by Sezin Koehler

Created on: April 09, 2008

"Get out of the car," the soldier barked in both Sinhalese and English, signaling to both my parents with his machine gun. He walked them to the sidewalk as more soldiers met and surrounded them, like a swarm of green-clad vampires.

It was New Year's Eve, 2006. The dawn of 2007 and my husband and I were visiting my Sri Lankan father and American mother who, in their retirement, live in Colombo, Sri Lanka, my dad's home. My husband, a Floridan, had never visited Asia before and I hadn't been back to Colombo, where I was born, where my parent's met and where half of my ancestry hails from. My dad, a member of the exclusive Royal Colombo Golf Club had arranged a table for all of us to welcome in the New Year at their big soiree. It was indeed a great night: Wonderful food, amazing company, and time with family, which becomes rarer and rarer as my sisters and I live in Europe and the US and can't always make it home for the holidays.

Sri Lanka is a nation in the midst of a civil war and one cannot help but notice it around the city. Military checkpoints, soldiers, and machine guns dot the otherwise beautiful landscape. My father is Tamil, the ethnic group in the north that is being exterminated by the Sinhalese majority and my mom is Lithuanian American.

After a brilliant New Year's celebration trouble hit us, or rather, we knocked into it totally accidentally.

My dad was driving us all home: my mom, sister, husband and I. We were making our way carefully down a dark stretch of road near a canal bridge and all of a sudden, literally out of nowhere, a three-wheeled rickshaw appeared in front of us with its lights on. My dad braked, and hard; we stopped in time to not completely smash into the fellow, but indeed gave the back fender of the three wheeler the slightest of taps.

Moments later, on that same deserted and dark bridge, out came half a dozen police and soldiers, all wielding very large machine guns and pistols.

"Get out of the car," the solder said to my father, gesturing towards the sidewalk with his machine gun. My mother quickly got out of the car as it is well known that soldiers and police are a lot less likely to harm other Sri Lankans (especially Tamils) if foreigners are present as witnesses. My sister, husband and I remained in the car as I proceeded to have the mother of all panic attacks: A good friend of mine was murdered in a Hollywood carjacking and died in my arms. Seeing those soldiers with their enormous machine guns and hands readily poised on the triggers surrounding my parents not only set me off into a flashback, but also into the most horrifying imaginings of what could go wrong and how much we all risked to lose.

My husband saw my dad hand over 1,000 rupees, about 10 US dollars, and they let us go. As we drove away we saw the soldiers disappear back under the bridge and the rickshaw driver remained in his same place, turning his lights off. It was a complete scam: The soldiers, police and driver were working together to hustle unsuspecting people out of money on their way home from New Year's celebrations.

Apparently, they just wanted money and would not have hurt us even though my father is Tamil. But in a place where war is ongoing daily, terrorist bombings are the rule not the exception, corruption through all levels of society runs rampant, and ethnic tensions are high, you realize that anything can happen and just like that your whole life, your whole perspective can shift into a painful and frightening reality.

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