The Dog by the Lagoon Bears Witness to the War’s Atrocities

C. Christine Fair

Published in ColdNoon on 22 December 2018. https://coldnoon.com/magazine/diaries/poetry/the-dog-by-the-lagoon-bears-witness-to-the-wars-atrocities/

Whelped behind an old Hindu temple on the road linking the beach of Mullaitivu and the lagoon, she was the lone survivor of her pack easily recognized by their light brown coat, perky ears, pointed snout and delicate feet.
The others — her children, siblings and sires — had died in the war or in its aftermath
From bombs, gun fire, mines, starvation, thirst or illness
She hunted alone, wandering the body-strewn beaches for flesh or refuse.
She tried to avoid the bodies although they were everywhere and she felt the stabbing pangs of hunger
She had come to know many of them by their scent, their voice or the colors they preferred to wear before transmogrifying into this frightening pale bloat
Some fed her. Others kicked her. But they were her familiars. She followed them to school, to temple, to market.
Her ears stung with the cries of mothers wailing, clutching their dead children
She cowered from the inescapable thunder of the mortars, the hissing of bombs and the shrieking of jets passing overhead their bellies heavy with bombs.
She crouched low as she watched the Tamil Tigers knock on doors, rip the terrified children from their mothers and foist the guns into their arms. She felt and smelled their fear.
She smelled the offending odors of the Sri Lankan soldiers’ sex. The cries of their victims as they snuffed out their lives pierced her ears. Their language was as strange as their scent and gate.
Her young pup eyes became attuned to the motions of the humans she tried to warn. She felt the rumbling of the war machines before they could.
She barked at them. Whined at them. Pawed at them. She tried to tell them to get into the trenches so many had built for such moments.
In these moments of madness, they had no patience for this noisy bitch. Some threw discarded coconut shells at her. Others brandished sticks or stones. She slinked away, with her tail tucked.
One by one she watched her pack members die off as well as the humans she had come to know.
What seemed like years passed. With the planting season disrupted, she could not mark time.
New people came in. Soldiers. People who spoke that different tongue who smelled like the Others. The Others erected new buildings upon the carcasses of old. She no longer knew this place.
Her eyes became glossy and her vision began to fade. Her hips ached, and she could no longer hunt the chipmunks who know dared to play in front of her. Her body trembled from the pangs of hunger and the sharp jabs of illness. Her coat was infested with mange. Her hearing diminished. She mostly tried to sleep.
She wondered why she had survived. What was the point in bearing witness to these crimes without the ability to testify?
Increasingly, she sought comfort in the dirt in which she nested in the dark, alone some distance from the Vaddu Vakal Bridge. She thought of the dogs and people she had known. She pondered her loneliness.
In the early hours of no morning in particular, the soldiers’ truck sped over her without so much as noticing.
She took one last look at her beloved Nanthi Kadal lagoon, unable to move and in a pain she could not understand.
She had not yet given up her life when the clatter of hungry birds descended upon her soft belly to pick out her pink entrails.
Too weak to move or bark or whimper, she heaved her last breath and hoped that in her next life she would not be a soldier.

C. Christine Fair is Associate Professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She has published extensively on the political and military events of South Asia, and has travelled throughout Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka.