By Larry Habegger
I stood at midnight by railroad tracks on the island of Sri Lanka, looking at a sky full of stars. The moon was gone, the darkness so complete I could barely see the outlines of the surrounding forest. Above, pinpricks of light so filled the sky that I felt I could see in three dimensions, into the depth of the cosmos, layer upon layer of stars. A trickle of sweat meandered down my spine and I wondered if it was caused by the tropical heat or the awareness of my utter insignificance.
“Train coming soon,” a lilting voice announced, and I saw the stationmaster silhouetted against the faint light of the shed-like train station. In this rural outpost, we were alone.
“Do you see the three bright stars very high in the sky? Look high, very bright, do you see? That’s Orion,” he said.
The train approached, its beam of light spearing the night. As it drew closer, hissing steam, the stationmaster’s face glistened with sweat from the humidity.
He smiled. “Now you have seen Orion, and will remember. When you see it again, I hope you will think of Sri Lanka.”
A few years later, back in the US, bad news came from Sri Lanka. Social strife erupted into civil war. Massacres occurred in places I knew: Trincomalee, Batticaloa, unnamed villages all across the east and north.
I stepped outside and found three stars very high in the sky, very bright.
