When Elephants Fight (6 page)

Kutti's claws raked Annu's arm. Her first urge was to just release it. Her second was to strike it for hurting her. She did neither. She held it more firmly with the one hand while she continued to bury them both in the hay, using her body as a little shelter to protect the cat. She used all her power, pinning the cat against her in such a way that it couldn't escape. She was not going to let her cat suffer the fate of other pets.

Annu had a good friend who lived not far. They were schoolmates. Her friend had a dog. It was a nice dog. It lived outside, tied to a stake. It was a pet, but it also was a watchdog. It would bark when people came, warning them of visitors or strangers. Warning them of danger.

Her friend and her family had heard the plane up above and knew they had to flee their home. Sometimes the planes dropped bombs, or gunfire spewed out and hit people on the ground. The noise was getting louder and louder, and they ran, stumbling, jumping into the little bunker behind their house. That bunker, like most, wasn't much more than a ditch, as high as their heads, covered at the top, sometimes with metal and then a layer of Palmyra leaves to disguise it so it couldn't be seen from the air. The whole family scrambled in and pulled the roof into place.

There was no doubt that Annu and her mother were in a similar hole in the ground on that night. In some strange way Annu liked the bunker. The walls were only made of dirt and the bottom often held a a few inches of rainwater, but it seemed so much safer than their house. Here the walls were the earth itself and bullets couldn't penetrate. Of course nothing could stop a bomb being dropped from above, and Annu had seen the walls shake—felt the ground shake—when a bomb hit close by. She'd even heard of families who had been buried in their bunkers as the sides collapsed. She tried not to think about any of that.

For her friend that night it felt like the bombs were dropping almost on top of them. And it wasn't just one blast, but a second and a third and a fourth. They all huddled together, waiting, praying, hoping, and then it stopped. No more blasts. And as they listened, the sound of the
airplane faded away and was gone completely. They lifted the leaves, pushed the roof aside and climbed out. Now that they were safe they hoped their house was safe. They moved slowly, still listening. The house remained—the walls and the roof were intact.

Then the family saw the dog. The collar was still around its neck, the rope still pegged to the ground, but the dog was dead. There was no doubt. It was ripped in two, half still tied up, the other half a dozen feet away.

Annu hadn't seen it, but the image was so strong in her mind that she'd never forget it. And, she would never let this fate be that of her Kutti.

The cat had given up the struggle. Partly because Annu had it so tightly pinned to her body that it had no room to struggle, but partly, she hoped, because it knew that she was there to take care of it. Then Kutti started to call out. The first plaintive cry had almost startled Annu.

“Be quiet,” she hissed at the cat. “Don't shout out...you might get us both killed!”

She put her hand over the cat's mouth. It still made little sounds but it wasn't able to screech anymore. Now she had one hand to hold the cat and the second to hold its mouth closed. There was no hand free to stroke the cat anymore. She looked down.

Population:
22,200,000
Location:
Latitude: 7° N, Longitude: 81° E,
an island in the Indian Ocean south of India
Area:
65,600 square kilometers
Climate:
tropical, monsoon
Languages:
Sinhala (Official and
National language) 74%
Tamil (National) 18%
Other 8%
English (used by 10% of the
population)
Ethnicity:
Sinhalese 74%
Moors 7%
Indian Tamils 4.6%
Sri Lankan Tamils 3.9%
Others 10%
Religion:
Buddhist 70%
Muslim 8%
Hindu 7%
Christian 6%
Life Expectancy:
73 years
Infant Mortality Rate:
13 deaths per
1,000 live births
Per Capita Income:
$4,600
Literacy rate:
92% (male 94%, female 92%)

Annu's mother had a camera; she used to dress up Annu for pictures. Annu's grandfather is in the background
.

The little cat looked scared. She was scared too, but then she realized that Kutti was afraid of her! Kutti didn't know why she was doing this, why the little girl who had always treated her so nicely was now hurting her. The cat didn't know why, it just knew that it was happening.

