Nausea was spilling like soup in my eyes around 1 am, as I turned in bed. It was the Monday night I had just finished marking 2100 MCQs and 42 mini essays. Meanwhile, I got an urgent email from two of my students, saying they had 24 hours to apply for a Rohingya student scholarship in Canada, which would change their lives.
As I began to scratch the bottom of the pot for leftover knowledge on writing personal statements, I needed more information on their lives in the camps so I could relate it to the public health and biology undergrads they were applying for. However, doing so, I slowly realised that whilst the Rohingya crisis was always described to me as “the textbook definition of ethnic cleansing” , it was in fact, my students who were the remaining pages of this genocide.
As they stepped into class every day, they were the river water coloured chapters and scribbled annotations of survival. Their stories proved to be first hand historical proof of international humanitarian failure. How they had been shoved under the UNHCR’s ‘refugee’ carpet.
A Little Background
The Rohingya are a small, majority Muslim, ethnic group that are descendents of Arab traders, who have long settled in South Asia. However, they have faced constant displacement, making them the most vulnerable group in South East Asia. Most recently, they have been forced to flee violent attacks in Myanmar, a Buddhist majority country, that launched its most potent onslaughts from 25th August 2017, killing at least 6, 700 Rohingya within the first month of violence.
Escaped refugees find themselves now settling in the UNHCR camps in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, which houses 1.1 million refugees, making it the world’s largest refugee camp. The Rohingya are denied visas or nationality cards/ID in Myanmar, neither are they permitted a Bengali identity. They are unfortunately stateless, and have no international identity outside their UNHRC refugee cards.
My employer, the Asian University for Women, has enrolled 369 women out of the 1.1 million from the Rohingya community.
Foreword for Interview
Everything from this interview is non fiction and a first hand retelling. The words and stories are direct words from these two rohingya students, transcribed by me. They have given permission and sincerely asked that their story be shared:
“Mam I don’t want anything from this. To me it is enough that people will hear this story. Because no one has asked us before.”
“Mam, when I heard you were a writer, me and (redacted name) were wondering maybe mam could write about us. We were too scared to ask. No one asks about our peoples.”
Aliases will be used to keep their identity private.
After I finished teaching for the day, I sat in the empty conference room as the sun was on its last leg, where I met two students for an impromptu meeting.
PART I: Samia’s Story
As Samia walks in, you can’t tell the difference between her and any other university student from across the world. The same oversized jumpers, black framed glasses, hair in a comfy clutch, and a tired yet enthusiastic student look in her eyes. You’ve probably walked past someone who looks like her a thousand times in your Cambridge dorms, across the road on the way to Sainsbury. She’s one of my best students, calm and attentive. She sat curiously next me when I told her my article idea, and that I had some questions for her.
Where do you go home for holidays after term ends? What is the environment like?
I go back to the UNHRC camps in Cox’s bazaar mam. It’s very dirty mam, there are no toilets or food, yes it’s very dirty. When you get back, you don’t feel comfortable, and it’s very overcrowded. That’s why when I come back to dorms, the first thing I do is shower and sleep all day. It’s impossible to sleep in a tent or camp with hundreds of people who are always talking.
If you don’t want to go back, are you allowed to stay in university instead?
No mam, the university only lets me stay when I study sometimes. Then when I complete my studies, after five years, I have to go back there forever. That’s why I am always looking for opportunities like this scholarship so that I don’t have to go back.
That’s also why when we walk around AUW, our parents say that don’t misbehave or be a bad girl, because people in the camp will know. If men takes pictures of us, they upload it on the internet and put our faces as profile pictures, or harass us. They tell our family ‘she is a bad girl’. That’s why my parents say never leave the dorm in the AUW, even though I need to.
How long have you been living in the camps?
My whole life mam. She is 18 years old.
I have been facing these issues my whole life. My parents came to Bangladesh in 1992, but still we are not allowed to be considered citizens or given any visas. We are forced to stay in the camps, we cannot move out or around, we are closely watched. They even have taken our fingerprints and registered us as Rohingya so if we go to the visa office, we cannot make another identity.
What was life like growing up in the camps from birth?
Food has always been a big problem.
The NGOs give us food, like rice or sometimes vegetables. But my parents are not allowed to work so when they give us a ration of maybe 50kg of rice for the months, we keep 20kg and sell the other 30, that’s how they earn living, by selling rations.
