Riding Sri Lanka's A9, a passage between two worlds

In the tiny interrogation shack is a map of Sri Lanka. In red are the areas claimed by the Tigers, extending from the north to a full two-thirds of Sri Lanka's coastline. Does Arun want the east of the country for the LTTE as well?

Unconsciously, he fingers the cyanide capsule necklace that every Tiger wears, a suicide precaution against capture.

"Yes," he says. "We have interests there, too."

Those interests have been a major sticking point. Many Singhalese say they're willing to give up the north in the name of peace - but not the east, where the Tamils are a minority.

R. Ratnayaka is a Singhalese tea trader, corrections officer, and a 250-pound ex-commando of the government army. He has a ready smile and a love of arrack, the local firewater.

"I fought in the north for six years. I mastered 85 types of firearms. I can tell you anything you want to know about the Tamils. We could all get along together, us and them," he says.

But another shot of arrack, and the old soldier lets his tongue - and prejudices - slip. "But you know something? We had - we have - a beautiful culture on this island. Muslims, Christians, Singhalese, all together, all living together. But they [the Tamils] can't have that. They must have everything, the whole island, or nothing."

P.D. Balaratnam, a gentle, pudgy, Catholic Tamil confectionery supplier, says he just wants a home for his people.

"We are not greedy, we Tamils. We only want a home, a place to do business, a place to be secure. We can only have security with our own country," he says. Security is an issue close to Mr. Balaratnam's heart; in 1983 he was in Colombo during a wave of vicious anti-Tamil riots. He, his family, and 12 others survived by spending the night nose to nose sweltering in a toilet stall.

He's the type of man who walks half a mile to help a foreigner find his hotel in Kandy, but because of his politics, he also indirectly supports the recruitment of 14-year old LTTE cadres who check the truck heading up the A9.

Yesterday, Human Rights Watch in New York issued a new report saying the Tigers are still forcibly recruiting underage fighters.

Rageeswaran regards these child- soldiers with resignation. He points at the bombed out husk of Kilinochchi Central College, where Tamil students attend class under a roofless classroom, and the empty Bank of Eelam building.

"There's no one doing any business there. But what to do; the Singhalese won't develop the north or the east," he sighs.

Mr. De Silva calls it a case of an "insecure majority dealing with an insecure minority." Most trace the problem to the institution of Singhala as the national language in 1956, which led to government cuts of Tamil students from state universities and a mandate in the 1972 constitution to "protect and foster" Singhalese Buddhism. The education-oriented, largely Hindu Tamils seethed and finally rebelled.

In recent years, more and more Tamils have been seeking opportunities outside the disputed north and east, and in Colombo at least, Tamils seem well integrated.

Those who stayed behind, however, have long and bitter memories. V. Selvaratnam is a retired Tamil postmaster who has remained in Jaffna while most of his family has emigrated. In a Jaffna hotel which had its roof blown away by the Sri Lankan Air Force in the late '90s, he says he will remain in his hometown.

"In the west, you still see the Tigers as terrorists. Well, I do not agree with their policies or tactics, either. But I accept they are fighting against a real oppression," he says.

"Maybe the younger generation can live in peace. I hope so. But I am an old man, and I remember everything that happened here," he concludes, looking at the clouds through the roofless ceiling.

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