In some ways the cat and the little girl had a lot in common. Annu didn't really know why the war was happening. She didn't know about the big issues, about politics, or peace or world opinion. All she knew was that her family was Tamil and that people she knew and loved were being killed. People she knew had become members of the Tamil Tigers, and she was told they were fighting for her, fighting for her future. When they won a battle, the streets were filled with people cheering. There were loudspeakers playing patriotic songs that celebrated Tamil fighters.

Gradually the gunfire became less frequent, and then it stopped altogether. Annu stayed in the haystack a little bit longer. She knew that it was best to wait, to be safe and make sure it wasn't just at a lull but at an end. Finally satisfied she pushed aside the
straw and stepped into the daylight. She released her cat and before she could reach down to reassure it that everything was safe it ran off, racing between the trees, around the side of her house and disappeared.

Now it was safe for her to go back to the house and wait for her mother to return. Or maybe it would be a cousin sent to get her or an aunt or maybe one of her grandparents. She hoped it was her mother. Then Annu would know her mother was safe. That was the most important thing, her mother, because her father wasn't there anymore.

Annu's father, like so many men in the village, had fled the country. They didn't want to be killed by the army. All they wanted was a safe life for their families, and they'd left the country to try to establish a life, get a job, create a home and take their families away from this war. Annu's father had left when she was less than two. He returned to the family for short visits, but mainly his picture was the most she knew of him. Someday, her parents had promised, they would all be together, and it would be in a place where they didn't have to fear for their lives, a place that would be safe.

Annu was told stories, and promises were made. Those stories were just that—stories. Was there actually a place where people didn't have to live in fear, where gunfire didn't punctuate the day, where families lived together in peace? She hoped, but she didn't know.

Right now she was just worried about her mother coming home. And she thought about her cat, the way it had run away from her, the look in its eyes when she was just trying to save its life. It didn't understand why she was treating it so roughly. Annu understood. She had no choice, but the cat didn't understand.

Annu's mother returned shortly after. Kutti was never seen again.

Annu and her mother left Sri Lanka to be united with Annu's father. The family ultimately immigrated to Canada. Annu is now twenty-two years of age and recently graduated from university.

Sri Lanka is an island country located in the Indian Ocean, just south of India. It contains an ancient civilization with continuous documented settlement for close to three thousand years. It existed as a number of independent kingdoms or territories for most of this time period.

While always closely intertwined with the Indian Subcontinent, the northern part of the island was, at one point, seized by a southern Indian dynasty, and a Tamil Kingdom was established.

It came under the influence of various European countries, beginning with the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, then the Dutch in the seventeenth century, and the island was ceded to Britain in 1796. The entire island was united under British rule in 1815 and was called Ceylon. It was considered valuable not only for the warm climate and fertile fields that produced numerous crops—especially tea—but also because of its strategic position in the sea lanes.

With even greater potential for agricultural uses, the British imported from southern India close to one million Indian Tamils to work in the large-scale plantations. This created a “visitor” population that was closely related to the Sri Lankan Tamils but considered by many, especially the majority Sinhalese population, as not truly being Sri Lankan.

The British Empire controlled countries and people around the world. The people in various countries, including India to the north and Ceylon, began asking for more rights and freedoms. In 1948 Ceylon became an independent country with citizens being given the right to vote for their government.

With the right to vote, there were fears in the minority communities that the majority group, the Sinhalese, would establish dominance to such a degree that the rights of the minorities would be reduced or impinged. There was an acknowledgment that the government would protect minority rights and recognize the country as being pluralistic in nature.

The Sinhalese, who spoke Sinhala and were almost exclusively
Buddhist, composed almost 75 percent of the population. The Tamils were composed of two groups, Indian and Sri Lankan Tamils, and they combined to form the largest minority group. They spoke Tamil as their primary language and were mainly Hindu, but had a significant number of Catholics as well. A third group, the Moors, was Muslim. While all three groups lived throughout the country, the Tamils formed a majority of the population in parts of the north and east of the country.

A tea plantation in Sri Lanka. Tea accounts for almost 25% of Sri Lanka's export earnings
.

The dreams of a pluralistic country, representing all groups, quickly dissolved once independence was reached. One of the first acts of the government was to disenfranchise the Indian Tamils, removing their right to vote. This was done despite the fact that the vast majority of these people were born in Sri Lanka, as were their parents and, in some cases, their grandparents.