An hour later, after a cup of tea and some sweet biscuits that Ahmed’s wife had produced, they walked back out to the shop. It was approaching midday. Despite the heat, the street was packed with people going about their business.

“It should take me about two hours to swap the differential,” Ahmed said. “And when was the last time you changed the fluids in this old thing?” he looked at Sam. She sheepishly looked down. “I’ll throw that in too. Make it three hours. Meanwhile, take Mr. Tusker up the road to get some crab curry. You know that shop at the top of the road does a good one.”

Sam and Tusker set off on foot, leaving Ahmed to fix the Land Rover. The two of them were quite the curious pair in this largely Muslim town and they drew stares as they walked.

“I didn’t want to ask Ahmed, but what happened to the previous owners of his shop?” Tusker finally asked.

Sam stopped walking and looked at him. “After the Easter bombings a couple years ago, there was a backlash of violence against Muslims, especially here in the east. Shops torched, people beaten, mosques vandalized… the government did little to help.”

She glanced back and then continued, “The Majeeds had been here for decades. My father used to take this same Land Rover to him for repairs back in the ‘90s. Then during the violence here, someone threw a petrol bomb into the shop and with all the flammable fluids stored in there, it burned pretty quickly. Majeed tried to get his wife out but…” Her voice trailed off. “Anyway, after that, he moved to Dubai to live with his daughter and her family. Ahmed worked for Majeed for years and took over the shop.”

They continued on up the street to where it intersected with the main road. Pasikudah is an old town and shows battle scars from many years of strife. It was a stronghold of the Tamil Tigers during the civil war and was pounded by the country’s military before peace finally arrived in 2009. By then, decades of neglect had left its infrastructure in tatters. The country’s Muslim population found some solace here, far from the populous west coast, Colombo and the Buddhist Hill Country around Kandy. But then came the more recent violence. Some storefronts were blackened from fire or simply abandoned or boarded up. Still, the streets were lively, with men in long tunics and caps and women, most in hijab but some in full burqa.

Over steaming bowls of crab curry, Sam filled Tusker in on the complicated background of the Buddhist-Muslim tensions in Sri Lanka.

“So the government tolerates this militant Buddhist group?” Tusker asked, his lips on fire from the curry.

“Some say the government is even behind them, covertly, of course.” Sam said, deftly cracking a claw open. She sucked the meat out and discarded the shell on a side plate.