Round them up. With a jolt, Hasina recognises those words. Was that the day she was outside the bazaar? The day she encountered the young soldier?
‘They were looking for ARSA fighters. They took us and Bashir, my uncle, out the back. They lined us up and asked us questions.’ Isak pauses, gathers his breath. ‘They beat us. They cut us. They left us for dead. Only, I wasn’t dead. I crawled back into the bazaar. In the morning they came for the bodies with trucks. I could hear them shouting about loading the stiffs. I have been in the storeroom ever since.’
‘But what about Bashy?’ Araf cried. ‘Where is Bashy?’
Isak turns away. When he faces them again, his eyes are full of tears. He looks broken, like one of his puppets. ‘I am the only Brother and Son now,’ he says softly.
Hasina’s head spins. Isak is no ARSA fighter. He is a boy. And Bashir was a small child.
There’s a soft miaow, and Daamini rubs against Isak’s legs. Araf picks her up and puts her in his lap. Daamini sits, purring.
‘Isak, did you hear anything about our parents? They’ve disappeared too.’
‘I heard the soldiers talking. They are pushing people to Bangladesh. Many people from this town went there. Hasina, I heard someone say they saw your father.’
Relief floods through her. Baba!
‘Was anyone with him?’ Ghadiya asks anxiously.
‘Yes. Your mother, Ghadiya, and yours too, Hasina.’
Mama and Aunt Rukiah were with Baba. If only she could be certain it were true. But that also means Asmah is still missing. Hasina is torn. Who should she hope has survived?
There is another question. What can they do with Isak? Should they take him back to what remains of their home? Will he be offended if she asks? It is not proper for her to have a boy, even Isak, in her house. But these are strange times. Proper doesn’t seem to count anymore.
Araf solves the problem for her. ‘Isak, come to our house. We will take care of you.’
Isak lifts his broken mouth into a stiff smile. ‘Maybe tomorrow, Araf. I don’t think I can walk there. Right now, all I want to do is sleep.’
‘Tomorrow you will come,’ Araf insists.
Hasina sighs. If only she could feel so sure about what tomorrow would bring.
Chapter 19
They settle Isak back into the storeroom. Araf brings him water to drink. Ghadiya opens a dented tin of dut for him. They promise to return in the morning.
All the way home, Hasina thinks about Isak. How alone he must feel, the only brother, the only son. At least she has Araf and Ghadiya. And there was news of Baba, Mama and Aunt Rukiah. Even her house is still partly standing.
Isak’s news brings fresh questions; has Baba left for Bangladesh without them? Hasina cannot believe this is possible.
When they arrive home, something is not right. Someone has dumped a pile of rags in front of their house.
As Hasina draws closer, she sees it is not rags, but a person.
And then the rags move, as if whipped up by the wind, and take a human form. A small person stands upright. With a jolt, Hasina recognises who that person is.
‘Dadi Asmah!’
In a few bounds, Hasina is beside her grandmother. ‘You’re here!’
She is about to wrap Asmah in the biggest of hugs when she stops short at the sight of her grandmother up close. Dadi Asmah looks like she might crumple under a big hug. Her eyes are red-rimmed and sunken. Her shoulder bows, her head moves slowly and stiffly on her neck. The hawk-like nose, so familiar in her face, is now sharper, bonier, as if it is stretching the skin around her eyes and hollow cheeks.
‘Hasina!’ Dadi Asmah’s voice is a croak so dismal that Hasina barely recognises her own name. What has happened to the voice that told so many stories? Then her grandmother smiles.
That smile! It is the same as ever, and what it shows right now is the deepest joy. And those red eyes shine with tears that run down Dadi Asmah’s dusty skin, leaving wet tracks.
She croaks again. ‘Araf! Ghadiya!’
From behind her, Hasina hears Araf and Ghadiya’s shouts of ‘Dadi, Dadi!’ She feels rather than hears Araf’s footsteps as he accelerates, about to launch himself into Asmah’s arms.
Hasina is just turning, just about to stop him, when a fierce creature leaps out from behind Dadi Asmah’s legs and plants itself between Asmah and Araf. Dark eyes glower from beneath a ragged fringe as the creature growls and hisses a warning through bared teeth. The message is clear: ‘Leave her alone, or you will have me to deal with.’