It’s not fair on my father mam. Because he wants to work, he is educated from Chittagong medical school, and used to work part time selling clothes before being encamped, but now he isn’t allowed to work or even leave the camp.
It was strange – growing up in the camp, because I didn’t know what life was like outside the camp, I didn’t understand what was the difference between me and a Bengali, and I would just ask my father, why I was different. What was the difference?
I realised everything one day when I was going to 10th grade metric class in a Bengali medium school. I was embarrassed and kicked out of class in the middle of my simester. Somebody had reported that I was a Rohingya, and that was an absolute shock to me. I was no longer allowed to study outside.
From then on, my father began to teach me English in the camps, and thanks to him I got a chance to apply to AUW and came here.
I didn’t know that I was a refugee, or what that meant until I experienced an incident when I was 13.
One day I was coming home from school, and four to six boys jumped me from a CNG, whilst trying to kidnap me. They asked me where I was from, and started slapping me when I told them where I was living in Cox’s Bazaar. They started calling me “refugee” over and over again, and at this point I had no idea what this word meant, only that it was giving them reason to harass me like I meant nothing.
That was a really shocking moment because, as I was looking around, only then I realised that no one was coming to save me. Because I don’t have a nationality.
I went home, asking my dad, what does this word mean? Refugee. He saw my red face, and said that he also is tired of hearing this word. Everytime, I have a nightmare, I hear this word, and I cannot explain with words what it has done to me.
She was turning a little red now, staring into the table and wholly angry with the sting of the memory.
What issues do young girls specifically experience in the camps?
From the age of 13, everyday, we get marriage proposals. However, my father is educated so he thinks differently and he would never allow anyone to marry me.
Some criminal men would get angry with this, and come threaten my father. They would say, she has had her first period, she should be married by now. This is because at my age, now most of my friends are already married with kids.
For example, my best friend Pinky. I recall Pinky, because in one of their recent essays they had to practice letter writing to a friend, and Samia had written to this Pinky.
She got married when she was very young mam, because she has no father. He left her family to marry another younger woman. Her husband doesn’t give her any money for her children or lets her eat food.
She also had dreams like me mam, she was so beautiful, and intelligent, she really could have been anything. Her eyes were sparkling so much talking about Pinky.
And now she’s a mental patient, I can’t recognise her, but she used to be my best friend. I realised the Pinky in that essay had long since died and her letter was make belief of an old friendship.
But it’s hard being a woman there anyway, because every day I hear a new story of a girl dying in either my camp or another camp, because she was raped by a somebody in the Myanmar military or attacked by somebody else. . There’s infighting all the time, and the army is meant to be there to protect us, but they treat us like dogs. For example, they shine lights into your eyes when you are sleeping, (Redacted name) is treated like this a lot, they think she’s beautiful so they bother her a lot rudely. I once asked one of the soldiers shining lights into my eyes, “why?”, he looked at me scornfully, surprised that I would respond.
That’s why when I go back, I stay in a singular corner of a small room, where I have to wear a burka and a veil all of the time. A place where no one can see me. There is no wifi, no place for showering. If you need the toilet, you have to go to some place far away from the camp, and so at night I’m not allowed to use the washroom, even in emergencies.
It’s too dirty, imagine thousands of people using just one toilet, and there are no sanitary towels. That’s why I save them from the health centre when I am at university, and then I bring some back for my sisters as well. Before we used to reuse clothes, but now I learnt what pads are, I can’t use anything else.
It’s hard for my father because has four daughters, no sons. Well only three but I still say four. One of the hardest day in the camps was when my little sister died. She went for water in the pool, and a UNHCR car crashed into her. She passed away at the age of 5.
She looked at me kind of really lost, restlessly clutching her own thumb in her palms. She then broke the silence.
Living in the camp was okay most of my life mam. Until I really knew about the real world.
When I came here (AUW) , I learnt words like , “peace,”, “hope”, “country”, “ethnicity”, “nationality”.
Then I realised, oh. Her voice broke. I really have nothing.
I have never seen my own country, I have never had a house. I don’t even know where I was born. Not even in a hospital, just a camp.
