Narrating Crisis in Sri Lanka

By Nimmi Gowrinathan-February 16, 2015

Humanitarian efforts may alleviate the pain, but do they stop the political strife that leaves victims bleeding?

IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, Orphan Solidarity Days in Sri Lanka. April 512, 2013.
Image by IHH Insani Yardim via Flickr.

For Justice
Jeyas daughter is nine days old, unnamed, when I meet her in Sri Lanka.
Miniscule compared to my chunky little boy, born only a few months earlier, she
squirms beneath pink netting as I gingerly reach in to hold her hand. I dont need
to see her, Jeya says, turning away. That day, I was a human rights researcher,
and I wondered what fresh trauma I would cause in the pursuit of documenting
her story.
Jeyas daughter was born of rape. Half Singhalese, half Tamil. Half soldier, half
civilian. She entered her world when a vicious cycle of violence had come full
circle. They say the war is over now, the country is at peace. Discreetly positioned
inside a church, sitting across from Jeya, Im restless, intimately familiar with the
pangs of guilt that interrupt my work and jar my sense of self.

The last time I was here, I was a humanitarian worker. Then, at least, I could have
carefully placed a tiny Band-Aid over the details of her damaged life. Now, I am
intervening into local lives with only the promise of social justice in hand. I am an
ill-equipped spy, sent to retrieve the most repressed memories from a repressed
people. The stories will, at worst, incite a directionless moral outrage on behalf of
the people, and at best, brand their government an international pariah.
I am relieved Jeya will talk to me, as I have come looking for Victims of rape
(Survivors, in aid parlance), but so far had only encountered Witnesses and
Rumors. From inside the electrified fence of her internment, Jeya didnt know
which day the war ended. They never told us. Or maybe they did. None of us
understood Singhalese.
It is a war the West knows little about, though its fighters became infamous
around the globe. The slow exclusion of Tamils from government jobs and
universities bled into the manipulation of ethnic extremism by political elitesa
familiar post-colonial tale. As the Singhalese articulated a vision for a unitary
Sinhala Buddhist state, the Tamils demanded a separate nation, and Muslims were
caught in between. Years of peaceful protest turned violent, and though nobody
quite agrees on when it beganwhat followed was three decades of intractable
civil war.
Jeya speaks to me in Tamil. She is a Tamil. In this post-war moment, I am opening
the curtain on extreme violations in order to reveal everyday, and historic,
injustices. I am here for the same reason I have always come here. As a Tamil-SriLankan-American-Woman I want to, I have to, help.

To Educate
I had always known Sri Lanka through the inroads of culturemissing out on
American sleepovers and proms in exchange for traditional Carnatic (singing)
and Bharatanatyam(dance) recitals. Tamil voices filled my weekends, pushed
aside by weekday English interactions. But it was a culture divorced from context.
Only from the safe distance of my ivory tower did I marry the tworeading pages
that described the bloodshed dripping from my own family tree.
When a friend asked me to help develop a leadership program for war-affected
orphans in the north and east of Sri Lanka, I said yes, because I wanted to help.
Fresh out of college, I wholeheartedly embraced the promise of volun-tourism
one part rewarding, two parts adventure, with the added potential for selfdiscovery. Rumbling across the island with a bus-full of volunteers, I had come to
save lives and, perhaps, change my own.
We drove through the middle of the country, in the middle of the war. Right before
we disembarked one of the volunteers asked me, Dont you think it would have
been more useful to send the money we spent to get here directly, to improve the
lives of these children?I couldnt believe that might possibly be true.
Nirmala was one of the participants in our enthusiastic endeavor to build

