Later that morning, Araf climbs the tree again and sees the trucks turning onto the beach highway. By the early afternoon, they are all gone. The shadows grow longer, and still Baba does not come.
Will they have to spend another night in the hollow? At the thought of this, Hasina feels despair. She turns to the others. ‘Baba hasn’t come, but the trucks have gone. If we don’t go home now, we spend another night in the hollow. If we do go home …’
‘Can we just go?’ Ghadiya begs. ‘Please, Hasina?’
Never before has Ghadiya spoken to her like this. It is as if she is the married woman already, the wife, the mother, the responsible one, when really, she is just Hasina, a girl only a year older than Ghadiya. Why can’t they just go home? And with that realisation, another one comes.
What Baba promised was for a time that is already in the past. Both Ghadiya and Araf are looking at her, watching for what she will say, because it is up to her. They are her responsibility now. She has to decide.
‘Okay. Let’s go home.’
Is it the right thing to say? Just saying the words makes her feel better. They are going home. No more waiting.
But again Hasina’s heart clenches with fear. What will they find there?
There is only one way to find out. Hasina winds her numal, tattered and dirty, around her hair. She has fished with it at the stream, used it as a blanket and a dressing. Ghadiya picks up her orange bag. Nothing remains of them in the hollow except the patches of flattened leaves where they slept, Hasina on the left, Ghadiya on the right and Araf snuggled in between.
‘Ready?’
‘Ready,’ Ghadiya nods.
‘Goodbye, hollow.’ Araf waves his little hand at the campsite.
‘Yeah,’ adds Ghadiya, ‘thanks for everything.’
Suddenly, Hasina feels sad to be leaving the hollow. It has been cool when it needed to be cool, warm when it needed to be warm, dry too. It has kept them hidden. It has kept them safe.
Now it is time to go home. But to what, she does not know.
Chapter 16
Hasina walks out of the mottled shade of the forest and into a grey morning. She helps Ghadiya clamber down the rocky path. She holds Araf’s hand as they pick their way along the raised sandy path across the Arakanese paddy fields.
Just like on the day she met the soldier at the bazaar, the paddy fields are empty. There are no children on their way home from school. Even the birds and dogs are silent. Still, Hasina moves carefully and speaks in a low tone. Ghadiya and Araf follow her lead, frightened of breaking the silence.
At the riverbank, they made quick work crossing the Children’s Bridge. Hasina’s spirits lift a little. Araf first, tripping across the pontoons on light feet, turning to splash them. Araf, so naughty, so predictable! Ghadiya second, shuffling on her bottom, like a crab. Hasina, bringing up the rear.
With each step, she feels eager to get home one moment, uneasy at what they might find the next. Baba and Mama didn’t come to find them. But there could be good reasons for that, couldn’t there?
At last they are approaching the corner for Third Mile Street.
‘What has happened to the pump?’ Araf asks in a small voice.
The standpipe is broken. Not just broken, but smashed. The handle is splintered near the fulcrum, the broken bit of metal tossed to one side. All that is left is a tiny stub of the handle, impossible to pump. The spout is pinched flat.
‘The men did that.’ Ghadiya’s voice is flat.
‘I’m thirsty,’ says Araf.
‘So am I,’ says Ghadiya.
Hasina is too. Just looking at the standpipe makes her thirsty. ‘We’ll get a drink at home from the chatty pot.’
Still Araf and Ghadiya stand staring at the pump. ‘Come on,’ Hasina says.
But when they turn into Third Mile Street, she cannot believe her eyes. The street where she has lived all her life, that she knows like the back of her hand, is almost unrecognisable.
Where there were houses standing close together, there is now mostly sky. Where there were rambling gardens, full of chickens and ducks and vines and herbs and fruit trees, there are only blackened sticks and brown leaves. Even the air is different. Heavy as the stone in her belly and stinking of smoke. It catches in her throat, choking her and making her eyes water.
Hasina stands taking it all in for a long moment, wiping her eyes, Ghadiya and Araf rooted to the spot beside her. Eventually Hasina shakes herself, forcing her legs to move forward, forcing one foot in front of the other. ‘Come on,’ she says to the others.
