large and framed by long lashes, like their father. ‘I like to sit here and think sometimes.’
‘What do you think about?’
‘Did Amma send you to talk to me?’ Gajan guessed.
‘She did, but I’d like to know what you think about anyway. It’s beautiful here.’
The creek wasn’t much, but its underground tributaries fed into their village well. The water was salty and tasted like a paler shade of the Indian Ocean.
Gajan was a skilled fisherman and set traps all along the water, sharing the catch with their neighbours. He knew how to read the creek.
He picked up a stone and threw it in. ‘Sometimes I think about the fighting. I think about Balu, Sarangan and Prana, and all the others who’ve gone to fight. I wonder if I should join them.’
‘Have you thought about what it would be like to kill someone? You play cricket and build Lego robots. Look at your hands.’ Sathyan reached over and caught Gajan’s hands before his brother could throw another stone into the water. He held them tightly. ‘You do all the things a boy should be doing. You still collect marbles.’
The boy pulled his hands away. ‘There’s no place for cricket and Lego anymore. And I have thought about killing someone. I want to kill the people who killed Appa and Manju Acca.’
‘Those people are long gone and killing them won’t bring Appa or Manju back. Thinking about killing is different from actually killing. It won’t be the way you imagine it.’ Sathyan knew he couldn’t take a life. He had been around the dead and dismembered for too long.
‘I want to fight.’
‘And I want you to stay alive,’ Sathyan replied. He cursed the Sri Lanka Army who made it so easy for children to be radicalised against them. He cursed the Tigers, too. They wouldn’t win this war, but they wouldn’t end it, either.
‘We’ve lost so much. I owe it to Appa to fight. You should fight, too, Sathyan Anna,’ Gajan addressed his older brother respectfully, without accusation.
‘I am fighting, but not with guns or bombs. Appa wouldn’t want you to fight like that either.’ Sathyan thought of his father and younger sister. ‘He taught all of us that nothing will come of this war but our destruction. If you owe him anything at all, it’s to stay alive.’
Gajan said nothing in return, pushing at the dirt with his bare feet. Sathyan tried again. ‘You know I’ve been working for an organisation in Canada.’
‘The one-legged people?’
He laughed in spite of himself. ‘You are surprisingly rude for such a sweet-looking boy. They are not “the one-legged people”. It’s called the Anti-Landmine Lobby, and I’m researching the ability of amputees to become economically viable members of society.’
‘Do you even know what that means?’ Gajan asked.
Sathyan slapped him on the back of the head. ‘Yes, I know what it means. It means that if I can finish my study, this Canadian NGO will fund another prosthetics factory in Jaffna.’
‘Sounds important. Appa would be proud of you.’
‘It is important. It gives me papers to come back here every few months. If we’re successful, it could help a lot of victims. Appa would be proud of both of us, Gajan. You look after Amma, you do all the things Appa would have done. You get the water, go to the market, fish and help her take her sewing to her clients. She said she’s even been teaching you to sew.’ He paused. ‘I’ve been talking to my boss in Canada.’
‘No,’ Gajan said quietly.
‘Please, listen to me. I have letters of recommendation from the NGO. I can get you out of the militarised zone and take you back to Colombo. From there, we can work out what to do.’
‘No. I won’t leave the north. Colombo isn’t safe either. There are bombs everywhere, you know that.’
‘Yes, but it’s worse here. The ceasefire is ending, the way they all do, and soon the war will start again. The shelling and landmines and death squads and torture. There are still police coming in the middle of the night—’
‘I don’t want to run away from that.’ Gajan pulled the fishing line hard, snapping it. He unspooled more jute from a ball next to him, concentrating on undoing the knots.
‘Running doesn’t make you a coward. Most of the north would leave if they could. They’re getting on shitty boats and going to India or anywhere. No one expects you to stay.’
‘The Tigers expect all of us to stay.’ Gajan retied the line as he spoke. ‘They’re fighting for us, for our homeland. What’s the point if we run away?’
‘The point is that you’ll live.’
The silence between them was heavy.
‘Do you think about them?’ Gajan whispered.
Sathyan nodded. He thought about them all the time. ‘You?’
‘A bit. I remember Amma crying, mostly. I can’t remember Manju’s voice. I try to hear her laughter in my head.’
‘It sounded like a snort. Kind of a snort, kind of a burp.’ She had only been thirteen.
‘Sometimes I sit here,’ Gajan said, ‘and I wonder what would have happened if she’d been at school that day, or at a friend’s house.’
