The Rohingya: Refugees On The Run

‘My heart is pounding; I pant from running too fast.

- Sangeeta Purkayastha

I want to get to a safe place, but I do not know where that is. I cannot go back. Our village set on fire, I run till my legs can carry me no more. Though nothing more than a nightmare that haunts me in my sleep, I usually wake up in the middle of the night with a start and my insides begin to throb with ache. I long to go back to the place I once called home. When I close my eyes, I still see the little courtyard where I used to hop and play.’

An unusual smile disperses the gloom that always hangs over her face. Shamsheeda looks up at me. She is not crying as I thought she would. Her eyes are, in fact, gleaming with joy. Her impeccable brown eyes are glinting with mischief as she recalls her childhood days in Burma’s western-most Rakhine region. Her yellow teeth peek out as she takes a bite of the watermelon I had taken for her. This is my third visit to her little tailoring shop – a bare setup with nothing more than a desk, a bench, and a few piles of clothing material apart from needles, scissors, and some rolls of thread.

‘This fruit is very juicy,’ she says, and her smile scrunches up her nose. ‘Back home, in my village, we had trees that bore jackfruits – bigger than pumpkins. When the fruit ripened, the entire courtyard would be thick with their sweet smell. Well, jackfruits are like a mix of mangoes and bananas. Sweet, juicy but not easy to manage. We rubbed oil over our hands before peeling off the giant fruit’s thick, thorny skin. It’s such a struggle, you know, to cut open the fruit for its pods. Difficult and messy.’ Her young face suddenly takes on a grim look. She looks at a distance as if to hide her terrible sense of loss. ‘I miss all that here,’ she says, admitting there is no hope of regaining their Eden.