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Prisoners of Liberation -- Rajmohan Ramanathapillai
Knock. Knock. Knock. She looked out the kitchen window. Three boys were looking impatiently at the door. Shankar, the son of the next door neighbor Kunam, was one of them. "Has anything happened to the old man?" she wondered. She wiped her hand on the end of her sari and reached to open the door. "Shankar, is your father all right?" she asked anxiously. Shankar avoided facing her. The one standing next to him cleared his throat and said authoritatively, "Acca, we are going to stay in your house today." Akkila turned to Shankar. "What is your friend talking about? What is..." Before she had finished her sentence the boys pushed her inside the house. In that moment she saw a shining revolver tucked in Shankar's waist. Something like a ball was blocked her throat and she could not speak if she had tried. Now Shankar's face betrayed no emotion. "Don't be afraid Acca. For the past two days there has been heavy army patrolling in this area. For us, it is very difficult and dangerous to move around. So we have decided to hide from the eagle's eye at your place. Just one day!" The child who had always come to play with her children had somehow changed. His voice was not even yet fully developed. A year ago she had heard from his mother that he had gone to India to study, but then she also had heard a rumor that he was with the Boys in the liberation struggle. And so it was true. As she surveyed him more carefully, she could still see in the hard face a child, scared. But could this be the same child whose company she had once enjoyed. What had happened to him? Where was that joyful, innocent face? Was it the grip of a gun that changed him or had war itself made him so expressionless? He had matured like half-cooked rice which had boiled dry. He was a man in a child, like an old watch dog with the smell of death. She slowly began to understand that they wanted to hide from the army in her home, and that, if necessary, they would use her family to shield them from the soldiers. She did not know what to say or how to react to such a situation. "Thambimar (my brothers), there are four of us living in this house, my mother, daughter and ten year old son. I last saw my husband three years ago. He was taken by the army for investigation and never returned. My mother has been paralyzed and bedridden for the last year and a half. There are no men in this house to help us in a crisis. If the army discovers that you are hiding in my house and if they come in search of you in battle rage, what will happen to us? Tell me, thambimar,... we cannot leave our mother in the house and run away. And my daughter, she is so young and beautiful... if anything happened to her at the hands of soldiers...? You know about our people. It would be a disgrace to my daughter and to our whole family. After such a bad thing, who do you think would marry her? People would gossip that she and my family invited the army for trouble. People are so unkind to a woman who has been violated. Our family would never recover from such shame. Shankar! You know about our family and how difficult life is without a man in the house. Please, tell your friends to go hide somewhere else, not in our house." She pleaded with him as she struggled for breath. Shankar was not moved. A sarcastic smile crossed Kannan's face, the leader of the three. "Ha, everyone has some excuse! We are freedom fighters. We are fighting for you, our land, our nation. And we are willing to sacrifice our lives for the cause. We have committed ourselves to the future generation and the welfare of the people. People like you are only concerned about your problems and your own safety. You are selfish people. How dare you only think about your family," he shouted self-righteously. The other boys looked at her with disgust, as if she had disgraced herself. Kannan's accusation hit her deeply. His words were like a sharp knife cutting through her ability to reasoning power. She was uncomfortable, and felt terrible for not helping the boys who were fighting for freedom. Kannan had intentionally tapped her sense of shame. The general tone of his argument was that if you were not helping the boys who were willing to give their lives for the nation, you were morally wrong and socially irresponsible. She felt defenseless and confused. For a moment she was not quite sure what was right and what was wrong. She felt selfish, and a coward. "Don't be afraid, Acca," Kannan said patronizingly. "We came here before sunrise. Your neighbors were fast asleep. No one knows we are here, and we will be quiet. Please go ahead and do whatever you do every day as if everything is normal. If anyone comes to visit you, we will go to your son's room so they won't notice us. Don't send your children to school today. If the children even casually mention our presence, the story will spread like wild fire and the army will eventually hear it. You know what will happen then. They will come after us and we'll have to defend our lives. That will be bad for all of us." It was a frightening scenario. Akkila felt the acid rise in her stomach. "Is this advice or an order?" she asked herself. She was not quite sure. "If my children casually tell anyone at school it may upset the boys' plans and cost both their lives and our own. But what if my children accidentally tell this story tomorrow at school, after these boys have left our home? The army will destroy us for helping the boys. Of course by that time, the boys will be far away and safe. Who will protect us? We will suffer at the hands