Sonali Deraniyagala - Wave

We were tilting from side to side. The water was rising now, filling the jeep. It came up to our chests. Steve and I lifted the boys as high as we could. Steve held Vik, I had Mal. Their faces above the water, the tops of their heads pressing against the jeep’s canvas hood, our hands tight under their armpits. The jeep rocked. It was floating, the wheels no longer gripping the ground. We kept steadying ourselves on the seats. No one spoke. No one uttered a sound.

Then I saw Steve’s face. I’d never seen him like that before. A sudden look of terror, eyes wide open, mouth agape. He saw something behind me that I couldn’t see. I didn’t have time to turn around and look.

Because it turned over. The jeep turned over. On my side.

Pain. That was all I could feel. Where am I? Something was crushing my chest. I am trapped under the jeep, I thought, I am being flattened by it. I tried to push it away, I wanted to wriggle out. But it was too heavy, whatever was on me, the pain unrelenting in my chest.

I wasn’t stuck under anything. I was moving, I could tell now. My body was curled up, I was spinning fast.

Am I underwater? It didn’t feel like water, but it has to be, I thought. I was being dragged along, and my body was whipping backwards and forwards. I couldn’t stop myself. When at times my eyes opened, I couldn’t see water. Smoky and gray. That was all I could make out. And my chest. It hurt like it was being pummeled by a great stone.

This is a dream. It’s one of those dreams where you keep falling and falling, and then you wake up. I was sure of this now. I pinched myself. Again and again. I could feel the nip on my thigh, through my trousers. But I wasn’t waking up. The water was pulling me along with a speed I did not recognize, propelling me forward with a power I could not resist. I was shoved through branches of trees and bushes, and here and there my elbows and knees smashed into something hard.

If this is not a dream, I must be dying. It can be nothing else, this terrible pain. That jeep turned over, and now something is killing me. But how can I be dying? Just now I was in our hotel room. Just now I was with the boys. My boys. My mind shook itself, it tried to focus. Vik and Malli. I can’t die. For them, I have to stay alive.

It was too ferocious, though, the force on my chest. I only wanted for it to stop. If I am dying, please, hurry up.

But I don’t want to die, our life is good, I thought. I don’t want it to be over, we have much more to do, so much. Yet I had to surrender to this unknown chaos. I could sense that. I am going to die, I am nothing against whatever it is that has me in its grip. What to do, it’s over, finished. I gave up. But as I went whirling in the water, I did feel disappointed that my life had to end.

This cannot be happening. Only now I was standing by the door, I was talking to Orlantha. And what was that she said? A dream ? What you guys have is a dream. That’s what she said. Her words came back to me now, I cursed her for saying that.

All at once I saw brown water. No more smoky gray, but billowing brown water, way into the distance, as far as I could see. My head was above the water now. Still I was being swept along at such a speed. There was nothing I could hold. I flung about. There are trees swirling around me. What is this about? I was with Vik, in our room. He wants to wear his new England cricket shirt, we are driving back to Colombo soon. I’ve put the shirt out on the bed. This has to be a dream, I thought. I tasted salt. Water battered my face, it went up my nose, it burned my brain. For a long while I didn’t realize that the pain in my chest had stopped.

I was floating on my back. A blue spotless sky. A flock of storks was flying above me, in formation, necks stretched out. These birds were flying in the same direction that the water was taking me. Painted storks, I thought. A flight of painted storks across a Yala sky, I’d seen this thousands of times. A sight so familiar, it took me out of the mad water. Watching storks with Vik, laughing with him about their pterodactyl-like flight, for a moment or two that’s where I was.

Vik and Malli, I thought again. I can’t let myself die here in whatever this is. My boys.

A child was floating towards me. A boy. His head was above the water, he was screaming. Daddy, Daddy. He was clinging to something. It looked like the broken seat of a car, there was yellow foam or rubber inside. He was lying on top of it, as if he was body-boarding. From a distance, I thought this boy was Malli. I tried to reach him. The water slammed into my face and pushed me back, but I managed to get nearer to the boy. Come to Mummy, I said out loud. Then I saw his face up close. He wasn’t Mal. The next instant I was knocked sideways, and the boy was gone.

I was falling through rapids. The water was plummeting. There was a man, he was being tossed about in this torrent. He was facing downwards. He had a black T-shirt on, only that. Is that Steve, I wondered, maybe it’s Steve, his sarong’s come off. I thought this calmly at first, and then I panicked. No, it can’t be Steve. Don’t let it be him.

There was a branch hanging over the water. I was floating towards it, on my back. I have to clutch that branch, I told myself, somehow I must. I knew I’d go racing under it, so I had to lift up my arms in time to have any chance of catching it. The water thrashed my face, but I tried to keep my eyes fixed on that branch. Then I was under it, and I reached out, but the branch was nearly behind me. I threw my arms back a little and grabbed, holding on.

My feet were on the ground.

My eyes couldn’t focus. But I saw then the toppled trees everywhere, I could make those out, trees on the ground with their roots sticking up. What is this, a swamp? I was in an immense bog-land. Everything was one color, brown, reaching far. This didn’t look like Yala, where the ground is dry and cracked and covered in green shrub. What is this knocked-down world? The end of time?

I was bent double, I couldn’t straighten. I held my knees, I was panting hard, choking. There was sand in my mouth. I wretched and coughed up blood. I kept spitting and spitting. So much salt. My body felt very heavy. My trousers, they are weighing me down, I thought. I took them off. What happened to those waves? There are pools of still water around me, but no waves. Are these lakes or lagoons?

I couldn’t keep steady. My feet sank in sludge. I stared into this unknown landscape, still wondering if I was dreaming, but fearing, almost knowing, I was not.

It was only then that I wondered what happened to everyone. Could they be dead? They must be. They must be dead. What am I going to do without them, I thought. Still panting, still spitting. I couldn’t keep balance, I was sliding in mud.

I heard voices. Distant at first, then close. It was a group of men, shouting to each other in Sinhala. They couldn’t see me, or me them. One of them said, “ Muhuda goda gahala. Mahasona avilla .” The ocean has flooded. Mahasona is here. Mahasona. I knew the word, but what was he saying? I had last heard that word when I was a child and our nanny told us stories about ghouls and demons. Mahasona, he is the demon of graveyards. Even in my complete bewilderment, I understood. Something dreadful had happened, there was death everywhere, that’s what the man was shouting about.

That voice called out again. “Is anyone here, you can come out now, the water’s gone, we are here to help.” I didn’t budge or make a sound. I felt too exhausted to speak. Then a child’s voice, “Help me. Save me. I was washed away.” I heard the men come closer to find the child. I stayed silent. Bent over, holding my knees.

The men spotted me and ran over. They spoke to me, but I didn’t reply. They said I should go with them, we must hurry, there could be another wave. I kept shaking my head and refusing. I was too tired. And without my boys, how could I leave? What if they’d survived? They might be near here somewhere, I couldn’t leave them behind. But I couldn’t say this out loud. I couldn’t ask these men to search for them. I couldn’t tell them that we had been thrown out of the jeep into that water. Telling them would make it too real.