Run-In

Dan and I occasionally went for mid-week runs at the Gardens when he needed a break from translation. After a grueling opening to 2007, Dan decided to take a Wednesday morning off. Manju dropped us at the Botanical Gardens in his three-wheeler with instructions to return for us in an hour. Dan was in the process of selling his car to his research assistant, so I no longer had to maneuver my way out of riding in it. As we ran we discussed Dan’s long range research objectives, focusing on a Muslim-Buddhist relations project. “I know that this is the next hot thing,” Dan commented.

“Yeah, I was reading on the Tamil.net page about how the Tamils kicked all of the Muslims out of Jaffna in 1989,” I replied. “On the website the Tamils just say ‘um, sorry about that.’ Even they can’t spin it.” If Sri Lanka was a teardrop hanging off of the triangular Deccan of India, then Jaffna would be the apex of the teardrop, still almost clinging to India.

“They just perform a lot of really interesting functions in society,” Dan went on. “The Sinhala will never kill animals, but if the Muslims kill the animals then they will eat them. That’s ok for the Sinhala because they aren’t getting the sin from killing,” he continued.

“But not cows,” I commented.

“No, not cows. People say that the Tsunami happened because the Christians ate all that beef on Christmas. Beef is still a no-no,” Dan replied.

“That’s clearly such a Hindu thing, it’s weird,” I remarked as we started our second lap. As we passed the Great Lawn I saw one of the tour guides leading a school of tourists across the lawn. A dog I had seen several times in the Gardens bounded near him. The dog had a collar and always looked well-groomed. Stray dogs were strictly off-limits in the Gardens and it was virtually the only place in Sri Lanka where I never saw them.

“There’s your friend again,” Dan remarked as the dog bounded up to us in a slightly confrontational way. It seemed to me that I saw that dog with that tour guide fairly often. The dog always made me nervous because it didn’t seem afraid the way normal Sri Lankan dogs seemed afraid. I tried to ignore it but it ran next to me, jumping up and nipping my left thigh slightly. I immediately reached down and got a rock to throw at it, my heart racing and the dog ran back to the tour. I knew that the dog was just playing and didn’t even snag my pants with its teeth, but I still felt terrified and angry that this dog clearly had some sort of special status in the Gardens and it wasn’t safe. I stopped running and quickly turned around to the tour guide on the path behind me.

“Is this your dog?” I yelled at him with my right hand raised to the level of my eyes, index finger out, other fingers clenched in a fist. The whole tour of Europeans stopped dead in their tracks. “This dog just bit me,” I yelled, approaching him. Dan was behind me, backing me up. “Why do you think this is my dog?” he replied once he stood next to me. “This dog is a stray.”

“Maybe because I see the dog with you every week,” I replied. “That dog has a collar and is healthy, he’s no stray,” I said, pointing to the dog standing next to him in the grass, just off the pavement.

“I am the main tour guide for the Gardens,” he explained with pride. “Some of the tourists, they feed him some chocolate or something so he gets excited, you know,” he finished, shrugging his shoulders.

“If I see this dog again I am going to feed him some Mace,” I told him angrily, “so get control of the damn thing.”

“This dog is a stray,” he repeated. “Go and complain at the front and they will have it killed.” When he said this I knew he was really lying, no Sinhala ever killed an animal in Sri Lanka. I turned and continued my run.

“Unbelievable,” I said to Dan as we continued running, “That dog is no stray.”

“It probably belongs to the head gardener or something,” Dan replied, “That dog has no fear.”

“I know that guy was lying, I just hope the owner gets the message,” I answered. I started thinking about a guy I knew in college who had been attacked by a dog while running. He showed me the long white scars on his lower back. He warned me that I should always run with Mace or pepper spray to protect myself against animals if nothing else. Now I wished I had followed his advice.

We started running along the back, more deserted part of the Gardens perimeter trail and I felt more peaceful. I focused on my stride and my breathing. As we rounded a corner I noticed that we were gaining on a gaggle of teenage boys in a tight knot of ten across the path. Even by Garden standards it was an unusually large band. Dan and I quietly picked up our pace. They heard us coming and silently parted into two packs. As I ran by I heard the usual snickers and comments. When we passed them I heard them running after us. We ran faster. I could hear some of them stopping, maybe half. So we ran a little faster, I was powered by adrenaline. I wanted stop and turn around and yell to them “why do you think you can do this to us?” But I didn’t. I just listened as the running footsteps and jeers dropped off one by one.

When we came out of the forest we saw one of the Garden police men. “Let’s stop and complain,” I said to Dan, “Sometimes you have to take a stand. I really want to feel comfortable here.” Dan agreed and we stopped. Dan explained the situation in Sinhala to the officer. As he was talking, several of the gardeners began to literally come out of the bushes and the trees to gather in a muster to back us up for the coming confrontation. The way they emerged out of the shrubbery and fell into formation behind the police officer made me think that they might suddenly start dancing like a scene from Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story. But I knew this was no musical. I had a fleeting fear that they would find us on that back stretch on the next Sunday and beat the shit out of us. The gaggle of boys tried to branch off onto a side road, so our troop followed them. The police officer told them in Sinhala to “Come Here!” and the gardeners behind him echoed him. The boys obeyed. The police officer proceeded to speak sharply to the boys in Sinhala. He allowed Dan to have his say also. Dan told me later that he went for shame. The boys were very quiet when the police officer and Dan were talking to them.

“I told them that if they were the future of Sri Lanka I was very sad.” He reported when we had resumed our run. “I asked them if they wanted their little sister treated that way,” he continued.

“I wear these long Capri-length pants to run in,” I said, “And I wear these loose, high-neckline, dri-fit T-shirts over my sports bra,” I pleaded. “I don’t know what else I can do. I’m not out here in a tank-top and shorts. My shoulders and knees are covered. I even wear this hat so they can’t really see my face or look me in the eye. I don’t know what else I can do except run in a burqua or just not run,” I finished.

“They were unusually bad,” Dan consoled me.

“In the ISLE handbook it tells you to stay away from other students who persist on doing the things they used to do in the States,” I said. “They say that’s unhealthy and those people are psychologically stuck back in the States. It tells you to try and do things that you couldn’t do back home. I just don’t know what that would be.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Dan replied as we walked out of the front gate.

Manju was already faithfully waiting for us in the roundabout. Riding home and looking at the back of Manju’s head I could not believe that he and his brother were cut from the same cloth as the boys in the park. They were both young men and not too much older than the boys at the Gardens, but I could not imagine them in an idle group harassing foreigners. Then I realized they weren’t in an idle group doing anything because they both worked all day long. “What are those boys doing at the park on a weekday?” I asked over the roar of the three-wheeler’s two-cycle engine.

“Well, they aren’t in school and they obviously don’t work,” Dan confirmed my train of thought. “I don’t know what to tell you on that one, they are just hood-rats and the Garden police need to get control of them.”