Rani's Story

The place has been difficult to find and I am late.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

And then I hand her the bunch of flowers bought on impulse. It is an unremarkable day in February. The sun does not shine and the damp air threatens rain. I have travelled up to London for this interview but at the station I hesitated, then bought some hyacinths.

The girl I am about to talk to, Rani, is twenty-six, and because I too am Sri Lankan I am interested in her story. But still, I must admit, I have been dreading this meeting. For I am neither journalist nor councillor, lawyer or doctor and I have no experience of interviewing someone who has endured what she has. So, as an uncertain gift, a token of respect, I have brought her flowers, blue as a tropical sky, scented like the air of her lost childhood. I hold them out and instantly see, even before she says a word, a desolation in her face. She is detached from her surroundings, muffled, in some way. The interview room is small. A low bed, an empty desk, a blank computer screen. No plants, no pictures on the walls, nothing personal. When I came in I noticed a row of grey socks drying on a radiator. A faint trace of incense hovers suggesting prayers. I am aware of listeners behind closed doors.

            ‘Tell me,’ I say, dismissing all thoughts of where I might be, ‘start at the beginning.’

But she cannot. Like all memories hers arrives in fragments, in vivid shards, hesitant flashbacks relived again and again in the retelling.

            ‘They killed them,’ she says, and I wait.

Once they had been six. Now Rani is just one. Alone; the emblematic story of the destruction of Tamil families.

            ‘On the ninth day of the seventh month last year,’ she tells me, closing her eyes, arms wrapped around herself, ‘my aunt rang me. She told me they had set my home on fire. She told me my mother and sister had been burnt alive. When I went back all that was left was their skeletons.’

The statement lies between us in a shock of silence. She has started with the thing upmost in her mind. Outside on the busy north London road a siren rises and falls, then fades into nothing.

Rani’s story is medieval in its savage retribution. It is a story of innocence, idealism, and betrayal in a time of civil war. One that is repeated again and again in Sri Lanka. To its shame the country has collectively mastered the art of camouflaging its horrendous crimes, bussing in western tourists to its golden beaches and fronting a campaign of faux-peace. So that the world with its limited attention span, its short supply of pity, turns a blind eye. In the glossy brochures and magazines of the west Sri Lanka is called the ‘Number One Holiday In Paradise.’    

Tamil harassment and persecution had been taking place as far back as 1958. Slowly, over time the Tamils were denied education and employment. Those who could, seeing the writing on the wall, like my own Tamil father (my mother was Singhalese) left the country. As the intimidation worsened, abductions and disappearances became common and no Tamil was safe.

Rani’s story began in 2004 when she was seventeen. She was an ordinary girl whose simple religious belief made her hope to become a school teacher to help Tamil children to a better future. Her father worked for a telecommunication company, her mother, a housewife taking in sewing and keeping chickens. Rani was the eldest of four children, all of whom, throughout their young lives had seen local violence between the Sri Lankan army and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, an armed separatist movement). All of them had witnessed the frequent round-ups in which the Sri Lankan authorities made the villagers assemble for questioning. Rani clearly remembers as a young child seeing older children interrogated and arrested, never to be seen again. She had grown up with the palpable feeling of injustice metered out by the Singhalese armed majority to the people in the villages in the North East.  But in 2004 she was still a dreamer, an ordinary girl, who hoped for a better future. An ordinary girl for whom the time was out of joint.

And when on that fateful evening in 2004, a man, known simply to the family as ‘Uncle’ came to her house, walking up the steps to sit out on the verandah, requesting help for the LTTE cause, it was Rani, the passionately idealist who stepped from the shadows to offer that help. It was just another evening when the Nerium bloomed. Rani’s younger sister was fourteen, her two small brothers somewhat younger. How could she know then what she now knows? That her life and all the lives of her family would soon be changed forever?

