Shadows of Geneva Camp
The narrow alleyways of Geneva Camp reeked of dampness and despair. Rusty tin roofs sagged under the weight of monsoon rains, and the air was thick with the smell of stale cooking oil. Inside a cramped, one-room shack, Rafiq Ahmed sat on a frayed mat, staring at the newspaper in his hands. Bangladesh’s Supreme Court has concluded that the Biharis stuck in Bangladesh are now citizens of Bangladesh. A hard-won victory, yet hollow. The court verdict to become a reality seems unlikely, at least in the near future.
“Abbu, will we get the passport this time?” twelve-year-old Shabnam asked, her eyes hopeful.
Rafiq forced a smile. “Insha’Allah, beti.” But his chest tightened. They had been to the passport office three times. Each time, the officer’s face twisted in recognition. Geneva Camp – a congested slum-like area where the Pakistanis were stuck in Bangladesh after the Liberation War of 1971. The words alone were a curse.
His wife, Salma, stirred a pot of watery dal, her back bent from years of stitching garments for meager wages, and working as a housemaid. “They’ll find another excuse,” she muttered. “They always do.”
Rafiq’s son, Arif, sixteen and restless, kicked a broken chair leg. “Why do we even bother? They don’t see us as humans; they won’t consider us citizens.”
Rafiq’s jaw clenched. The Liberation War had ended decades ago, but the wounds never healed for the Biharis. Branded “collaborators, traitors, and Maura – a slang, a curse used to demean their ancestry and language.” They were trapped—unwanted in Bangladesh, forgotten in Pakistan. The Supreme Court had granted them citizenship, but society refused to.
The next morning, they stood in the long queue at the passport office. When their turn came, the officer- a man with a thick mustache—glanced at their address and smirked. “Geneva Camp, huh?” He flipped through their documents lazily. “Come back next week. There’s a… verification issue.”
Rafiq’s hands trembled. “Sir, we’ve submitted everything—”
“Next!” the officer barked.
Outside, Shabnam wiped her tears. “Why do they hate us, Abbu?”
Rafiq had no answer. That night, as the call to prayer echoed through the camp, he stared at the cracked ceiling. Salma’s soft snores filled the room, Arif’s anger simmered in silence, and Shabnam’s dreams wilted like flowers in concrete.
They were citizens on paper. But in the eyes of Dhaka and the Bengali citizens of Bangladesh, they were dirty, filthy, not human, but rather ghosts.
****
The narrow alleyways of Geneva Camp were a maze of rusted tin roofs, open drains, and the constant hum of struggle. The Ahmed family—Rafiq, his wife Salma, their son Arif, and daughter Shabnam—lived in a single room that smelled of damp jute sacks and kerosene smoke. The Supreme Court had declared them citizens, but they were still strangers outside the camp.
The Son: Arif, the Barber with a Broken Dream
Arif had once dreamed of being a teacher. As a child, he had attended the NGO-run school inside the camp, where a kind old man, Master Sahab, taught him to read and write. But after primary school, the doors of government institutions shut in his face. “No admission without nationality papers,” they said. Now, at sixteen, he worked in a small barbershop in Mohammadpur, the same area where the Geneva Camp is situated, where Bengali men sneered at his Urdu-accented Bangla.
“Oye, Bihari! Cut it properly, or should I call the Razakars to do it?” a customer once laughed, referring to the infamous militia from ’71. Arif’s hands shook, but he forced a smile. He needed the ten taka per haircut.
At home, he never spoke of the taunts. But Salma saw the way his shoulders slumped when he returned each evening. Rafiq, a butcher with calloused hands, would pat his back and say, “Allah dekhrahahai, beta.” (The Almight is Watching My son)
Yet, there was one thing that confused Arif—cricket. When Pakistan won, the same Bengalis who cursed Biharis would cheer wildly. “Miandad! Wasim! Great Cricket Players! Legends!” they’d shout. But Arif stayed silent. He had never been to Pakistan. He really never had any love for the country, but he did not belong to the country that he lived in, and he was never acquainted with the country that he is touted to be from, although he was born in Bangladesh. Thus, when considering between the two – Bangladesh and Pakistan – he knew Bangladesh hated him, and he presumed that Pakistan would at least accept him as one of their own. Thus, his emotional penchant was naturally towards Pakistan.
