Free Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera

In Jaffna, a city two hundred miles north of Colombo poised
     at the very top of the island, a city which has always been the stronghold of Sri
     Lankan Tamils, a gang of Tamil boys is up to suspicious activities, it is said. Smuggling.
     Also bank robbing and weapons stockpiling. They are led by a youth with the fierce
     eyes of a true believer. He speaks of revolution, secession, independence; he speaks
     of splitting the island; he speaks of a Tamil homeland. People scoff, “Ragtag boys
     armed with sticks and stones. Uneducated Jaffna kids speaking big-big politics. What
     do they know of such things? Who does this kid think he is? A bell-bottomed King Elara?”
    On a hot, yellow Jaffna afternoon, an old man sags and crumples at the gates of an
     ancient temple. It is the city’s Tamil mayor, Alfred Duraiappah, the newspapers scream,
     shot sharp between the eyes by the upstart smuggler, robber of banks, and seventeen-year-old
     revolutionary secessionist, Velupillai Prabhakaran. He has killed the old man, he
     proclaims, because Duraiappah was a traitor to his race, a lackey to the Sinhalese
     oppressors. From now on the battle against Sinhala oppression will be fought by any
     means necessary. And in this way the nation hears the name of the man who will come
     to be called the Leader.
    *   *   *
    In the morning, the postman rings his bicycle bell and Alice, hunch wobbling dangerously,
     hurries to the front gate. She leaves the family’s letters on the front table. But
     there are others she tucks into her sari blouse. These are from Dilshan, her son,
     who has been with our family from before our births but who has newly left us to enlist.
     He is in the north with his army battalion, together with entire generations of young
     Sinhala men hoping for new lives, better lives than those of their parents. The letters
     capture Alice’s whole attention. We watch her read them, her lips moving slowly. But
     we are shut out of this part of her life as surely as if she had a door to close.
     The letters make her unattentive to us so that we are jealous of Dilshan, whom we
     too love, but who steals her affection so completely.
    When he comes for leave, a tall, handsome stranger with a shank of thick, black hair
     falling into his eyes, it’s hard to believe that he is the playmate we have climbed
     all over from birth. It takes us days before we are again easy with him.
    Then he is again on the top balcony with us, throwing off our sandals to the ground
     below and attempting to hook them like fish with the fishing poles we have fashioned
     from sticks and large safety pins. We are on a ship, he says, tossed by the waves.
     He makes us see the water rising, the heaving horizon. We lurch about the balcony
     like ocean-tossed fishermen, drunk on the picture he has painted with his words.
    His return causes strange reactions. Sylvia Sunethra comes into the kitchen. When
     he scrambles to his feet she says, “No, no, sit, Putha, you must have enough standing
     where you are stationed.” She presses an envelope into his hands and hurries off.
     It is money, we know, we have seen her counting out the rupees just this morning.
     It is not easy for her to part with, but she tells us, “Poor boy. Might as well give
     him something to put aside.”
    On the last morning of his leave, he comes to the kitchen steps. He is dressed in
     his uniform, the khaki ironed, the boots polished. A different person. A stranger
     with hard eyes, he makes us suddenly self-conscious, shy. When he kneels to put his
     forehead at her feet, Alice bends over, she runs her fingers over his hair, her hump
     quivers. She says, “Budu saranai, putha.” After he leaves, she will not talk to us. She keeps her head down and serves us cold
     noodles and soggy fish for days.
    *   *   *
    In these years it is fashionable to cultivate seawater aquariums, so each house has
     great transparent rectangles perched on back porches and verandahs, glass