I remember the dust first.
It clung to my skin, filled my lungs, blurred everything I saw that morning in Savar.
By the time I reached Rana Plaza, the building was already gone -- reduced to a crushed mass of concrete, steel and silence broken only by screams.
It had been an ordinary day.
The political noise of 2013 -- hartals, protests, tensions -- had filled the headlines.
I was out covering a strike in Dhaka when the call came: a building had collapsed in Savar.
I reached around 10:30am
What stood before me did not feel real.
A pile of rubble where a multi-storey building had stood just hours earlier.
A bank signboard stuck awkwardly out of the debris.
People running, shouting, digging with bare hands. Soldiers, police, volunteers -- everyone trying to pull life out of death.
I learned the name soon after: Rana Plaza.
It had collapsed within seconds. Thousands were inside.
Cracks had appeared the day before. Workers had refused to enter. But they were told it was safe.
That morning, it became a grave.
The injured were being carried out -- some alive, many not.
Ambulances rushed toward nearby hospitals. Others lay still, covered in dust, their faces barely recognisable.
By night, I was back again.
The cries had changed. They were weaker. Fading.
People were still trapped beneath layers of concrete.
Rescuers drilled holes, calling out into the darkness. Sometimes, a voice answered. Sometimes, there was only silence.
I went to Adhar Chandra High School after midnight.
That is where the dead were brought.
Bodies kept arriving -- one after another. Laid out in rows along the veranda. Families stood around them, searching, hoping, breaking.
I spoke to a mother who was looking for her daughter. She had not found her yet. I did not know what to say.
At one point, I sat down, exhausted.
And it struck me -- these were people who had been alive just hours before. They had homes, families, routines. They had slept the night before without knowing it would be their last.
Now they lay side by side, reduced to numbers in a tragedy too large to comprehend.
I covered Rana Plaza for eight days straight.
The stories did not leave me when I left the site. They followed me home. Into my sleep. Into my thoughts.
I lost my appetite. Sleep became difficult. Whenever I entered a tall building, I felt a sudden fear -- it might collapse.
Even now, I sometimes see it again: the rubble, the hands reaching out, the faces covered in dust.
Back then, I did not have the language to describe what I was going through.
Today, I understand it as trauma.
Many of us carried it, quietly.
We reported the facts, filed our stories, moved to the next assignment. But Rana Plaza stayed with us.
It still does.
The author is an assistant professor of Mass Communication and Journalism at Jagannath University, Dhaka, and previously worked as a reporter for ATN Bangla in 2013.