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| Sunday, 8 December 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Sri Lankans in Paris : Good, bad and pathetic tales by Frances Bulathsinghala in Paris If you are asked to, you would probably describe her as a scriptwriter, or a novelist. A very good scriptwriter and a very good novelist who should be winning laurels for her stunning capacity to invent, colour and juxtapose facts with fiction. However in reality your description would be incorrect.
Familiar with the political situation of Sri Lanka, each day she is inundated with appeals, written and in person made by Sri Lankans mostly youth, requesting her to invent a plot to be presented to the Embassy of France in order to obtain asylum. situation "Things are not good any more. There is no war, there is no insurgency and still the situation in Sri Lanka concerning young people and a country as a whole is the same. We do not have jobs", says 24-year-old Sanjeewa, a youth educated only to the sixth grade hailing from Kalmunai and who has a long history of globe trotting, having smuggled himself in a ship to Japan years ago, ending up in Germany and now in Paris, for the moment, as he stresses. Sanjeewa who is a close ally of Soma, by profession a cook working out Asian as well as French recipes in a restaurant in Paris, has sent droves of youth to her in order to get them asylum in France and in various other countries where he vouches that Soma has 'strong connections. He seems proud to declare that none of Soma's storylines have been rejected by the Embassy. Asylum "They believed whatever Soma writes for us. But now it seems that there are no more things to invent when it comes to seeking excuses for getting asylum", says Sanjeewa, wearing his shiny new jacket which he obtained two days after arriving in Paris, using his brothers' visa. Even though he slept on a park bench he assured me that the twenty euros (almost two thousand rupees) that he spent on acquiring his new western garb came in useful as it made him 'presentable' and according to him was the talisman in getting his first job, as a sweeper in a Tamil hotel in the La Cheppele region, an area crowded with a majority of Tamil hotels and a few Sinhalese shops. Seated in a house of a 'Frenchised' family, making a hand to mouth living for the past 16 years, Sanjeewa is happy that he has found a friend in 'Linette akka', a Sinhalese married to a Tamil living in the centre of the city with her two children. 'Bonjour, mais pour quoi tu'est etudiante' (so you are a student). This first greeting of Linette to me in fluent French when I contacted her to find suitable accommodation, an exorbitant and arduous task. Her eloquent French had me initially thinking that it was a very sophisticated French woman that I was talking to. Recognising my halting French laced with an apologetic sounding English (the French do not take kindly to speaking English) she rapidly switched on to Sinhalese. So when I turned up at her house I found myself in a claustrophobic very Sri Lankan styled minute apartment stuffed with bronze Sri Lankan ornaments, two French speaking kids and Sanjeewa who was occupying one torn sofa letting off steam at the world for not being able to find a long-lasting job in Sri Lanka, Japan, Germany or France. "I occasionally help Sri Lankan students, and give them space in the children's bedroom", explained Linnet waving her arms to indicate an extremely stuffed space with a bunk bed. "I do not charge much. Maybe just two hundred euros a month", she explained while I try to figure out how many students really interested in studying occupied her doll house kind of apartment. She is obviously elated at seeing another Lankan added to her small troupe of Sri Lankans whom she visits around the city when she has free time left over from her chores of being a 'home assistant' as she calls it. "In Sri Lanka I would be called a servant but here I do not feel any kind of social ostracisation that I would have felt in Sri Lanka working as a helper. I work in four houses and they pay me well, plus I am treated equally', said Linette pointing to the luxurious toys she has bought for her two children aged five and seven adding emphasis to the fact that she had just thrown her old washing machine which her French neighbour living in the apartment below began using after retrieving it from the garbage. Having a typical Sri Lankan penchant for luxurious items Linette can never see eye to eye with the French who would rather invest in a bookrack full of books which to them would have some academic value rather than cramp the house with cumbersome equipment. To the average French, the weekly washing could be dealt with at the laundry where one could pay a nominal amount of around two euros (two hundred rupees) and use the washing machines at a laundry. Sri Lankans in Paris... you see them everywhere, storming heaven and earth to remain in a land that is not their own. Why ? I ask the question from Nimal, who lives with his wife and five year old kid in a comfortable apartment in the heart of the city and works as a casual helper in a large firm where he earns according to him an equivalent amount which he would have earned if he worked as a white collar worker in Colombo. Paradise "Life here is the way it should be for a human being. There is no rape. No robbery. If you work hard you can live peacefully. I dread to think of bringing up my daughter in Sri Lanka where there seems to be a total break up and disregard for law and where social frustration has set in and there is lack of opportunities and low regard for academic qualification", says Nimal. An avid follower of the international as well as local news he; although away from his motherland for a period of over 20 years, still has feelings for the destruction caused to the country by the civil war in the past 19 years. Santosh's brother a mid ranking officer in the LTTE; he says had been killed by the military five years ago. Having left Jaffna, his hometown almost ten years ago and obtained asylum in Paris, he speaks freely of having to leave the country of birth due to the war. "Most of my friends here are Sinhalese. I do not hold any rancour with the Sinhalese. It is not our war. It is a result of political forces", says Santosh. Asked whether he would also call the LTTE a political force, lobbying more for power than true liberation it proclaims to have towards Tamils, he declines to answer and changes the subject onto his present jobless state and his intentions to return to Sri Lanka now that there is peace in the country. Fifty year old Raden, a Muslim is another example of a Frenchised Sri Lankan. Having come to Paris 20 years ago "to make a life and a living" as she calls it, Raden now is a citizen of France visiting Sri Lanka occasionally to see her distant relatives in Polgahawela. Her 19-year-old son, who is a law student in Paris who accompanies her on these visits is a foreigner to the country. Her son, Habeeb's Sinhalese vocabulary remains static at a heavily accented 'yes' and 'no'. Although finding himself a French girlfriend it has not made him deviate from his Muslim practice of fasting during the Ramadan season. Although he goes to a French College, and has a taste for French wine, he cannot speak any Sinhala. He does not know who the first Sri Lankan Prime Minister was, or that Muslims were affected by the ethnic war in the country. But he knows that there was 'something like a war' in Sri Lanka. Radens husband, Habeeb's father, Tony who works as an 'assistant' in a law firm in the city, after 20 years of working for other lawyers finally has his dream materialised: his son getting into law school in Paris. Tony was so elated that he along with his wife decided to invest the entire family savings of 20 years to see their son's dream, come true by buying him an ulta modern version car. The good, the bad and the pathetic stories of Sri Lankans who have left their land and struggling to make ends meet in an alien country, continue. Why? I ask this one worded question once again from Kusum, a 45-year-old-woman living in Paris as an illegal immigrant for the past ten years. She avoids going to the doctor, where the producing of ones passport and papers is compulsory. She cannot get proper employment which will earn her at least the minimum salary of one thousand euros stipulated by the French Government. No permanent employment "It is not possible to find permanent employment. It is only temporary jobs such as cleaning, washing and ironing which are available, where the producing of papers are not compulsory ", she says as she bid goodbye to me at the metro station of Paris, I repeat the question again and again in my brain: "Why?". But the answer seems obvious. And those who should be responsible for the phenomenon of the brain drain and overall scenario of young people wanting to get out of their country, too, is obvious. |
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| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
Fifty-one-year-old Soma has never written a film, script or a novel.
Yet living in her spacious apartment in Paris day after day, she shelves
out plot after plot which would give even the most imaginative writers of
fiction a run for their money.
