There were about fifteen souls sitting or lying on the long benches. Now and then a doctor strolled in, signalled for the next patient and went off with him. She was there for more than an hour and in the end gave up, because more and more injured were coming in off the street and her wound began to seem insignificant in comparison. But that wasn’t why she left. A man wearing a black coat walked in and sat down among them, blood on his clothes. He remained there in silence, waiting for someone to help him, not bothering to pick up a number like the rest of them. Eventually there were three empty spaces on the bench and he stretched out, took off his black coat and used it as a pillow, but he couldn’t sleep and his open eyes stared across the room at her.

His face was red and wet from the blood on the coat. He sat up, pulled a book out of his pocket and began reading very fast, turning pages, taking it in quickly. He swallowed a tablet and lay down again and this time dropped off, his circumstances and surroundings lost to him. A nurse approached him and touched him on the shoulder; when he didn’t move she kept her hand there. Anil was to remember all this very well. He got up then, pocketed the book, and touched one of the other patients and disappeared with him. He was a doctor. The nurse picked up the coat and took it away. That was when Anil left. If she couldn’t tell who was who in a hospital, what chance did she have?

T he National Atlas of Sri Lanka has seventy-three versions of the island-each template revealing only one aspect, one obsession: rainfall, winds, surface waters of lakes, rarer bodies of water locked deep within the earth.