The pain in Kulsum's lower belly was sharpening with the roll of the boat.
It had come and gone, dull and gnawing, easing for a moment only to return fiercer than before for two days now. Curled up, doubled over, she pressed her knees against her swollen stomach, trying to hold the ache in place.
Her mother-in-law, Majma Begum, rubbed at her back and her hips, though there was little strength left in her own hands. It had been so long since either of them remembered when food had last passed their lips in any real measure.
The small wooden boat had drifted on the open sea, exposed to sky and salt water alike for the last three days. Nearly fifty people — men, women, children — pressed together, lay and sat in whatever space their bodies could claim. It was winter, and even as the hours wore on, the fog over the water refused to lift.
The sun showed itself rarely, hiding for long stretches behind grey cloud.
Kulsum was folded into one corner of the crowded boat, buried beneath the weight of bodies and bundles. Whatever food anyone had carried was gone now, spent quieting crying children.
The cold bit at cracked, shivering skin until it split open. Though they floated on water, the water to drink had nearly run out; a few had only a mouthful left in the bottom of a flask, not even enough to share.
The children's eyes had long since dried of tears, but the thirst in their chests had not gone anywhere. They had left behind their homes, their land, the animals they had raised, sailing out toward an unknown destination.
For the sake of that stubborn will to survive that lives in every creature of flesh and blood, they drifted now on an endless sea. Every moment brought to them only uncertainty and nightmare.
Death might, at any instant, swoop down like an albatross and carry someone away in its claws.
Besides Kulsum, who moaned softly in her pain, lay an old man from her village — eighty-year-old Fazar Ali — gasping for breath, his lungs rattling with each cough.
A middle-aged man held him close, one hand pressed to the old man's chest, as though he could keep the man's heart and lungs from bursting out of him with the violence of his coughing.
Three days passed, and a fourth morning came. The sun still could not break through the curtain of fog. The faces of the drifting men and women had turned to plaster, staring blankly at sky and sea — two vast nothings.
Some murmured, "Allah, oh Allah," under their breath; others stared through open eyes that seemed to see nothing at all. The horrors left behind, the grief of losing everything, surfaced again and again, impossible to hold down.
There was no chance to move the great stone lodged in their chests. All they could do was try to forget, in the single effort of keeping themselves alive.
Then, suddenly, a five- or six-month-old baby began to wail in its mother's lap. Majma Begum, the mother-in-law of Kulsum, lifted her head toward the sound.
The baby's mother pressed her breast to the infant's mouth, trying to quiet him, but the crying would not stop.
Day gave way to night. In the distance, a handful of fishing boats showed their lanterns.
Their own boat carried no light at all; the moon could not reach them through the thick fog. Hunger had stolen the words from most mouths.
Silent, they blinked in the half-dark. Over the past three days, the boat had tried more than once to reach the Bangladesh border, but each time the muzzles of border guards had turned them back.
Now the engine had run dry of fuel. The boatman had let go of the helm. If they drifted into Myanmar's waters again, everyone aboard would die together.
Fear, hunger, and the tug-of-war of the will to live carried this small band of Rohingya through the trackless dark.
Suddenly, from somewhere behind, came a sharp splash. Everyone stirred — but no one could see what had happened. No one dared move from their place; if they moved, the boat would tip, and all would drown.
The sound of women wailing came from the back. Someone, surely, had fallen into the water. Word passed forward to this end of the boat — the person had been sitting near the edge, must have dozed and slipped in.
The boat was packed so tightly that there was no way to pull anyone back aboard; reaching toward one side would only tip the whole vessel over.
And besides, whoever had fallen was already far off now, carried away on the waves. The women's cries thinned into the night. The crying baby, worn out with hunger, finally fell asleep.
Night deepened further. At this end of the boat, Kulsum and Fazar Ali were both fading.
The pain in Kulsum's lower belly sharpened by the minute; it could happen at any moment now. The men nearby edged back, making room for two or three women to come close to her.
Majma Begum held her tight. The girl wept openly, thrashing against the pain. This was to be her first child. She had married barely a year ago.
Her husband, Rashid Mia, was gone now — shot dead in their own yard by Myanmar soldiers, in front of his wife and mother.
Then they had burned the house to the ground. Kulsum and Majma Begum had survived only because they were hiding in an earthen bunker beneath a tree.
Rashid had gone out looking for food, and the soldiers' guns had found him first. Later, seizing the chance, Majma Begum had brought her pregnant daughter-in-law aboard this boat.
At the other end, Fazar Ali's breathing had grown ragged, his chest rising and falling with visible effort. His forehead and the veins of his hands had swollen thick beneath the skin.
