The Easter Sunday Attacks see the second anniversary today.
The lady in the bright yellow salwar still screams in front of my eyes. No matter how scorching the sun, no matter that high-speed vehicles and ambulances were dashing through the road and into the Colombo National Hospital, she was shrieking for her son.
Without certain knowledge about her son (burnt into ashes after the bomb blast, or taken inside the hospital or transferred to another hospital), she was yelling seated on the tar road.
The yelling gives me the feeling that something is lodged in my throat. She was Tamil; I barely managed to speak a few words just to pull out a few details about her son, since my Journalist ID would help her to find at least a slight shadow of her son.
My heart was heavy, hospital records said that none like him was brought in.
We, the media group, had one common fabricated lie. “The patient has been transferred to the Ragama hospital”. If we were unable to find any detail regarding one of the beloveds of the people screaming outside, all that was left to us was this “fabricated lie”.
Were we strong enough to say, “None of you will find your beloved?” The fabricated lie made us a little confident to give them hope.
Walking through the hospital wards I heard a voice cry out, “Miss, Miss”. I turned, teary eyes full of misery and affliction. “They do not recognize me, but it is me, it is me, tell them I am theirs”, she cried, showing me a previously shot photograph of her, before the debris of the bomb burns. I was melting, I felt faint, my heart was heavy and aching. If her family does not recognize her due to her disfiguration, will they believe me? An unknown woman, claiming that she belongs to their family?
I had never been this helpless before, I felt I was going down in flames. Among all the commotion I remember I hugged her. This woman, a Catholic, I have never seen before, now scarred by the flames, between my arms. My vision was not clear; I felt her pain inflicted upon me. It was only humanity that knitted us to each other.
The whole country was in disarray. Within a few seconds the news reached us that a series of bomb blasts had happened minutes apart at different places targeting churches and luxury hotels. Police and ambulance sirens blared in the air between blast sites and hospitals. Within a few hours the government took steps to impose a curfew. Army officers, Police, healthcare workers and us, journalists, were still on the move, trying to offer at least a kind word for the people who had already gone down an abyss.
I felt fear in the street, I felt fear in every step. The air made me shiver through every limb. I was grief-stricken, feeling blue, the only possession that my colleague and I had was a water bottle bought from a shop in front of the Colombo National Hospital. Not in our wildest dreams did we think we would face such carnage on a festive day.
Hospital officials found it difficult to release information, as causalities were rising. We barely spoke to each other. We were on the move, agitated, nervous, disappointed, wrecked and heartbroken. I saw a pregnant woman coming out of the hospital clutching her womb wailing, “My baby will never get to see his father”.
Our first stop was St. Anthony’s Shrine, Kochchikade (my colleague Lahiru Fernando and I). Soon after the blast we stopped in front of the Shrine, and I felt it was more horrifying than a horror movie. The bomb had blown bodies into pieces, parts of different people hugging another’s body parts. I was feeling dizzy to see that even in death, loved ones were clutching each other. It is still carved in my memory, a mother fallen inert treasuring her baby under her bosom. I still remember how the Army officer found it difficult to separate them. William Ross Wallace’s saying struck me as I was passing frozen, “The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world”. These memories haunt me every time I pass a church even two years after the tragedy.
That Easter Sunday would forever be embedded in my memory.
Still they scream, still they haunt, the little baby who was still clinging to her mother fallen dead in front of Jesus, inert. Who can wake them up? Who will heal their souls?
I heard a fellow photojournalist passing by with tears uttering about a baby who was seated on the ground of Shangri- La hotel with her teddy bear, oblivious to the venomous attacks that happened back-to-back. “Waiters were thrown miles away, it was all sealed, it was a blood pool, I did not feel like capturing anything, I left.”
Irrespective of class, creed, race the whole country was mourning.
Who do we punish? Does punishment serve for the loss and the possibility to make peace?
For the peace they seek will only happen when they meet their eyes again. Killing the dog would not cure the bite and justice delayed is justice denied. Jesus was blood-soaked when we left the premises. Almighty God is still bloodstained, victims did not receive justice even after two years. Is it even possible to compensate for their pain?
On April 23, 2019, two days after the attacks, I visited the Katuwapitiya St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo while on duty. A bustling town with a Catholic aura, Negombo had taken its worst shape as a sombre burial ground after the attack.
When my colleague and I stepped into Negombo, the town was paralyzed. Streets filled with funerals, caskets and hearses had taken centre stage. Survivors of the dead, holding the remains of their loved ones moved forward. We followed the funeral marches into the church and stayed until the funeral services were over. There were no breaks for the priests, back-to-back they performed funeral services.
We could not find a single street around St. Sebastian’s Church without a loved one taken away by this massacre.
St. Sebastian’s cemetery was a mass grave. Three victims of the same family were buried in a row. We had no intention of talking to the families of the deceased to recount their pain, which was far thrown away from their expectations of a peaceful Easter. We were mute, pregnant with a myriad of emotions, watching the burials.
A resident of the area came near me and silently asked, “Are you from the paper? (paththarenda awe?). I nodded. He pointed to a man who was wailing, bent towards a coffin that was going to the graveyard, “He was abroad, he left the country to give them a good life. Now he can only witness the still bodies of his mother and sister as well as his nephew and two nieces”. My heart sank, I was breathless.
We heard countless stories. At the end, they have all lost their beloveds while they were obeying the Command of God. Sons and daughters of the Almighty were called to His feet.
Memories of the massacre toss back and forth in my mind. My memory as well as their lives will be forever scarred.