The barbershop was cramped, the air thick with the scent of cheap hair oil and sweat. Arif wiped his razor on a stained cloth, his fingers numb from work hours. The fan overhead groaned, barely stirring the stifling heat.
That afternoon, a group of boys his age—students from the nearby college—burst in, laughing loudly. They wore crisp uniforms, backpacks slung over their shoulders, textbooks peeking out. Arif recognized them—they often came with loud jokes and careless words.
“Oi, Maura, make it quick,” one said, plopping into the chair. “I have to be home in twenty minutes.”
Arif nodded, his throat tight. The boys chatted about exams, scholarships, and plans as he worked.
“Did you hear? Tareq got the Dhaka University admission—science section!”
“Lucky bastard. I’m still waiting for my results. But my uncle said he’ll get me a bike if I get in BUET (Bangladesh public engineering university).”
Arif’s hands moved mechanically. He had memorized the motions—short at the sides, tapered at the back. But his mind wandered. He had once dreamed of sitting in those classrooms, of carrying books instead of a rusty razor.
One of the boys said something, and the other boys laughed. Their laughter was not at Arif, but his inability to be among them stung all the same. They didn’t mean to hurt him—they didn’t see him as someone who could want more.
Later, as he cleaned up, another boy—taller, with a sharp face—shoved past him. “Move, Maura.”
Arif stumbled, the bowl of water in his hands tipping. Cold water splashed onto the boy’s polished shoes.
The boy’s face twisted. “You filthy—”
Before Arif could apologize, a stinging slap cracked across his cheek. His ears rang. The shop fell silent.
The barber-owner, a gruff man, a Bihari, who had endured all this and more during teenage years, knew he could not do much. He sighed. “Clean it up.” That is all he said to Arif.
Arif’s hands shook as he wiped the floor. The boys left without another word, their laughter ringing in his ears.
That night, he returned home late. The camp was quiet, the usual sounds of arguments and radios muffled by exhaustion.
Salma was waiting, her eyes heavy with worry. She didn’t ask questions—just pulled him into a tight hug. Arif didn’t speak. He couldn’t. His body trembled as he sat on the thin mat they called a bed.
His mother sat beside him, her calloused fingers gently stroking his hair. No words. Just warmth.
Arif curled onto his side, his face pressed into the pillow. The tears came silently, soaking the frayed fabric. Salma kept patting his back, her own heart breaking.
When Rafiq returned, his hands still smelling of the butcher’s shop, he found Shabnam kneeling beside her brother, her small hand resting on his shoulder. Arif was asleep now, his breathing uneven, his face streaked with dried tears.
Rafiq’s chest tightened. He looked at Salma, who met his gaze with silent sorrow.
Without a word, Rafiq lowered himself onto the mat beside his son. He didn’t ask. He didn’t need to. Salma and Shabnam got on the bed. This is how they have lived in the 15 by 15 feet room, where they had their bed, kitchen, clothing, and everything else – their entire life. The men slept on the floor, while the women slept on a bed lifted two feet higher with bricks stacked under each foot of the bed. So that the space beneath the bed can be used for stacking stuff, and allowing the men to stretch their legs, while their heads were less than six inches away from the door of the room that they called home.
The night stretched on, the weight of unspoken pain pressing down on them all.
In the darkness, Arif dreamed—not of Pakistan or Bangladesh, but of a place where he wasn’t a ghost.
The Daughter: Shabnam, the Girl Who Wanted to Learn
Shabnam, at twelve, was the brightest in her class. The camp’s NGO school had no secondary section, but she devoured every book she could get her hands on. Her mother would bring her books from the house where she worked as a maid. The Bengali girl named Mitu from that house was the same age as Shabnam. She graciously gave her books that she had read to Salma, the housemaid, to give to her daughter.
“Your daughter should study in a proper school,” Mitu once said.
“They won’t take her,” Salma replied softly.
Shabnam was often commended for her class performance. She wanted to study further, so the passport and citizenship documents were necessary for her to get admitted to a local school, a proper school.
One day, she overheard her teacher say, “Such a sharp mind, wasted.” That night, she stared at the ceiling, thinking that all her hard work and aspirations were worthless if no school would accept her.
The NGO school in Geneva Camp was little more than a tin shed with rickety benches, but to Shabnam, it was a sanctuary. Every morning, she arrived before the others, her tattered notebook clutched tightly in her small hands. The teacher, Mrs. Rahman, often smiled when she saw Shabnam—she was the only one who could solve the math problems before the lesson began.