leadership and teach English. She had my mothers name. She was eleven when I
first met her, one of two hundred girls who lived on a generous plot of land
nestled on the lagoon. At the church-run orphanage, she, and many others, didnt
quite fit the funding definition of an Orphan. She explained, I am here because
this is where my amma (mother) felt I would be safe.
Safe from whom, I didnt yet know. I had hoped to jump easily into the task at
hand, but in those first days I was preoccupied. My mind desperately tried to
grasp floating Tamil words resurfacing from childhood memories, while my
militantly carnivorous body protested that a ripe banana was the only thing to
sink my teeth into at every meal. At least a dozen times a day, mind, body, and
soul would band together to pose an urgent questionwhy are we here?
Nirmala, however, saw me as one of her owna familiar alien. She often gently
laughed,You have just forgotten your Tamil in America! It was the first time that
shards of my own self glared back at me, constantly shifting shapes in a
kaleidoscope of competing identities. The view through this tube would define my
place as an inside-outsidertwo positions that tugged at me most fiercely on this
first expedition into a contested homeland.
My favorite part of the day was teaching Bharatanatyam in the still of the
afternoon heat. It was the only time I was on sure footing. The girls gathered
excitedly and focused intently to copy the basic steps. Nirmala told me after one
class, This is something I had always wanted to do. A traditional hand-me-down I
always took for granted was one shed never been able to touch.
In the midst of service-providing there was storytelling. Bits and pieces of life
histories snuck out over learning and leisure time. Nirmala revealed, My appa
(father) left us when we were young, and amma has always been very ill. My
uncle, you know, he used to hit at [sexually assault] us.
In all of the children, pain brimmed in their eyes, even as they smiled, relaying
what you needed (and yet didnt want) to know. Nirmalas uncle had left with her
father to join the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), then known as the
boys, guerilla fighters in pursuit of a separate Tamil nation. He had been caught
by the Sri Lankan Army and tortured. He was a broken man when he returned to a
home ravaged by war, sinking deeper into poverty.
The violence of his politics turned violently personal, for her. When he came back,
he was different. I had to leave that place, she says, uncomfortably, quietly. For a
complex problem, could there be an immediate, simple solution? The safe space
of a childrens home filled with childlike joy seemed a sufficient, humane
intervention.
We crossed through the gate with trepidationas it should
be when the navely humanitarian wanders into the overtly
political.

And Nirmala seemed happy, joining impromptu hip-hop performances to make us

laugh, and looking on in proud silence as her team put the final touches on huge
murals lighting up the walls in a colorful plea for peace. My own appa called the
church home one evening. How is it? he asked, anxious. I thought for a moment. I
feelpeaceful.
In our final days we took a bus ride to the beach, a first for many of the children.
As we bumped along they broke out in song, and I was a child againsurrounded
by Tamil in the most beautiful way. And then the bus stopped. We disembarked
before an ornate metal gate framing rows of marble headstones. Beneath them
lay the bodies of Tamil fighters from the LTTE, some as young as the children. By
then, the LTTE governed large swathes of land, had its own foreign ministry, and
marked its territory with symbolic memorials such as this. The space was a
decorated celebration of lives lost in the struggle, for the right to demand rights.
We crossed through the gate with trepidationas it should be when the navely
humanitarian wanders into the overtly political. There was a considered silence as
we walked gingerly around lives that once were, in a war that still could be. The
veil was lifted as soon as we returned to our seats on the bus. One student blurted
out, I would never join the Tigers. I dont think you should kill. Next to her, another
retorted, They have to use guns against the Army. When I am older, I will
definitely join.
Nirmala is quiet. Back inside the walls of the orphanage, she sits next to me,
sketching a couple getting married. My sister is in the LTTE, she says she feels
safer there. In my village the army comes to look for people connected to the
movement. They wont come here.In a place where cultural conservatism
determined the appropriate size of earrings and lengths of skirts, Nirmalas sister
was stomping through the jungle in military boots. She was among the roughly
one-third of LTTE combatants that were female, filling ranks from foot soldiers to
high-standing lieutenants.
All too soon there were tearful goodbyes, names and addresses scribbled in lined
notebooksdesperate hopes to retain a connection between two worlds. As we
drove away my friend turned to me and conceded, Ok, by coming here we had
more of an impact than we would have by only sending money. The concession,
though, was more disconcerting than assuring. Even where the intent was
honorable, the impact was ambiguous.
Our haphazard intervention was, from the outset, handicapped in its ability to
settle the political terrain rumbling beneath these childrens feet. But between us,
and within us, the compilation of moments had been transformative. In a way
that, perhaps, transcended measurement.
As we tore through bumpy territory, I was intensely aware of every military
checkpoint, every tilted interaction between an aggressive soldier and a
submissive mother, every little girl standing aside watching it all unfold. We

