On Easter Sunday 2019, coordinated suicide bombings struck three churches and three hotels in Sri Lanka, killing 269 people. One of the churches was St Sebastian's in Negombo, a coastal city north of Colombo. Among the survivors was Dinesh Perera, a thirty-five-year-old fisherman who lost his wife and his youngest daughter in the blast. He was standing outside the church when the bomb detonated inside. The force threw him against a wall. He woke in a hospital with a broken arm, shrapnel wounds, and a grief so heavy it pressed him into the bed like a physical weight.
The Two Who Came
In the weeks after the bombing, two men visited Dinesh in hospital and then at his home. Neither was Christian. Asanka was a Buddhist friend who had grown up with Dinesh in the same Negombo neighbourhood. Farhan was a Muslim colleague from the fishing cooperative where they worked. Both had been horrified by the bombings — carried out in the name of a faith that Farhan shared and that Asanka's community had sometimes blamed Muslims for. They came not to discuss theology or politics. They came to sit with their friend.
The Rebuilding
When St Sebastian's announced a community rebuilding effort, Dinesh could not bring himself to go — the building held too much pain. Asanka and Farhan went instead. They helped clear rubble, carried building materials, and painted walls. When Dinesh finally returned to the church site three months later, he found his Buddhist friend and his Muslim friend covered in plaster dust, hammering nails into new pews. Dinesh picked up a hammer and joined them. They worked together every Saturday for four months until the church was restored.
The Brotherhood That Healed
The three men became inseparable. They fish together. They eat together. They celebrate each other's festivals. On the anniversary of the bombing, they stand together at St Sebastian's — Dinesh inside the church, Asanka and Farhan outside in the courtyard. Dinesh says a Christian prayer. Asanka lights incense in the Buddhist tradition. Farhan whispers a prayer in Arabic. None of them tries to convert the others. What they share is not theology but the belief that love is stronger than any bomb. "My wife and daughter died in that church," Dinesh says. "My friends — a Buddhist and a Muslim — rebuilt it with their hands. If that is not God working through everyone, I do not know what God looks like."