‘You are a wonderful mother,’ she whispered.

‘You are a wonderful mami,’ Smrithi whispered back. Dhara felt a pain in her chest.

‘I need to go now, I’m not allowed to park here.’ She kissed Smrithi one more time and started the car without looking back. She didn’t want to watch them leave.

Colombo, 2004

The agar-agar jelly at the Galle Face Hotel was palm green. Management hadn’t changed the colour in the fifty years that Dhara had been drinking faloodah there. Management probably hadn’t changed the colour in the one hundred and thirty-eight years since the hotel was built from the skeleton of a Dutch villa.

She sipped her drink slowly as she read Priya’s latest letter. Despite emails and weekly calls, they both still enjoyed writing. She sat in the hotel lobby instead of at her favourite table on the verandah. It was unusually windy for May. Dhara liked to suck the jelly pieces up her straw first, rolling the gelatinous emeralds around in her mouth before swallowing them. Then the basil seeds—they were swollen and sat on the surface of the rose syrup like fish roe on a pink pond. Lifting her straw, she sucked those next, grinding them between her teeth. She glanced around to see if anyone heard her.

No one was listening. The magnificent colonial lobby was quieter than usual. Even the Galle Face Hotel had been affected by the recent state of emergency. She had barely noticed it. Another year drifted by and another ceasefire drifted with it. Under the watchful eyes of the Norwegian mediators, both sides had finally conceded to a federal solution—the Tigers had relinquished their objective of a separate Tamil state; and the government had agreed to devolve some power to the Tamils in their own provinces. An agreement written in sand, washed away by the rising tide of war. You can’t hold back the tide. Its surge and swell were primal.

Last month’s election had consolidated power for President Kumaratunga, Bandaranaike’s daughter, and her new Prime Minister, Rajapaksa. Neither wanted a federal solution. She doubted the Tigers had ever really wanted one either. Some aspirations were too deeply embedded in our DNA.

The Tigers of the eastern province had splintered from the Tigers of the north. Now these factions fought each other. Colonel Karuna in the east and the Tamils’ Supreme Leader Prabhakaran in the north: the army still hadn’t entered into the conflict, because they didn’t need to. They could afford to watch. Like an auto-immune disease, the Tigers had begun attacking their own body.

Dhara continued to work with all sides of the conflict. Her only priority was the movement of medicine and equipment into the Tamil provinces. Those areas had become more accessible since the ceasefire.