Funny Boy (33 page)

Appa looked very thoughtful. “Let’s watch the situation for a little longer and then decide,” he said. “I have so many assets here. I don’t want to just up and go like that.”

Later, however, I heard Appa telling Amma that, as soon as things quietened down, they would apply for passports for Diggy, Sonali, and me.

July 28

8:00
P.M.
This day has been a terrible one for Appa. We heard that the hotel was attacked yesterday. It was severely damaged and most of the rooms were burned. Fortunately there were no tourists there at the time; they had all been removed to the airport. Mr. Samarakoon and some of the staff tried to stop the mob, but it was useless. After he heard the news, Appa sat in the front garden, staring ahead of him. Amma went out to see if he was all right, and he said that he wanted to be left alone for a little while.

Appa finally came inside to hear the president address the nation. When the broadcast was over, he said that he wished he had stayed outside. The president expressed no sympathy for what we Tamils have suffered, nor did he condemn the actions of the thugs.

After the president’s address, Appa went into the garden
again and Amma followed him. I sat on the steps that led out from the French windows into the garden and listened to them. They were silent for a while. Then Appa said, “It is very clear that we no longer belong in this country.”

Amma nodded.

“How could I have been so blind? Why didn’t I see this coming? Now that I look back, it was obvious this was going to happen. I should have seen it, I should have known things would come to this.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Amma said. “It’s difficult to see clearly when you’re in the middle of something.”

Appa shook his head. “But you saw it. You even warned me, but I refused to believe you.” He turned to her, “How were you able to see it?”

Amma did not answer.

“When this is all over, we’ll start to make plans for Canada.”

I am glad he said that, because I long to be out of this country. I don’t feel at home in Sri Lanka any longer, will never feel safe again.

July 29

10:00
A.M.
The morning has hardly begun and already the visitors have started to arrive. How many times must we repeat the same story? The excitement of the riots is wearing off, and what happened to us has become dull from being told so many times. Ammachi and Appachi are the latest visitors. They say they have come to see how we are, but all Ammachi has done
since she got here is moan about the loss of their house. Finally I got up and went away to write in this journal.

The reality of losing our house is slowly beginning to sink in, but what I feel is nothing like what I imagined. I expected to be sad and nostalgic for a part of my life that is now destroyed. But I only get irritated and lethargic. It’s the little things, the comforts and luxuries, that I miss. The yearning for things like my records or my books or even the mat by my bed gnaws at me until I think I must have them this moment or I will die. Then I become angry and frustrated, because I can’t have them. I am also beginning to feel claustrophobic, because with so many people in the house it is impossible to have any peace and quiet. I long to be with Shehan, and I am thinking of slipping out this afternoon to see him.

The loss of our house is also beginning to hit Amma. She has cried a lot this morning. She tries not to let us see her crying and goes to the bathroom. Still, we know what she is doing in there and that makes us feel terrible.

1:00
P.M.
The riots have begun again. Just when we thought everything was going back to normal. We heard people running down our road, shouting that the Tigers had landed in Colombo, that they had come to avenge the Tamil people.

A few minutes ago the radio denied that the Tigers have landed in Colombo. So how did this story start? Was it merely a rumour to cause more trouble?

Appa has just finished talking to Kanthi Aunty on the phone
again. Ammachi and Appachi left forty-five minutes ago in their car and they still haven’t arrived at Kanthi Aunty’s house. Where can they be? Neliya Aunty is praying in the drawing room with Amma. I should be praying too, but I can’t. All I can do is write in this book.

Sena Uncle has gone looking for them.

The situation must be serious, because the government has declared curfew again.

August 2

So many things have happened over the last four days, I have not felt like writing until now.

Not long after my last entry, Sena Uncle returned. I was in Sanath’s room and the door was open. From the silence in the drawing room, I knew what had happened. Then I heard Amma begin to weep, a long cry of despair. I just stood where I was, not knowing what to do. I couldn’t bear to go into the drawing room and see Amma crying.

At first Sena Uncle didn’t want to say anything, but Appa pressed him until he finally told them what had happened. He had set out for Kanthi Aunty’s house, following the route Ammachi and Appachi had likely taken. Shortly after he left, however, he noticed a crowd up ahead on the road and smoke rising into the air. The traffic in front of him was too congested and, fearing the worst, he had got out of his car and hurried along the pavement. But he got there too late. The mob had set the car on fire with Ammachi and Appachi inside it.

Appa was silent for a while, then he said, “I must go. I have
to see what happened.” His voice was strange. “No,” Amma said in a panicked voice. “You can’t go. It’s too dangerous.” Now Appa began to shout, “It’s my parents, for God’s sake. It’s my parents who are being burnt.” Sena Uncle tried to calm him down but he wouldn’t listen. Finally Amma yelled at him, “You have children to think of. If anything happens to you, what will become of them?” Appa became silent.

I knew that I couldn’t stay in Sanath’s room any more. It wasn’t right. I had to go into the drawing room and join them. My hands were sweating as I went towards the door. Everybody stared at me as I entered the drawing room, but I avoided looking at any of them. Amma turned to Sena Uncle. “What shall we do now?” she asked.

“We’ll have to wait until the ambulance comes and takes the bodies away,” he replied. “Until then, I’ll go and keep watch over the car. Someone has to look out for …” he moved uncomfortably in his chair, “stray dogs and crows.”

Chithra Aunty shuddered when he said this. I looked around me now. Appa sat in a chair, his legs sprawled out. He stared at the floor and his jaw muscles tightened every now and then. Amma had smudges on her face. The knot on the back of her neck had come partially undone and a strand of hair hung down.

