Introduction

316
Sonja Lehmann
unable to. Like Ondaatje, Anil thus becomes a stranger in her homeland and feels
equally lost as further comments on her inability to speak Sinhala show: “on this
island, she realized she was moving with only one arm of language […]. There was
less to hold on to with that one arm” (AG 54). Her ability to connect to the social
world around her is severely handicapped. As Brenda Glover shows in her analysis
of Anil’s behaviour in Sri Lanka, her lack of language denies her a whole world
(79). This certainly complicates any further attempts to establish transnational
ways of belonging – or even being for that matter – because Anil is cut off from a
large part of the population.
However, it is important that Anil’s problem concerning language is not that
she has completely forgotten how to speak Sinhala, but it is “her lack of tone”
which makes it impossible for others to understand her (AG 23). There is no differentiation
or nuance in her voice, which makes questions, offers and commands
sound the same. This lack of differentiation is also present in other aspects of
Anil’s behaviour and is her biggest problem when it comes to finding her way in
Sri Lankan society. Her attitude towards the concept of truth exemplifies this
particularly well. Anil believes that the truth is simple and straightforward: “she
had come to expect clearly marked roads to the source of most mysteries. Information
could always be clarified and acted upon” (AG 54). Therefore, when she
and her colleague, Sarath, discover the skeleton they dub “Sailor”, she immediately
thinks that this is an opportunity to accuse the government of a war crime (AG
51). She entirely overlooks the fact that the social location she is in in war-torn Sri
Lanka is very different from her social world in the West and accordingly demands
an adjustment of her actions. As Sarath says, “It’s different here, dangerous.
Sometimes law is on the side of power not truth” (AG 44). 32 Yet, as with her
language Anil has only one tone to use, and that is the ‘tone’ of Western science.
In the course of the investigation this leads to constant tension between her
and Sarath who repeatedly accuses her of acting like a “visiting journalist” (AG 27;
see also 44). This does not mean, though, that she is a “stock character in postcolonial
fiction: the Europe- or America-returned professional woman struggling
to maintain her hard-won status against all odds” (Burton 41). On the contrary, its
symbolizes Anil’s problem to form transnational ways of belonging because as
soon as she takes up the nuanced changeable notion of truth Sarath offers, she is
in conflict with her Western self-understanding which is above all dependent on
her being a scientist as shown above.
32 Teresa Derrickson, however, remarks, “Lost in this account [...] is a summary of the foreign
agenda that is served by initiating a human rights investigation on the island to begin with. As
the novel tells us, the president of Sri Lanka only approved of Anil’s visit in an attempt to ‘placate
trading partners in the West’ ([AG]16). This statement not only provides insight as to why
the Sri Lankan government has taken a sudden interest in the human rights of its people, but it
also suggests a dubious reason as to why the United Nations has followed suit” (142). Apparently,
the truth is not only influenced by power in Sri Lanka alone.