Thashreeq Moulawi remembers his childhood well. The four-to-five-kilometre walk each way to middle school in Mutur was a chore. Growing up in the village of Arafa Nagar, separated from mainland Mutur by a river, children from the village had to make a long detour.

"It used to take a whole hour to get to school," he reminisces. "There was a lot of discussion on putting a bridge across the river; however it somehow never used to materialize. There were numerous attempts to put a temporary bridge and then the rains would come and wash the bridge away."

So crossing the river meant swimming or using boats. Life was much simpler back then in the early seventies. After school, it was helping out with the family farm. Thashreeq Moulawi's relatives had first settled in the village in 1914 to cultivate the land.

In the early eighties, things started to change. Land politics started to catch up with Arafa Nagar. A predominately Muslim village surrounded by five Tamil villages, Thashreeq remembers the growing mistrust that started to emerge between the two ethnic communities.

"As a child, I remember having Tamil friends and playing with them in the fields that divided the villages. When I became a teenager, we stopped playing with each other and our village elders would warn us about associating with the Tamils. There emerged this mistrust."

In 1985, following an escalation in the country's wider conflict, the outskirts of Mutur were occupied by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the villagers of Arafa Nagar were displaced to the mainland of Mutur.

For 20 or more years, they looked across the river at their fertile lands which they could see were being occupied. Gradually these lands were also abandoned and became overgrown.

As the years passed, Thashreeq began to lose hope of ever returning to the land of his forefathers.

In 2006, after an escalation in the conflict between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army in Mutur that saw some 50,000 people displaced to Kanthale, a town 60 miles south, Thashreeq concluded things would never return to normal. The deterioration of security that year also saw the inhabitants of the Tamil villages of Amman Nagar and others surrounding Arafa Nagar displaced from their homes.

PLAN TO RETURN

When Thashreeq returned to Mutur, along with his friends and family he started exploring the unlikely possibility of going back to their original home in Arafa Nagar.

Getting together with other village elders, most of whom were childhood friends, they prepared a plan for resettling there. In the process, they identified one essential condition: building a permanent bridge across the river!

In October 2006, they approached a Muslim Aid assessment team that was looking at ways of rebuilding the shattered town to discuss the proposal. They explained that if they were given access to their lands again, they could return to their hometown and restart their lush cultivations.

Initially, the team was sceptical. "We had to convince them this idea was valid. It sounded too far-fetched," explains Thashreeq. "If returning to an area to restart livelihoods after 20 years sounded crazy, our assertion that building a bridge across the river would cause this to happen seemed nonsensical."

In April 2007, Muslim Aid - this time with another agency AmeriCares - came back to do the initial groundwork and surveys. The people of Arafa Nagar, buoyed by this unexpected development, came together to form a community-based organisation called Rural Development Society (RDS).

RDS organised visits to the area using local boats, and instigated a clean-up programme in preparation for the villagers' return. Its member also built a temporary bridge to help returning farmers.

As construction proceeded, the community started resettling, and tidied up the village, roads, wells and so on before getting down to cultivation. Aid groups helped put up temporary shelters and barbed wire to fence off respective plots, and provided seedlings to kick start production. Today, 400 to 500 acres of land are being farmed.

The construction of the bridge was not without problems. Design challenges and lack of knowledge about the ground conditions was compounded by a change of contractors and labourers, poor weather conditions and political interference.

At one stage the army - which has a base close to Amman Nagar - declared parts of the area a high security zone, which meant returnees could not access their lands. This issue was made worse by the return of displaced Tamils.

WORKING TOGETHER

RDS approached the Tamil community, and together they made representations to the army commander, who initially allowed people to come back during the day to look after their farms. This has since changed and people are now able to stay overnight too.

"The returning Tamil communities from the neighbouring villages were a concern initially for us," says Thashreeq. "After decades of being apart and having the mistrust, we were initially apprehensive. However when the army declared it a high security zone, both communities got together on this common issue.

"This was the start of the thawing of relations. Both communities wanted to do our livelihoods, have a roof over our heads and food on the table, and send our children to school ... The building of the bridge in some way was the catalyst for us to start cooperating."

Amman Nagar resident Chitra agrees: "This bridge is helping us in terms of economic enhancement whilst also helping our communities to come together."

In the past year, the communities have celebrated each other's religious and cultural festivals while also supporting each other's livelihoods.

AmeriCares and Muslim Aid ceremonially opened the bridge - nicknamed "The Friendship Bridge" on February 26. It will play a twin role of linking these two agricultural villages to the mainland, and also, more significantly, building links between the two communities.

The main objective now for both sides seems to be working towards making their villages a joint hub of production, allowing them to export their produce to main markets.

Tamils and Muslims are now living and working together side by side, while retaining their own identities.

"Nearly 500 families cross this bridge on a day-to-day basis," says Thashreeq, adding that it takes children only five minutes to get to school these days. "We hope this new bridge will bring about peace between the two communities."

Driving into Arafa Nagar, I saw a Tamil and a Muslim family sipping tea together under a tree, watching their children laugh and played nearby. I had a feeling Thashreeq might just be right, although there's much work left to do.

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