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Nathanial Robinson
In “The Stilt Fishermen of Kathaluwa,” Asanka is a young Sri Lankan boy who, in the story’s present, is being held at the Villawood Immigration Detention Center in Sydney. In flashbacks, the reader learns that Asanka fled war-torn Sri Lanka on a fishing boat after the Tamil Tigers, a paramilitary group, forced him to serve as a child soldier. The Tigers inflicted unspeakable acts of violence and torture on Asanka. As punishment for trying to run away, they locked Asanka and his friend Dinesh in a potato chest and nailed it shut. Though the story never makes it clear, it’s insinuated that Dinesh dies in the chest and that Asanka abandons Dinesh’s body, an act that haunts Asanka. When Asanka is on the fishing boat en route to Australia, he hallucinates a group of stilt fishermen who give him advice. Asanka continues to see the fishermen at the center, but by that point, he seems not to register that they’re hallucinations. Asanka feels immensely guilty and responsible for the acts of violence the Tigers forced him to commit, and he frequently hallucinates that he’s covered blood, not realizing that it’s not real. While aboard the fishing boat fleeing Sri Lanka, Asanka met a man, Chaminda, who protected him against the cruel boatmen, Mustache and Ponytail, who headed the journey. After Australian officials detained the asylum seekers and sent them to the center, Asanka and Chaminda became roommates. They considered each other family, and Asanka grows horribly depressed after Chaminda seemingly dies by suicide after his scheduled release from the center falls through. The lawyer Chaminda had been working with, Loretta, comes to visit Asanka after Chaminda dies. However, by this point, Loretta is only a volunteer, so she can’t do much to help Asanka. While they talk, Asanka clandestinely removes hairpins and dental floss from Loretta’s purse and uses them to sew his mouth shut, believing that the act will silence his bad thoughts once and for all.
Asanka Quotes in Foreign Soil
The Foreign Soil quotes below are all either spoken by Asanka or refer to Asanka. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Stilt Fishermen of Kathaluwa
Quotes
The head doctor said there was no blood, that he would never be locked in a chest or a fish hold again. But then the head doctor had walked out of here, left him behind, in the chest.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
In this country, you look at a person and you know them. It is the inside-out way the people of this country wear their soul. In their eyes you can find civilizations of honesty or sweeping fields of lies. It’s taken some getting used to but now Asanka likes it—this casual unguardedness that comes from never really knowing fear.
Tears stream down her face as she watches the cameras flashing and microphones jostling at the other end of the parking lot, where the razor-wire fence adjoins the visiting area. The Mazda windows are closed, but she can still get the gist of the press conference spin. Hopelessness burrows into her chest again, its fingernails digging into her lungs, slowly squeezing the air out.
Fuck Sam, fuck having a baby, fuck her new job, and fuck this stupid fucking car. Loretta doesn’t even know who her husband is anymore. She’s even more uncertain of why she’s sitting here, crying about her husband, in this of all places.
The Sukiyaki Book Club
Quotes
This story is not going to be sent out, in any case. Most likely never even completed. Certainly not published and read. Because Avery is hanging upside down, and it will all end in tragedy. The only way down is for a scared little girl to hurt herself. I do not know how to rescue Avery gently.
Get the entire Foreign Soil LitChart as a printable PDF.
Asanka Quotes in Foreign Soil
The Foreign Soil quotes below are all either spoken by Asanka or refer to Asanka. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
The Stilt Fishermen of Kathaluwa
Quotes
The head doctor said there was no blood, that he would never be locked in a chest or a fish hold again. But then the head doctor had walked out of here, left him behind, in the chest.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
In this country, you look at a person and you know them. It is the inside-out way the people of this country wear their soul. In their eyes you can find civilizations of honesty or sweeping fields of lies. It’s taken some getting used to but now Asanka likes it—this casual unguardedness that comes from never really knowing fear.
Tears stream down her face as she watches the cameras flashing and microphones jostling at the other end of the parking lot, where the razor-wire fence adjoins the visiting area. The Mazda windows are closed, but she can still get the gist of the press conference spin. Hopelessness burrows into her chest again, its fingernails digging into her lungs, slowly squeezing the air out.
Fuck Sam, fuck having a baby, fuck her new job, and fuck this stupid fucking car. Loretta doesn’t even know who her husband is anymore. She’s even more uncertain of why she’s sitting here, crying about her husband, in this of all places.
The Sukiyaki Book Club
Quotes
This story is not going to be sent out, in any case. Most likely never even completed. Certainly not published and read. Because Avery is hanging upside down, and it will all end in tragedy. The only way down is for a scared little girl to hurt herself. I do not know how to rescue Avery gently.