Araf is so stunned that he changes direction midair and lands behind Hasina, clamping himself to her leg. Ghadiya too pulls in beside Hasina, but instead of hiding, Hasina senses that Ghadiya is there to help her withstand this new threat – this spitting, growling, fierce creature that has come between them and their grandmother.
It takes Hasina a moment to realise that it is a girl. A brown, cat-eyed, long-nailed, tangle-haired, absolutely filthy little scrap of a girl.
‘Hush, hush,’ Dadi Asmah soothes the fierce girl, placing a hand on her shoulder. The girl stops growling, but she does not relax that fighting stance.
Now Hasina can see that she is tiny. Hardly a threat at all, unless fierceness alone counts. Like Asmah, the girl looks weak and exhausted. When was the last time these two ate?
‘Ghadiya,’ she asks her cousin in a soft voice, so as not to set the cat-girl off into another round of hissing and growling, ‘those biscuits, please?’
Ghadiya hands her the tin of broken biscuits. Slowly, gently, Hasina removes the lid and extends the tin towards the girl. ‘Would you like one? Go on.’
The girl glances at Dadi Asmah, who nods her permission. The girl cautiously extends her fingers then, quick as a flash, snatches a biscuit from the tin. Never taking her gaze from Hasina, she licks the biscuit. Then nibbles at it, then crunches it, then crams the rest into her mouth, chewing hungrily. The biscuit is gone in a heartbeat.
Hasina offers her the whole biscuit tin and the girl takes it in her hands as if it is something precious. With a shi-kho, she hands it to Asmah. Asmah offers her the tin in turn, and once again the girl takes a biscuit, this time crunching into it noisily.
Meanwhile, Dadi Asmah hugs her grandchildren. Araf first, Ghadiya next and finally, Hasina. Nothing feels so good as being wrapped in her grandmother’s arms. At last, Hasina thinks, we really are home.
They retreat beneath the brick veranda, the girl and Asmah passing the tin of biscuits between them, while Hasina lights a fire, boils water, makes tea, hands her grandmother a cracked cup. Asmah takes a sip; a smile of pleasure warms her face.
‘Dadi,’ says Araf, his voice serious, ‘we do not know where Mama or Baba are. Or Aunt Rukiah. We do not know where everyone is.’
Asmah’s smile fades. She seems to shrivel before their eyes.
‘I left your parents a few days ago.’ Parents! That meant Baba and Mama and Aunt Rukiah were alive. Hasina’s heart leaps with relief. And yet Dadi Asmah’s face is so sad. ‘They have gone from Teknadaung. They are walking to Bangladesh.’
So, what Isak had heard was true. But that meant …
‘Bangladesh! You mean they left us behind?’
Asmah places her cup of tea on the ground. She hangs her head. ‘Yes, they left you behind. We left you behind.’
Hasina feels a vice-like grip squeezing her heart. Tears scald her eyes and constrict her throat. She turns her face away from her grandmother’s. She cannot believe this is true. Ever since they’d run to the High Forest she’d wondered why Baba had not come for them. Now she wonders, did he even look for us?
Asmah gives a deep sigh and continues her story. ‘On the night the men came … it felt like the end of the world. We were like animals. We were so afraid.’ She shivers at the memory of it. ‘Baba saw you three run up the road. And then, he saw men come from that direction. Bad men with covered faces. And fire.’
Hasina remembers the three men waiting by the stan
dpipe. The man in the middle had lit first one torch and then the other. With those torches, those men destroyed her home. The realisation hits her like a blow.
‘Your baba was already out of the house. He was going to find you. But …’
Tears well up in Asmah’s eyes, they leave shiny tracks along her cheeks.
‘… everywhere was on fire. We ran outside. There was screaming, crying. Our neighbours and our friends. Some ran to the river, others ran to the paddy fields.’
Asmah wipes away her tears. ‘We ran to the Lower Forest. We were not alone. There were others from Eight Quarters. All night we watched our homes burn.’
Hasina’s heart hurts at the thought of her grandmother watching the home her father built burning.
‘Before the dawn, the men who had set Eight Quarters on fire came to the forest. When they found us, they told us that they would let us live if we left. If we went back to where we came from.’
