I moved to the US for my MBA at 27. It was dark, gray, and it rained all the time, like it was typical for Oregon. But I bought a red raincoat and gray rainboots, not wanting the rain to interrupt the life I was trying to build there.
When I graduated and started working at the World Headquarters of Nike, Inc., I told my co-worker from Uganda, “I want to die in the land I was born. I’ll eventually go back to Sri Lanka.” He, who has lived in the US for at least 20 years by then, smiled knowingly about how a new immigrant thinks.
I fully believed what I said because I never had any intention of leaving the country until I started dating a Buddhist boy, and our interracial union caused death-like allergies for our Buddhist and Muslim parents on either side. We decided to leave the country and preserve us.
A few years after the conversation with my co-worker, anti-Muslim sentiment exploded in Sri Lanka with the Aluthgama riots. Although I left the country to get away from my parents’ claws, I genuinely feared for their safety, especially my brother’s, as he had much more life left to live.
During the riot season, I saw friends (not my closest friends, but the middle circle who knew me well enough) post anti-Muslim rhetoric on Facebook. I had gone to an all-Buddhist girls’ high school. (Sri Lanka still has religiously segregated schools; no wonder it’s easier for local politicians to create the fear of otherness in people.)
It pained me to see this, and I immediately unfollowed her without trying to go into an online dialogue. Did she forget that I was a Muslim? Did she forget about how we had shared rice and curry packets for lunch? And the long conversations we had about our crushes? Did she forget that I came from a family where my father had served the national police and the intelligence services?
These riots set in motion a string of cataclysmic events, including the Easter Attacks by fundamentalist Muslims or political masterminds, who knows. These riots also had me turn my back on Sri Lanka.
I guess my co-worker from Uganda knew better. I was young and dumb at that time. I still have my back turned because reconciliation precedes reconnection.
