Also by the author
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Ronit & Jamil
Homer the Little Stray Cat
New Beginnings
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Plagiarist
Visitation Rites
Leapfrog Press
Fredonia, New York
Why No Goodbye? © 2019 by Pamela Laskin
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Published in 2019 in the United States by
Leapfrog Press LLC
PO Box 505
Fredonia, NY 14063
www.leapfrogpress.com
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed in the United States by
Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
St. Paul, Minnesota 55114
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Proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to
Fortify Rights
First Edition
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Laskin, Pamela L., author.
Title: Why no goodbye : why no bhine / Pamela Laskin.
Description: First edition. | Fredonia, NY : Leapfrog Press LLC ; St. Paul, Minnesota : Distributed in the United States by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution, 2019. | Summary: When his mother escapes Myanmar with his siblings during the Rohingya crisis, thirteen-year-old Jubair expresses anger over the abandonment and struggles to find forgiveness, in a series of letters.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019021546 | ISBN 9781948585064 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Rohingya (Burmese people)--Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Novels in verse. | Rohingya (Burmese people)--Fiction. | Abandoned chilldren--Fiction. | Separation (Psychology)--Fiction. | Refugees--Fiction. | Letters--Fiction. | Burma--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.5.L37 Wh 2019 | DDC [Fic]--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019021546
To the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar
Acknowledgements
The cover photo is of Rafiqul, a boy from Myanmar. He has been living with his father in a refugee camp in Bangladesh since September 2017, and is waiting for his mother to join them. The photo was taken by the riverside in Shaporir Dip, Bangladesh, a popular place for refugees to cross from neighboring Myanmar. Rafiqul is currently studying in high school grade 8, and would like to continue his education in the future.
Photograph © 2018 Lewis Inman, lewisinman.com.
Special thanks to Matthew and Amy Smith, Fortify Rights.
Thank you RF CUNY, Grant cycle 49, for financial support of the book.
And to my agent, Myrsini Stephanides, Carol Mann Agency, and finally to Samantha Reiser, who consistently fights for human rights all over the world!
Escape to Malaysia
New York Times, June 6th, 2015
How could you leave
your first born,
how could you tell him
his father is dead,
when you are crossing the sea
to Malaysia
with the babies
where he might be.
True
it was full fare
to pay the smugglers
to take Jubair, too,
but you never
even told him
or even
said good-bye.
Part I: Letters to May-may*
*Mother
Why did you leave, May-may?
You know I cannot write,
so why are you writing me?
I gaze at the long, dirt road
which leads to more dirt.
Keh-bah! *
*Help
Why didn’t you teach me to read or write?
You know how to.
It was another gift you kept from me!
Where is my Pay-pay? *
Did he die on the ferry
on the boat
in the air?
*Father
Something terrible happened.
I can still hear your screams
and men
with mean smiles
on their faces,
guns that were arms
arms that were guns
thought nothing
of firing their rage
wildly in our village
and May-may
children
were never spared.
You never taught me to read or write.
Ha Jia is teaching me. He wants to read me your letters.
You can keep your letters
same way you keep my two brothers and sister with you.
Why didn’t you say bhine? *
*Goodbye
I may learn how to read and write,
but I still sleep on the soil.
Last night was a monsoon.
Ha Jia let me sleep inside,
“but just one time”
he has told me.
Everyone in Thayet Oak
knows me,
so sometimes
there are bamboo houses
where I can sleep
for the night.
Yaq! *
Your letters should stop!
*Stop
One night
they barged into the hut
military men
and you told us
to pretend
to sleep,
but I heard
the shrieking
the crying
saw the pools of red
bleeding on the floor,
“Please stop.
Yaq.*
Stop.”
And the men,
they laughed,
and when my sister,
just a baby cried
they laughed
even harder.
*Stop
Ha-Jia says seven is the magical number.
There are five children in his hut.
Hia-Jia and Len-Wen make it seven
and I am the eighth
I am the other child.
What is magic, Mama?
I do not think I have some.
Did you not have enough money
to take me?
I never cursed you before.
I never thought I would.
I would never do this to your face
like street kids do,
but now I am one of them.
Gway Htoot *
to you!
*Gway Htoot: Burmese profanity
I want to stamp you
in the soil
and stamp my feet
till you are crushed like the snake
I step on.
You will drown in the rain.
You will cough
when the soil is dry,
and my ears
will not moisten you.
Thayet Oak means mango orchard
in our language.
Where are they?
Qui Ma.*
*Qui Ma: Burmese profanity
Where do words come from?
You are like the rat who eats the garbage
leaving us so little food.
Ha-Jia does not understand why I write
I hate you.
I will not read your letters.
Your last words to me?
“Don’t cry.
Don’t be sad.
Stay well.”
Lee Gon *
*Lee Gon: Burmese Profanity
Your screams:
Yaq.
Yaq.
Yaq.
Your pleas:
my babies.
Please protect
my babies,
and their laughter
rings in my ears
like a nightmare typhoon
that gets bigger
and uglier
with each monster laugh.