‘Back to where we came from? But this is where we come from.’ Araf’s voice is tiny, confused, tearful. ‘This is where we all come from.’
Asmah continues. ‘At first, it was just us, from Eight Quarters. Then, as we walked it was others from Teknadaung. Then from other villages and towns. Sometimes the men came back, to make sure we kept going and did not turn for home.’
Hasina thinks of the young soldier’s officer barking, ‘Round them up.’ What if such a man found you, all alone in the woods? If it was her, would she have run too? Would she have left Araf and Ghadiya and saved herself?
‘But where are they going?’ Araf demands.
‘To the Naf River. From there they can cross into Bangladesh. There are camps there. Camps where our people are gathering in great numbers.’
‘But why didn’t they wait for us?’ Araf’s voice trembles.
‘They were being forced to go, Araf,’ Ghadiya explains, her voice dull. ‘They had no choice.’
So this is how Ghadiya has felt all along, Hasina thinks. Empty. Angry. Like the world has lost its colour.
Ghadiya breaks the silence with a question.
‘Why didn’t you go with them, Dadi?’
‘I did. But I cannot walk fast. I got lost. I too was left behind.’ Asmah smiles bitterly.
‘I didn’t mind. I thought, if I have to die, then let it be in my home.’
Hasina shudders. Is that what will happen now? They will all die here. And her parents will never know it.
‘How long until they walk there?’ Araf asks.
‘I don’t know.’
‘How will we know when they are there?’
‘I don’t know,’ Asmah repeats. Her skin pales and she leans against the brick wall, closing her eyes. In the late afternoon sun, Hasina can almost see the bones beneath her grandmother’s skin. How long was she without food? Without water? Does she need medicine? Or just sleep?
Ghadiya breaks the silence. ‘How did you find the girl?’
‘The girl’ looks up, as if she knows that she is being talked about.
‘She is a Mro girl. And she understands Burmese.’ Asmah demonstrates. ‘Can you find me a flower?’ she asks the girl, who nods and runs off immediately. While she is gone, Dadi Asmah tells her story.
‘When I lost the others, I followed a stream back to the river, then followed the river. Our own Farak River, which I know so well. I slept beneath a tree one night, in a cave on another. On the third day, I found this girl.
‘I was walking upstream. There is a place where the river opened out, and the forest sloped upwards – a good place to stop and take a drink. This is where she was. She was among her family, trying to wake them up, but they were all dead. They are not Muslim. They are not Buddhist. They were people of the forest.’
Hasina glances towards the cat girl, searching the ashen gardens for green shoots. How it must have hurt to leave those sleeping bodies behind. How hard it is to be the one who is left alive.
‘Was it Sit Tat?’ Araf demands. Hasina stares at him in surprise. How quickly he has learned these words. Again, she wonders how much of this he understands.
Asmah shakes her head. ‘So many people have been killed. Some by Sit Tat, who fight for a Buddhist nation. Others by the Arakanese Army, who fight for an Arakanese nation. But this girl’s family were killed by ARSA, who fight for the Rohingya. Our people killed her people.’
Hasina reels. This girl’s family had been killed in her name, as a Rohingya. What say did she, Hasina, have in this act? None at all.
The Mro girl returns, a purple orchid in her fingers. She holds it as if it is a precious jewel. She is about to hand it to Asmah, but then she turns and gives it instead to Hasina.
Hasina holds the flower flat in her hand. It looks like a miracle. But what good are miracles if she cannot save those she loves? She places the flower on the ground.
She stands up. ‘Araf, time to let Dadi rest. And this girl too.’
Mechanically, Hasina looks at the sky. Maghirb, the dusk prayer – time to cook dinner. She realises this is the first time she has remembered prayers since the attack.
And what, she asks herself, is the point of praying? What is the point of a god?
She turns automatically towards the makeshift kitchen, pours the rice and lentils salvaged from the bazaar into a deshi. Lights a fire.
The perfume of cooking rice fills the air, but she gets no pleasure from it.
She spoons the meal onto a tray, places it in front of her grandmother and the girl, her brother and cousin. This is an act of love. But she does not feel love, only numbness.
She sits to eat. ‘Bismillah karo hamam rahin,’ she murmurs. She fills her mouth with grains of rice. But she might as well be eating the ash from the houses burnt around her.
