The Wars We Survive
and the stories we tell
It was 1993. I was eight years old.
My family had just moved back to Batticaloa, in Sri Lanka’s eastern province. It was a night like any other—until the gunfire started. We didn’t panic. We knew the drill. A few shots in the distance were nothing unusual. But if the gunfire didn’t stop after a few rounds, we knew what it meant: a crossfire between government forces and the Tamil Tigers.
That night, the firing didn’t stop.
My family—five of us—huddled beneath our big bed, waiting for the violence to subside. The shooting lasted for over an hour, each bullet a reminder of how fragile our shelter was. Our home, made of dried coconut leaves, wouldn’t withstand a single shell, grenade, or stray bullet. We lay there, silent, hoping luck was on our side.
At some point, I needed to go to the bathroom. But we didn’t have one—not inside, at least.
Stepping too far from our house in the middle of a gunfight was unthinkable. But my father, understanding my urgency, took me to the doorstep. “Go quickly,” he whispered. The gunfire continued as I relieved myself, my heart pounding. I could hear the ‘whoosh’ of bullets zipping through the night and the sounds of explosions nearby. I finished as fast as I could and darted back under the bed, where the rest of my family waited.
Next to our home was a refugee camp—a settlement of families who had fled the war in search of safety. They had abandoned everything: homes, livelihoods, memories. Now, they lived in makeshift huts, scraping by as daily laborers, doing whatever work they could find—yard work, cleaning, hauling stones for construction.
The morning after a crossfire, we would step outside to assess the damage. And every time, we’d hear the wailing. The gunfire had claimed more innocent lives. Someone’s child, husband, wife, father, mother—gone. Just a bloody corpse now. They had escaped one hell only to find themselves in another. Their flimsy huts had no chance against the bullets, the shells, and the violence that didn’t care who it hit.
Today, when I see images of the massacre in Gaza, I remember that refugee camp. When I see the inhumane Trump policies rip apart families, I remember how that easily could have been my family too. The echoes of war are not confined to battlegrounds; they reverberate through policies, borders, and the rhetoric of power. The trauma of displacement and violence knows no nationality, no timeline—only the shared grief of those caught in forces beyond their control.
These stories rarely get told.
Almost four decades have passed, but this remains a vital part of my story. It shapes how I see the world, how I read history, and how I make meaning of what happens around me.
Because our histories shape our stories. Our stories create our futures. And the wars we survive—both personal and collective—define the world we build.
For better or worse.