After Sena Uncle left, we all remained as we were, not knowing what to do. Finally Amma moved in her chair and said, “We should inform the rest of the family.” Yet nobody made an attempt to get up and go to the phone.

Yesterday, we buried Ammachi and Appachi. It was a bright, sunny day, so different from what a funeral day should be like. Radha Aunty flew back from America for the funeral. It was peculiar to see her standing near the coffin during the service, her head thrown back in the way Ammachi used to do when she was upset about something and didn’t want anybody to see it. We no longer have much to say to each other, but, as we followed the coffins towards the grave, she put her hand on my shoulder and kept it there.

The whole funeral had an unreal feeling to it. Even while they were lowering the coffins into the grave, I found it hard to believe that it was Ammachi and Appachi we were burying. I think that the other aunts and uncles felt the same way, for nobody cried at the funeral. We simply stood around the grave, watching the coffins disappear under the clods of earth that were thrown on them.

I find it impossible to imagine that the world will ever be normal again.

August
25

Today I received my passport. As I looked at it, I finally realized that we were really leaving Sri Lanka; that in two days we will be in a strange country. I thought about how, when we were young, Diggy, Sonali, and I would sometimes imagine what foreign countries were like. All those Famous Five books, and then the Little Women and the Hardy Boys. We would often discuss what fun it would be to go abroad, make snowmen,
have snowball fights, and eat scones and blueberry jam. I don’t think that we ever imagined we would go abroad under these circumstances, as penniless refugees. We are going, not with the idea that something delightful awaits us, but rather with the knowledge that great difficulties lie ahead. First, Appa won’t be coming for a while. He has to settle many things over here. The thought of not having Appa around is frightening. Amma didn’t want to go without him, but he said that it was too dangerous for us to stay here, because we don’t know when the next riot will break out. Second, we will have to live with Lakshman Uncle. This news makes me want to stay behind. It is bad enough living off Chithra Aunty and Sena Uncle whom we know so well. But to be in a foreign country, living off the charity of somebody I hardly know, is terrible. Appa can’t take his money out of the country because of government regulations. We are only allowed five hundred pounds each. The thought of being this poor scares me.

Today I watched a beggar woman running from car to car at the traffic lights, her hand held out, and I wondered if this would be our plight in Canada.

August 27

I have just returned from seeing Shehan. I can still smell his particular odour on my body, which always lingers on me after we make love. I remember the first time I noticed this. I had come home from being with him, and I was so nervous that others would detect it that, after putting my bicycle away at the
back, I rushed to the shower. I smile to think about that, since now I am reluctant even to change my clothes for fear that I will lose this final memento.

When we made love for the last time today, it was nothing like I imagined it would be – almost passionless, uncoordinated and tentative, lacking synchronization. Like those afternoons when neither of us felt ardent, but, thinking that the other did, we would make our best effort. I had dreaded our parting so much that, for fear of the pain, I had withdrawn from him. I suppose he had done the same thing.

Afterwards, while we were putting on our clothes, I glanced up at the mirror and saw that he was watching me. For a moment our eyes met, then I turned away and continued getting dressed.

When I left his house, the sky had darkened and I could feel the moisture in the air. I had borrowed Sanath’s bicycle for the afternoon, and, as I cycled along Galle Road towards Sena Uncle’s house, I had the nagging sense that there was something I needed to do but I couldn’t remember what. When I passed Bullers Road, I knew what it was. I stopped my bicycle and wheeled it back along the pavement.

By the time I had turned onto our road, I could already feel a few drops of rain on my arms. The road was deserted. From the top of it, I could see our house, its black walls and beams visible above the other houses. When I reached it, I pushed open the gate. Something was different from the last time I was there. The house looked even more bare, even more desolate than before. Then I realized what had happened and I stared at
our house in shock. Everything that was not burned had been stolen. Whatever had remained intact, furniture, uncharred beams, doors, windows, even the hinges and the rain pipes, had been taken. How naked the house appeared without its door and windows, how hollow and barren with only scraps of paper and other debris in its rooms. I felt hot, angry tears begin to well up in me as I saw this final violation. Then, for the first time, I began to cry for our house. I sat on the verandah steps and wept for the loss of my home, for the loss of everything that I held to be precious. I tried to muffle the sound of my weeping, but my voice cried out loudly as if it were the only weapon I had against those who had destroyed my life.

Finally I could not cry any more. I leaned back on one of the verandah posts, exhausted, and stared out at the garden. It looked so forlorn. The grass had grown, but in uneven patches, and the roses had lost most of their petals. The araliya tree was bare of its flowers. They, too, must have been stolen. I was struck then by a bitter irony. These araliya flowers would probably be offered to some god as a pooja by the very people who had plucked them, in order to increase their chances of a better life in the next birth.

I could hear the thunder in the sky, now, and in the dust on the driveway I could see the speckled pattern of rain drops. It was time for me to leave. I got up slowly and brushed the dirt from my trousers, then I went down the steps and picked up my bicycle. I wheeled it to the gate, staring straight ahead, not
wanting to look at the house again. I didn’t bother to close the gate as I left. There was no reason to protect it against the outside world any more.

I began to ride up the road, and the rain suddenly started, falling in great torrents, as it does during the monsoon season. When I reached the top of the road, I couldn’t prevent myself from turning back to look at the house one last time. For a moment I saw it, then the rain fell faster and thicker, obscuring it from my sight.