Araf slips his little hand into hers. Then Ghadiya does the same, and they start along Third Mile.
No one speaks. All they can do is walk and look. So much has changed, it is hard to take it all in.
A wall standing on its own is all that remains of a bamboo house. On the other side of the street, a chimney has nothing around it. Ahead, a house is missing its roof. How will it keep dry when the rains come? To the left, an entire roof of corrugated metal lies crumpled on the ground. Scattered across the road are ordinary things, like cooking pots. Bedsheets. A ripped poster. Shirts and trousers. A beautiful dress. A smashed chatty pot. A teacup and half of a saucer.
Is this why Baba didn’t come? Is it because there is so much to be done right here? So much to be cleaned up? Or is there some other, worse reason? Hasina feels a thickness rising in her throat.
But this is not what is worst of all. Worst of all is that in this, their once bustling street, there is now not a single sign of life.
No Aziza Begum, grower of fat, tasty hodu hak – her garden is black.
No sour old Rafee Hussain, spying on them – his house is a smoking patch of ash.
Sabikam Nahor’s house stands, but in her garden is a mighty pair of buffalo horns, swarming with flies.
‘Monu Mush!’ Araf exclaims with a sob. ‘Why would they kill Monu Mush?’ Hasina too feels like her heart will break. Big, beautiful Monu Mush. Why kill an animal? What has Monu Mush ever done to anybody? They walk on, Araf still sobbing.
Hasina’s heart lurches as the brown speckled brick of their own house comes into view. Baba and Mama and Aunt Rukiah and Dadi, all of them could be inside their house, waiting. She walks a little faster, dragging on Araf and Ghadiya’s hands.
But something about her home seems stranger the closer she gets to it. Hasina cannot put her finger on what. All she knows is that the stone in her stomach is growing heavier. Why?
Right at that minute, Araf also sees the familiar brick of their house rising above the ruined trees. He drops her hand and starts to run. ‘Mama, Mama!’ he calls out. ‘I am home!’
Araf, so predictable. Araf, so quick.
Suddenly, Hasina understands that stone-in-the-stomach feeling. Their house, like all the other houses in Third Mile Street, is still and silent. Maybe Mama and Baba aren’t at home. Or maybe something far, far worse is waiting for them inside. She remembers the body she saw bobbing in the river and her gorge rises. ‘Araf ! Wait!’
But he does not stop. Instead, she sees his little heels flying up even higher.
‘Come on,’ Hasina shouts to Ghadiya, speeding after her little brother.
Araf jumps the old pots and pans in the road. He dips around the bits of metal roof and broken tree branches. He squeezes beneath what is left of their fence. Hasina pounds after him, but he is way ahead of her, already disappearing past the kitchen wall.
Hasina rounds the wooden wall of the kitchen and lets out a gasp. All that is left of it are the two walls. The cast-iron pots and pans, usually stacked neatly on a wire rack, are either crushed or have disappeared. The deep braziers which held the wood fires are all kicked over. The tidy bags of spices, twists of herbs, rattan boxes of tea, the tongs and spoons and chopping suri, all are gone.
So is Araf. She can just see his heel as he kicks it up, running on past the kitchen towards the madrassa. Now he is calling, ‘Mama, Mama,’ and ‘Aunty, Aunty,’ expecting Aunt Ruki
ah to be in the madrassa. Hasina gives a final backward glance at their ruined kitchen and follows him.
Their madrassa, where she heard the helicopters for the first time, is only an outline of ash where the woven bamboo walls once stood. Gone are the wooden desks, their schoolbooks, their papers and pens. Hasina’s precious maths textbook with the kyat notes tucked in it, her savings towards the next maths book, is gone. Only the blackboard where Aunt Rukiah showed them how to do their calculations is left. This stands out in the sunshine, all on its own. Araf is stopped here, staring, as if Aunt Rukiah has just written up a line of sums he doesn’t understand.
‘Araf, stop,’ Hasina calls out, slowing down, catching her breath, forcing her voice to be gentle. ‘Araf.’
Araf glances back at her over his shoulder, but only briefly. ‘Baba, Baba!’ he shouts. And then he is off again, dodging Hasina’s arms as she tries to catch him. How is he able to run so fast? She herself is feeling light-headed, slow-limbed, the weight in her belly pulling her back.
