Anil's Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page B

Kolongaha.
    Another page reveals just bird life. The twenty species of bird out of the four hundred native to Sri Lanka, such as the blue magpie, the Indian blue chat, the six families of the bulbul, the pied ground thrush with its fading hoot, the teal, the shoveller, ‘false vampires,’ pintail snipes, Indian coursers, pale harriers in the clouds. On the reptile map are locations of the green pit viper pala-polanga, which
in daylight, when it cannot see well, attacks blindly, leaping to
where it thinks humans are, fangs bared like a dog, leaping again and again towards a now hushed and fearful quietness.
    Sea-locked, the country lives under two basic monsoon systems—the Siberian High during the northern hemisphere winter and the Mascarene High during the southern hemisphere winter. So the northeast trades come between December and March, while the southeast trades travel in from May to September. During the other months mild sea winds approach the land during the day and reverse their direction during the night.
    There are pages of isobars and altitudes. There are no city names. Only the unknown and unvisited town of Maha Illupalama is sometimes noted, where the Department of Meteorology once, in the 1930s, in what now seems a medieval time, compiled and recorded winds and rainfall and barometric pressure. There are no river names. No depiction of human life.
     
     
    Kumara Wijetunga, 17. 6th November 1989. At about 11:30 p.m. from his house.
    Prabath Kumara, 16. 17th November 1989. At 3:20 a.m. from the home of a friend.
    Kumara Arachchi, 16. 17th November 1989. At about midnight from his house.
    Manelka da Silva, 17. 1st December 1989. While playing cricket, Embilipitiya Central College playground.
    Jatunga Gunesena, 23. 11th December 1989. At 10:30 a.m. near his house while talking to a friend.
    Prasantha Handuwela, 17. 17th December 1989. At about 10:15 a.m. close to the tyre centre, Embilipitiya.
    Prasanna Jayawarna, 17. 18th December 1989. At 3:30 p.m. near the Chandrika reservoir.
    Podi Wickramage, 49. 19th December 1989. At 7:30 a.m. while walking along the road to the centre of Embilipitiya town.
    Narlin Gooneratne, 17. 26th December 1989. At about 5:00 p.m. at a teashop 15 yards from Serena army camp.
    Weeratunga Samaraweera, 30. 7th January 1990. At 5:00 p.m. while going for a bath at Hulandawa Panamura.
     
    The colour of a shirt. The sarong’s pattern. The hour of disappearance.
    Inside the Civil Rights Movement offices at the Nadesan Centre were the fragments of collected information revealing the last sighting of a son, a younger brother, a father. In the letters of anguish from family members were the details of hour, location, apparel, the activity.
. . . Going for a bath. Talking to a friend . . .
    In the shadows of war and politics there came to be surreal turns of cause and effect. At a mass grave found in Naipattimunai in 1985, bloodstained clothing was identified by a parent as that worn by his son at the time of his arrest and disappearance. When an ID card was found in a shirt pocket, the police called an immediate halt to the unburial, and the following day the president of the Citizens’ Committee—who had brought the police to the location—was arrested. The identity of others in this grave in the Eastern Province—how they died, who they were—was never discovered. The warden of an orphanage who reported cases of annihilation was jailed. A human rights lawyer was shot and the body removed by army personnel.
    Anil had been sent reports collected by the various human rights groups before leaving the United States. Early investigations had led to no arrests, and protests from organizations had never reached even the mid-level of police or government. Requests for help by parents in their search for teenagers were impotent. Still, everything was grabbed and collected as evidence, everything that could be held on to in the windstorm of news was copied and sent abroad to strangers in