‘Then she’d have lived longer,’ Sathyan answered without hesitation. ‘Just as you will live longer if you come with me to Colombo.’ He caught himself from saying Canada just in time. He had to work on getting his brother out of the north first.
‘It’s not right that some people get to live longer, and others just die. Who decides that?’
‘In our country, the Sri Lanka Army and the Tigers. Gajan, I am begging you.’ Sathyan tried to keep the rising panic from his voice. ‘We’re all Amma has left. Once the fighting starts, it will be harder to leave. We need to go now, before the Army suspects you or the Tigers recruit you. I will never forgive either of them.’
Gajan gave up on the fishing line and threw a handful of stones into the water. The ripples crashed into each other on the surface. He smiled and Sathyan’s heart broke a little more. ‘No one will take me, but I believe in the Tigers, Anna. Would you forgive me if I joined them?’
‘I would forgive you anything,’ Sathyan replied.
•
Sathyan placed the bags on the table. A small UN ship had unloaded food rations at Ponnalai. He had lined up at 3 am, taking shifts with Gajan, until eventually, nine hours later, he’d presented his papers and been given three plastic bags of rice, yam flour, lentils and milk powder.
Families depended on the UN rations. People tried to grow king yams, snake beans and bitter gourd on their land, but the earth was hard and water was scarce. They often hid their meagre harvests, because if the Sri Lanka Army was moving through, the soldiers stole from the hungry.
Sathyan rotated food out of the go bag, replacing the old food which they would eat tonight with the fresher dry goods.
The go bag was his father’s idea: a backpack ready to be picked up and run with. It contained a rudimentary first-aid kit, food, matches, a torch, batteries and a large, tightly folded square of plastic for shelter. On each trip home, Sathyan added another item to the sack. It made him feel like he had some control over their survival.
In Canada, he had bought a small camping stove but hadn’t worked out how to smuggle it in yet. Fuel canisters weren’t allowed into the north.
‘Will he go with you?’ Amma swept grains of rice from the table into a container to be saved.
He shook his head.
She sat at the table, placed her head in her hands and sobbed, defeated. ‘Please, son, please. Maybe he could get a scholarship to Toronto like you. Ravi Anna said he overheard Gajan and other boys talking about running away to find the Tigers. We’re running out of time.’
Sathyan thought about Ellie. Perhaps she could help them. USAID had connections on the ground. She would know what to do.
‘I’ll try, Amma. I’ll try.’
•
He woke to the sound of heavy wheels on dust. A voice crackled over a speaker, tinny and piercing. They were being attacked. He ran into the kitchen and rifled through the cupboard, grabbed the go bag and called out to his mother.
He stumbled out onto the front step of their small house. Amma was there already, standing in her batik kaftan. She had been up at dawn, sewing. Gajan too, on the lower step, in his shorts, his bare chest heaving. Sathyan frantically searched the sack and found the inhaler, shoving it at his brother. Gajan pushed his hand away and tried to slow his breathing down himself.
Their mother moved to crouch on the step above Gajan. She wrapped her arms around him, holding his scrawny body to her chest, as if that would make all the difference.
The Army jeeps drove in convoy, tearing circles around the streets of their small village, striped green, black and brown like a herd of mechanical jungle animals. The vehicle in front had a siren that bayed, making Sathyan wince every time it passed their home.
All the neighbours stood outside, watching. Eventually, the jeeps stopped on the main street, which housed the well, the Ayurvedic doctor and their one bus stop. In the middle of the dusty street, there was a small Ganesha temple.
Orders were barked over a speaker, calling the people out of their homes. They hurried back inside to change their clothes and hide what little wealth they had.
Sathyan hid the go bag under a pile of his mother’s sewing and surveyed the house. There was nothing of value except the sack, the food and his brother.
‘You stay here, son,’ Amma said to Gajan.
‘They already know I’m here,’ he replied. ‘It’s better we go out to meet them.’ He went to the small shrine, touched the picture of Appa then the picture of Lord Ganesha, and took his blessings.
Sathyan stood next to him and held him, swallowing back the fear. The Sri Lanka Army could arrest Gajan just for suspecting that he wanted to join the Tigers. They could arrest him just for being Tamil.
They heard the wail spiral from the main street. A woman screaming, a man crying, too. Sathyan and his family ran outside and down the road, clutching each other’s hands, terrified of what they would find.
The soldiers had dismounted from the jeeps, leaving one at the helm of each vehicle with a machine gun trained on the villagers lining the street.