Soon she was recruited into the Tamil resistance movement and used as some sort of spy but really she didn’t understand the significance of what she was doing. The LTTE arranged for her to work for a non-governmental organization. Her work involved visiting war-ravaged areas to teach basic health and hygiene. She assisted doctors in medical ‘camps’ while at the same time, remarkably, completed her A Levels.

But in 2007 other, more sinister events began unfolding. The LTTE started a compulsory recruitment of child soldiers in the build up to the final phase of the war. At least one child from every family was what they wanted.

‘How long was it,’ I ask, ‘before you heard your brothers were recruited?’  

At that Rani throws her head back and I wait for the storm to subside. The sound I am listening to cannot simply be called weeping. It is too wild, too primeval, too piercing. The sound goes on and on, defying words, the hopelessness a lament for lost love. When at last she speaks she describes how her brothers left at night, holding hands for mutual support. Neither of them, she says, has ever been seen again.

By 2008 hostilities between the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE had moved to a part of Sri Lanka far from the north east of the island and Rani lost all contact with the rebels. Determined however to be of use to her family she took up new activities, attending courses in tailoring and cake making. But the harassment of villagers in her neighborhood continued so that suddenly, fearful of her past connection with the LTTE, her parents urged her to stay with relatives in another town.

Time passed and the war was over, in name at least. Rani was missing her family badly and in April of 2011 she moved back into her parental home. But, shortly after her return, she was arrested by the Sri Lankan intelligence forces, the CID. They kept her in jail for 10 days.

            ‘They tortured me so much’, she whispers, the coffee that has been brought in for her, untouched, growing colder.   

I am silent, unable to ask the questions forming on my lips so the interpreter asks for me, instead. Yes, she was beaten. Yes, she was raped, many times. As part of the torture they cut her big toe, she tells me and I shake my head in disbelief.

            ‘They hurt my mind,’ she cries, from deep within her curled up body. 

 With the help of a lawyer and an MP, Rani’s father secured her release. She was admitted to hospital for a month during which time her mother held her daughter in her arms and rocked her day and night. The only thing Rani remembers of that time is the feeling of her mother’s arms, the tenderness of a woman comforting her child. As she recalls this Rani too begins to rock gently. I look away towards the dull February light coming in from the window. Words are failing me.

            Finally, she left the hospital, a broken person. Those who have been tortured say that once their bodies have been violated they no longer belong to the world. It is this way for Rani. It was clear how very unwell she really was.  She hardly ate, could not sleep and the searing flashbacks that began then have never left her. The doctor she was seeing told her,  ‘forget the past.’  

She could not. What had been done could not be undone.

              After her release from the hospital Rani was obliged to ‘sign on’ at a police station each week but she found the sessions deeply distressing. The men there would pull her hair, sneer at her and run their hands abusively over her body. Any resistance would have made matters worse. At one point she tried persuading her father to allow her to stop the weekly humiliations. Helplessly he told her that this was impossible unless they moved away altogether. He tried but failed to arrange a student visa that would permit her to leave Sri Lanka and come to the UK. Then, on a bright November morning, on his way to work he was abducted. For some time now he had been watched because of his daughter’s connection with the LTTE. Later, on that same day, they found his battered and bleeding body dumped very near the sea.

              ‘Everything happened because of me,’ Rani now cries. ‘They killed him because of me’.

Her father had been the gentlest of men, she says.

            ‘I wanted to die after that. I tried poison – but my mother stopped me’.

And then she adds, chillingly,

            ‘If I had died my mother and sister would still be alive’.

After her father’s death, Rani, accompanied now by an uncle, continued to sign on with the Sri Lankan authorities. But by May 2012 she was no longer able to stand the abuse. Her mother frightened for her sanity arranged once again for her to go into hiding in Trincomalee.

              During those few weeks between May and early July Rani was too frightened to leave the safe house. Her mother rang as often as she dared but men from the CID had started making spot checks on their home in search of her daughter. Her mother continued to deny all knowledge of her daughter’s whereabouts.

            ‘My mother told me not to worry. She would somehow manage the situation.’ Rani tells me.