How do you get these letters to me?
Why do you write them?
They are like garbage.
Why did you take my older brother
and leave me tired
and hungry?
How did my father die?
At night, when it is raining
just rain, not storms
I cry for my brother, especially my younger one
I cry for my sister
I cry while the sky
cries with me.
I will write longer letters
when I can do it on my own.
For now I sleep on the soil
and wonder if you feel sad for me
or mad
like I am.
I am like the mandrake in the soil.
I fester
I rot.
And there are ants,
mountains of them
sleeping next to me.
I learned this today.
I can write it, too.
I am a hard worker.
I am an ox.
I am a whale.
This is what Ha-Jia says.
I am dependable.
I like that sound of this:
dependable.
It sounds
like I am someone important.
Why do other Muslims
hate us so?
We are Rohingyas.
We are Muslims, too.
Even the monkeys who roam freely
laugh at me
and they are free.
They laugh like the monsters
who hurt you
and drank blood
for fun.
I had a dream.
I always knew about dreams
even when I could not read
or write.
We are all together
even Papa
who you say
is dead.
My insides do not feel dead
because we are laughing
and Jaynu acts like a clown.
Our little girl,
the princess
she laughs so loud
it makes the sky thunder
in happiness,
and Papa brings back meat
and our stomachs
are full.
Now I know more words,
so I can tell you,
my back is broken from the water pails
I must carry every day
and from the little sleep I get
with a blanket of angry stars above me.
There are dead dogs
in the water,
but Ha Jia
says he boils the water
so I will not get sick.
The air smells
of rot.
I am thirteen soon, I think.
I do not remember my birthday.
Do you?
Do my brothers and sister
remember me?
Why did you take my older brother?
Here is my day:
I wake up tired.
I wake up hungry.
I want to cry.
There is no time for this.
I eat some rice.
I drink some water.
Then I go fetch water
and fetch
and fetch
and fetch
till my arms collapse at my sides
like two dead trunks
of broken wood.
Ha Jia told me you were once beautiful
he told me you dreamed of going to school
of writing poetry.
He said you loved books
and language.
Words were a gift
you kept to yourself
Why didn’t you share them, May-may?
Were you that greedy?
I like them, too.
Why did you write
to tell me this?
This is the first letter you wrote that I am reading.
I will not read the letters in order
if I read them at all.
But telling me
you are in a refugee camp
and what you ate for breakfast.
I want to strangle the rope from the bucket
around your dirty neck.
Here is what I ate for breakfast today.
Nothing.
There was not enough food
for all the children.
Two kernels of rice
nothing
for a crying stomach,
and the monkeys ran around
with bananas.
We had a hut
it was bamboo
and sometimes it felt moist
since the river was inside,
but it was our hut.
We had a hut
with four children,
sometimes there was laughter
sometimes there was mohinga for dinner,
but always
there was a warm body
to feel next to you,
and someone
to share stories with.
We had a hut
a mat to sleep on
we never walked under the clothesline,
we had a hut
and I had a hug
even though I had to share it.
This is what I think
one day I had a father
he farmed, he made some money
sometimes we ate laphet
sometimes we could not,
but we were a family.
He left
for safety
for the family,
but he didn’t take the family.
This is what I know
that is some cruel joke
since you are gone, too.
You said he died
you do not know how,
but now you are alone.
You are not alone.
You have three other children.
I am alone.
And there are water rats
to keep me company.
You have died for me.
And the nightmares
of the military men
laughing in the wind
keep me scared
every sleeping moment.
Did he really die?
How?
This does not seem real,
nor do the bush fires.
Nor do the bullets I hear all around.
Sometimes, at night, the bullets dance
they weave in and out of stars
like a bad nightmare.
Why didn’t he come home
when he knew the men
had hurt you?
You couldn’t even rise
from the floor.
This is what I think
(and this is what Ha Jia told me)
we have no citizenship
no jobs
no benefits,
no education
our mosques were destroyed
monuments and cemeteries
destroyed;
this is what I know
Pay-pay was smart to die
(if he really died)
because we have no future.
Why did you name me Jubair?
it is an odd name
an uncomfortable name,
no one else has it.
I want what everyone else has
a normal name
a mat to sleep on
the indoors
a h
ome.
Last night
a monkey shrieked in my face
and I screamed at him
till my voice
was gone;
I saw that his face
was filled with terror.
This is what I think
I used to play
I used to clap
my sister jumped rope,
sometimes I skipped around
with nowhere to go.
I helped with chores,
but I was not the only one.
Once I saw a balloon,
and this is what I know
it was colorful and bright
but it disappeared
in the sky.
This is what I know
the sky at night
is filled with monster sounds-
hissing,
screeching
sometimes girls
plead
no
no
no,
and there are guns
going off
cries
no
no
no,
the monkeys wail
for their Mamas;
yes,
I want to get out of here,
but how?
This is what I think
tomorrow
when I wake up
may be the last day.
Why No Goodbye? Page 1