of brutal soldiers." Her mind churned. She was terrified at the thought of the army coming to her home. At the same time, she was furious at the boys for trapping her family in this deadly situation. "Who is at the door?" Her mother called from the rear room. Although mother was bedridden, her hearing was intact. "No one is here Amma." There was a heaviness in Akkila's voice. "If I am persistent in protesting their presence in my house, will they listen to me? Have they already made their decision? Do I have any power to stop them?" Kannan took out an AK-47 that was hidden in his bag and rested it by the side of the wall. He sat on a chair and pretended that everything was normal and in control. He opened his notebook and started to write something down. He had taken on the style of his leader. His hair was neatly combed back. His glassy eyes shone alertly. Underneath his sharp nose, an intimidating thick black mustache. It seemed as if their decision to stay at Akkila's home was not dependent upon her permission. He did not care what she thought about it either. "Thambimar, my brother, I have told you what would be the possible consequences for us of your decision to stay here. Now it is up to you to decide what is the right thing to do. I understand the importance of fighting for freedom, but I am a human being. I don't want my family to get hurt." Although there was a powerlessness in her voice, she expressed her mind clearly and went quietly to the kitchen. Bright, angry flames crackled firewood in the kitchen. While the smoke rose up in the chimney, the kettle lid danced on the bubbling water, spraying steam. She took the kettle and poured the water into the coffee mug. Her frightened mind could not rest. "Should I ask for some help from my friends?" she wondered. "If they discover that the boys are here, no one will come forward to help. Everybody knows it is dangerous to confront the Boys." She could not bear the thought of somebody getting hurt in an effort to help her. "No, no one will be hurt for my family," she thought stubbornly. It occurred to her that even if someone came to help, that news would eventually get to the army. What would happen then? There were lots of horror stories about the army major who was in charge of the camp near her house. When people were taken into custody for questioning they failed to return. If they actually did return, they were changed by deep mental wounds. Dizzy from her swirling thoughts, she closed her eyes and took comfort in the darkness. She felt trapped, a pawn in the unpredictable contest of the boys and the army. "Both sides tell us and the rest of the world that they are fighting for a good cause; that they want to protect innocent civilians like us. But they place us in the middle of their battlefield. I don't think it is shameful to be scared of being killed in their combat. I want my life and I care about my mother and the life of my children more than anything else in the world. Is such desire evil? Can these boys comprehend the situation they are forcing on my family? Please, somebody understand me!" a tiny voice screamed in her heart. "I am not a coward. I simply want my family unharmed. What's wrong with that? Am I an unkind woman because I am afraid to help the boys? Am I a traitor because I don't want to risk my life or my family's for a greater cause? Somebody help me!" She felt alone, caught up in conflicting feelings of fear for her family and guilt for not helping the cause. The need to care for her family finally won out. "I am not selfish. I just want to be alive with my family. I don't care if the world doesn't understand me." Tears rolled from her eyes. The fire was still full, flying upward, the wood sharply crackling. She stared at the flames: the dancing yellow, red and the blue, the magical flames grews, died down, and rose again, just like the thoughts in her mind. The heat from the fire slowly embraced her and held her in its warmth. She tried to calm herself. To let peace wash over her. She suddenly began to remember the dream she'd had in the night. A dark, foggy morning just before the sunrise.... a barefoot woman running on a deserted road, breathless... two men with guns chasing her. Are they the Boys or the army? It was not clear. The light was dim... smoke and rain hung in the air so she could only see above the waist. The men and woman were running slowly, as if through water. One moment, she felt she was looking at the scene as an outsider, but the next moment, she felt she was one of the running figures. At times she could not distinguish between these two vantage points. Then, there were moments when she thought she was the woman running away from the armed men, until the scene shifted again, and she was one of the gun carriers chasing the woman. Although the dream action was unclear, the feelings were so powerful, the memory of it caused her heart to pound. When she ran as the woman, she felt desparate fear for her life. When she was the chaser, she had a feeling of murderous frenzy. The fear of death and the wish to kill battled within her. Slowly, she arose from her dream memory, baffled and shocked. "Is this the kind of dream that people always have in the war zone?" she wondered. The fire in the kitchen hearth was losing it strength, its colors fading. Red cinders were now covered with white ash. Trapped in confusion between reality and her dream, she searched for answers in the dying fire. What would she say to the children when they awakened? "Amma, milk!" Sundu came to the kitchen with sleep in his eyes. She took the steaming milk from the stove and poured it into a mug.