Then on 8th July her mother rang one last time. The men told her that if she didn’t disclose Rani’s address they would kill her instead.

            ‘Don’t come home,’ her mother said. ‘Wait!’

She spent a sleepless night, worrying. The following morning her aunt telephoned the safe house. The family home had been set ablaze. Rani’s mother and younger sister had been in bed.

            ‘I went back, then,’ she tells me, her voice indistinct. 

Arriving at the house she saw the villagers gathered in front of it. The moment is fixed forever in her mind, the silence of the crowd, the charred walls, the overpowering heat of the day, the smell of petrol. Someone, she cannot remember who, led her inside where two skeletons remained on a bed of ash. Everything slowed down and blurred. She saw a fragment of fabric from the dress she had handed down to her younger sister. Gripped by despair she fainted.

            Now there was no longer any reason to hide. What was lost could not be recovered. And although the police came back to harass her with questions, crazed with grief she no longer cared about her life. The villagers urged her to flee but she would not. Everyone, she tells me now, knew she would be arrested again and when they came for her in the white van she thought nothing could be worse than what had already happened. How wrong she was.

            For 47 days and nights last November, Rani was tortured and gang-raped. She was burnt with cigarettes, her head was pushed into a barrel of water. She was made to kneel while faceless men in army boots kicked her. Her distress served merely an incitement to further abuse. In the end it hardly mattered as she drifted, like a boat without oars, into semi-consciousness. Stripped of all humanity she had arrived at a place beyond human help. 

            At last, on the forty-seventh day Rani's uncle having bribed a CID officer managed to have her released. He took her to the coastal town of Mannar.

Now, in this silent interview room, with only the ticking of a clock, I am piecing together what happened next. I am piecing it through her tears for she can no longer speak in any coherent way.

She left Mannar that night hiding on the bottom of a boat. Leaving under a fistful of stars shining over a land that had betrayed her. Leaving, a word that sounded so like grieving, with the slow, slow, dip of oars into water. In this terrible way, in the torn and bloodied, semen-stained dress sewn long ago by a mother’s loving hand, carrying her broken body, she went.  Steering away from rocks that, so the legend goes, were placed there by the demon Ravana. Helplessly, sliding away from her home, shedding her past as though it were a skin. Leaving it as if it were a foreign country. Going from the place where she had been born. Sinking into the sea.

              Betrayed, she tells me, on this dull February day, ‘if they send me back from here, I will just kill myself.’

The scent of hyacinths is strong in the room.

            I have heard stories of how, in the process of the destruction of Tamil families, one shell of a person is left as a warning to others, so the brutalities could be spoken of and thus cause fear. Elie Wiesel, when he accepted the Nobel Prize said,

            ‘I have tried to keep memory alive… I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.’ 

This I think, is what I too must do. 

‘Don’t forget your flowers,’ I say, and I place them in her hands once more before raising them up to her face.

Behind the opening buds I see her eyes, as bright and as young as the blue-winged Leafbird from that place which we both once called home.

           

Since writing this article an anonymous benefactor hearing of her plight has offered to pay for any medical help that Rani might need. She is also soon to undergo counselling.

http://bit.ly/YOAawK

  

Planting a Bo Tree in Sri Lanka

In the aftermath of the publication of Frances Harrison's book Still Counting The Dead the discordant cawing of Sri Lankan male voices seem louder. I am hoping this is because the book is having an effect. Oscar Wilde said there is only one thing worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about. So it’s good that Frances Harrison’s wonderful book is being spoken of.
A week ago I was in Tahrir Square, in Cairo, where Coptic Christians and Muslims clashed in a demonstration. Men raging at other men, nothing new about that! Blood and anger spilling out in equal parts. But Egypt is not where I was born. The burnt out bus, the dirt, the corruption, none of these things move me in the way the mess in Sri Lanka does. Why do I care, I asked myself as I stepped onto the plane taking me back to Britain?

