This paper analyses the civil war in Sri Lanka as a sustained national catastrophe lasting 26 years. It studies how violence is inscribed and political ideologies of sovereignty and separation are manifest across two main arterial routes, the road and rail links between the north and the south of the island. Sutured by military check points, these arterial scars and their wartime itineraries mirror the unfolding catastrophe that surrounds them. They represent in microcosm the social and spatial involution that follows the breakup of the nation. Catastrophes including the catastrophe of war become critical sites for reading these transformations