Everything Is So Political (10 page)

Kelly and another social worker ran into the hallway. “Tegan, what the hell?” said the other one—the short dyke with spiky hair.

Tegan stood and flew down the stairs, grabbed the jug, hoisted it onto her shoulders—pouring the rest of the water down her back—and kicked the door open.

“For God's sake you could rake the grass for ten bucks!” Kelly yelled.

Tegan was gone, Kelly's words hot on her ears as she sprinted north toward the depot. The hipster kids and maybe her old classmates would see her running, old-school running, but with this fucking water bottle. Raking grass for ten dollars. She'd rather be caught dead.

Suicide Bombers

Shane Joseph

D
ear Barney,

I did my best with the old man. Dad is a stubborn mule, and scared too. One thing: he respects what you have done and feels unworthy due to his neglect of you while you were growing up. I have given him your address. Now it's his turn to reach out. My stay with him was pleasant, though emotionally draining for we dredged up a lot of old stuff.

I leave Haputale for Colombo today, and my flight departs for Canada in two days.

I am enclosing e-mail addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers etc., for you to find me in Canada. Please call me collect, if you have to, the moment Dad gets in touch with you. This is very important to me and one of the main reasons why I came to Sri Lanka.

All the very best to you and Sena in your heroic attempts to give those children a chance in life.

I am proud of you!

Martin

Martin places a stamp on the letter and drops it in the old red colonial mailbox in town and heads for the bus station.

The pull of home is strong in Sri Lanka, especially when looking and walking among surroundings that are familiar: crowds in the bus station, the bullock cart pulling a load of cement and being steered by an emaciated ebony-skinned carter wearing a white turban, the man making tea outside his little
the-kade,
streaming the steaming brew from one glass to another like a juggler. His father has given him some inescapable facts to ponder. He has been told that he could get a seat on the mid-day bus. He has toyed with hiring a car to drive back to Colombo, but nixed the idea: this is going to be his last bus ride in Sri Lanka for a long while, so why not enjoy it?

The passenger next to him in the window seat is in his sixties, with long grey hair; he wears a thin black tie over a white shirt, the pocket of which is lined with fountain pens. He keeps screwing his features every time he looks up from the thick wad of papers on his lap, as if trying to balance the heavy lenses on his nose. Martin nods politely and takes a seat next to the man, hoping that he will not be disturbed during the ride.

The passenger in front of him, however, looks like she will not let him sleep in peace. She is about five years old, standing on the seat and looking back at him: dark curls framing a round face, long earrings dangling, kohl accentuating eyebrows, giving shade to her sparkling eyes. She is bouncing on her seat beside a woman who must be her mother, a woman in a sari who looks too young for motherhood and is trying valiantly to get the child to settle down. The girl keeps waving a lollipop in Martin's face.

“Ah, the ebullience of youth,” the grey haired man on Martin's left says, raising his head from his papers and screwing up his face again as he observes the little girl.

Martin smiles. “Refreshing in a land of conflict, isn't it?”

“Are you a tourist here?” the man asks.

“No. Visiting my family after many years.”

“From Australia?”

“Canada.”

“Ah. Nice country. I went there on a study exchange once. My sister lives in Vancouver.”

“I see.” Martin realizes that between the man and the little girl he is going to be kept awake for the trip.

Just as the bus is about to pull out, a young woman in her early twenties who has been hesitating at the bus stop jumps on board, and receives a rude telling-off from the conductor. She pulls herself slowly down the gyrating bus and sits across from Martin on the right side of the aisle. She is dressed in a long loose dress, a thin sweater thrown over, and carries a heavy knapsack which she stows under the seat. Martin smiles at her, but she looks down instantly. She is tired and pre-occupied. From her dark complexion, white pottu, and short oily haircut like a boy's, Martin makes her out to be Tamil. He idly wonders how long it will be before the bouncing five year old in the seat in front will end up cowed and beaten by life like this young woman.

“Professor Achibald Silva.” The grey haired man extends a bony hand. “And you are?”

“Martin James.”

“Burgher?”

“Uh huh.”

“Not many of them left. First, we drove them out with the language issue, now this civil war has put the lid on it.”

“I guess that's one way of describing it. You can add Standardization, Nationalization, Catholic Action, the '71 Insurrection, and a few others to your list of drivers.”

“Yes, yes, we are good at marginalizing people. In fact, that is the subject of my dissertation,” Professor Silva says pointing at his jumble of papers.

“Marginalization is your subject?”

“No—suicide bombers.”

Martin leans over. This man is beginning to sound interesting. “What do you mean?”

Professor Silva puffs his chest and launches into his theory with authority. “I have studied these cases extensively. Suicide bombing is now an integral part of our culture. We lead the world in it.”

Martin sighs. “And I thought we led the world in tea.”

Professor Silva smiles. “I wish it had only been in tea.”

“But there are suicide bombers everywhere. Those guys who blew up the towers in America were promised virgins in heaven.”

“Ours is a unique conditioning. Children, usually orphans, are plucked from refugee camps and ‘prepared' in jungles under a leader. The leader shuts them away from all human contact and demands absolute obedience. This is an extreme form of marginalization. When the children are in their late teens, they know no other life but obedience to this leader. Disobedience results in shame and ostracism from the tribe.”

“Is that when they get their orders to kill?”

“Precisely.”

“And why are you writing this paper now? Isn't this a hackneyed subject that hit its peak after 9/11?”

“My theory is that we are going to see a spate of these bombings again, now that our ceasefire is in tatters.”

“Very reassuring.”

“Yes. I am preparing a profile of how one could identify a suicide bomber. This will be a benefit to our security forces.”

“I see.”
I'm sure they have plenty of profiles already
. Martin is beginning to lose interest the more Professor Silva gets fired up on his subject. “Just to reassure me, did you see any suicide bomber types board this bus?”

Professor Silva screws up his face, looking to see if he is being played the fool. When re-assured that Martin is serious, he looks around. “I don't see any on cursory inspection. You see it in their eyes—they are dead eyes, without expression. The suicide bomber is dead long before he, or she, kills others.”

Martin suppresses a shiver. “Thanks for letting me know. I'll keep a lookout.” He slumps back in his seat and closes his eyes, signalling that he wants some peace. The professor returns to his papers. The child in front is now on her mother's lap singing a song. Martin glances to his right: the young girl is reading what resembles a prayer book. She senses his glance and looks up momentarily. She looks distracted, far away; there is no life in her gaze.
She has dead eyes
. A chill runs down Martin's spine. He tries to shrug off his misgiving.

Bandu had been a suicide bomber of a kind, Martin rationalizes. In his friend's case, everything he had possessed was deliberately taken away from him before he turned into a killing machine without concern for his own life. Christo was a suicide bomber of sorts too, when he shot Maha in the open without any consideration for the consequences. And those sixty children in the orphanage under the care of a charismatic leader like his brother, whom they would literally die for, do they fit the profile of future suicide bombers?
Are all marginalized people potential suicide bombers? Am I one?
He has difficulty with Professor Silva's narrow definition of the model. And yet he cannot shrug off the feeling of impending doom when he glances over at the young woman with dead eyes sitting across the aisle from him.

The rocking bus must have put him to sleep. He is trying to board a flight, rushing through the airport, but they have closed the gate, and a little girl with kohl on her eyebrows and a key around her neck is waving to him from a window in the plane. He is chasing the aircraft down the tarmac but it explodes at the point of take off and he falls on his knees and wails, “Why did I leave it so late?”

He is jolted awake as the bus hits a bump. Next to him, Professor Silva swears under his breath as his papers spill on the floor. “Potholes,” the older man says and bends to pick them up, bumping his head against the seat in front. The little girl is asleep on her mother's lap; the mother has fallen into an exhausted sleep too, both their heads rocking in unison. The young woman on his right has her eyes closed, but a nervous tic plays over her left eye. She is awake.