He rushed to take it. "Wait! It's too hot. I will cool it for
you." She poured the milk from one mug to another. Watching the
steam and the bubbles from the milk was a familiar morning ritual
for Sundu. His sister appeared. "Amma, some boys are in our visiting room. I did not even dress properly!" With this embarrassed complaint, Nila joined Akkila in the kitchen. "First drink the coffee, dear," she told her daughter. She ordered her son to play in his room. "Nila, these boys came early in the morning and demanded to stay here for a day. I explained to them that if the army found out, in so many ways this would put our lives in grave danger. Unfortunately, talking to them is like talking to a wall. They all have the same stone faces. Sometimes I can't see much difference between the army and these boys. They only think about their own interests." Akkila was trying not to cry. Nila did not need further explanation from her mother to realize that her family had just become prisoners of the Boys. This nothing new or unusual. Since the Indian army's arrival these kinds of events happened regularly. Nila recalled hearing such stories at the university. She always thought of her mother as a strong woman, but now her mother's confusion and fearful eyes scared Nila. She hugged her mother for comfort and strength. Nila was a natural leader. Her calm but firm personality attracted many, making them want to work with her. Friends at the university looked up to her. As a student she was involved in many social activities and was always an inspiration for her friends. But the presence of the boys in her house made her very frightened. Like a virus, the fear in her mother had caught Nila in its grip. But when she spoke it was with a voice of anger. "This is outrageous! This is not the way to liberate the people." She knew that taking civilians as a buffer for hiding was secret knowledge in the village: "When the army discovers they are here, the boys will jump over the fence and run away. The frustrated soldiers will beat or kill the families for sheltering the Boys." She remembered the old woman from the neighbouring village who was shot by the army because she had fed the hungry boys with love and compassion. "Then the local and international papers that support the Boys will compete to say how Tamil families have been destroyed. The Boys gain people's sympathy and outrage at the army's brutality. They succeed in raising money for weapons so they can beat the army back. "Last Sunday the Boys threw a grenade at the soldiers in the market and ran away. Who got beaten and killed -- the army? the boys? No, the innocent civilians! The injured soldiers, in their panic, sprayed bullets on every moving object in the market. Bystanders paid the price. Thank God many of them were smart enough to lie on the ground when they heard the first blast; otherwise many more would have died. If this had happened once or twice, then one could understand it, but this has happened several times. Why on earth did these heartless boys choose a populated marketplace as their stage? If they want to attack the army why can't they choose an isolated place so the innocent won't be killed or maimed? Why can't they choose Vallavelli, the open field beside the bay for their horrifying acts?" With question upon question, Nila's anger rose. "If the Boys were truly concerned about people, why would they choose to attack the army in a busy densely populated place? They need people to be killed for their war of propaganda," she mumbled. "We innocent people are beaten by everyone. Who really cares about our day-to-day safety in the war zone? Assaulted women and dead bodies... all are fodder for propaganda. When people have been killed, there will be a public meeting in sympathy, a political analysis of the incident, a cry for human rights, a tearful poem, emotional rallies in world capitals against the brutality of the army, all are staged like a tragi-comedy." "Amma, I want tell them to get out of our house." She got up from the chair. Her eyes were red. "Nila, be patient. They are fighting to liberate us. They are
risking their lives and suffering a lot for our freedom. I don't know
whether they even have three meals a day or proper sleep at night."
