Although I have seen nothing but black crows in my life, it doesn’t mean that there’s no such thing as a white crow. Both for a philosopher and for a scientist it can be important not to reject the possibility of finding a white crow.
Jostein Gaarder,
Sophie’s World, 1995
I think the strangest afternoon I have ever spent in Colombo was my last meeting with the late president of Sri Lanka, J.R. Jayewardene. A remarkable politician with an authoritative presence, he was the island’s first executive president from 1978 to 1989, having masterminded the change of the country’s constitution to a Gaullist system. While president, he wielded immense power, though some times for questionable motives. His failure to prevent Sinhalese mobs from attacking Tamils in a frenzy of ethnic violence in July 1983 undoubtedly fuelled the separatist struggle of militant Tamil groups in Sri Lanka and the emigration of many families. This led to the intervention of India’s peace-keeping force on his country’s soil in 1987. Despite Jayewardene’s considerable efforts at peace-making, Sri Lanka’s separatist struggle intensified, not diminished during his period as president.
I remember him as a superb raconteur. Over tea at his home in Ward Place, he held me enthralled with his recollections of Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Sri Lanka in 1981. ‘How would you like your people to see me?’ the queen asked the president. ‘I think they would like to see you with your crown on, Your Majesty’, Jayewardene replied. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. President, but I don’t travel with my crown’, the queen apologized. Later, the queen told him that her most embarrassing moment as queen had been in Uganda during a state visit in 1954 when, during a private and intimate moment four hundred school children had burst into ‘God Save the Queen’.
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He was also a student of history, and this was what brought us together in 1993, three years before he died at the age of ninety. I was in Sri Lanka to help the historian Hendrik Hooft publish his epic biography Patriot and Patrician, which followed the life in Holland and Ceylon of our ancestors Hendrik Hooft and Pieter Ondaatje. In the 1780s, Hooft and Ondaatje were champions of a popular movement that brought the Dutch Republic the first democratically elected government in Europe a few years before the French Revolution.
But right now I have less to say about President Jayewardene’s politics and intellect than about the birds in his garden. As anyone knows who has visited one of the spacious houses that line the avenue of Colombo’s Ward Place, where many high-ranking politicians and officials have their residences, the area’s trees, gardens and pavements abound in armies of noisy crows. They are large birds, over a foot long, with heavy pointed bills and powerful legs. Omnivorous, they eat fruit, large insects, small vertebrates, as well as other birds’ eggs and young. In my experience, they are extremely intelligent, gregarious, and black with a very slight metallic sheen.
Hence, it was not surprising that as ‘Henk’ Hooft and I were driven with the former president in his limousine through the guarded gates, to the portico of his house, we noticed a number of crows busily going about their activities in his garden. What was surprising to us was that one crow was entirely white except for its pink legs and a light grey beak. This unique-looking crow seemed to be bossing the activities of the other crows.
Intent on listening to the former president, I said nothing about the peculiar sight until much later in the afternoon after we had had sandwiches and tea and were thinking of leaving. At this point, Jayewardene moved to the window overlooking the garden and himself seemed engrossed in watching the crows. I seized my moment, stood next to him and asked about the white crow. His long and enigmatic face was pensive for a considerable time. Then he looked at me and said with unexpected seriousness: ‘I think we had better sit down again.’
Placing himself in an armchair away from the window he asked us: ‘What do you know about Meredith Foster? Do you remember, a few years ago, the British press announced the disappearance of this English reporter who came to Sri Lanka in the mid-1980s to cover the violence against the Tamil minority? It was a terrible time for us, and particularly difficult for me because I had to make some very tough decisions. Not everything worked, even with the help of the Indian peace-keeping force. In fact, the strained relationship between the Sinhalese and Tamil population got worse with the unpopular Indian involvement.’
I let him talk. ‘Anyway, Miss Foster’s reports - and I call her Miss Foster even though she had a husband in England - received world wide attention for a while, particularly in the Western world. She was a good writer, with a better-than-average understanding of a complicated political situation, and took some quite extraordinary risks to get her stories - sometimes actually going to the battle fronts and war zones where reporters were definitely not allowed..
She made a name for herself overseas, but also here in Colombo where she was based and where she spent most of her time when she was not in the field. Her husband did visit her occasionally at first, but she seemed to have made a permanent home for herself in the Barnes Place area, not far from here. I suppose she had been living there for six or seven years when she suddenly went missing, supposedly on one of her more dangerous reporting missions. There was real consternation because both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan army had taken great pains to advise and protect foreign journalists, knowing full well the bad press they would get if a Western reporter were hurt or killed. For a long time there was confusion as to Miss Foster’s whereabouts and her reporting mission. No body was ever found. And then, after a few months with no further news of her, the situation died down and the press coverage basically stopped.’
I did recall the reports in England about the disappearance of an English reporter in Sri Lanka. It had caused quite a stir at the time, as he said; but I chose to say nothing, as the former president seemed anxious to continue with his story.
‘Well, what very few people outside the government knew was that Meredith Foster, a good-looking blonde in her mid-thirties, was having rather a serious affair with a high-ranking minister, who had his house in this area. The relationship was an embarrassment for all of us but no action was taken, although the minister in question - himself a married man - was warned several times about the dangers of the compromising relationship. The situation was further complicated because the minister’s wife was related to the Bandaranaike family and we knew she was understandably in a high state of anxiety about her husband. Most of the cabinet knew there would be trouble at some point'.
Now Jayewardene seemed to change tack. ‘Here I need to ask you a fairly personal question. Do either of you know anything about demonology and witchcraft?’ I decided to shake my head, as did Henk, without taking our eyes off his face. He was clearly eager to speak.