PART II: Raisa’s Story
Raisa entered the conference room a little later. The difference between her and Samia is stark because she is a recent refugee, following the 2017 insurrection. So her mobility in the camps, as well as her family’s ability to buy and sell their assets acquired from their previous life in Myanmar, puts them in a different, slightly better financial and living situation than those refugees who have been restricted from work and home ownership for decades.
Raisa is a strong student, who puts too much pressure on herself, but is a pleasure to teach.
How is life for you in the camps?
Again, we are always facing difficulties with money and rations, because the food runs out in 15-20 days usually, and we have to buy again. Especially because there are nine people in my family. The washrooms are really awful, I tell my mum, I really can’t use them, and she says, this is our life, how can you avoid it? She says her biggest regret sometimes is sending me and my sister outside the camp because otherwise we would not have known any difference, and it wouldn’t hurt us so much.
Do you live in the same camp as Samia?
No. When we first came here, we were put in some sort of camp, but we sold our jewelry and gold to buy our own shelter. My mum also borrowed a thousand rupees from her relatives, but we still needed about 70,000 more. My dad didn’t tell me about this because he wanted me to focus on studying. But mum told me about our financial situation anyway.
However, when I started coming to AUW, me and my sister would get an 8,000 taka stipend bimonthly ,and even though my father insisted that I don’t do this, I would give them some of this money, and we were slowly able to buy our own shelter. This kind of thing makes me feel so good, when I can help my own family. I feel like something.
What was your experience feeling Myanmar in 2022?
So many people I knew died, it was pure luck, because we didn’t know which roads, or pathways would get bombed. We had to pay so much money to the boatmen to take us here. I lost my best friend and her whole family because of one drone attack near the sea, we could have easily died too, mam.
My dad became jobless and I needed to do my metric but he could not afford the tuition to send me to a proper institution. So he began to sell his first shelter, and we became homeless. He did this just so he could buy us tutors for our studying, because of our education.
Her eyes were trembling.
He hired three tutors for us, maths, english and science. But most of them were scamming us or would try to do inappropriate things with dad’s daughters. So dad kept the maths teacher, and taught us everything else.
He told me all I needed to do was get at least one distinction. So I told myself that I would get a distinction in Biology. They didn’t understand, nobody else understood me. Our neighbours would throw rubbish at us when we were homeless, and make noise, so I had to hide under a sheet with my phone light to study.
Her scholarship application for Winifred Laurier that we worked on together, was for a biology undergrad.
What’s the biggest issue you think women face in the camps?
Mam, the most recent problem is the dowry. The older we get, the more they are pressuring women to pay a big amount of money if they want to get married.
But in Islam, the dowry, (mehr), is given by the man to the woman, isn’t reverse dowry forbidden?
Yes mam, but this is a cultural practice even though it is wrong.
Marriage is my biggest fear anyway, around 80% of the men in the camp have two wives, and each woman has like six children. I remember when I was younger (she is currently 16), a proposal came to my house. My dad just replied, “Okay we will think about it.”
I didn’t realise, he was just being polite and you can’t just say no in front of them. But I was shaking and crying all day, everyone came over to see what was wrong with me. My dad asked for a cup of cold water, and I was trembling so much, I dropped the cup. He asked me what was wrong with me, and I said, I can barely give you a cup of water, how can I marry someone? He agreed to never let me get married as long as I study as hard as I can when I go to university. We don’t have time, mam, to think about boyfriend, or men. I don’t ever want to get married.
I’d rather die than get married, Samia added.
Concluding Remarks
The interview ended up being three hours long, and they both felt like it was their first time getting this off their chest. It didn’t feel long enough. This article will never be long enough.
I don’t know what the effect or purpose of this piece will be. However, there is a realization that follows. Those who live the least autonomous lives are often just a classroom away from us, and their struggle doesn’t stop after being ‘rescued and refuged’.
The crisis in Myanmar festers in my bedroom. It sleeps across the halls, and says good morning to me the next day. These students are not headlines, they are young girls who have their freedoms unfairly predetermined by the parameters of genocide, and they are the most determined young women I have ever met in my life. Permission to live is the bare minimum yet this is all they have been given.
As an international community, we have failed to offer them a future beyond the small glimpses of normalcy they receive through light hearted, minimal NGO work.
Post Writing Notes
Packing up my desk on my late day of teaching this term, Raisa came running to tell me she was shortlisted for an interview for the Canadian scholarship. She hugged me tight, her eyes splashing pools of light. The depth of her.