And as the flight path over rain-washed Sussex spread below us with its neat-green fields, its sheep so quietly grazing, I puzzled over the centuries of love and care lavished on this small island by its people. And the effect this has had on those people themselves. Wars have been fought to save their sceptred isle from enemy forces, its citizens standing shoulder to shoulder in unbelievable solidarity.  So that no matter how much you may cry Empire, or, hey, look at what the British did in such-and-such a country, what cannot be denied is the social conscience of the British people for their own home. Not all, you understand, there are always the exceptions, but for many it remains so. This land of wind and rain and grey scudding skies, whose magnificent parks were planted centuries ago for the benefit of future generations, is etched deep within the hearts of its people.
How lovely a thing is that?

Why can't the Sri Lankan diaspora, both Singhala and Tamil unite and care for their country in this way? Why do they simply blame each other, uncaring of either the bigger picture or the greater good, refusing to see the curse that lies on both their houses? 
Why do they not value the virtue of solidarity?
Or notice that there are dead to be remembered? 
Victims on both sides of this wretched, senseless, divide, crying out for attention. Isn’t the pity of it almost beyond words?
There are Sri Lankan children who have lost limbs, mothers who have lost children.
Trauma that will not simply go away, that needs careful handling for years and years to come.
What does it do to a woman to be raped repeatedly by a ruthless army? What does it feel like to know that no one will give you a decent hearing, that your own government couldn’t care less.
That your country’s army is a disgrace,
that its legal system is corrupt,
that its priests are too frightened to speak out,
that you yourself are worthless,
that your own side in the divide talk the talk of retribution,
when all you want is  someone to understands your hurt?

Shame is an emotion of the civilised.
Aggression, just a bully-boy crutch.
When has aggression ever solved anything? In which war?
It isn’t difficult to see how denial is being used as a delaying tactic in this struggle for lasting peace. And on the subject of denial every Sri Lankan has to accept accountability, in one way, or another, for it is only when denial is banished forever that the dove of peace will fly in.
Here, now, is that moment for the diaspora to make its collective, united entrance. To forget the game of blame, (the GOSL love the clashing of cymbals, it helps keep them in power. Remember the expression, divide and rule?), attend to those who weep, help all who have lost sight of reality (what is this Tamil state for God’s sake? Would the Isle of Wight be better if it had its own state?), demand accountability from the Government and learn that old-fashioned skill of caring for each and every single Sri Lankan citizen.
The greed and prejudice of fifty years has to stop here.
A younger, clearer thinking, new generation has to enter the arena, join forces, learn to really care for their country’s future and recognise that violence and division will do no lasting good.
Look at Burma.

Togetherness is what is needed, togetherness, built together.
From the country that produced the world’s first female Premier there should arise a new female intelligentsia that talk only of unity. They should banish the testosterone-infused rabid dogs in power, plant a symbolic Bo tree, many Bo trees in fact, form a sisterhood and begin to clean the land of its shocking disgrace. Nothing else will do. And all of us in the diaspora, every single one of us, should help them. 

Still Counting The Dead

Frances Harrison’s important new book on Sri Lanka, Still Counting The Dead is published this week. It was sent to me at its proof stage, to read. Such was the elegance of the prose that I read it voraciously in one sitting. I did not know its author, but I recognised the passionate commitment that this slight, energetic Englishwoman had for the vanished dead of Sri Lanka’s killing fields. Sri Lanka, that distant land where I was born and whose name is a song of childhood memory, a love though lost impossible to erase. I was stunned to find a stranger cared so much.

We, my family & I, left our home many years ago when the war was still   simmering out of sight. In those days there were only riots to contend with. Some broken glass windows on a bus, verbal abuse, a stone or two been thrown. Then, suddenly I saw some Singhalese youths set fire to a Tamil man. My father saw this too and also the writing on the wall. And so with the violence a hair’s breath away, we left.