‘Sri Lanka, together with Haiti and South Africa, is known to be among the most sophisticated countries in the practice of demon worship. Superstition, coupled with the worship of gods and demons, as well as Buddhism, has had an extraordinary degree of influence on the minds of the Sinhalese. Even respected historians and writers such as Robert Knox in the seventeenth century, and more recently Sir James Emerson Tennent, have researched and written on the subject. Curiously, Buddhism acknowledges the probable existence of demons and tolerates demon worship, even if it does not openly encourage it. A Sinhalese demon is himself a being subject to death, like all other beings recognized by Buddhism, although that event may in some instances take place only at the end of some tens of thousands of years. This difference arises from the Buddhist doctrine that there is no state of perpetual existence for any being; that happiness or misery can never be perpetual; and that the rewards or punishment for the actions of one’s life will be reaped in one or more states of existence afterwards and then come to an end. Thus, mere obedience to a demon does not necessitate any disobedience to one’s religion.
‘The priests of demonism are styled yakaduras, yakdessas, or more commonly cattadiyas, and there is scarcely a village in the island that does not boast of at least one. So it is not that surprising that when someone gets into trouble, or is involved in a relationship or situation which cannot be resolved in a normal way, they put themselves in the hands of a village cattadiya. These people have the means to call on one of the demons, who are invisible but have the power to make themselves visible, generally in some other shape, often that of beasts, or of men, or of women. You must understand that cattadiyas receive no particular respect from anyone as the Buddhist priest does. The profession of cattadiya is looked upon as an ordinary calling, like a shopkeeper or a boatman. There is nothing sacred about him, and his main job is to cure or inflict diseases and achieve other tasks via the agency of demons.
‘There are a great number of these demons and they are said to have enormous influence over life, death, disease, health and love. However, the number of those who are worshipped does not exceed fifty or sixty. Worship is a complicated business involving various kinds of charms, the object of which is to bind a demon in a certain manner so as to make it an obedient slave of its worshipper. There are many learned books and letters on the subject, most of which have not been translated from Sinhala.
‘Among the demons is Baddracali, whose assistance is sought for winning lawsuits and for subduing enemies and rivals of any kind. Baddracali would have been a suitable demon for the wife of the government minister to have appealed to against her English rival, with the help of her cattadiya in her home village close to Kandy. However, discreet enquiries suggested that the lady in question actually appealed to Bahirawa Yakseya, another female demon, generally feared for being able to inflict diseases on women. Bahirawa Yakseya is very well known around the giant hill, Bahirawa Canda, overlooking one side of the city of Kandy, near the wife’s village. Residents of the Kandy region are steeped in the folklore of Bahirawa Yakseya.
Most famously the demon helped an early queen of Kandy, who had miscarried several times. Through the agency of a cattadiya, Bahirawa Yakseya stated that she would not remove her malign influence over the queen unless an annual sacrifice of a young virgin was made to her on the summit of Bahirawa Canda. To be precise, a stake had to be driven into the ground on the summit of Bahirawa Canda; the girl tied to it with jungle creepers; flowers and boiled rice placed close by on an altar constructed for the purpose; and certain invocations and incantations pronounced. The girl herself was not to be killed by the worshipper. But as a rule, in such sacrifices the following morning the girl would be found dead. When the king of Kandy agreed to Bahirawa Yakseya’s demand, and had the sacrifice performed, several children were born to his young wife.
‘I say “as a rule,” because Bahirawa Yakseya, though she is said to have considerable powers over disease, does not have any direct power over death. The escape of the virgin from death is therefore possible - either by reincarnation, where she can choose to take the form of a human in another life at another time, or by immediate transformation into an animal or bird of the demon’s choosing and approval.
‘Rumour has it that the minister’s wife was told by her cattadiya that in order to rid herself of Meredith Foster and save her marriage, she must sacrifice her rival in the same way that the sacrifices were made for the queen of Kandy. Thus it was, we suspected, that Foster was kidnapped during one of her many reporting assignments, taken to Bahirawa Canda in Kandy and tied to the sacrificial stake. But since no body was ever found, she most probably escaped death.
‘Nobody really knows what happened. But I think there may be a clue. This unique white crow - which is, by the way, a female crow - appeared in Ward Place at almost exactly the same time that Meredith Foster disappeared. No one talks about it much because Sri Lankans, as I’ve explained, are extremely superstitious and fear reprisals from demons if they question their orders. Ofcourse people some times come, with official permission, to see the albino bird, but they say nothing. Often it flies off to other gardens in the area, but everyone around here is very careful not to disturb or frighten it in any way, and certainty not to harm it. Eventually it always returns here.’
After the perplexing story was over, Henk Hooft and I stared at the former president in disbelief. We said nothing. I was just about to make our excuses and leave, when there was a strange sound from the window: a persistent tapping. The sight disconcerted us, to say the very least .We could see the white crow was outside on the window sill, where it appeared to be tapping out a message in some sort of code.
Jayeawardene, completely unfazed got up, walked purposefully to the window and opened it. Immediately the white crow flew into the drawing room, circled briefly around the centre, and then alighted on the former president’s shoulder, as if she knew exactly what was expected of her. I was about to say something when I saw him look at me with a threatening scowl. We stared at each other for a few moments. He said nothing. Nothing needed to be said. Then his face relaxed and with a half-apologetic smile he gave a shrug. Taking care not to disturb the remarkably possessive bird.
© Christopher Ondaatje |
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