Although Akkila was angry with the Boys, they were still children
in her mind. "Amma, I don't disagree with you. After all, they are fighting for us. But they are trained. They know how to escape from the army if things become deadly. If the army comes to our home, can we jump over our fence to escape? Can I carry Grandma on my shoulder and run? How about my little brother? If I pinched his nostrils he would not even know how to open his mouth to breathe." "We will give them some coffee and explain our situation," Akkila told her daughter quietly. Nila turned her face. There was a surprise for Akkila when she went to the front room to offer them coffee. Now they'd increased in number. The house without men was now full of them. Thick mustache, thin mustache, curled mustache, a face that longed for a mustache. Her house was filled with all sorts of mustaches now. As the leader, so the comrades. All rebel boys wanted a mustache, a symbol of Tamilness and manliness. There were a couple of grenades on the coffee table and Russian made AK 47 guns were propped against the wall. Sundu was touching the AK 47 of a baby-faced boy who was keeping a watchful eye on the gate. "Sundu go to your room and play there," Akkila ordered
her son with pain. Akkila's home had turned into a small camp. She herself felt as if she was walking on the slime-covered steps leading to the well. She had slipped on a single step and lost control. "They took advantage of my helplessness and confusion. How dare they bring more boys into my house?" she thought but could not find the strength to say it aloud. She quietly placed the coffee on the table. Her eyes fixed on the grenades sitting there. Black egg-shaped things that contained enough power to blast them out of this life. The explosive power was tied to a single trigger clip that hung on the side. The black eggs themselves gave no indication of their force. "How can the eggs I produce in my body, which create life, co-exist with these dark eggs, which destroy lives?" This unusual question invaded her thoughts. She stared at the grenades again. "Whose child will be killed by this egg?" Her mind was like an owl, searching for meanings and connections in the mad darkness. Kannan pretended that he had not noticed her reaction to the new Boys' presence, or to the grenade display in the house. Instead he concentrated on giving orders to the new Boys. Hesitantly, Akkila stayed to talk to him. Finally he concluded his commands, "So you have heard the orders," he barked. "Do what I have said and if you mess up anything I will break your bones." The Boys wrapped their guns in school bags and left the house. The steam and the smell from the coffee was still in the air. The other Boys did not touch the coffee. They were waiting for Kannan's permission. Attempting to intimidate, he looked directly at Akkila. But Akkila still saw only the young boy. "How could anyone who carries a gun have such a face?" she wondered. Before either of them could speak, the boy who stood near the gate announced, "Murali and Jaya are coming!" A knot of anger formed in Akkila's stomach. More Boys! She remembered the Tamil saying: "There are some will lay claim to the entire house, if you give them but a small space." "Acca, my boys are coming to meet me. Please leave. I will come and talk to you later." Again the authoritative voice. "Who's house is this?" Asking herself the question, she returned to the kitchen briskly. "They not only don't care about the danger my family is in, but now they are using my house as a place to have secret meetings. If my neighbour notices Boys coming in and out of my house?" She noticed her heart pounding. Nila was still in the kitchen. Although all of her friends saw her as a strong woman, today she was shaken. At other times she would help others in a crisis. But today she could not focus on anything. She realized that there was no way other people would know what was happening in her house. No one would help their family. She remembered she had seen on Point Pedro Road a half-naked body of a woman the army had dumped on the road. Another of the army's demonstrations of what would happen if anyone got in the way. The breasts of the body were exposed. Wide open eyes were fixed on the sky. Nila wondered what the woman's last thoughts had been before she was brutally violated and killed. Poor soul! Must have died alone. All alone, surrounded by men with guns who would have torn her apart. Deep fear suddenly gripped Nila. She tried to control herself, at least for the sake of her mother. "I should not be weak or scared," she repeated to herself. Her mother, absorbed in her own thoughts, did not hear her. "Lots of Boys are coming into our house, Nila. So many guns and grenades,... standing beside them makes me nervous," Akkila went on in frustration. Nila did not reply. Instead she said firmly, "Amma, I am not going to the university. I am going to feed grandma." Nila suddenly felt she had became a grown woman. She looked at the Boy who stood beside the window watching the gate like a tired watch dog. War had forced him into an adult's role. Why was