A Scar
His grandfather walked me to a schoolhouse on a Sunday, and locked me inside the courtyard gate as he went to get him. I was shooting outside of the town of Trincomalee, in the recently war ravaged northern areas of Sri Lanka. This is Tamil country, where bullet holes still cluster around window frames and doorways, like stage notes to a deserted play.
It was hot, the sliding metal door would open soon, and the old man would be back. I sweated, checked my shutter speed, aperture and peaked over the courtyard wall. I hoped that the military post down the street didn’t notice a white kid with a camera walking around the tsunami relief housing project. Apparently 20 odd years of ethinc conflict between the Tamils and the Singhalese wasn’t enough, the island had to be crushed by a massive surging wave, swamping the straw homes and rice paddies. The homes were to be rebuilt, but only to be riddled with bullets for another five years.
Soon the old man was back, with a small boy. He was six years old, wearing a striped, collared shirt, probably donated by one of the many international organizations that came this way at one time. His eyes were cartoonishly big, a smirking frown stuck to his face while he looked around with almost annoyance.
He certainly knew what was going on, I could tell that much. With a quick few words from his grandfather, he lifted his pant legs to show what was left after the blast from a land mine. I was told that his friend stepped on one when a group of them were playing. It left three of them in pieces scattered throughout the field, and this boy and his brother barely alive.
The mine had blown apart his knee, leaving it now flimsy and awkward. To walk, the boy swung is hip, then followed with a knee high enough to let the foot flop forward in front of him before putting weight on it again. To a six year-old boy wishing to bowl and run wickets with his friends, the leg was devastating.
The scars on his face were poorly healed, I knew I could pull them out a bit more with a little contrast. With the bright sun, I had to shoot at the school house to prevent the background from getting washed out. I opened a wide aperture, and set a quick shutter speed.
I tried to shake his hand and held my camera to ask if a picture was ok. But he coldly kept his pant leg up, and looked at me with a, “So are we going to do this or what?” look on his face. He never flinched, never turned away, never teared, never smiled. The boy shared, while the old man and my guide chatted, telling stories of military abuse and the Tamil hardship imposed by the Singhalese victors. One translated to me, with the desperate tone that one tries to grow accustomed to when dealing with the unfortunate losers of a war.
This one was nasty. Hundreds of thousands died throughout the rebellion against Singhalese control of the government, led by the notorious Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE). The small, elite guerrilla fighting force, essentially ran an independent Tamil state for nearly a quarter-century while fighting the Singhalese dominated, Sri Lankan Army. The rebels captured the hearts and minds of the Tamils, they were their highly educated freedom fighters whoms fierce fighting reputation was complimented with banking systems, universities and judicial systems. They were the true leaders, providing the things the Tamils felt they never had, or could get, living with the Singhalese dominated government in the south.
The Tigers wouldn’t be received by the international community so warmly however, and didn’t seem to care. They introduced the world to the suicide vest, most notably, a female Tiger assassinated India’s Prime Minister, Indira Ghandi in the late 1980’s. The move ended any support India had offered to the Tamils, who share ethnic ties with south Indians, and other nations followed suit. This act certainly, among others, put the LTTE on terrorist watch lists of most nations, a spot they still hold to this day.
In 2009, an internationally backed surge by the Sri Lankan military left thousands of Tamil civilians dead in only a few months, many dying in what has become known as “The Killing Fields”. The United Nations claim that roughly 40,000 civilians died, some others, 100,000 or more. No matter who is counting, just about all agree that it was more than the governments official tally of 10,000 deaths as of today. Even admitting to 10,000 took a while, despite growing video footage of hospital bombings, rape and executions, along with eye-witness accounts from aid workers and official counts by the UN the Sri Lankan government claimed that there were “zero” casualties during the “Humanitarian Rescue Operation” until the middle of 2011.
Now, Sri Lanka is supposed to be healing. The reconstruction jobs seen by world diplomats during tours laced with flowers and dancers are held only by Singhalese speaking migrants from the south. Activists and journalists opposing the state-run media fear kidnapping and “disappearance”. Hollow accusations of “terrorist” activities send men and women to hidden cells where they undergo rape and torture, many never to be seen again. Human Rights Watch released a report entitled, “We Will Teach You a Lesson: Sexual Violence against Tamils by Sri Lankan Security Forces” this past year which chronicles such atrocities occurring as recently as November of 2012.
I kept shooting. I also kept trying to get the boy to smile, something. “We are all the same, all six year-old boys are the same” I kept telling myself in between shutter snaps. I pretended to swing a cricket bat, “You like?”. He simply nodded his head.
“Duh” he must have thought, this is Sri Lanka, they breath the sport.
We all knew time was limited and I needed a moment to hide the sd chip and take some shell shots to justify myself being there. The soldiers would be by soon to investigate, and I could tell that the older men were getting anxious. So after about ten minutes, we knew it was time to go. I walked out alone, shared cigarettes with the blatantly undercover soldiers on bicycles trailing me, convinced them I was a priest in training and left. They never knew he was with me, hiding behind my belt, sheltered by smiles, nicotine and a rosary hanging with complete indifference from my neck.
And so it went. Past the checkpoints and through the thick, hot air. I got him through airport security without a problem. He took his first plane ride, and soon we were home, safe and sound.
Once back, I brought him out, fixed him up and tried to share him with the world, but journalists and editors never responded. I offered the images to human rights groups without a reply. I thought, “How could they say no straight to his face? How could they? How dare they?”
If only people cared, about him, about the Tamils.
If only I captured him better.
Now he is dying. I feel his fainting breath when I cap my lens. His cooling blood seeps from the edges of my shutter button. His image is burned onto the back of my screen. Everyday he goes unexposed, he seems to slip into a realm of irrelevance, losing a pulse I bet he barely knew he had.
A life crushed by differing Gods, languages and soldiers is precious, that kind of poverty needs everything it can hold on to, and yet I took something without giving anything back, I couldn’t even make him smile. A life with little chance of a future other than flooded rice fields, imprisonment or the back of a mysterious white van, stuck, in my camera.
I do not know what happened to that boy. I hope he will get to live fully, and slip through the corners of my camera onto magazine covers and newspapers. I hope he stares into the eyes of every man and woman on this earth and they end up seeing a boy with a future, even a Tamil with one. One who can choose a life, not just be given one. One we could take a million pictures of.
While we shot, his grandfather once again became involved in a heated, passion induced rant about this injustice and that. I put my camera down and winked at the child. He stared back at me blankly, lifted his shirt and I saw his scar, shining, like the smile of a young boy.
