Tuesday, April 5, 2016

This might be enough for one day

A mine has blown up the road with a hole as big as a house. 
The villagers are brought there, ordered to stand around the hole, and they are shot. 
Why did they bother to bury them down there?

The bodies are covered in sand. In a day or two they are exhumed. International peacekeepers heard about this massacre and they are coming to check. 
The bodies are burnt, their parts are burnt, their effects are burnt. 
The one who ordered it laughs. 
If there had been a massacre here you'd see blood on the sand!

A soldier boards a bus and slaps, hard, the driver?
One brave man risking being shot asks what was the meaning of this?
It's simple. This bastard driver passed some of my boys hitching a ride in Dambulla (place of the exquisite cave temple and huge gaudy plastic religious statues. A real must for every tourist, man, woman, and child). Were your boys in uniform? No. But he should have stopped anyway. 

People have streamed in to the university campus to seek asylum. They came from villages under bombardment and mined from every side, places crawling with torture and paramilitary. What refuge they have been given must be punished. The students are lined up, young unmarried people and some married people. Their arms are tied behind their backs with the shirts they are wearing. They are shoved into buses. Somewhere, they are shot. 

A bus to Colombo full of students and teachers is stopped near Welikande, one of the worst or maybe the worst checkpoint. Everyone is ordered out. A hard rain has begun to fall. They walk one hundred meters and they are checked, every detail of their clothing and belongings is checked, just to make sure. A young girl carries a small backpack. "That's mine!" she shouts at the soldier. He laughs. What do you think he does next?

A line of three mines is set up near the military camp. This is the place the boys must retreat to at dark. They drag a villager along with them. One mine has been set for each and the body parts split off and fall to the ground. 

The first Kokkodachcholai massacre or the second?, we ask in polite conversation. The roundup in which village? we struggle to recall. We dare each other's remembering. 

This might be enough for one day. 

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