‘Araf! Stop!’ she begs.
Araf races towards the wooden part of the house, where his bedroom is and where their parents sleep.
Warmth drains from Hasina’s body.
She pelts after him. The closer she gets, the stronger the stink of smoke. Now, as she turns the corner, there is too much light. She looks up – Mama and Baba’s bedroom is gone, her mother’s scent of kohl and cloves, her father’s piles of newspapers, the handsome clock which called the times for prayer. Araf’s bedroom too, his toys and games and clothes. What is left of the wooden walls is charred and blackened.
She follows him through the doorway and inside. Araf races through the wooden building and into the brick heart of the house where Dadi Asmah and Aunt Rukiah sleep.
‘Dadi,’ he bellows. ‘Dadi!’ This is the only part of the house that is still intact. It reeks of smoke, but it looks and feels familiar.
Hasina catches up with him in their grandmother’s room. Here are all Asmah’s things. The shelf of books. The blue tin of biscuits. The frilly pink curtains. But the room is empty. Of their parents, their aunt, their grandmother, there is no sign at all in the house.
‘Where is she?’ Araf demands. He turns to Hasina, his face furious.
‘Where are they? Where is everybody?’
Chapter 17
‘Hello?’
Hasina startles at the voice. Is that Aunt Rukiah? With a thud of disappointment, she realises it is only Ghadiya, calling out as she limps after them.
When Ghadiya arrives in Asmah’s room her face is pale with shock. She glances quickly around, then hurries next door to her mother’s room. When she comes back, her eyes are wide. ‘Isn’t anybody here?’
‘Nobody,’ Hasina replies.
‘Where are they?’ Araf demands, and then, ‘Are they dead?’
Here is the question Hasina has been asking herself since they first arrived at Third Mile Street. With each step through the house, she half-expected to come upon the twisted and blackened corpses of her family. Now at least she knows that her mother and father, grandmother and aunt escaped the fire that consumed half the house.
But did they escape only to die in some field like the girl under the longyi? And if they aren’t dead, have they run away and left them behind?
Suddenly, Hasina misses their hollow in the forest beneath the fringe of leaves, when she still had faith that Baba would come for them. Exhaustion washes through her. She half-climbs, half-falls onto her grandmother’s bed.
Araf climbs across the bedspread to snuggle in beside her. Ghadiya burrows in on her other side. The three of them lie there, silent, for a long time.
Suddenly, Ghadiya sits bolt upright. ‘The hand phone!’ she exclaims. ‘We are forgetting the hand phone.’
She limps quickly to her mother’s room, next door, Hasina and Araf following.
Aunt Rukiah kept her room tidy and, despite the fire, it remains as neat as she left it. The maths textbook she brought with her from the south is propped up on the shelf beside her bed. There is little else in the room – or so Hasina thinks.
Ghadiya takes the chair from the dressing table and places it next to the curtains. Next, she climbs up onto the chair and, standing on tiptoe, reaches behind the curtain rod. Hasina gasps. Behind the curtain rod in the brick wall is some sort of hiding space. One that is totally undetectable from anywhere in the room.
Ghadiya plunges her hand into this space and pulls out a small, cloth-wrapped package. Inside is the cracked hand phone. ‘My mama would never leave Teknadaung without this,’ she exclaims triumphantly.
‘Then where is she?’
Ghadiya’s face falls, but Araf has a point. Finding the hand phone won’t help them to work out where Baba, Mama, Dadi and Aunt Rukiah are, or even if they’re together. ‘I don’t know.’ Her face suddenly brightens. ‘But we can call my baba!’
Just like Aunt Rukiah, she sweeps a finger along the glass surface and stabs at the screen. The phone makes a noise like a bird, then a high-pitched burst of sound. After that, like a miracle, Uncle Rashid’s voice comes through the phone. ‘Hello?’
‘Baba? It’s Ghadiya!’
When Uncle Rashid hears Ghadiya’s voice, he starts to sob. ‘You are alive!’ Ghadiya, too, weeps. It is a few minutes before they can speak.
‘Baba, Mama is not here.’