“You see, my dilemma is this,” Professor Silva says, now that his companion is awake. “What solution do I give the forces even if I help them to identify a suicide bomber? The moment one of them is stopped at a checkpoint, everyone gets blown to bits, because the bomber never turns back. Failure is not an option for them.”

Martin ignores his companion and his problem and focuses his attention on the little girl, who has woken up and is back at her perch staring at him. The kohl in her eyes has become smudged with sleep. She is not in her bouncy mood, being still half asleep. Martin hunts in his shoulder bag and finds a piece of candy, a remnant of the stash he bought over from Canada. He holds it out to the girl. Her eyes widen. She looks at her mother then quickly grabs the offering, a hushed “thank you” in Tamil coming from her lips. Martin wonders if Julia was like this when she was five years old. Somehow, he has missed all that growing up, an experience never to be re-captured. He realizes why he is so uneasy. Something tells him that he has missed the opportunity for fixing things back home. The aircraft dream was telling him that.

“Where are we?” he asks Professor Silva.

“Nearing Kollonawa. Very soon we will be in Borella.”

“Kollonawa? The big hydro station, right?” They are entering the outskirts of Colombo.

“Yes. And we will have to get off at the checkpoint soon,” Professor Silva says sliding his untidy papers into a briefcase that he fishes out from under his seat.

As if in answer to the professor's statement, the bus begins to slow down.

“They check ID and bags and things, sometimes on a random basis, sometimes on all vehicles—it depends on their mood. After the foreign minister's assassination I don't know how they will be reacting. You should be all right if you show them your Canadian passport.” Professor Silva seems accustomed to these inconveniences. “This is also now part of our culture—checkpoints.”

Martin swallows hard and tries to remain calm, but he feels the sweat trickling down the sides of his arms.

“Main thing is to keep calm. They shoot people who try to run,” Professor Silva says.

The bus takes an eternity to get to the checkpoint, and Martin figures today is a check-all-vehicles day.

He decides to face his fear and confront the young woman, even though he is pretty sure that she does not speak English or Sinhala. He tries Sinhala first and is surprised when she answers him in accented English.

“I am going back to my novitiate in Colombo,” she says in answer to his question. “I was attending my mother's funeral in Haputale.”

Martin exhales. He feels like an idiot. A paranoid idiot. An English-speaking nun-to-be. Certainly not the profile of a suicide bomber. He has let himself get into a funk, when all he had to do was to simply talk to another human being. He lets the relief wash over him as the bus keeps inching forward. “I'm sorry to hear about your mother,” he says more effusively than he should.

Now he can relax, let the damn bus take as long as it needs to get past this checkpoint.

A soldier gets on board and walks down the aisle ordering the passengers to disembark, from the front door only. When the man gets to the row ahead of Martin, he blocks the aisle.

“Stop!” he orders, as Martin begins to rise.

“They don't want to crowd the checkpoint,” Professor Silva whispers.

The woman in front sighs and asks the soldier if she can leave the child on board while she goes through the checks. Her Sinhala is Tamil accented. The soldier nods with a bored expression. The woman kisses the child, mutters something in her ear, and props her up on the seat. She then takes her bag and with a quick look at the child, follows the rest of the disembarking passengers. The child immediately stands up and sticks her hand out at Martin. He shrugs, looks at the soldier, and reaches inside his bag.

“No bag!” the soldier's gun falls heavily across Martin's knuckles making him squirm in pain. The child screams in fear. The young novice reaches out across the aisle and pats the sobbing child.

“I was only searching for a bar of candy,” Martin shouts at the soldier in Sinhala.

The man is surprised at this foreigner speaking the local language, but continues with his reprimand, “No bags are to be touched,” in a softer tone this time.