His son, Karam Ali, held his father's head in his lap, making one useless attempt after another to ease his breathing.
Kulsum's labor cries tore through the deep winter night and dissolved into the surrounding silence. The boat, riding the swell, seemed at last to be moving toward some shore — or so it seemed to Majma Begum.
The shapes of dwellings were visible now, close by. Whether it was Myanmar or Bangladesh, no one could say. They had left that question behind the day they left Myanmar's soil and set themselves adrift.
Kulsum's body convulsed with the pain, cries tearing from her throat. And at the same moment, three or four people struggled to bring some relief to Fazar Ali. Then — suddenly — a thin wail, "waa... waa" — a newborn's cry — and something like joy passed over the hollow, hungry faces around them.
These drifting people had long since lost the strength to weep. They had lost, too, the capacity for joy. But a baby boy had come into Kulsum's arms. She lay limp, spent. The newborn's cry pierced the air.
Nature is the great master; its workings are hard to fathom. As the child slipped free of Kulsum's womb into a world adrift on the sea, the pull of breath in Fazar Ali's chest was slowly loosening.
He drew his very last breath in his son Karam Ali's lap. Karam Ali held his father's still body and sat frozen, wordless, tearless, grief too large for sound. There was no strength left in his body even to cry.
Word of the birth had barely reached the length of the boat before news of Fazar Ali's death followed it. But no one had it in them to react. There was no exchange, no words.
Too much movement and the boat would tip, and everyone would share Fazar Ali's fate. And so, as though nothing at all were happening in the world — as though nothing had happened on this boat — they all sat on, bodies emptied of feeling, strangers to one another, as though they had never met, each one as if washed up from a different planet.
Looking now at his father's face, Karam Ali finally wept. Tears ran down his cheeks. Fazar Ali had once saved his son from certain death at the hands of Myanmar's soldiers.
But now the father was gone, right before his son's eyes, and there had been nothing to hold onto. With his father's body in his lap, Karam Ali drifted on beneath the open sky, on the trackless salt water — and no one on that boat knew where this drifting would finally end.
Majma Begum noticed again that the boat was drawing close to some shore. Kulsum's newborn would not stop crying. She pressed the baby's mouth to Kulsum's breast, again and again.
Nothing worked. No milk would come. At last she turned to another woman nearby — the one whose own baby had cried itself to sleep from hunger — and asked her to try nursing the child.
The woman listened. She put the infant to her breast, and the crying stopped. A small flicker of a smile crossed Majma Begum's face. But it did not last; the baby began to cry again. Majma Begum asked the woman to offer her other breast. The woman could not do as she was asked.
Tears spilled from her eyes instead. Majma Begum reached for the woman to guide the child to the other breast herself — and stopped short. The woman and Majma Begum looked at each other. No words. No sound. No language between them. But everything that needed saying passed, wordless, through their eyes.
Majma Begum asked, in their shared dialect, "What happened?"
The woman's right breast was simply gone. She pressed the child once more to her left. She gripped Majma Begum's hand tightly, and began to speak.
"My husband and I were running away together. After walking a full day, we were caught, suddenly, at dusk. They dragged my husband off. My baby — six months old — only wanted a kiss on his forehead.
"Even that much, those bastards wouldn't allow. Before they'd even gone far, I heard a gunshot."
"And then?" Majma Begum asked, with a long breath.
"They took me into a house. They put my baby down in a corner of the floor, and then they..." She broke into sobs, unable to finish.
Majma Begum tried to calm her, but the woman could barely speak through her crying. In broken words, she managed, "There were four or five of them.
"One of them, suddenly, took a knife to me..." She could not go on. Her sobbing spread through those near her. "A second one wanted to cut off the other side.
"My baby's crying — that's the only reason he didn't. They just left me there. I had no strength to walk. I tore what leaves I could find, pressed them against the wound to stop the bleeding." Her voice broke apart into weeping again.
The newborn had already fallen asleep.
Dawn was breaking. The boat had drawn right up to the shore now. Houses and people were visible here and there. Seeing the boat approach, more people began to gather.
At last the boat came to rest against the bank. A few people ran forward.
They reached out hands to help the exiles climb ashore. At first it seemed they had come to help these people save their lives.
But it soon became clear that many of them were simply seizing the chance to snatch away whatever bags and belongings they could.
Soaked in blood, Kulsum could barely manage to climb down. The newborn was held tight against Majma Begum's chest. Two other women helped Kulsum down from the boat.
