Will to survive
Ziaur Rahman is determined to share his harrowing story of being a refugee with no place to call home, writes
ICOULD almost hear the palpable excitement lacing through his voice as he asked me: “Can you take a picture of me here?” “Here” is at the bookshop where copies of Ziaur Rahman’s book Survivor sits proudly on the shelf.
The author hands me his mobile phone, while pointing at the shelf with pride. “Can you see the books from that angle?” he asks me half-anxiously. I nod and the camera clicks as he smiles widely.
He’s justifiably excited and proud, of course. Writing a book is a matter of pride for him. It’s his story and legacy. “In a refugee camp,” he says quietly, “stories are everything. Everyone has one.” He pauses for a while, before remarking: “I was only free for 40 days. We fled for Bangladesh when I was slightly over a month old. I’ve been a refugee ever since.”
The 30-year-old Rohingya looks pensive. “I’m a refugee,” he declares again, but this time a little louder as he speaks into my recorder. I’d instructed him to speak loudly. He clears his throat and looks at me quizzically. Is it loud enough, he asks me uncertainly.
In a world where refugees have lost everything, including their rights and identity, the act of speaking out loud takes some getting used to. Once away from their homes, refugees like Ziaur become a “problem” — wards of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency or the countries in which they take refuge, usually as an unwanted and resented burden. In the many conferences and diplomatic discussions about refugees, their own voices are rarely heard.
Ziaur wants to have his history documented. “My journey has never been documented anywhere. My story is like many other Rohingya refugees. It deserves to be told. We deserve to be heard.”
He doesn’t just enjoy talking about his journey. He feels absolutely compelled to. To offer the world a new refugee narrative. To show what is possible if you have a strong will to live. And yes, survive insurmountable odds stacked up against you.
Having fled from Myanmar as a baby,
Ziaur’s story has been one of survival. From the heavily controlled regime of the refugee camps in Bangladesh, the bleak depths of raging seas, and even the latest crisis of the pandemic, the politics of being a refugee are explored in Ziaur’s deeply personal narrative.
“I live in a world where every human right has been denied to me and my people,” writes Ziaur. “But surviving a tragedy isn’t living. Living means having a purpose, living lives, learning new things, having a career, hopes and dreams that are not fantasies but can actually have a chance at becoming realities someday. It is more than existing.”
This is a book full of revelatory truths; moments where we’re plunged deeply and painfully into the quotidian experience of the refugee. Refugees are trapped in the perpetual present: the future brings anxiety because you don’t belong and can’t move forward. The past brings depression because you can’t go home, your memories fade, and everything you know is gone.
THE ROHINGYA CRISIS
The ethnic Rohingya is one of Myanmar’s many nationalities and have been described as one of the most persecuted groups on the planet. Successive Burmese regimes have continuously denied the status of the Rohingya as indigenous peoples and citizens although the presence of the Rohingya in Arakan dates back to the seventh century CE and they were settled there well before the Burman invasions in 1784.
The use of the term Rohingya is highly contested in Myanmar. The broader Buddhist populace in general rejected the Rohingya terminology — referring to them instead as Bengali — and considered the community to be largely composed of illegal immigrants from present-day Bangladesh.
The Rohingya comprising a Muslim ethnic minority, lived in Myanmar’s far western Rakhine state. Most were stripped of their citizenship by the military junta that used to rule Myanmar, and they have suffered decades of repression and systematic persecution under the country’s Buddhist majority, including killings and mass rape, according to the United Nations (UN).
Since the last quarter of the 20th century, many Rohingya have periodically been forced to flee their homes — either to other areas in Myanmar or to other countries — because of intercommunal violence between them and the Buddhist community in Rakhine state or, more commonly, campaigns by Myanmar’s army, of which they were the target.
Home is still Myanmar, insists Ziaur wistfully as he gazes into the distance. “But we can’t go back.” A shroud of silence hangs over our table in that bustling cafe. He has been a refugee almost all his life but the sadness doesn’t quite go away. He doesn’t remember what “home” is like but he tells me his parents do.
“My parents remember their lives in Myanmar,” he says quietly. They also remember the persecution and the torture that caused them to flee and leave everything behind. His father was a farmer and sole breadwinner of his whole family.