this child gripping a gun before he had the capacity to understand what a gun can do? Maybe that is why leaders chose these children, preying on their innocence and corrupting them with their own acts of violence. The face of the young boy with the AK 47 reminded her of the goya fruit which ripens by the bats' bites. Time moved slowly. From time to time Akkila looked at the front gate. None of her visitors came by except the milk woman. Akkila ran to the gate to pick up the milk, afraid that the milk woman might notice the Boys. In the afternoon several Boys in shorts, trousers and sarongs came on bicycle to see Kannan. With a "Yes, sir" manner, they nodded their heads at whatever Kannan commanded and quietly left the house. It was almost five o' clock. The army must not have come by her house for their usual patrol. She prayed to all the Gods and Goddesses. She cooked for the boys when they said that they were hungry, and gave them some tea in the evening. Despite her fear and anger, she pitied these young AK kids with tired red eyes and dry faces. She was not sure whether these children were more fearful of the army or their own leader. "What kind of a future would her son have in a world of guns?" she worried. Nila did not come out from the asylum of Grandma's room except to help her mother in the kitchen. Nevertheless, she was alert, and from time to time she watched her mother and brother from the room. Her brother was playing with one of those AK kids again at the back in the corridor. Nila could see him clearly from her room. Sundu had a broomstick and was pretending it was a rifle. He was aiming at the papaya fruits which hung like swollen breasts on the tree. It brought a chill upon Nila. "What is the attraction between men and guns?" Nila wondered. She wanted to become like a ghost and enter the heads of men to know how they perceived the world. A curious desire rose in her mind. "If I had such power...?" she mused. She remembered the poem by poor Sivaramani. Like sheep In the grip of nights of war At the university Nila had learned that Ancient Tamil literature divides the world into interior and exterior, the home and the outside world. Love and romance is related to the interior, and war is strictly an exterior matter, a men's affair. But modern, urban guerrilla warfare is different. The exterior has invaded the interior. The Boys have maked our home into a war zone. If the army attacks us and we are lucky enough to survive, we will enter a refugee camp. There will be no exterior and interior. Her thoughts went round and round wildly like a monkey jumping from one branch to another without direction but gripping whatever it grabbed. Sheep, trucks, buffalo, helmets, boots, mustaches, guns, beards, books, saris, garlands, heroes, lamp posts, dead bodies, statues, posters, slogans, mushrooms growing on the broken palmyra tree... She lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. She was sweating heavily. Wiping her face, she looked outside. Her brother was still playing with the AK kid and trying to pull the butt of the gun. "No! Don't go near that gun!" she wanted to shout at Sundu from the depths of her spirit. But she could not do it. Again she felt faint and her mind filled with images. Cyanide capsules, passport, papaya fruit, worshipers in the Mosque and temples, gun fire, refugees, children going to school, explosions, cameras, flash... flash... Canada, Canada... Canada. She became quiet in the chaos of images. Her eyes filled with tears and she cried silently. "Why are you crying, kunju (my little bird)? Did Amma scold you?" mumbled Grandma, waking up from her world of dreams. Her voice drew Nila back to reality. Grandma immediately went back to sleep. Nila was envious of her world. She looked at her Grandma's peaceful face, at its beautiful lines. When she was child she had been fascinated by those lines, the curves, the squares, the triangles. She remembered sitting on her Grandma's lap and trying to count them. When Grandma told stories, Nila would focus instead on the moving lines. Grandma had thought Nila was listening carefully. Nila never revealed her real interest. The stories were undoubtedly enjoyable, but Nila was more intrigued by how the lines changed according to the moods and turns of the story. Now as Nila again studied those magic lines on her Grandma's face, the crisis slowly diminished. The lines told the stories of her memories. But life at present was different, day and night together in sleep, waking only for a bomb. She rarely made an effort to surface from the dream world of her bed. Often she said, "I am ready to go." "She does not have any sense of what is happening around her, or of the war," thought Nila. "In a way it is good. The war has changed everything. The world is now far different from the one she lived in." "What place is there for elderly people in a culture that only recognizes the greatness of young war heroes and heroines? The temple courtyard was the most sacred place for generations before Grandma. How would she understand the new military culture, where the Boys display the enemies' dead bodies in