The Seasons of Trouble (42 page)

They were sent next to Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The group was split up and Sarva was taken to a two-room tenement in the outskirts. Eight others were already there, having arrived on different flights from Colombo through various transit points; they were fresh off the boat. The youngest among them, a twenty-one-year-old Jaffna university student called Bharati, was the only one smart enough to have brought a world map. Sarva pored over it, finally able to visualise the continent and borders he had been ripping through for months. When he found Bolivia nestled in the centre of South America, he counted upwards, towards the USA. If he continued to travel as he had been doing, nine, possibly ten countries lay between him and his destination.

Gradually, as had happened at every other safe house, some men started to leave with the chap, many of them taking boats or flights to Canada. Finally only Bharati and Sarva were left. Bharati
was not like the others; for one, he had brought books and a pen along with his map. And at night, while Sarva tossed on his mattress, Bharati scribbled away in his book. ‘What are you writing?’ Sarva once asked. ‘My thoughts,’ Bharati replied, in absolute seriousness. After some time, Sarva borrowed a pen and some paper from him. He wrote letters to Malar, one every day, kept neatly folded in his wallet with 3,000 Sri Lankan rupees. His wallet used to have a small picture of her, too, the one with her in the yellow sari, but he had been nervous about one of the agents getting to it. He had avoided even mentioning Malar, and though he made repeated requests to call home, he didn’t ask to call his girlfriend. He could not bring himself to throw her picture away, so, in Ecuador, he had swallowed it with a glass of water. He wrote about this in one of the letters, adding that Malar now literally resided in his blood.

By this time, Sarva had begun to lose sight of the future. It had been seven months. He was not sure where he was going, only that he could not go back. If he landed in Colombo and took one step near customs, he would be dragged into a dark basement without windows once again and have an iron rod shoved up his arse. He was so sure of it he could smell the petrol bag fumes squeezing his lungs. It was 2011, three years after he had been picked off the street, two years after the end of the war, but all that would matter to the antiterrorism police were the years Sarva trained to be a Tiger. No time, no action, no court acquittal had been able to undo that.

During the horrible idle hours, his mind whirred, hypothesising. Suppose the UN or some independent body went to Sri Lanka and investigated the war crimes perpetrated by both sides, the Tigers and the government. Suppose they threw some people into jail and provided counselling to reform others. He hadn’t killed anyone; he had never even held a gun after his training. Assuming that he was forgiven, would he go back? Or going a step further, suppose the LTTE issue didn’t matter at all, and the TID forgot about him. Would he go back?

He posed these questions to Bharati, who had left Jaffna after two occasions when men in white vans attempted to kidnap him. Two of his university friends had been jailed for trying to gather funds for the regrouping of the Tigers—he said they had actually
been collecting donations to buy mosquito nets for refugee families being forcibly settled in the Vanni jungles. Two other university students had simply gone missing after a game of cricket on the school grounds opposite the Jaffna library. Bharati said he could not go back. ‘Actually I
would
not, even if I could,’ he added in that determined way of his, enunciating every Tamil syllable. He had a zoology degree and a good grade, but he was sure he would not find a job. Moreover, his parents had sold their house to send him on this journey, dreaming that he would settle down in America and then fly them over. Going back home was not an option. Listening to him, Sarva wondered if the young man didn’t have every reason to want to drive a knife into a Sri Lankan soldier. The crime would be huge but the sentence had already been served.

Sarva couldn’t return either, not to a place he knew would never pardon his crime. He might as well have stayed in the Tiger ranks, Sarva thought sometimes, instead of letting Amma persuade him to quit. It was not out of the ordinary to serve in the Tigers; they had recruited thousands like him. He, too, had felt the rage, the helplessness, the desire to level the uneven playing field.

Throughout the years of his youth, the idea of militancy had presented itself to him repeatedly. He told Bharati about the time when, eleven years old and living in Chavakacheri, he had lost the key for his bicycle and was trying to break the wheel lock with a stone. Two female Tigers with double braids had passed by, asking if he needed help. He nodded shyly. ‘In exchange you better join the movement, okay?’ they had laughed. When his bike was unlocked, he sped away, but their faces always caught up with him. They were not threatening or scary, he had thought then, just young girls doing an honourable job.

At other times, he had desired retribution. Like that day when he was fourteen, standing in the Vavuniya bus station with his aunt, looking at a soldier kicking a youth, pounding his boots into the boy’s face till he was bleeding, till his mother was wailing, throwing herself on her son, cursing the soldiers in stricken Tamil.

Every so often, such a scene had confronted Sarva, forcing him to take a stance. In or out. Family or community. Anger and pride pulsed through him. This mix of emotions had burnt fiercely all
through his life: in his childhood, when his one-day-old sister died and he was sure the Sinhalese nurses had been neglectful; as a young man, when he roamed the streets unemployed; during his darkest years in prison.

There had been so many reasons to pick up a gun. If not for Amma pulling him out of the school in the Vanni and sending him to Hatton, perhaps he might have turned to violence when still a teenager. She tried sending him abroad, but when that didn’t work, she encouraged his work as a seaman, which kept him out of the country. Even when he signed up with the Tigers, she had forced him to abandon them. Had he seen this fugitive life coming, he might have stayed with the LTTE.

‘At least I would have made a real contribution,’ he told Bharati.

‘You’re being nostalgic,’ Bharati scoffed. ‘They were there for thirty years’—longer than the span of his life—‘and they did nothing but leave us in a mess.’

A COUPLE OF
months after Sarva arrived in Santa Cruz in eastern Bolivia, Siva made an appearance. Ever since the night with the thugs, Sarva’s patience had been wearing thin.

‘Why am I still here?’ he demanded.

