30 April 2019 12:01 am Views - 566
Mourners light candles during a vigil in memory of the victims in Colombo (Reuters)
I didn’t know at the time that the noise that woke me up on Easter Sunday morning was the explosion at the Kingsbury. Living across from the Port City development, there were always loud noises coming from the construction. This was different though, after a loud bang was heard; a long alarm sounded. “Is this a tsunami warning?” I asked my Sri Lankan partner. As an Australian expat, who had lived in Colombo the past four years, a tsunami was the only option my brain could offer me, I knew something felt wrong, but the idea that it could be a terrorist attack didn’t even enter my mind.
At 9.30 am; a fellow Australian expat dropped a text to tell me there has been an explosion at the Kingsbury and to know whether were we safe? At this stage we still weren’t aware that multiple churches had been hit, as well as two other hotels in the area - Shangri-La and Cinnamon Grand. It was only then we realised the alarm that we had heard was ambulance sirens. I called my family to let them know before they saw the news and assumed the worst.
We spent the rest of the day in front of the TV in horror at the enormity of what had happened that morning. It was hard to reconcile the images in the media of what was happening outside. The day was eerily quiet. It felt as if I was watching events happening in another country, it didn’t feel that this was happening just down the road. So we stayed inside and waited.
When I made the decision to relocate to Sri Lanka in 2015, friends and family in Australia questioned whether it was safe to live here. My response always was that I believed after 30 years of war, even though there were still tensions in the country, that peace was the most important thing to the people. Before the Easter Sunday attacks, I had always felt safe in Colombo and the bombings were a harsh wake up call. Australia is not a stranger to terror attacks but I had never felt fear in the way I did on that Sunday.
When the terrorist attacks happened in Christchurch, there was a grim expectation that a possible retaliation would follow. As the attacker was an Australian, I believed that a big city such as Melbourne or Sydney would be the target. Sri Lanka felt much safer than if I had been in my home country. The government had experienced terrorism before; they would never let it rise up again surely?
For the days immediately following the attacks, I was in a state of shock. Other residents, expats and tourists contemplated with heavy hearts-‘it could have been me’. As stories of narrow misses started to emerge, “I stepped outside for a moment”, “I was booked for the Easter brunch an hour later”, “I decided not to go…” guilt started to creep in, why them and not me? Only two weeks ago, my Sri Lankan family and I were having dinner at the Kingsbury, in the exact place the explosion took place. We had Christmas lunch at Cinnamon Grand.
The people who were in those churches and hotels on Sunday were no different to me. They weren’t a better or worse human being; they weren’t doing anything out of the ordinary. They were just living – and that’s the hardest thing for me to process, that all these innocent people were murdered in the simple act of living. They never even knew it was coming.
At this stage, none of the other expats I know from Australia, USA, Italy and Sweden who live in Sri Lanka have decided to leave. Our homes are here now. We have Sri Lankan partners, families, jobs, and friends. How can I leave when they might not be safe?
Tourists in the country at the time were offered the chance to continue on with their trips if they wished but tour companies re-routed itineraries to avoid major sites and complying with curfews. Some travel companies are offering their passengers counselling services. Those who wanted to leave immediately were assisted but bravely, many tourists wanted to stay and finish their trips. The tourism industry that provides income to so many people across the country, is going to suffer as cancellations at hotels and tour companies grow. The terrorists not
only took lives, but people’s livelihoods.
The past week has plunged those who lived through the war into a flashback of fear. My partner and friends reflect on their childhood, the curfews, and the knot in their stomachs when their loved ones left the house, wondering if they were going to come back. People have become suspicious of each other; they drift through the supermarket, through their offices, quiet, watchful, hoping to get home as soon as possible.
But day-by-day, more people are back at work, they are walking around, they are getting back to a routine. They’ve lived through this before; they will live through it again. Sri Lankans are resilient. For me this is new, and while I am worried about my safety, I’m concerned about the survivors of the attacks whose lives would never be the same. Physical wounds can heal but grief, survivor-guilt and post-traumatic stress can last forever. The hospitals have done an outstanding job in caring for the wounded, and I hope that in the weeks and years that follow, that psychological support will also be provided at such a high level.
Travellers to Sri Lanka regularly mention that one of the most heart-warming things about the country is the ability for different religions to live in harmony together. While it’s hard to imagine this at the moment amongst the anger and the grief that the country collectively feels, there is the feeling that the country is uniting. Members of different faiths came together to donate blood, to offer security to places of worship that weren’t their own, to support investigations and to assist the victims. It is my hope that the devastating events of Easter Sunday can bring people of all faiths together and make Sri Lanka a safe place for all.