‘What?’ Rashid’s voice jolts out of the phone.
Ghadiya puts the phone on speaker and lays it on the bed so they can all hear.
‘I don’t know where Mama is. Or Uncle. Or Aunty. Or Dadi. Only Araf and Hasina are left here. We don’t know what to do.’
‘Tell me exactly what happened.’ Rashid’s voice is rough with emotion.
Ghadiya tells him about the attack. How it had come at night. About the men and the fires they lit.
‘Sit Tat,’ her father grunts.
Ghadiya explains how they hid in the forest for five days. How they saw the Myanmar Army trucks leaving.
‘They had to leave,’ Rashid says. ‘The Arakanese Army are attacking at the border.’
Ghadiya continues, describing how the standpipe has been destroyed and most of Third Mile Street is now ash. ‘Baba, what should we do?’
‘The television reports many attacks on Rohingya. Rohingya are being driven from their homes. Your mama, uncle, aunty and dadi, all of them may have had to run.’
Is that what happened? They have run? Without them? But where?
‘Uncle, they have no permits,’ Hasina says.
Uncle Rashid’s voice becomes even more serious. ‘Rohingya are not just being driven out of their homes, they are being driven out of Myanmar. They are allowed to leave, if they go to Bangladesh.’
Hasina can feel the blood draining from her face. Bangladesh? That is another country.
‘Last week, thousands of people arrived at the camps there in a single day.’ Uncle Rashid pauses. He takes a breath. ‘Hasina, listen to me carefully.’
‘Yes, Uncle Rashid.’
‘You are very brave. Ghadiya and Araf are lucky to have you take care of them. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
Her uncle’s praise brings the anguish of the past few days flooding back. Hasina has to swallow her tears.
‘But Hasina, you will need to be braver still. Every Rohingya is now a target. You are in danger from the police, the Sit Tat, the Buddhist extremists. They all want you out. And if not out, then worse.’
Hasina’s blood runs cold.
‘Our family is in your hands. You must keep everyone together in Teknadaung. Otherwise, we may never find you again. Can you do that?’
‘I will try, Uncle.’
‘Good. I will do everything I can to find your parents, and your mama, Ghadiya. I will call when I have news.’
Uncle Rashid goes on to explain that they must keep the phone hidden, that they must keep the battery charged. He gives them the number of a Rohingya lawyer in Sittwe, someone they can trust. Hasina onl
y half-listens as Ghadiya writes it down. All she can think is, Targets, we are targets. We are in danger.
‘I love you all.’ And Rashid rings off.
In the silence, Araf and Ghadiya look to Hasina, their eyes wide. How is she, a fourteen-year-old girl, meant to keep them safe from the police, the Sit Tat, the angry Arakanese and Buddhists?
How will she keep her promise? And if she can’t, what then?
Chapter 18
You are Rohingya. You are a target.
Her uncle’s words wake Hasina early the next morning. She lets the others sleep on. She has thinking to do.
They may be targets, but they still have to eat and drink. And now, they must also make sure the hand phone is charged.
For this they will need to go to the family’s stall at the bazaar. ‘Mama always charged the phone at the stall,’ Ghadiya explained the night before. Hasina shivers – the last time she was there she came face to face with a Sit Tat soldier. Were they right in assuming that no trucks meant no more soldiers? If they are wrong, they could be walking into a trap of their own making.
On the other hand, there is an outside chance that the bazaar will have reopened and they will hear news of their family. A mist of hope films her eyes.
When the others wake, they all set off for the bazaar – they must stick together. They hide the phone and charger in a dented tiffin tin so they look to all the world like three children bringing lunch to their father. The last thing Hasina and Ghadiya do is leave their numals on Rukiah’s dressing table. Today, they will pass for Arakanese to strangers. As for those who know them? Their neighbours at the bazaar? Farmers in the paddy fields? People they’ve been passing in the street all of their lives? We will just have to hope they don’t turn us in, Hasina thinks.
The morning is still cool as they walk along Third Mile Street. All over again, Hasina feels the painful shock of seeing a place once so familiar now so profoundly changed. They stop as they pass Monu Mush’s horns.
Hasina: Through My Eyes Page 8