‘I have to look after them’
Word of Shamsul and Jafar’s plight reached Kamal Hossein and his lost-andfound booth, a small kiosk that offers hope for separated families. In September, Hossein, also a refugee from Burma, spent his month’s salary to rent a microphone to call out names of lost children, reuniting more than 700 children with relatives and garnering support from the United Nations refugee agency.
After about two weeks, Mohammed Junaid heard of the announcement about his nephews and rushed to the camp to be reunited with them – learning then that his brother was dead.
He and his wife, Jorina, began caring for the boys along with their own six children, ages one to 12, in their small bamboo-andtarpaulin tent, with bags of rice and piles of kindling stacked in the corners and a mud oven to cook meals. “They are my brother’s sons,” Junaid said. “I have to look after them. There is no other way.”
For the boys, being reunited with extended family has provided some refuge. But it has not staved off the hunger, or grief.
Morning comes early at Thaingkhali, part of a group of camps that has grown to be one of the most densely populated refugee settlements in the world, with more than 800,000 residents. The first call to prayer echoes just after 5:30 a.m., the moon a silver disc still hanging in the sky. It’s so cold that Shamsul’s lips turn blue, and he shivers in the dawn light, wearing only a thin jacket.
Most days, the boys trudge from their shelter home down the mud steps that have been cut into the hill, and then up again to the small mosque for morning prayers, and perhaps a few Koran lessons at the madrassa.
It had been days since either of the boys had seen the inside of one of the cheerful learning centers set up by UNICEF – just yards away from their tent. Their uncle thinks the madrassa lessons are enough.
The brothers roam with no supervision, dust from the dirt pathways caking their bare feet.
In the afternoons, the warm sun makes them lazy and they lie around the tent.
Daily soccer games are their only joy. They find flat ground, set up lumps of dirt as goal posts and kick the $2 soccer ball they pooled their coins to buy. Both Shamsul and Jafar smile, chasing the bouncing ball.
Jafar said he misses his school in Tula Toli, which had its own soccer field, not far from the river where he and his brothers used to fish. He’s hungry a lot of the time now. The 10-member family gets an allotment of rice, lentils and vegetable oil from the UN World Food Program every two weeks, and the uncle’s work as a day labourer allows them to buy a few vegetables or dried fish.
Back home, Jafar said, “we had peanuts, green chilies, eggplants. We had everything growing in our own lands. We had so many vegetables to eat, and fresh fish.”
Jafar brightens describing the flat river fish, as long as your hand to your elbow, that his mother used to fry with chili and turmeric on top.
He said, he often doesn’t feel like playing. His aunt and uncle say he and his brother are often depressed. Jorina, the aunt, said she struggles to find the words to console the two. future. In the evenings, the fading light casts long shadows from the palm tree leaves, and the air darkens with smoke from thousands of campfires.
Men gather in the lanes and around the chai stalls to talk about the latest development – an agreement between Myanmar, also known as Burma, and Bangladesh that would allow them to return home, if they can prove their residency.
Many say that the idea of returning home is unrealistic now, with villages still burning and refugees trickling into Bangladesh daily.
Junaid wavers on the topic. One day he says adamantly that he will not return to a place where his family was slaughtered; the next he says that he will go to reclaim the family’s 20 acres as long as the Myanmar government provides security.
Said Jafar: “We miss the place, but we don’t want to go back. But we’ll follow our uncle wherever he goes.”
As the sun sets, a near total darkness falls over the camp, broken only by the glow of a fire or a solar-powered lamp.
After evening prayer and a dinner of rice and lentils, the family unrolls colorful straw mats and prepares for bed.
Jorina says it’s a victory when they can all drift off without one of the boys crying himself to sleep.