ourselves were commanded into the sea of camouflage, and my identity was
hyphenated in reverse. I was safe because I was an American-Woman first, and a
Tamil-Sri Lankan second.

For Relief
The things left unsaid and unexplored on that original trip propelled me into
graduate school. I wanted to know all of the forces that exerted pressure on
Nirmalas life. Most months of the year I was lost in texts on ethnic identity,
federalism, and, on occasion, resistance. In my summers, I went back to the
island. A life lived on the margins had shaped Nirmala and the girls, and our
conversations grew more thoughtful year by year.
One afternoon as she carefully braided my hair she said, If the war really starts
again, maybe I will join the movement. In the academy, such casual comments
have no value. Those days, I sat between community engagement and the
standards of intellectual rigor, and wondered how to draw the two closer together.
Until the waves tore everything apart. The ones that brought back the war.
Flashed on the front page of the Los Angeles Times was a Sri Lankan Brown Girl,
overlooking the devastation that was The Tsunami. Conspicuously not pictured
was the young Muslim girl in Indonesia, whose headscarf may have warded off
donations.
Overnight, from a political science graduate student, I transformed into a
humanitarian aid worker. I spent those post-tsunami weeks collecting twentydollar bills at bars in Los Angeles, harvesting suffering for fundraiser spiels,
opening boxes of donated red heels, fielding calls from well-wishers and racists
alike (Please make sure this money doesnt go to the Muslims, one letter read). It
was a moment in history where natures shock and awe elicited a global
outpouring of pure emotionin everyone but me. Even as I was constantly
shifting in response, a part of me was stuck in a freeze-frame, watching the first
death tolls flashing across the television screen.
It wasnt until I had made the familiar trek across the island with eight wide-eyed
therapists in tow and confronted the deceptively calm waves of mass destruction
that I begin to melt. On the sand next to a toppled temple, a woman approached
me and said,My arms still ache. I cannot hold anything since I dropped my baby in
the water. I dont remember her name, there were too many people crowded on
the beach that day, but I remember the way she looked at me. She didnt ask for
nutrition, medical attention, or a new home. She only needed it to matter, to
someone else, that her baby was dead.
This was my first experience as an emissary of the massive humanitarian
apparatus that descends in the aftermath of crisis: postdisaster/famine/conflict/dictator. I was tasked with straddling two distinct
territories to stem a tide of indiscriminate suffering. I came complete with the
clipboard and authoritative walk necessary to inspire confidence in a team of

