On Sal Mal Lane by Ru Freeman

Author:Ru Freeman [Freeman, Ru]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9781555976422
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2013-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

“I remember the tension!” Nihil spoke up. “I remember that everybody was looking at us when we got down from the buses and also when we got back into the buses. There were even soldiers at the Jaffna fort.”

“I don’t remember anything but the boring boring boring chess and the loud loud loud chess clocks, and we only stayed at the ocean for a little while,” Devi said sadly.

“We didn’t go there to have fun, that’s why,” Rashmi said. “We went to watch the tournament.”

“So boring to watch chess,” Devi said, and smiled when her mother laughed beside her. She stole a look at her mother, forgiving her for her earlier comment and, seeing that it was permissible, even while Kamala was still clearing the dishes, slumped toward her into a cuddle.

Rashmi looked over at her father. “Why did the Tamils kill the mayor when the mayor was Tamil too?”

“Not the Tamils, Prabhakaran,” Mr. Herath said, after a deep inhale and exhale of cigarette smoke. “Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was leading a terrorist outfit from the jungles of Jaffna. Prabhakaran is Tamil, Prabhakaran’s group is Tamil, but not all Tamils support Prabhakaran.”

Devi said, “Uncle Raju is not Prabhakaran,” and wiggled with cozy satisfaction in her mother’s lap.

“The mayor was killed because he represented the old way, trying to make changes through politics, through parliament. Prabhakaran’s lot don’t think that is working.”

“Is it working?” Nihil asked.

“And now we have to have a war?” Rashmi asked at the same time. “No, there won’t be any war,” Mr. Herath said, gauging the level of interest as well as the available answers and choosing Rashmi’s question. “The Tamil moderates in Jaffna will get rid of the bastard; the TULF will return. They’ll continue negotiating.”

“Good, then the Silva boys won’t have to join the army. I’ll tell them tomorrow,” Devi said.

Rashmi was not convinced. She was not convinced because her father continued to smoke and think and think and smoke and didn’t pick up one bit of reading from the stacks of material around their house. This was not the behavior of a man who was sure of anything. And Suren was not convinced because, while he had not felt tension in the air in Jaffna, he had felt tension in the air around Mohan, and that was much closer to home and seemed to carry with it the malice of intention. Nihil was neither convinced nor unconvinced. He sat through the rest of dinner wondering about the soldiers at the fort in Jaffna. Several of them had been Tamil. If both Tamils and Sinhalese were guarding the same public fort, how could there be war?

Ah, the conversations between parents and children, the way they unfold, always with good intentions, rarely with complete honesty. Which of these stories that the adults told was true, which false, which details spun to fit a certain way of seeing the world, which to fit another, we cannot say with any degree of surety. To know what effect the murder of that mayor of Jaffna, Mr.

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