What happened next is familiar history and, depending on which side you were on, the story differs. The Singhalese majority had their version while the Tamils, some of them, hounded for years, took matters into their own hands. Who amongst us can blame them? Which of us can take the moral high ground over what happened next? For of course what happened next was civil war.

The newly formed Tamil Tigers, beaten and hounded, psychologically and economically (their university careers and job prospects becoming non existent), took what they believed to be the only course of action by pitting violence against violence. Was it any surprise that grim death followed? That the chief casualty was innocence itself? Or that the great dark heart of revenge and bitterness took a strangle hold on the entire country’s psyche? Around the world today all Sri Lankan’s have a ‘view’ on the subject of the war even if they don’t voice it. Often this view is painfully at odds with the views of their fellow countrymen. No other civil war has managed to create such an astonishing cacophony of discordant voices and Frances Harrison is already finding this out.

Having spent time witnessing and interviewing victims and relatives of the dead along with decent Singhalese who have helped Tamils in their hour of need, Harrison has raised a clear voice reporting on the violence that took place on both sides of the divide. We know that both Tamil Tigers and Singhalese hard liners are at fault. That after the British left, long before any war started, each successive majority government persecuted innocent Tamils for decades. From this seething crater of injustice came the Tamil Tigers who, living by the sword, using their own people as cannon fodder, walked into the trap of becoming the aggressor. Losing what little sympathy they had from the International community they were labelled the terrorists they had become. Violence had cut its inevitable path to hell.

And now the war is over. All the Tamil Tigers are dead. And it isn’t easy to be critical of the dead. Still, in spite of this difficulty Harrison manages to take a balanced view. But it isn’t easy, the Tamil people are sensitive and some do not take kindly to what she has to say.  For while understanding what led them along this terrible road, the truth remains that no sane person can support any further desire for violence. The Tamil diaspora, their dignity twice violated, their homeland littered with land mines, their children maimed and killed, now, more than ever, need help to move away from anger. As do, interestingly enough, the disgraced Singhalese elite. The sad truth is that all this hatred, violence and grief, has worked its way through the skin of the country and into its blood stream, heading straight for the heart and head of the nation.

Thousands of corpses lie in mass graves created by the Singhalese military while the child soldiers, recruited by the Tigers, add to their numbers. Thus far the diaspora on both sides seems unwilling to engage with these shocking issues. Touch on them at your peril. For who will admit the great wrong done by so few to so many? Can the Singhalese elite stop using the anthem of ‘They-Were-All-Terrorists-So-We-Killed-Them’, and look at what they started all those years ago when the British left? Can the Tiger supporter abandon the crossed gun flag for another less aggressive symbol?

In order for a healing process to begin all white vans should be clamped, all weapons, both real and psychological, must be laid down. While memory, that most gracious of human qualities, needs inviting in with a flight of angels called up to sing the dead to rest. Frances Harrison’s book Still Counting The Dead is the first of those angels. Ignoring her words would be an act of monumental foolishness on the part of the Sri Lankan community, for she is one of the few messengers we have.  

Memories of injustice do not simply go away. Take a look at the beautiful film Nostalgia For The Light, about Chile’s disappeared and you will see the infinite extent of human remembrences and its refusal to be denied. Effort is what is needed. The effort of admission. Reading Still Counting The Dead is a start.

'Summer's lease...'

It's that time of year at last when like the swallows we will soon be heading for the sun. The garden has become overgrown with the rain. While the unseasonable cold has held back the roses. But now they are blooming at last and the first of them is beside me on my desk. They will be gone, along with the summer itself by the time we return.

During these busy months I had not allowed myself to think of the little valley where we are going. Or the house that withstood the harsh winter of last year. Or the snow that piled up against the door, the ice that froze the pipes and the bats that nested in the roof. I did not think of the wind that would have lashed against the terraza, undoubtedly chipping off the paint and discolouring the walls. 
There will be work to do when we arrive; painting and cleaning and washing and ironing. The clothes line will flap with white sheets, the soot will be swept from the chimney, the cooker will splutter into use. I shall examine the larder, check out the tins, the dried pasta, the rice. 
On the way up from the airport we would have stopped to buy bread, butter, a few tomatoes, some mozzarella, a little piece of parmesan, some parsley, a few borlotti beans and a bottle of local wine. Although on arriving there will be a little cluster of presents awaiting us by the front door, Cargalla's way of welcoming us back.