disheveled newbies to the Third World. In truth, I had only a marginal cultural
advantage over the Americans who granted me expert status on the basis of my
own brown skin.
As I entered the orphanage grounds, Nirmala came running out. Akka (older
sister), see what I have kept! She had grown into the woman the photo I had with
me predicted she would become. Printed with overly ornate framinga third world
version of Glamour Shotsit was one of the few possessions she saved from the
almighty water.
In those first post-disaster days I floated through a sea of Beneficiary faces,
stepped over debris, and found fragments of past trauma lodged in the present. A
small child carrying an even smaller child in search of adults; a piece of sari
awkwardly wrapped around the straight trunk of a tree, stolen from the curves of
a previous owner; the childrens faces missing from the orphanage line-up I once
remembered. I couldnt summon the names, but I felt their absence.
There had been no trepidation here, no pause, before boots
on the ground overran the blood-soaked earth.
The kaleidoscope re-assembled to place me on the inside of colored communities,
relied on by individuals and villages (the Tsunami-Affected) as their uncomfortable
guide through the lighter-skinned humanitarian labyrinth. There had been no
trepidation here, no pause, before boots on the ground overran the blood-soaked
earth. Nobody stopped to question whether the disaster was man-made, natural,
or both. The black waves were replaced by an equally invasive flood of
humanitarian intervention. It was chaos heaped on top of emotional turmoil,
covering political volatility. Amid the bright array of saris and sarongs were miniarmies of aid workers, color-coded.
In yellow were the scientologists. I walked into a church preschool to find very
little people in their striped uniforms seated, semicircle, staring up at big people,
trying to follow the happiness-inspiring, stress-relieving chant that their
benefactors were offering. In red were the Korean rescue teams, followed by a
chain of translation. One for Korean to English. The second for English to Tamil.
Those in white were there in service of God (though neither name nor mission
statement revealed that). They proudly showed off expensive new homes, made
of an imported metal guaranteed to overheat their residents and likely breed
disease. The Italians were shirtless, but wore bright green Speedos as they soaked
up the island sun, only halfheartedly frustrated at the political curfew that kept
them from their work.
And then there were the play therapists, who came armed with brightly colored
crayons. Before I could unleash them on unsuspecting children, I tried to temper
their lofty expectations with the weight of political and cultural realities. Working
against the ticking clock of emergency relief, I had only three hours to discuss the

violence running through the past and the present of these young girls lives. I
focused on pragmatism, explaining, The ones with short hair will likely have been
in the movement, do not mention it. For their safety, and in an attempt to do no
psychological harm. There were a few respectful nods.
On our first afternoon, I had scarcely left the dormitory when three therapists
cornered one Ex-Combatant on her bed, inquiring after her past activities. Their
reasoning, We were trying to get her full story so we could arrange an adoption
for her. For a better life.The children were asked to use crayons to visualize their
trauma. A technique whose only value seemed to be in producing materials that
could be used to raise money. For more crayons.
In those months, and years, hundreds of people whose lives were overturned by
disasters contextualized their own misery in the struggle of others, a morbid
game of compare-the-tragedy. One man tells me, I have lost fifteen members of
my family, but him, you see him, he has lost twenty-three. It seemed to be a way
to gain perspective on pain, though it provided very little solace at all.
He had told his story to someone with a survey, but she had pulled only the
numbers from his narrative. As an aid worker her job was to categorizeto
separate the most affected from the least affected. As she measured the depth of
impact, she missed the breadth of injury. He was a number in a never-ending
numbers game. Dollars donated, beneficiaries reached, progress evaluated,
dollars spent. There was no space to log the disappointment of saving nobody, no
link to record one mans choice to wallow in empathy over self-pity. These rare
glimpses into our collective humanity are, in fact, the best indicators of a
complete recovery.

For Rehabilitation and Research

In Sri Lanka, bad things happen in threes. Three riots, three wars. I returned to the
island in the midst of the third (final?) war. My presence was enabled by aid work
on the surface, though my research drove me into the heart of the political
backdrop. While days of LTTE-imposed curfews occasionally landed me at a hotel
bar next to a red-faced aid worker, I avoided ex-pat staff hangouts. I was happy to
spend my evenings using old Tamil cassettes and an empty cafeteria to host
Bollywood dance parties for Nirmala and the girls. In the years after the tsunami,
joy played hard to getenticed momentarily by cheesy lyrics and gyrating hips.
Within my portfolio was a livelihood program for Ex-Combatants who left the
movement due to injury. These were women who joined the LTTE when it boasted
land, sea, and air capabilities. When I met Premila, the movement was splintering
and the land was slipping away.
The portrait of a terrorist is difficult to paint with soft strokes. We will see her
through hardened eyes, and she will show a hardened soul. She was my third
interview that afternoon. The heat was oppressive in the tiny room held tenuously
together by metal scraps. Earlier that day Ex-Combatants had used the space for
classes in carpentry. I fidgeted with my scarfconstantly trying to affix it in its

