Achieving bliss in Sri Lanka

Although Saminda doesn't point it out, the British were the last in a succession of Ceylon's outside rulers, which began with the Portuguese in 1505 and lasted for the next 443 years. The Portuguese and the Dutch fought over the island between 1641 and 1658, the Dutch eventually winning out. They expanded and improved the massive stone fort at Galle. When the British and Dutch, allies before 1791, took opposite sides during the Napoleonic Wars, the British responded by taking over the Dutch possessions in the east, including those in Ceylon. The British remained until granting independence to the country in 1948, which polished up its historic title, Lanka, by adding Sri or "resplendent," in 1972.

The 19-year civil war between the Tamil minority, based primarily in the north, and the Sinhalese majority, located everywhere else, began in 1983 and claimed 64,000 lives. The six percent Muslim population has largely stayed out of the conflict, though at times both the Tamils and the Sinhalese have eyed it with mistrust.

In July 2001, Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil Tigers attacked Bandaranaike International Airport, and 21 people were killed. In June 1996, 21/2 years after the first New York World Trade Center bombing, Sri Lanka's own World Trade Center in Colombo, also composed of twin towers, was bombed, killing 88 people and wounding more than 1,400. Government forces are known to have extracted confessions and information by throwing and threatening to throw people out of helicopters. The blood-covered atrocities go back two decades and soak both sides of the conflict.

After Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. government began its war on terrorism by designating scores of regional separatist groups as terrorist organizations, including the Tamil Tigers, which had previously been categorized as refugees. That move helped push the Tigers to a Norwegian-sponsored negotiating table in the winter of 2001-'02, a year and a half before our wedding. Despite some bumps, a tenuous peace has held, giving hope to the tourism-dependent economy.

Prior to the civil war, its stunning beauty, functional infrastructure and incredibly hospitable residents made Sri Lanka one of the top vacation destinations in the entire world. (The country's literacy rate is the second-highest in Asia, and English is spoken nearly everywhere.) In fact, thanks to both the scenic splendor and relaxed marital laws, so many Europeans traveled to Sri Lanka to be married that nearly every hotel offers the kind of all-inclusive wedding packages usually seen in Las Vegas or Hawaii.

The tourism numbers are beginning to come back but have been hampered somewhat by security concerns and the terrorism-stoked fall-off in travel generally.

None of which seems to be lost on Saminda. "Tell your friends," he says, as he drops us off outside the Majestic City shopping mall on the north side of the city -- home, we are told, to one of Colombo's few pool halls -- "Go home and tell everyone, 'Come to Sri Lanka.'"

MAKING THE DECISION
My brother seldom shies away from provocative statements or difficult questions. So no one is too surprised when, still standing in the Mount Lavinia lobby, he asks the shaky travelers: "Did you guys see Baghdad on the map in the plane?"

"See it!" says Mom. "We couldn't take our eyes off it!"

I try to picture the scene in the cabin as the in-flight map shows the white airplane silhouette moving across Turkey, threading its way between Iran and Iraq, swerving east to stay out of Iraqi airspace, Tehran on the right, Baghdad on the left, before heading out over the Persian Gulf. That map resembled the one most Americans see every night during CNN's Middle East coverage, except that now these four non-traveling Pennsylvanians were flying over the middle of it. Unfairly maybe, we hadn't told them about that part of the trip, about their routing through the middle of the "axis of evil," and they didn't ask about the path the plane would be taking. It wasn't as if their trip was really any more dangerous than any other air travel, and besides, we didn't want to alarm them.

At some point -- and I don't know exactly when this happened -- they confronted their fear. We pushed them, to be sure. We reassured them about how beautiful Sri Lanka is and that I would be getting married only once.

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