For the first time, Siva answered the question directly. He said that everyone else had paid him properly. ‘You have paid me half.’

That was the agreement, Sarva said, a discount in exchange for a favour from his brother.

Siva looked annoyed. He took his phone out, opened the calculator, and made as if he were doing complicated arithmetic. Finally he clucked. ‘Yes, one million rupees. I need at least one million more from you to pay people to get you safely across. And I won’t be making a profit.’ Looking at Bharati, Siva said, ‘That goes for you, too.’ Until he got that money, they were staying where they were.

The next day, the boy who usually brought lunch told Bharati they would have to fend for themselves. Siva would not provide food anymore. Sarva kicked the wall in frustration and injured his toe, but in a few days, when hunger struck, he left his room. He went downstairs, walked a few blocks, his hoodie up, hands deep in his
pockets. If someone asked, he would say he was lost, just as he had been told to do earlier. Or he would give Siva up, tell the police he was being smuggled and would disclose all the details in exchange for his freedom. Sarva and Bharati went in and out of small shops all day looking for work. They did the same the next day, and for a whole week, circling further away from the hideout, and returning beaten every night. Finally, they found a job cleaning a deli and taking the garbage out. They didn’t tell the employers they were illegal immigrants; but perhaps the shop owners guessed the risks involved, since the wages were so low. Sarva and Bharati worked alternate days at the same job and were able to make just enough to buy food. Both were aware that their pay would never add up to the amount Siva wanted. ‘Even if we sold our kidneys,’ as Bharati put it.

When Siva next visited, he was transformed. He spoke to Sarva respectfully, apologising for the fight on their previous meeting, but still not offering to pay for their meals. Most suspiciously, he revoked the prohibition on using a telephone. He offered the use of his own iPad to Sarva. ‘It must have been ages since you spoke to your mother.’ He then went out for a smoke.

Sarva was sceptical, but he logged on to Skype and looked for Malar. Luckily she was online. There was shouting, crying, many questions, few answers, disbelief and concern. He asked her to tell Amma where he was. With Sarva still online, Malar called his mother on her phone. Amma was in Nuwara Eliya, she said, and Carmel was there with a laptop and Internet connection. Sarva buzzed his little brother on Skype.

‘Why haven’t you called your mother in so long, child?’ Amma cried immediately. ‘Are you all right? Where are you?’

He let her get the questions out of the way before saying he was in Bolivia.

‘Olivia? Where is that?’

‘In Latin America.’

‘Is that America?’

Sarva laughed, but until a few months ago, he himself hadn’t known any better. ‘It is still far away, Amma. I don’t know how long it will take.’

She didn’t seem to know what to say. ‘Show me your face.’

The connection is not fast enough, he lied. His emaciated face would worry her. She would also ask to see his room. She was sitting on the living room sofa with Carmel, her face tired but beautiful, and Sarva’s own surroundings felt too shabby to share.

‘Is Siva good to you? Remind him I asked him to take care of you. He used to eat so often in our house.’

Sarva said he would let Siva know.

‘Are you eating well? Do you need money, child? Tell me the truth.’

How could he tell her he needed yet more money? He was trying not to blame his brother for this ruinous turn of events. ‘I’m eating fine.’

She launched into a long story about her calling Jehaan and Shirleen, seeking their help to find him.

Finally, he had to tell her. ‘Amma, can you send one million? Siva is demanding more now. Without it, he won’t take me further.’

Immediately she sounded anxious. ‘Is he treating you badly? I will speak to Deva.’

‘Please don’t. It will make things worse. If you can arrange it yourself … If not, I will … I don’t know. I’ll have to see.’

‘No, no. I will do something. Don’t worry, child, I will do something, okay?’ and Sarva believed she would.

When he hung up, Bharati got on Skype with his parents, who also assured him they would send money ‘somehow’. It dawned on Sarva that Siva had anticipated exactly what would happen. The agent had planned for a long silence that, once broken, would prompt a wire transfer of one million rupees.

24.

January 2012

ON A JANUARY
afternoon in 2012, Divyan’s guards asked him and twenty others to get into a military truck. As they drove out of the Poonthottam rehabilitation camp, a blue tarpaulin was draped over the back of the truck, so they wouldn’t know where they were being taken. One man, sure of a mass execution, wished he could have seen his family one more time before the end. Others came to different conclusions about their destination: they were going to Boosa prison to be tortured or to another camp for interrogation. Divyan closed his eyes and forced himself to sleep, a skill he had taught himself in two years of imprisonment. It kept him sane and, most importantly, unthinking.

A few hours later, the tarpaulin was lifted and the man next to him shook Divyan awake. ‘Your place is here,’ he said. They were at the Point Pedro bus stop. Divyan got off the truck, bemused at this anticlimactic return home. He didn’t know where to go from there. He had to call Mugil on a borrowed phone.

She came on her bike to pick him up. She was radiant as she pedalled towards him, not like the mouse he had seen on her visits to the camp. She asked him why he hadn’t told her in advance of his homecoming. He said he only knew when he got off the truck. They did not have any more words and smiled in acknowledgement.
He folded his sarong and took the handlebars, while she moved to the carrier at the back. She did not remember the last time she sat pillion. It was a willing submission to a role she had not enjoyed for two years. He did not know where to go, and she gave him gentle directions.

‘The shirts and sarongs I gave you at the camp?’ she asked as he pedalled.

‘They got left behind. They didn’t tell us to pack. Children are home?’

‘I sent Amma to bring them from tuition.’

At home, Tamizh clambered all over his father, but Maran hugged him uncertainly. He asked when Divyan was going back. ‘Maran!’ Mugil slapped his arm. But she wanted to know, too. Divyan said he didn’t know.