most conservative form. She was tall, with long black hair, and eyes that turned
up ever so slightly. She looked like me. An inescapable bridge formed over the
space between shared identities. What would I have doneif I were her?
My inner monologue was quickly silenced as she interrogated me about the
nature of my research. I am tired of questions for the sake of questions! More
importantly, she was tired. Premilas story had the basic foundation of earlier
incantationsfinding commonality in culture, context, and cause.
At the intersection of these three is the tale of a terrorist we have heard before
rarely accurate to the subject, even less relevant to effective policy. Missing from
the popular versions are the experiences that shaped an identity full of the same
idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies we expect (even accept) in ourselves, but ignore in
those we declare exceptional.
Premila was the middle child amid three brothers and sisters. My amma was
disturbed, I think, after appa left to fight. My job was to care for my siblings. Life
as a child was divided into categories of challenges. We lived in a small home, off
the coast, there was no running water, and people were sick often. She points to
her missing fingers, I was cooking for my siblings when the stove
exploded. Interspersed within her civilian experience were armed intrusions. The
militaryand the accompanying arrests, torture, and harassmentwere always a
peripheral presence in her consciousness. The soldiers were always around, we
avoided them. I had heard of the LTTE, and was glad someone was fighting for us.
Around the world, women are pulled to the table in a
desperate attempt to locate peace intrinsically within them,
ignoring the individual politics that sustain war.
Premila was eighteen when the woman recruiter, a fighter, entered her classroom.
She wore a stern expression that rested as forcibly on her features as the fatigues
that fell loosely along the contours of her body. I was asked to join the LTTE, for
my people. I could not refuse.
She spoke of state repression and marginalizationbut never said those words. I
hadnt thought of fighting, but once I joined, I knew this was right. She watched
propaganda videos that reflected the reality of her own life, capturing her anger in
a nationalist agenda. The training was hard, it was difficult for me. But, we fought
for a better life for Tamil people. Everyone deserves better than this. She is
constantly harassed by the army as an ex-fighter. Not because she was one, but
because missing fingers on her hand suggest she might have been. I have my
children to consider now, but yes, I would fight again. Not yet a mother myself at
this point, the statement surprised me. Even motherhood, a powerfully
transformative force, faltered in the face of her dedication to the cause. And she
wasnt the only one. Around the world, women are pulled to the table in a

desperate attempt to locate peace intrinsically within them, ignoring the

individual politics that sustain war.
It was only a chance overlap of luck and privilege that carved an escape tunnel
out of this place for me. There was not even a generation between us, and I
wondered where a different twist of fate might have positioned the two of us.

For Justice
In America, with remarkable frequency, the lectures I gave were met with a white
feminist questionWas I arguing that violence was empowering for women? No, I
dont use that word. Female fighters should show you that the power you are
generously transferring to them through humanitarianism is, at best, redundant.
Power is both personal and political, and not a resource that can be manipulated
through capitalist transactions.
Unsatisfied, the exasperated follow up is usually, Well, why do women rebel? It
depends on which woman you mean. For love, for nationalism, for health care.
The diversity of motives is kryptonite to consensus-building policy formulations.
The better question was rarely asked: What made violence vital to protecting their
internal and external existence?
Over there, the government of Sri Lanka claimed to be nearing the end of their bid
to eradicate the Tigers. As they recaptured formerly Tiger-held districts in the
North and East of the island, government forces banned journalists, the UN,
anyone they may be forced to protect. On one side of the ring, China stood up
front, handing Sri Lanka the big gloves, with the US and India sheepishly hiding
behind them. Trapped, on the other side, were the huddled masses of civilians,
whose bodies were both their weapons and their weakness.
Departing United Nations SUVs were blocked by the bodies of Tamil women, a
desperate sit-in, in saris. Behind the impenetrable shield created by the War on
Terror, advancing forces bombed hospitals and abducted journalists, trampling on
international humanitarian law and any semblance of free press. I lived fifteen
minutes away from the institution created, and funded, to prevent just such mass
atrocities. Never Again, it had told Rwanda and the world.
The few conversations that happened at the UN were relegated to the basement,
far from the exalted thirty-something floor. Here, a French diplomat
commented, The way most of the West sees Sri Lanka is well let them finish off
the messy part of eliminating terrorism, and go in later with Development. A
powerful prophecy, fulfilled within six months. One version of the last days of war
suggests that a negotiated surrender with the LTTE was flagrantly ignored when
they were summarily executed, white flags in hand, in a bloodbath on the beach.
A resistance was crushed in a manner that resurrected the reason to resist.
Crimes Against Humans were committed under the blind eye of satellite
machinery. And the Aid world stood ready to supply handouts through military
armsthe only ones who could reach trapped civilians.