We are targets, she thinks. Nobody wants us, she thinks.
But they did want each other, her family. Or so she had believed.
Her baba had made her promise to keep the three of them together so that he could find them. But that same Baba has left them behind. Like Monu Mush’s horns in the ash. Like the broken puppets at the Brothers & Sons Puppet Stall.
There is nothing left to rely on.
Hasina, the girl she once was, who loved geometry, who could take a shot on goal from the midfield, who could speak Myanmar and English and loved her baba above all, that girl is gone. As dead and lifeless as Rivka, the girl in the field covered only by a longyi. In her place is the Hasina she is now: a shell that once was that girl. A body with a head, with hands, with a belly. But empty, because her heart is now broken and she fears it will never mend.
Chapter 20
The monsoon settles over Rakhine. Rain swells the Farak River and washes the ash away. It leaks through the roof at Third Mile Street, drip, drip, dripping into a corner of Aunt Rukiah’s room. The sound wakes Hasina long before Fagr. She lies there waiting to see if the sun will rise, Ghadiya on one side, Araf on the other. When the dawn does finally come, all she feels is sad; the time when her family was there and she was whole slips further away.
She rouses Ghadiya and Araf before padding into Dadi Asmah’s room to wake Cat Girl. They gather all the buckets and tins they possess and walk for half an hour to a flat place by the river. Sometimes, out in the centre in the fast water, a body drifts past. One time, Hasina sees five footballs bobbing in the current. Too late, she realises that these balls have hair, noses and mouths.
Back home, after prayers, Hasina sends the children out to forage. Cat Girl is excellent at finding food. She has also taken a shine to Araf. There is nowhere he can go where she will not follow. Each morning, she takes him by the hand and they return with wild guavas, or wild garlic. Occasionally an egg. But it is never enough for all of them. One breakfast, Cat Girl presents him with a juicy white grub. ‘Yeuch,’ he says. But hunger wins. ‘Tastes like chicken.’
Ghadiya lights the fire for cooking while Hasina measures how much of their rice, salvaged from the stall, remains. At first, the grains go all the way up to her elbow.
Then to her forearm. Then only to her wrist. Each day, breakfast gets a little smaller. And she learns that hunger burns in the belly just like fear.
They eat off the communal tray on the verandah. If Dadi Asmah is feeling poorly, as she often is, Cat Girl or Araf takes her a small tin lid of rice. Dadi Asmah does not eat all of hers. Instead, she gives it to Araf or Cat Girl; she thinks Hasina doesn’t know.
Then it is time for the bazaar. Hasina rubs thanaka onto her face, as she used to when taking lunch to Baba. But this is thanaka from Aunt Rukiah’s dressing table. Her own jar, along with everything else that was once hers, is now ash. Only her numal remains, and that she leaves folded on her aunt’s dressing table, next to Ghadiya’s. The square of orange and purple cloth is a bright reminder of how things used to be.
A few days after Dadi Asmah comes home, Eid al-Adha, the festival of the sacrifice, begins. ‘Last year, we had fireworks,’ Araf reminds Hasina as she puts him to bed.
‘I remember,’ she sighs. Tara had brought pencils to the madrassa as presents. Aziza gave her mother a hodu hak. Now, there are no other Rohingya to exchange gifts with. Only the old and injured are left. How they survive, she cannot imagine.
Even the Arakanese have been leaving in droves. Teknadaung feels empty, as if time itself has stopped.
Yet, the days pass. A whole week goes by. Then another.
The bazaar is still quiet and the Rohingya section, deserted. The army may be gone, but her Arakanese neighbours and their old customers are either too scared or too ashamed to come near them. Only the very poor and penny-pinchers venture to the back of the market.
‘I’ll give you fifty kyats,’ a woman barks, holding up a packet of shampoo worth two hundred. Hasina has no choice but to take it. How else will she pay for the food they need?
‘It is not against the law to be a Rohingya,’ Isak proclaims, pretending defiance. He is right. But that doesn’t mean it is safe. That is why the two of them stick together when she is at the bazaar. Why she often brings Ghadiya or Araf with her. Her uncle’s reminder – stay together. His words – you are a Rohingya, you are a target –still ring in her ears.
Hasina: Through My Eyes Page 10