The Wars We Survive
and the stories we tell
It was 1993. I was eight years old.
My family had just moved back to Batticaloa, in Sri Lanka’s eastern province. It was a night like any other—until the gunfire started. We didn’t panic. We knew the drill. A few shots in the distance were nothing unusual. But if the gunfire didn’t stop after a few rounds, we knew what it meant: a crossfire between government forces and the Tamil Tigers.
That night, the firing didn’t stop.
My family—five of us—huddled beneath our big bed, waiting for the violence to subside. The shooting lasted for over an hour, each bullet a reminder of how fragile our shelter was. Our home, made of dried coconut leaves, wouldn’t withstand a single shell, grenade, or stray bullet. We lay there, silent, hoping luck was on our side.
At some point, I needed to go to the bathroom. But we didn’t have one—not inside, at least.
Stepping too far from our house in the middle of a gunfight was unthinkable. But my father, understanding my urgency, t…