Some of the soldiers had gone into old Uncle Skanda’s general store and were helping themselves to his scant supplies. Uncle Skanda stood silently outside, his feet frozen to the hot ground. He didn’t make eye contact with them as they left, arms full of soda, Sunlight soap and tins of milk powder.
‘Keep going,’ Sathyan whispered to his mother. They followed the sound of the crying, which had become more muffled after the initial howl.
At the well, they found the rest of the soldiers, some drawing water and refilling large canisters. Most of the villagers were standing in loose lines, their hands folded together in a gesture of prayer and greeting, their heads bowed respectfully, fearfully.
Collapsed against the small temple were Sarada and Venkat. They were holding Balu, their sixteen-year-old son. Sathyan heard Gajan stifle a cry. Gajan and Balu had been in the same cricket team at school, before Balu had run away last year to join the Tigers.
Balu’s grandfather stood to the side, holding back the other children, who were also crying.
Sathyan couldn’t tell if Balu was alive until he saw his legs move.
‘Thank God,’ Amma said.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Sathyan whispered. The Sri Lanka Army didn’t bring wounded Tiger soldiers back to their families. They killed them and left the bodies where they lay.
Sarada looked up and motioned to the women at the well for water. One of them rushed over with a small cup, but just as she reached Balu’s mother, a soldier knocked it out of her hand with the butt of his gun. The water splashed to the ground, beading in the red dust like blood. Sarada cowered over her child. Venkat wrapped his arms around them both, trying to push them into the wall of the temple. Lord Ganesha sat impassively over them, his bulbous stomach glowing in the morning sun.
A man stepped forward in the bright green beret of an Army leader. His skin was dark and shiny with sweat, the cuffs of his uniform rolled up to his elbows to reveal burns and scars along his arms. ‘My name is Captain Devage. This boy has betrayed his country. He is a coward and a traitor,’ he said in English. ‘There is no Tamil nation. There is only Sri Lanka. This boy has chosen to fight for terrorists. We are in a war against terror.’
There was no sound except for Sarada’s quiet whimpering. Balu did not speak or cry. He had left his home to fight for his homeland. In the short time he had been with the Tigers, he had seen a lot. He knew what was coming.
The captain motioned to two soldiers behind him. They stepped forward and tried to pull Balu from his mother’s arms. Venkat threw his body over his family again, swatting the soldiers away until one of them flipped his gun around and drove it into the top of Venkat’s neck.
Sathyan heard a sickening crunch as Sarada screamed, clutching Balu tighter.
‘Forgive us,’ she cried in Tamil. ‘Forgive him, he’s only a boy.’
He’s only a boy.
The second soldier reached down and grabbed Balu’s legs. Balu tried to kick them away. His clothes were torn as though he had been running through thorns and scrub. His feet were bloodied around the edges of his sandals. Sathyan was close enough to see masking tape holding the sandals together. The tape snapped and one of them flew into the air, slapping the soldier in the face.
Balu stopped moving and his mother stopped crying, shocked. The soldier froze in surprise. He touched his face. Registering the insult, he slammed his fist hard into Sarada’s face. Thick blood gushed from her nose, spilling onto Balu’s clothes. She drew her hands to her face, then, realising what she had done, reached for her son again, but it was too late. The soldier gripped the boy by the ankles and dragged him towards the well.
The first soldier stepped forward and blocked Sarada’s path, leaving her collapsed over the body of her unconscious husband, calling out to God and beating her chest with bloodstained hands.
Sathyan stood beside Balu’s grandfather and younger siblings. The old man stared at his family in horror, his arms around the two small boys in matching Spiderman shorts and dirty singlets.
‘Kanne moodengo,’ Sathyan whispered urgently to the grandfather. ‘Kanne moodengo.’ Close their eyes.
The old man looked at him blankly, then understood, drawing the children into the folds of his sarong and turning their faces away. He inched back and Sathyan stepped forward to block their view.
The soldiers hauled Balu to the well, his belly leaving a deep smudge in the dirt, his hands scrabbling and clawing, the dust choking him as he inhaled it into his lungs. The ochre earth of Jaffna in his blood and in his breath. They lifted him up so he was leaning against the crumbled brick wall of the well.
‘This boy is our gift to you,’ the captain announced. ‘And our warning. Tell the Tigers, the next time we find one of their soldiers alive, we will come back to their villages and we will kill the rest of their families. Tell the Tigers, if they want to send children to fight us, then we will kill their children. All of them.’ He looked at the little boys hiding behind their grandfather and Sathyan, then raised his gun and shot Balu between the eyes.
The hollow crack of the bullet ricocheted in the well, followed by the sound of Balu’s lifeless body landing in the water below.