But the older man was forced to work in labour camps by the military at least three times a week where he took on a variety of unpaid dangerous jobs, including being a porter and human shield for the patrol team. When he refused to report at the camp due to illness, military personnel showed up at his home to beat and torture him.
From 1978, the state confiscated, destroyed and nullified identity documents belonging to the Rohingya, making it even more precarious for them to survive in their homeland. “My father only received a ‘white card’ instead of a national registration card, which identified him as a ‘Bengali Muslim’,” he tells me matter-of-factly.
After the attack on his father and fearing further attacks, his family quickly packed up and fled to Bangladesh. They stumbled down muddy ravines and flooded creeks through miles of hills and jungle in Bangladesh, and thousands more like them came each day, in a line stretching to the monsoon-darkened horizon.
Some were gaunt and spent, already starving and carrying listless and dehydrated babies, with many miles to go before they reached any refugee camp. They walked for a day and ended up at the makeshift Moricha Tal Camp in Cox’s Bazar.
GROWING PAINS
His childhood wasn’t quite like that of children elsewhere. Ziaur flashes a rare grin, remarking: “I chose to remain optimistic despite the suffering I witnessed.” There was no peace or safety in the camp. “We were vulnerable, persecuted, abandoned by humanity,” he writes. “We had no rights in our country of origin. No rights in the refugee camps. We faced widespread cases of extortion by the camp authorities who worked in collaboration with the Majhis who were the heads of each block.”
One time, the police and the Majhis dragged his grandmother along the ground by her hair when she went to receive her rations and told her to look at the blazing sun from 10am to noon. The 5-year-old Ziaur was with her at that time. She sent him away to wait under the nearby shadows of the trees while she was being punished because she refused to return to Myanmar under the forced repatriation scheme.
The young boy learnt to compartmentalise the hardships and chose to focus his energy on his education. “I borrowed exercise books and pens from classmates
because my family couldn’t afford them,” he recalls, smiling.
He had a good teacher, he reveals. “Mr Habib Ullah was a private tuition teacher at the camp and he encouraged me to pursue my education. I learnt to write essays, even poetry, and my handwriting was very beautiful!”
Habib Ullah taught him to write letters about injustice to the UN in Geneva or the international community. It was Ziaur’s first introduction to activism. “There are two powers in the world,” he wrote. “...One is the sword and the other is the pen. For me, the pen can change our situation.”
Ziaur’s burgeoning interest in education and activism led him to join the scouting movement in his refugee camp. “Being in the scouts taught me survival skills, and the importance of discipline and responsibility towards other members of society,” he tells me with pride. He started learning English and also helped teach the language to other refugees.
The earnest young man brings out his own copy of his memoir and thumbs through the pages. There are several coloured papers stuck between the pages of the worn book. “You came well-prepared,” I observe with a smile.
He looks up from his book and grins. There are certain aspects of his story he wishes to highlight. He reads some parts of the book aloud for me to take note. The answers to most of my questions are in his book, he tells me between reading aloud some of the passages.
His best childhood memories? Oh, definitely during Aidilfitri. The monotony of misery was broken down by celebrations and festive days, the most important of which was Aidilfitri. “The food was delicious,” he says with an audible sigh.
The chickpeas with puffed rice, somocha, jelabi and dates served at iftar during Ramadan; the Semai dish (a special vermicelli dish) eaten with family during Aidilfitri; the smell of religious perfumes called Atar. “Money was scarce, of course,” he recalls wistfully, telling me how his mother would try to save up whatever she could so he could get new clothes.
“I’m grateful for having a strong mother,” he blurts out suddenly, before adding: “I’ve learnt so much from her example. My father left her and she raised me singlehandedly. She refused to remarry despite family pressure because she had my well-being in mind.” He confides that she was always proud of her son’s accomplishments and admired his quest for education.
Another aspect of camp life that gave Ziaur hope was the library at the community centre. The young boy was a regular visitor there and believed that books were silent friends who could help him maintain hope for his life.
