The brutal night
Life gives you two good things and one bad thing.
The first good thing; I had the time of my life at my first job in Dubai.
Then the second good thing: I secured another job within four months of that job.
In that second job, I was on cloud nine, and everything going my way. I was now earning something like a thousand dollars a month. That money was a twentyfold increase from what I earned just four months before I landed in Dubai — an unbelievable windfall for a young man entering adulthood. I thought I made it in life.
My fortunes aside, my thoughts were with my parents and the two teenage siblings, thousands of miles away in Sri Lanka. I missed them terribly. I dreamt of my family’s future and what I would do for the four of them, my little nuclear family, with my newfound money.
‘I would not let my finest chance in life go to waste. My sister and brother will have the very best of life experiences.’
That was my sole mission in life, my singular focus with immense hope.
I wrote to my parents and siblings twice a week. Unsatisfied with analogue letters, I recorded voice messages on cassette tapes, posting them. I loved marvelling at my bank balance and thinking of the things I would do for my father, mother, sister and brother. My head was full of dreams, and executable plans. I made lists, researched, budgeted and lived a life of great optimism.
The bad thing.
Everything changed with the arrival of a letter. Reading it was a shock. I choked. I could not believe what I was reading. My throat hardened. I suspected my heart would stop beating. Horrible is not the best word to describe what I felt. I could not work anymore; I felt dizzy; the world around me was rotating. Excusing myself to my manager on some vague pretext, I left work and grabbed a cab to head home.
I felt helpless during the cab ride. That was my fifth month in a new country. I felt fucking alone. Seeing me cry in the back seat, the Pakistani cab driver asked,
“Tum kue roh rahae hoe?”
When I did not reply, he stopped the taxi, went into a grocery store, and brought me a Pepsi Cola, pacifying me in Urdu, a language I did not know. My throat was dry, my body so hollow; when I took a sip off that bottle, I vomited, soaking my clothes. The kind cabbie ignored the mess in the backseat and dropped me at my place, waiving the fare. In a daze, I walked through the sandy pathways to the Arabic villa where I lived.
You may wonder what the hell happened for me to break down like this. A terrible thing had befallen my little family in Sri Lanka. My only sister, for whom I had tremendous hopes and plans, had run away from home, dashing my hopes for her.
I planned to work my way up, earn money and ensure my little sister had a great future. She was going to be somebody under my watch. I would be proud of her. I had plans for her to attend a private university in Colombo. Everything I planned and dreamt had been brutally crushed; while I was living in la-la land, I thought I made my family would be hunky-dory.
I sat on my metal bed, feeling alone and sad. I took out the letter again from my crumpled shoulder bag, wishing that this was a bad dream. I read the letter slowly, trying to grasp what had happened. The letter from my close buddy, Ajith, said that my sister had eloped with a man. I read that line so many times that my eyes hurt.
I had lost my sister.
The brutal night
I wanted everything to end. It was as if my life was not worth living. My heart was breaking apart. The night could not have come sooner, a terrible night. That night I cried alone, soaking my pillow wet. I never felt so alone, left out to dry without my parents. I stayed up the whole night, thinking of my father and mother, the sister I lost, my kid brother, and the pain of not being there with my parents to help them deal with the loss. I could not fathom why my dear sister decided to leave the rest of us in what I thought was a beautiful and loving family.
I thought of the day she was born, my excitement when she was brought home from the hospital, and how we played together as little kids.
It was one of the darkest nights of my life. When they needed me, I was helpless, thousands of miles away from my family.
Little did my friend Ajith know I was not informed of what had befallen my family until his letter arrived. My friend had no idea that my parents did not know how to convey this terrible news to me, news that would break me. His letter offered support, empathy, and kindness in my need.
Grieving
I did not go to work the next day. I could no longer stay alone in my apartment. It was not possible to take a phone call in a period when international calling was high-tech. Although I wanted to return to Sri Lanka to be with my parents, going to Sri Lanka was out of the question because I started in the bank just a month ago. I considered leaving my job and going back. Sanity prevailed when some of my flatmates, a generation older than me, brought some sense to this hapless lad.
I wrote a letter to my parents, offering support. I wrote to them that I would be there for them forever. I wrote the most passionate letter to my kid brother, just thirteen, who was yet to know the ways of the world, that I, his elder brother, would love him to death. I wrote letters to my family almost every day since that tragedy.
The picture of what had happened emerged from their despairing, sad letters. My sister had carried on a clandestine affair, married secretly at sixteen at the behest of this man, twelve years older than her. That man who broke our family was not a young man; he was thirty. He was not a suitable match for my sister. He was a street yoboo. There was nothing my parents could do, for that even my sister, because while in school, he had legally married her while she was a child. That meant she could not break the relationship. In Sri Lanka, once a woman is married legally, she lost her allure and could not be married again. That man had been so scheming that he married a girl child on paper before she could decide as an adult. This man waited until my sister turned eighteen and cajoled her to leave home. He had gone to the extreme of getting my sister to steal the bank savings book which my father maintained for her. This cunning man had planned everything to destroy my family.
After effects of the whole saga were deeply felt by my parents. It destroyed my parents mentally. This man had been nasty to my parents, bullying them when the matter was reported to the authorities and the local church.
My nuclear family would never be the same again.
My sister was the jewel of my parents. My parents did everything for her, the only daughter they had. Most of the family’s savings were put away in a bank account for her. My mother always took her side when I fought with her. Her exit broke my parents’ souls irrevocably.
October to December were the hardest months for my family. We were dealing with the heartache of our family being abruptly broken up. I suffered alone in Dubai while my parents and my kid brother went through hell in Sri Lanka, dealing with their loss.
I took two weeks' leave and travelled to Sri Lanka that Christmas. The only way I could lessen my parent’s pain was to spoil them rotten. I brought 200 kg of excess luggage on that Air Ceylon flight from Dubai. I brought a sewing machine and twenty-five sarees for my mother, a Pioneer stereo set, high-frequency world radio set for my father and everything electric a man could ever use, like shavers, electric appliances and crockery for their kitchen, a push bike, toys, dozens of diecast cars for my kid brother and lots of clothes for everyone, things one could never get in autarkical Sri Lanka.
My newfound money was nothing compared to my little sister.
The customs officers in Sri Lanka were so astonished that a young lad could amass a large collection of things and bring them down for his family. Customs officers came around to see who this crazy boy was who had gone berserk with a massive range of merchandise not available in Sri Lanka. Clearing them from Sri Lanka customs became a nightmare. My father had to pay a hefty bribe to clear my items.
It was a sombre reunion when I arrived home. Our home was never going to be the same. I could not look at my sister’s bed for days.
I spent two weeks at home, grieving and trying to make the best of what was left of my family. I made a Christmas tree, got my friends over, and had a few parties, hoping these little joys would provide some happiness to my poor parents and kid brother who lost the most valuable thing, their daughter and sister.
My sister’s life was never the same after she left us. I am glad, at least for a little short while, she had a good life when she lived with my parents. What happened to my sister was the biggest regret of my parents, a pain they took to their graves. It was their calamity to bear for the rest of their lives.
Two good things and one devastatingly bad thing!
PostScript: I wrote this on my sister’s birthday. I did not share the story with her, not wanting to cause any more pain than what she has been through in her adult life. But you may be glad that she has survived through sheer resilience. I am proud of and love her, just like I did as a young boy and lad. What happened to her was my parents’ and my tragedy to bear.
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Images and artwork belong to Denzil Jayasinghe