I couldnt bear to be an accomplice to their complicity. Among the thoughtful few

were those who offered to lend institutional weight to the desire to seek justice
through research and analysis. I was to locate the difficult narratives, verify the
stories, and aggregate evidence of womens pain. Which, of course, came with its
own politics. A medical report was credible, a grandmother who cannot erase
what she witnessed was not.
I went back to Sri Lanka armed only with notebooks and pens, shedding various
identities as and when necessary to slip through barbed wire. At first, I wrote my
own thoughts.
Maybe there is something liberating about letting go of hope.
Here youd have to unearth the mass graves for anyone to give a tiny shit,
But people living in shitthat wont turn any heads.
Its all so insipid. The normalizing of abnormal.
I keep thinking theres this familiar angst and anger that will
find its way to the surfacetesting my self-restraint,
pushing me in some direction or another.
I didnt find it today. Or yesterday.
Anger is the gateway drugto a hope
that no longer existsnot even in some bullshit new form or emergent
metaphorical space.
The information is out, the limits of political will have been tested,
the intellectuals have debated, the grassroots co-opted,
the politicians have compromised.
And amidst all that activity time stood still here. Moved backwards even.
Closer to a time of immediate, tangible pain.
Undead and unlucky.
Maybe we all kept bending, for our safety, or our sanitybut we bent too far,
and now the only thing to do is lie down and wait
Sometimes work is driven by hope, sometimes its something to do. When I sat
down with Jeya and her baby that morning, the first thing she asked was, Are you
married?Being married offered me automatic acceptance into the inner life of the
Tamil community. Marriage is important as a Tamil, as the act that validates the
presence, and life, of any woman. Among other traditions, the possibility to
achieve this cultural standard was threatened, nearly destroyed, in the last
phases of the war. Jeyas marriage was one consequence of the brutal military
campaign.

Jeya was there, as shells fell on camps and cluster bombs left no space untouched
when the Tamil people were in constant motion. Herded from safe zones to
bunkers to military captivityas tightly as they held each other, the violence
ripped families apart. She was one of the lucky ones. Her mother and father were
with her as they entered a long stay in internment camps, with nearly threehundred thousand others. Unlike the others I interviewed, Jeya spoke very little
about being held inside the camps, the lack of privacy, the overcrowding, the long
lines for food. Her story began to unravel on the outside.
I had been friendly with a soldier in the camp, he helped me with little things.
When we were re-settled near our home, he would visit often. Her family was
grateful for the inappropriate attention, as it provided them some safety. Once
back in a re-settlement village, he approached the family with the intent of
marrying Jeya. Despite her oft-noted good looks, she was twenty-eight and the
family was from a lower caste, making marriage difficult in the even the most
stable of circumstances.
The only thing she was certain of was that he had taken her
virginity with him. He wielded just enough personal power
for the act to occur, and not enough political power for it to
matter.
I was surprised my parents agreed, but he did speak Tamil. The soldier said we
must go meet his parents in the South. For Jeya, and thousands of women like her,
the only path from broken to normal is marriage. Beyond the power of belonging,
in Sri Lanka it offered a strange freedomfrom both military detention and militia
recruitment.
They traveled by bus, stopping for the night. He told her they would continue on
in the morning.
The lodge where they stayed would join the ranks of others along this route,
obliged to offer cheap dingy rooms to the soldiers who needed to feel their
victory, through the bodies of Tamil women. I was afraid to be in this place. He
offered me some food and then I think I fainted. He was gone in the morning. The
only thing she was certain of was that he had taken her virginity with him. He
wielded just enough personal power for the act to occur, and not enough political
power for it to matter.
Jeya has been quiet for some time now. I doodle on the edges of my notebook,
grateful for the silence. When amma discovered my pregnancy we went to find
him. We travelled to his village, but his parents were very angry when we met
them. They said he is married with two children, and not to bother him. From the
look on her face, I wonder if heartbreak cuts deeper than the wounds of rape.
I dont want to see her, Jeya says again of her daughter. I am only staying here
until I lose some weight, so nobody knows. I sucked in my own stubbornly sagging
postpartum abdomen and ached to hold my baby, again struck by the power of