He was never afraid to write and tell foreign delegates or even the UNHCR country representatives about the sufferings that his community went through, but he paid a heavy price for that. “I was called up by the local police inspector many times,” he writes. “Once, he slapped me.”
From that day, he became interested in writing a book about his journey as a refugee. “I began taking down notes about my own experiences and my daily life,” he says, adding regretfully: “I couldn’t add those parts to this book because they’re still with my mother in Bangladesh.”
QUEST FOR SURVIVAL
Without the protection of the government, refugees are vulnerable to robbers, kidnappers and human traffickers. That harsh reality sunk in when Ziaur found himself kidnapped, bound and taken to the outskirts of the camp where he was beaten and robbed at gunpoint.
He was then ferried to a wooden fishing boat — a more substantial vessel than the skiffs, though not much. The boat was clearly not designed for passengers but was crammed with 210 Rohingya, 100 Bangladeshis and 10 members of the trafficking crew. Conditions on the boat was that of a modern-day slave ship, with the trafficked refugees packed together so tightly in the darkened hold that they could barely stretch out.
People around him fell sick and women passengers were raped. The weather didn’t spare them either. Torrential rains flooded the upper decks and by the time the storm subsided, two people were dead. “It was terrifying,” he says, his eyes glinting with unshed tears at the memory.
The survivors of the harrowing boat ride spent time in a human trafficking camp deep in the jungles of Thailand where they were starved and beaten. Thankfully, the Thai police came to their rescue and Ziaur was eventually sent to a shelter in Songkhla.
Afraid that the traffickers might get him at the camp again, the terrified lad decided to flee one night. Unfortunately, he was caught again by another trafficker who eventually brought him to Penang. There, he was beaten regularly and forced to ask his family in Bangladesh for ransom money.
The traumatised Ziaur managed to escape through a broken window and begged some locals for help. A kind Malay family took him in, provided him with food, and helped him contact his family in Bangladesh. After another few harrowing episodes, Ziaur found his way to Kuala Lumpur. He was finally free but without a job or a place to live.
His gentle smile belies the horrors he has faced, the cruelty of traffickers, and the tragedy of separation from his beloved mother who remains in Bangladesh. It’s been an arduous journey, he says softly.
Today, Ziaur holds the UNHCR refugee card and is able to eke out a living to support his wife and two children. “This is my story,” he insists again and again. Life is a continuous struggle, he reveals, adding: “...but at least in Malaysia, I have some amount of freedom to live.”
The fact that he could have the freedom to narrate his story doesn’t escape him. He’s grateful that he’s been given this opportunity to break the pernicious stereotype
faced by many refugees — that they come to other countries to take people’s jobs, that they show up for government handouts, that they’re lazy, that they’re extremists. “All we ever want is to return home and live in freedom,” he says softly, adding: “I want my children to know their roots and to understand the heavy price we’ve paid.”
Ziaur’s story is riveting and almost painful to witness. Interspersed between gripping chapters are narrow escapes, perilous journeys across raging seas and through impenetrable jungles, seemingly impossible language barriers, corruption and bureaucracy, living in a radically different cultures and marriages that sometimes reach the breaking point (he witnesses the disintegration of his parents’ marriage and keenly feels the loss of his absentee father) — his story faithfully recounts the twists and turns of his journey to present day.
Voices of refugees like Ziaur are rarely heard. But when they are, as in the prose of Somali-British poet Warsan Shire, it’s a cry of desperation: “You have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.” So long as there’s conflict and persecution, people will risk losing all in an effort to reach safer shores.
His voice trails off again and I lean forward to hear him over the noise in the cafe. “My grandparents suffered, my parents suffered, I suffered. What about my children? That’s why I wrote this book. I want people to understand what it feels like to have no country and no rights,” says Ziaur softly, adding: “I’m trying my best for my children. That’s all I can do.”
The affable young man looks taken aback when I finally ask him to sign my copy of his book. Furrowing his brows in concentration, he carefully writes a short message, “Thank you for reading my book,” in beautiful script.
For someone who’s only had 40 days of freedom, it’s all Ziaur can hope for. That we’d read his book and by hearing his story, we can fathom the loss of the uprooted and their struggle to survive in a world where they have no place to call home.