‘No, I was thinking that I won’t be able to see my family. It won’t be safe for them in Madras; or me—for a while anyway.’ The birthplace on her passport said ‘Jaffna’. She turned her face away from the boy for a moment. She wanted to scream. Every day she counted the days until her next trip to India. It was the clock that she set and reset her life by.

‘Do you miss your family, Acca?’ he asked. Niri never talked about his. He called his fellow Tigers brothers and the nation he fought for mother.

‘I do, mahan, I miss them very much. And you? Do you miss your family?

He looked around carefully. Everyone was distracted, jubilant, happy.

‘Very much,’ he answered quietly, for the first time.

•

When she slept at night, different images plagued her. There was the Demon King, a ten-headed monster who threw her to the ground and tore her open, over and over again. She knew how to kill this monster now. She had only to wake up and wait for the Sun God.

Tamaso maa, jyothir gamaya, she would repeat.

From darkness, lead me into light.

But in her dreams, there was also the man who came to the village, who talked about Tamil Eelam, their homeland. He went to schools, temples and churches. He went to houses and spoke to farmers and fishermen and teachers and clerks and promised them all that the fight—their homeland—was worth the sacrifice. Then he told them the price that each family must give them—give the struggle—one child. Only one child, he said, holding up a finger.

Only one child.

Niri had described how the man came for him. He was only a boy, the eldest of three brothers and a sister. His father had disappeared, taken away at an army checkpoint on his way back from work. No one knew why, and the children had stopped asking their mother when he would return.

The man stepped into their simple home and asked for payment. He looked at the boys and the little girl and knew he would be back to this house in time. Payment was only ever part payment.

Niri stood up. There was no point in fighting. Every family had to sacrifice. He didn’t want to leave his Amma. How would she look after his siblings without him? He worked on their small plot of land, took their vegetables to the market, pumped water from the well and carried it for her. But still, it was better him than the others.

He took a step forward; he couldn’t look back. The children were crying and holding onto his legs and his mother fell at the feet of the man and begged him for her son’s life. She kissed his mud-caked boots and cried and pleaded.

‘Ende mahan, ende mahan,’ my son, my son, she wept.