violence to break biological bonds.

Jeya is also an Ex-Combatant. When the meager meals allow the weight to fall off,
she doesnt know where to go. The truth about his crime rests only with her
mother, placing her outside the comfort of her family. As an Ex-Combatant,
military monitoring will keep her away from her village. Having been raped, she is
bad luck at weddings. She is on the outside of her community, and her community
is already on the outside of the State.
And the most immediate intervention to entice her back into the folds of social life
will be to offer her three chickens, presumably to raise and make money from. As I
ventured through the resettled villages I met just such creatures, selected in the
noble mission to end rape. Here one Widow & Rape Victim tells me, Someone
from an International Organization gave three chickens to all of us who spoke
about rape. They said they would come back with cages and feed, but they have
not come. One of the chickens has already died, the other two run confusedly
between her legs. I dont know what to do with these in the jungle, but also I am
afraid the Army will know that I have told. They can see the chickens.
As odd as the intervention of livestock may sound, it remains a common approach
to rehabilitation. Around the world micro-finance flows into soap-making, breadbaking, and sewing initiativesintended to empower and protect women against
the macro-challenge of sexual violence in war. Jeya says, I dont know how women
will feel safe unless the political situation changes.
Jeyas story should matter, on the merits of its own tragedybut it wouldnt. I
knew that any indentation on the collective conscience of the powers-that-be
would require that her own testimony be buttressed by others. A pattern provides
the credibility that an individual case cannot. I worked with the precision of a
surgeon (or social scientist) and the hardened soul of a local cremator who
watches the truth burn in the bright embers of bones.
Surely, their stories, woven together, would create a red flag. Someone would see
it, and want to, have to, help.

To Challenge
Jeya has wandered off. The baby rests next to me, as of yet unlabeled. Like the
half-naked African girl child who unknowingly graces the cover of annual reports
and funding appeals, we will try to keep this babys story short, sweet, and
simple.
Boiled down to its most emotionally gripping essence, her tiny narrative could
deliver her a lifeline from the outside. Eventually she will Benefit from an
intervention that defines her by her worst condition (HIV, Orphan), affectation
(Disaster, Displaced), moment (Rape, Widow), or political transformation (ExCombatant).
She will be ensconced in a humanitarian apparatus that will alleviate the pain in

her life, but does not address the politics that may leave her bleeding to death.
Until she resists, her state will never be held accountable, for the rights they
violated, the ones they owe her.
I hold the baby to me. She looks up with a clear, focused gaze. The only simple
truth about her is that she, like the world around her, is complex and political.
Inside and out. Her mother was fully armed in the fight against oppression. Now,
the chokehold of militarization around her neck has made it impossible to breathe,
let alone speak. She will rely on silence to survive. Her fingers clench into a
powerful fist before her eyelids begin to fall. Her tiny body relaxes into my arms
and she is, for the moment, at peace.

Dr. Nimmi Gowrinathan is a Visiting Professor at the Colin Powell Center at City College
New York & Director of the Politics of Sexual Violence Initiative. Follow her work
at www.deviarchy.com or @nimmideviarchy.
To contact Guernica or Dr. Nimmi Gowrinathan, please write here.