the temple courtyard? She does not need to understand this new culture. She is better living her own world of dreams." The light of the evening sun was spreading in the room. On the floor, a box of light the shape of the window framed the shadow of the leaves dancing to the music of a mild wind. Life is full of art, and the gift of the eye is to embrace it. Nila fell into her imagination. "Pateer, pateer! Pat! Pat!" Gun shots from the lane behind the house! The army's F16 and the Boy's AK47 engaged in a fearful dialogue. Awakened from her thoughts Nila jumped to her feet, grabbed Sundu and quickly carried him back into her grandmother's room. Akkila came into the room too and held her mother's hand tightly with fear. "What's going on? I am fine. I am fine," the old woman mumbled. "Acca, leave me alone. I want to play," said Sundu resisting his sister's grip. Grandma and Sundu had no reason to know of the danger closing in on them. There was some activity in the front room. Crackling voices came over a walkie talkie. From the window they could see the young boy who was guarding the rear wall of the house take cover behind the Vaappu tree. He bit his lips and looked back and forth between the wall and the house. Even in this crisis, Akkila worried about that child. "I am surrounded by my family and Kannan is surrounded by his guards. But except for his gun, this boy has no one." She was distressed for him. His index finger had a tight grip on the trigger. "Whose child might he be?" Akkila prayed to the deities: Durka, Kanda, Jesus, Mary. Her lips repeated the names. Then a boy jumped over the backyard wall. He was breathless and shouting, "Army is moving!" His hand held a grenade tightly. Kannan ran to the backyard and roared. "Fucking bastard! Who asked you to run into this house? If the army moved, you should have run to the other side, you son of a bitch!" He kicked him violently. "I am sorry, brother. There were two boys firing at the army, and they ran to the other side. I lost my direction in the confusion." "Blind ass! Shankar, take the weapons and move out from the front gate. We must meet at the same place we met last night." Kannan shouted at his Boys. There was worry in his voice. His right hand griped his revolver tightly. Akkila held her mother with one hand and her daughter with the other, while Nila held her brother. The shots sounded closer. "Victor, move to the front yard!" The boy who was guarding the backyard jumped with relief and ran toward the front yard, as if liberated. The front door slammed. Akkila heard the sound of skidding bicycles. Suddenly she realized the house was silent. The boys had left them alone with devils. In the backyard the shots were getting closer and closer. Thad. Thad. The sound of one, two, three men jumping over the backyard fence. Akkila could picture their khaki uniforms and faces drunk with battle rage. Pateer. Pateer. Thud. Thud. Five, six, seven followed by many. Pateer! Pateer! Again the shots. Akkila tried to cover her mother's body with her own. She thought
that in this way the bullets might not penetrate her dying mother.
Nila dragged her brother under the bed. "I am with you, Sundu.
Don't worry," she whispered in his ear. "Acca, my eyes are hurting from the dust," Sundu cried. "Hush, please don't make any noise. The army is around us!"
She covered his mouth with her hand. "Nobody is here. Move! Move!" They heard the Major's irritated throaty voice. Boots running towards the front yard. Thud....Thud ....Thud... The boots jumping over the front wall. The shots were moving toward the front of the neighbours' house across the road. Noises and chaos faded into the distance. The village slowly fell silent. "Thank God, thank God," Akkila mumbled tearfully. Darkness slowly took over the house. Akkila was crying hard without making any noise. Her body shook frantically. Nila felt that her mother's cry lightened the heaviness of her own heart. She did not feel like crying. Her eyes were wide open and she was looking into the darkness. Sundu's light breath touched her neck and she could still feel his heart beating. The scene of the naked woman on the Point Pedro Road came again to her mind. Slowly she replaced the memory with the image of her grandmother's lines. The darkness and silence brought a sense of security. No one in the room felt like taking. An uneasy quietness. But it gave them the space to get a grip on themselves, to recover from chaos. A small space of time for peace. A grace from above. Akkila woke up in the early morning. The sunlight was bright and golden as usual. Shoe flowers returned again with red and orange in the garden. She noticed them as she went to meet the milk woman at the gate. "I heard the boys were running through your property and the army was chasing them. When the boys and the army fired at each other, a bullet hit our front yard neighbor, Ratnam Annan. He was admitted to the hospital," the milk woman announced the community news. "Is that so? I-yo. Poor man. In his old age."
---------------- Rajmohan teaches at Gettysburg College.
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