Rahima, 20, holds her three-month-old son Ahmed. “I fled to Bangladesh because of fear, now we are in Bangladesh , happy that I saved my child life. I was 8 month pregnant and suffering from fever while crossing the border. I also have three years old child, so it was very difficult to reach the border from our village in Myanmar. I had to rest frequently. After eight hours of horrible walking finally we crossed the border, paying the broker,” Rahima said.
Not only Rahima, many defenseless brave mothers faced different horrifying experience to save their live and their loved ones.
Trading in a host of goods and services keeps the Rohingya going, ranging from live chicken to haircuts to a host of labor jobs. Running their small businesses has resulted in forging new friendships, learning art, sending their children to school with the support of NGOs, even finding life partners, as was the case with Abdul.
Adbul, who does haircuts for living in a refugee camp, was part of an earlier 1977 exodus of over 200,000 Rohingya after the brutal army-ordered purge that year.
Abdul says the new-found freedom has come at a price. He revealed in an interview given to me that his people had been forced to abandon their loved ones besides everything they owned in the Rakhine region that was once their home.
Many are still traumatized by what they have experienced — most have no idea of the future that awaits them, Abdul adds, as he waits for his next customer.
Abdul is thankful that they experience safety and intellectual freedom, albeit weighed down by emotional distress that displacement brings. He reveals that the Rohingya refugees pine for a return to normal lives in their homeland, but which in the same breath, he adds, remains a pipe dream.
We want to go back to Myanmar, we want to live in peace and have citizenship rights and freedom before I die sadly”, said Rahman.
In Myanmar, the Rohingya have no human rights, discriminatory laws and practices which have effectively denied citizenship to Rohingya on the basis of their ethnicity.
The memories though of a lost country live on. Beyond the exhilaration of breathing freedom, there remains a sense of mourning for their native land. For one exiled, the joys of the present are dulled by the reminiscences of the past.