We will see no one during those first hours for our friends in the village will tactfully leave us alone as we dust and shake rugs, sweep floors and make beds. The sun will turn slowly on the hillside shining dazzling pin pricks through the trees. And we will listen out for the nightingale in our Ulmo tree. While far above us on the Prati I will see again the place I wrote about in my novel The Road To Urbino. Then finally as dusk descends and the lights come out around the hillside and the smell of cooking fills the air, and the bats fly away to another deserted house in disgust, there will be the sound of footsteps on the cobbled lane outside before the first soft knock.   
'Benvenuti! Welcome back!'

P.S. As last year, share your summer photographs now on the theme of all things Green. I will post them up in September.

From London to Urbino via Sri Lanka

In the packed auditorium of the National Gallery in London people I did not know were taking their seats.

'Can you read your extract in six minutes, d'you think?' asked the organiser of the event.
Looking through the window of the projection room I saw members of my family wandering in.
No use looking for escape routes, then.

Where were all these people coming from? Why had we tweeted so madly, so foolishly? Why had we wanted a full house, anyway?
'Now just to recap on the running order...' continued the organiser.
But where was Jon Snow?
'He's going to Greece,' she told me with alarming confidence.
Not yet, I hoped.
'Relax! Enjoy the evening. It'll be fine.'
Whatever.
'You'll be great,' my editor from Little Brown agreed.
She looked rather too jolly for my liking-as did the others members of the Little Brown crew.

'It's all in the text,' cried Jon Snow coming in breezily, waving a dog-eared copy of my book as any man in transit might. 'So much to talk about. We'll show the film first, get the whole thing going and have the discussion afterwards. Okay? Let's go!'
So we did.
Had he grown taller or had I shrunk?




In the darkness, in the audience were my children who had as yet not seen the film. I wondered how they would feel seeing their immigrant grandfather on the screen, here, in the National Gallery. Unremembered by any of us was the fact that it was the anniversary of his death.

Afterwards, after the last notes of Wagner's opera Walkurie faded into black, Jon said something I had not thought of before.
'Those sunflowers. They look like human heads.'
Heads hanging under a blue sky, frail and vulnerable, waiting to be decapitated. Like the skulls of Rwanda from that other terrible civil war.
We talked about Sri Lanka, its unacknowledged skeletons buried in the deeply dysfunctional tropical paradise.
A place where love has died, its loss, discarded like old bones.
Where nothing is sacred any more.
Where memory is defiled and the teachings of the Lord Buddha long forgotten.
But talking in this way, openly, with such an outstanding British journalist as Jon, was progress in its own way. For until recently the issues of Sri Lanka  could only be addressed in whispers. The Sri Lankan's themselves, relatives of victims and journalists alike know the bully boys lurk in the jungle, waiting to pounce. But now the world was listening at last, thanks to  decent, courageous people like Jon, Callum Macrae, Frances Harrison and Jonathan Miller and others whose passion for justice continues regardless. So this was progress.

Later, as I signed copies of my book, the beautiful Tamil woman who had spoken so heartbreakingly at a Frontline event a month ago came bounding up to me. Tonight her face was aglow.

'Now's not the time to talk to you,' she said. 'But thank you! And I shall read your book.'

They ask so little, these people who have been hurt so much.

'Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.' Jules de Gaultier.

The Road To Urbino starts at London's National Gallery

Film screening, book launch and discussion with author Roma Tearne and Jon Snow.
Friday June 15th 2012 at 6PM
Sainsbury Wing Theatre
Tickets £6/£4 concessions


Roma Tearne's fifth novel published by Little Brown will be launched at this event.

For further details click here.

