The highly anticipated 10th edition of the Dhaka Lit Fest, featured poetry and artwork by Rohingya refugees.
This session was moderated by Shahirah Majumder with Abdullah Habib, Shahida Win and Aylah Akhter as guests.
All three of them are refugees of the Mayanmar crisis, currently residing in the Cox's Bazar Rohingya camp.
Abdullah, a poet and photographer, recited his own poem, "Give me a chance," in which he described the difficulties faced by refugees and how they were forced to give up most of their aspirations due to being uprooted and staying in camps.
He recounted how he learned photography without any formal training by taking pictures of the refugee camps and their living conditions.
Since the literacy rate inside the camps is very low, Ayala, an artist, stressed the value of figure painting for communication.
Under contrast to texts, which can be fairly worthless in certain circumstances, artwork on posters and banners in the camps has helped people comprehend and discover things.
When Shahida read her own poetry, "A Great Daughter," she mentioned Malala Yousaf as an inspiration and how she overcome challenges. She shared similar feelings, claiming that she could never have imagined that she could now communicate her experiences through her artwork.
