They are pushed up north and east as far as they can go, into what is called the No Fire Zone, driven onto a long thin strip of land between the Nandikadal Lagoon and the sea. There they crowd under blue-and-white tents in the sun and wait for the end to arrive.
When the shells start coming, from both land and water, Ajanthi and her husband dig a hole deep in the sand and shelter under broad palmyra leaves. Their bodies form a fleshy shield over their newborn baby girl as sand and blood sift down onto their backs.
During a pause in the mayhem, they manage to board a truck that takes them, with many others, old and young, to a school building where they’re told they will be safe. They sleep that night on the classroom floor among left-behind notebooks and worn-down pencil stubs.
As dawn breaks, the youngest children whine softly with thirst and hunger, and mothers smooth their hair and hum soft lullabies. Then, before they can cover their ears and duck down low, all is dust and deafness as a shell falls in front of the building, blowing in the cement walls and bringing down the roof. When the choking releases her throat and she opens her eyes to the haze, Ajanthi finds her daughter somehow in her arms, but her husband no longer by her side. She crawls through the rubble, her baby tight against her chest, until she finds him lying on his back. His face is calm as though in sleep, but his chest is bloody and his legs are crushed. She presses her forehead to his fingers and kisses his blood-wet palms. There isn’t time for the tears to start to come before a doctor, with blood dripping from the middle of his mouth, comes yelling and pulling and tells her and the others to get back into the truck and leave.
* * *
For five nights Ajanthi lies next to an older woman and her family in a vast tent made of rice sacks and sarongs, although she does not sleep in the dark. These people have been good to her in the week since her husband’s death, even though the woman is herself a widow and has lost two of her sons. They make her eat though she feels no hunger, and they keep Ajanthi and her daughter close by at night.
Although the dawn is still many hours away, she needs to go outside to urinate. She lifts her legs like a dancer over the sleeping bodies and bends forward under the tied-back flap of the tent. She must walk far to reach an area of thick scrub away from the rows of tents. Three soldiers sitting on the ground at the side of a dark green truck watch her go, then rise and follow in her steps. They come up behind her as she is crouching down. One of them puts his hand over her mouth and the other two hold her by the arms and ankles. In the back of the army truck they beat her until she’s still. When the vehicle starts to move, she opens her eyes just a little. Through her tear-blurred lashes she sees the full moon between gaps in the truck’s canvas canopy. As they move away from the beach, her eyes follow the white globe as it swings round to the left and then disappears behind the thick crowns of tall palmyra trees.
When the truck pulls up in front of the abandoned police station, they carry her out and lay her down on her back on the bare cement floor. Her head is heavy and angled to the left and her gaze falls on a wooden door. A silver bar of moonlight is glowing underneath. She watches it unblinking while the soldiers come and go, one after the other, on top of her. When they finish they stand over her, calling her Sinhalese names she doesn’t understand. As they open the door to leave, she sees the sun has risen. There is a dog lying in the shade of the truck and a crow stalking in the dirt, and then the door slams shut. When she’s sure she is alone, she allows the tears to come, thinking it will soothe, but all it does is drain her. She lets her eyelids close and finally falls asleep.
She is woken by the heat of the late afternoon. Her legs are numb and her face is pulled taut like a mask. She lies without moving, her tongue swelled with thirst, and listens for the sound of the men. As the sun drops low, a long thin strip of sunlight rolls under the door and towards her. She can only see shadows through her swollen eyelids, but she feels the shift in temperature as the sunbeam meets her skin. It climbs the side of her forearm and circles up over her wrist like a fine gold wedding bracelet.
* * *
The sun through the light blue UN tent heats the air inside and makes the canvas bulge and billow like a downed hot-air balloon. Ajanthi waves a fly away from the corner of her baby daughter’s lips and searches the new faces for familiar eyes. From the far side of the lagoon, another shell explodes and rains down jagged fragments on the sand. Low screams travel towards her from all sides of the tent. They are muted by the stagnant air, barely more than white noise now. Ajanthi holds herself still, her back upright and her legs straight out. She picks up the plastic doll she found this morning on an abandoned pile of cloths by the entrance to the tent. She blows the sand from its pale pink face, but the grains have made their way into the eyes and jammed them open. It is clothed in a faded pink dress, but is missing one of its legs. Ajanthi adjusts the dress to cover the hole where the leg had fitted in and places it on the woven palm leaf mat next to her daughter. A sticky breath of air seeps in from off the surface of the water and leaches under the open tent flap.
Ajanthi pulls the frayed fabric of her purple skirt down over her dust-streaked calves. Without lifting her face, she scans the tent once more but sees no familiar faces. She waves away a fly and picks at an unhealed cut above her ankle. Another shell bursts, in the lagoon this time, and drops fall heavy on the tent. Ajanthi doesn’t blink. The noise no longer makes her shoulders flinch. She leans forward to pick up the doll and slips it under her daughter’s arm, folded loose across her chest. She looks around again at the others in the tent, but none of their eyes meet hers. Still, she keeps her movements small. She lifts the hem of her dress in both hands and her fingers find a fraying edge. She holds the fabric taut and tears away a long thin strip. She leans over her daughter, raising a knee to form a screen with the fabric of her skirt. With one finger, she pushes the child’s slack jaw shut, passes the strip of purple under her chin and ties it in a knot on top of her head.
‘Alright, alright, baby girl,’ she whispers low, so no one else will hear.