Letter From Urbino 6. 'After Rain the Angels come.'

So many people have supported this little project of mine that this post can only be dedicated to them.  I don't normally write personal pieces but touched by the encouragement and kindness I have received during this year I  feel somehow the occasion demands it. For, in spite of all that is written on the curses of the Internet, there remains a curious warmth when an unknown reader follows an unknown writer's blog. The novelist's lot, the loneliness that comes with the job, the uncertainties (does anyone even read your books?) is assuaged by such a practice. I know that my posts are read around the world in countries I have never ever seen, in places where the sun shines continously and a sea breeze springs up and in places where the summers are short. Places where wars have come and gone, where conflict remains and places where hope alone survives in a brilliant example of the human spirit. So for those of you who read these pages, this piece is for you.

Only a week to go now, before the film & book are launched at the National Gallery in London. If you are in London please come. It is a public event and the link for tickets is here.

It has been a long road and I have almost forgotten the beginning. Almost, but not quite. I still remember the day when my agent rang me having finished reading the manuscript of The Road To Urbino. I was in a bar in Milan with an old friend, drinking a strong black coffee. Outside on the pavement a tub of pink oleander cast shadows on the ground. And then amidst the hiss and steam of the espresso machine and Italian laughter all around I heard the voice from England telling me that yes, she loved the book.
'Brava!' said my friend when I told her, and putting out her cigarette, she added, 'now we have a glass of prosecco!'
Damn, there went the diet!

Another memory, this time in Jaipur, pausing between events at the festival, sitting with my wonderful editor beside the pool in her hotel, sipping tea and talking about the text.

Re-reading the manuscript, correcting, discussing character and plot.
'Why would he do that? What drives him? Would she really say this?'
To have a sensitive, caring editor is the one blessing a writer must have. Someone who gives you the time to develop your craft, who guides but does not dictate. The editor after all is the conductor who views the whole when you, the writer become too close. My characters and I are lucky to have her.
In this way the book wound its slow way into production. Copy editing, checking, changers, re-changers.
'You're just fiddling now, not improving,' my husband said.
'It's good, ' my children told me, with all the authority of being my children.

By now the year had turned and turned again and the kittens we had acquired in January snow had grown into large cats that prowled the garden. Time was passing swiftly as I set to work on the film, Letter From Urbino.
Another six months of solid work from morning until late at night with a different kind of editor.
'My job,' Conrad told me firmly, 'is to make your vision happen.'
But did this involve the vast number of chocolate cake we consumed on those long hours into the night?
'That's your choice,' he said. 'You should be concentrating on the screen.'

Winter turned to spring and the sky lightened. Stories from my homeland in Sri Lanka filtered down to me. I was appalled anew by the brutality of what was going on. Such ugly viciousness from people who were my countrymen. The only thing left was to bury myself in my work. Night after night I stared at the images on the flickering screen, discussing, changing, finding just the right music that conveyed the mood I wanted. And then, the voice of the wonderful actor Rob Mountford and suddenly there was a shape to the film. So it was off to London to check the film on the equipment at the National Gallery, not once, not twice but in all three times.

'Here it is,' said my editor at Little Brown, handing me the first copy of the book, smiling encouragingly.
She is a woman with the knack of making every author feel important, I thought.
I hope Urbino will do her proud.

So now all is done and I can only wait. A first review of the novel was out yesterday in the Morning Star. I believe it is a good one, but dare not look.
Next Friday the whole village of Cargalla is coming to my launch. Some of the villagers are quite old and have never been further than Genova, leave alone on a plane. But they love their country and want to see how it is represented on a screen. Since they do not speak English I have had a translation of the script made especially for them.

In my rain-swept garden, although the Albertine roses that usually cascade against the wall have failed to appear, the foxgloves seem to be withstanding this unseasonal rain. I see them through my study window, bending with the wind. Surviving.
 'After rain the angels come!' someone once famously said.
I hope they will.

The trailer for Letter from Urbino is here.