Sri Lanka, Day 1

It is 3am and I am in in the backseat of a van driving down the wrong side of the highway. Rather, it would be the wrong side at home, but this is Sri Lanka. I barely notice where or how we’re driving anyway, because I am so tired after 28 hours of travel time that my head is nodding forward even as I’m trying to give the driver directions to my hotel. To stay awake I ask the driver about Colombo. How big is it? How many people? Where does he live? What language does everyone speak? His accent is thick and the van’s motor is loud, so I ask him to repeat himself a lot. At one point he asks if I speak Tamil. I say I can say hello, which I learned how to do from YouTube while sitting in the airport waiting for my last flight to board. He laughs and doesn’t ask me to prove it. I sit back and look out the window at nothing in particular. I’ll learn later that the Southern Expressway on which we’re driving is a product of complex geopolitical relationships in Asia, but for now all I can think about is how all the signs are written in squiggles.

Arrivals always seem abrupt when you don’t know where you’re going, and my chest flutters open when I read the sign, Cinnamon Grand Hotel. As I open the van door, there are a total of two thoughts in my head: I am halfway across the world and I need sleep. The doorman greets me and looks at my face generously. Tired, madam? It was the first of many times I’d be called madam in the next two weeks. I smile weakly. He takes my bags and I am immediately uncomfortable by the lushness of the hotel as we walk inside. Grand was right. I have a complicated relationship with the privilege I walk around with because of my race and gender in the United States. I didn’t know it yet, but Sri Lanka was about to pull all my political and social awkwardness out of my pocket, light it on fire, and shove it directly into my face.

I have to call you down to the lobby to let me into the room. My thoughts have now advanced to I’m really excited to see you and I need sleep. At last you appear and my body moves itself into your arms. I press myself as close to you as possible because no matter where I am, I feel at home there. I breathe in your musk. It is so familiar yet so easy for me to forget. You walk me up to the room and I shower. I have no idea what to expect from the time I’m here, but I am glad to be with you. I think about the Lifestraw water bottle I brought with me so I can drink tap water without fear of parasitic infection, and I suddenly realize how very far away from home I am. I finish my shower, we fuck like we haven’t seen each other in two weeks, and then I finally let the fatigue settle in and sleep.

I wake up to my birth control alarm, the one I set for 2:30pm every day, ringing incessantly. My phone is already on Colombo time, even though I am not. My eyes finally focus on the vase of roses next to the bed, the bouquet you bought for me as a welcome gift. A week before my arrival you had texted, asking if I wanted anything for the room when I got there. I shrugged and sent you a flower emoji with a question mark after it. I promptly forgot about it, which is why your thoughtfulness is especially meaningful to me. I find you’re thinking about me when I forget to think about myself.

But now you’re at work and I am alone. I stumble around for a while in the room, getting dressed. Now that I’ve slept, the next basic necessity is food. We have dinner plans tonight with one of your coworkers, so while I wait I have coffee in the bar downstairs, the piano player filling the giant hall with American showtunes. The coffee is terrible. It’s my fault. Why would I come to a country that earns 2% of its GDP from tea and order coffee. At least it comes with a cookie. As I’m finishing, I get a text from you.

We walk along the seafront. The air is syrupy, sticky sweet. Stray dogs wander along the walkway and in the streets, shuffling in between busses and tuk tuks. At dinner, I am shy at first as usual, insecure about carrying on a conversation that anyone normal would be interested in. When I timidly ask about the language, your coworker pulls up a Buzzfeed article on his phone and teaches us how to tell someone to fuck off in Sinhalese. I am immediately put at ease. We talk about the history of colonialism and the arbitrary racial lines between the Tamils and the Sinhalese put in place by the British, the military checkpoints in Colombo during the 26-year civil war that ended in 2009, and how everyone in his family had some encounter with gunfire or bombings during those years of fear and wreckage. Perhaps not the most sparkling dinner conversation, but since I studied state-sponsored violence in graduate school, I’m enjoying myself probably more than I should. The conversation moves onto the relationship with the Chinese government, which is financing huge infrastructure projects (like the expansion of the Southern Expressway) throughout the country, while the Sri Lankan government hikes up taxes and takes on debt. As we are paying the bill, our dinner companion recommends we try curd and treacle while we’re visiting, and to be sure and haggle with the tuk tuk drivers. Actually it’s useless, he concludes, you’re white so they’ll overcharge you. Fair enough.

You and I go back to our hotel and finish the evening by the pool, smoking pomegranate hashish. I know so little about where I am, I think, but my goal is to figure out Sri Lanka. Somewhere in the good food, the natural beauty, the contained chaos of the streets, the living history, and the outgoing people, I want to find some coherent, if limited, perspective on the place. As we walk back to the hotel room, I’m both surprised and annoyed at my ambition, which is how I feel about myself most days, so I figure it must be right. We say goodnight and I close my eyes to sleep for the second time that day.