The woman who had lost her breast came down too, carrying her own child. None of the Rohingya stepping onto that shore knew where they would go from here, or what they would eat.
Majma Begum and the two other women took Kulsum to a house nearby. They explained the situation — Kulsum urgently needed to be cleaned and cared for. But the man of the house refused.
Humanity, sometimes, simply stops in places. Majma Begum and her companions carried Kulsum a little further, to another house, and made the same appeal.
This time, the older woman of the house agreed — on the condition that they leave as soon as Kulsum was cleaned up. Majma Begum and the others agreed readily.
Kulsum went to change her sari at the tube-well. Watching them, something in the old woman's heart softened toward Majma Begum and her companions.
She brought out what puffed rice and flattened rice she had in the house. Majma Begum and the others were overjoyed with even this much. The woman who had lost her breast joined them too, baby in her arms. They sat together on the earthen platform outside the door, eating.
Just then, a young man from the neighborhood, Eshaq Mia, appeared in the yard.
"Have you taken in some Rohingya, Aunt?" he called out in their shared dialect. His eyes drifted toward the woman with the baby, the one who had lost her breast.
Just then the door of the tube-well room opened, and Kulsum stepped out, her wet hair loose around her shoulders.
Seeing Eshaq Mia in the yard, she stopped for a moment; the moment his eyes fell on her, something flickered across his face. Kulsum did not look up, but Majma Begum's eyes did not miss it. The other women grew uneasy too.
"Don't worry, Aunt — I'll sort them out," Eshaq Mia said to the old woman, then turned to Majma Begum and the others.
"Go on and eat. I'll arrange something and come back."
As he turned to leave, his eyes flicked toward Kulsum once more. The women with Majma Begum all understood at once exactly why Eshaq Mia was so eager to help.
Kulsum had no strength left even to stand. She wanted nothing more than a long, deep sleep. But where would she sleep? Nothing here was hers — not the sky, not the earth, not the water.
Only the shared language gave her some small comfort; at least she could speak, could try to explain what she needed.
Having returned, Eshaq Mia led Kulsum and the others to a tent — one among many, crowded with women, men, children, all huddled together with their few bundles. Even so, there was some comfort in it for those who had found shelter here: at least death did not loom over every breath. At least, even by begging, there might be a little food to eat.
Some men approached, carrying a body wrapped in white cloth. As they drew closer, Majma Begum and the others recognized Karam Ali. They understood — Fazar Ali's body had reached Bangladeshi soil after all. Without meaning to, Majma Begum murmured,
"What a fate — a whole life spent on one soil, and he found his grave on another. Only Allah understands His own design."
Days passed into months. Kulsum, with her child, slowly gathered some strength back. Majma Begum managed to bring in relief supplies, and with that, they got by.
Every few days, Eshaq Mia would come by to check on them.
But today, the proposal he brought made Kulsum's whole body tremble. By now she had heard enough that the local men would take young Rohingya women away, and days later they would return, broken. Some were taken in the evening and sent back only the next morning.
Tonight, Eshaq Mia meant to take Kulsum. He had told them to be ready. Majma Begum and Kulsum could see no way out.
After hearing his words, neither of them could swallow a bite of food. Majma Begum went from person to person in the camp, searching, but no one could offer a way forward.
In the end, Kulsum decided on her own. She would run. She would leave the tent before evening came. She told only her mother-in-law. Majma Begum grew frantic.
She had already lost her only son. Now she could not bear to lose her son's wife and grandson too. She did not know what to do.
Then, closing her eyes, Majma Begum told Kulsum her decision. She would go with her. Whatever was to happen would happen. They had already left their own homeland behind for the sake of staying alive — there was no turning back now.
Before evening fell, without a word to anyone in the camp, Kulsum took her month-old baby and her mother-in-law and boarded a bus from Teknaf bound for Chattogram.
By then they had heard that many others were already scattering in different directions, searching for work.
The bus rolled on. Majma Begum drifted into an uneasy doze, her head nodding forward each time the bus braked. Riding on toward no fixed destination, she thought they had left their country to save their lives.
Now, where would they go to save what dignity remained? Where, in all that was left of this life, would they finally find a resting place? Would her own grave, too, lie far from her homeland's soil, just as Fazar Ali's had?
Human beings, she thought, are each other's worst enemies. People harm other people for their own gain. Those who had driven them from Myanmar were human.
And those here who wished to take what little dignity they had left — they were human too. A thousand such thoughts moved through Majma Begum's mind, drifting out through the bus window and dissolving into the passing wind.
Muhammad Moheuddin is a Bangladeshi fiction writer and editor of GOLPOKAR.