One afternoon, Mrs. Rahman paused beside Shabnam’s desk as the class practiced cursive writing. “Your handwriting is better than mine,” she joked, holding up Shabnam’s notebook for the others to see. The children giggled, but Shabnam’s cheeks burned with pride.
Then Mrs. Rahman sighed, her voice dropping. “If only you could sit for the scholarship exams. You’d win, no doubt.”
Shabnam’s heart leapt. “Can’t I, ma’am?”
Mrs. Rahman hesitated. “You need a birth certificate. A national identification document.”
The hope in Shabnam’s chest withered.
At home, she pored over Mitu’s old textbooks, tracing the words with her fingers. The pages smelled of lavender—a scent that didn’t exist in Geneva Camp. Mitu had even scribbled notes in the margins: “This will be on the test!” or “Ask teacher if confused.”
One evening, as Salma returned from work, Shabnam pointed to a passage in Mitu’s English book. “Ma, what does ‘opportunity’ mean?”
Salma, who had never been to school, and got married at the age of 16 because of not societal pressure and conservative family ideologies, but for other circumstances, squinted at the word. She said that she will ask Mitu when she goes to the next day. She did, when she got home after work and began to cook their dinner, Shabnam again asked about the word. Salma said, “Something… something you don’t get,” she muttered, stirring the rice more forcefully than necessary.
Shabnam’s throat tightened.
Their lives were full of such disappointments, unavailable opportunities, and accesses. The worst moment came on a rainy Thursday.
A nearby school had organized a debate competition, and the camp NGO school had planned on registering for it. Shabnam was chosen to represent the school. She practiced for weeks, reciting arguments before the cracked mirror in her shack.
But on the day of the event, the headmaster of the Bengali school took one look at her registration form—Address: Geneva Camp—and shook her head. “No,” he told Mrs. Rahman. “We can’t have… them mixing with our students.”
Mrs. Rahman argued, her voice rising. “She’s a child! And the brightest one I’ve taught!”
The headmaster shrugged. “Rules are rules.”
Shabnam stood frozen in the corridor, her carefully prepared speech crumpling in her fist. Through the open door, she saw Mitu sitting in the front row, waving at her.
Mitu’s smile faltered when she realized Shabnam wasn’t coming in.
That night, Shabnam lay awake, listening to the rats scuttle across the tin roof.
She thought of Mitu’s school—the clean classrooms, the fans that actually worked, the library with rows and rows of untouched books.
She thought of the scholarship exams she couldn’t take.
She thought of the word “opportunity.”
And for the first time, she understood what her mother meant.
The next morning, she didn’t go to school.
Instead, she walked to the garbage dump at the edge of the camp, where the Bengali schools threw away old papers. She sifted through the piles until she found a half-torn textbook, its pages smudged with mud.
She wiped it clean with the edge of her scarf and hugged it to her chest.
It wasn’t fair.
But she would keep reading.
Even if no one ever let her sit in their classrooms.
Even if the only place she could learn was in the shadows.
The Father: Rafiq, the Butcher with a Bloodied Apron
Rafiq worked in a cramped meat shop near the camp’s entrance, his cleaver hacking through bone and gristle from dawn till dusk. He had begun working in the same shop as a teenager under the watchful eyes of the shop owner, a Bengali man named Khalid. The owner used to pay him half what the equitable wage of the work should have been. “Bihari ka kaam, Bihari ka daam,” (Bihari’s work, Bihari’s pay) Khalid would chuckle.
With time and age, his situation in the shop had changed. The Bengali owner had died a few years ago. Rafiq was the oldest of the two workers who worked in the butcher shop. He had learnt the ins and outs of the trade. He negotiated a deal with the wife and children of the Bengali owner and leased the shop from them. He now earns enough to at least pay for his children’s future studies.
Rafiq swallowed his pride. He had continued to fight through the obstacles, all the insults, only to ensure food for his children. They prayed hard that their children would not face the conditions that he and his wife had endured throughout their lives. However, they never considered becoming citizens or considered a future outside this camp. Their son Arif and daughter Shabnam have forced them to consider at least such a reality, which seemed only a dream to them. But now with the Supreme Court order, things could change for them.
But the passport office had rejected them again. “Geneva Camp? Verification pending.”
The cleaver in Rafiq’s hand was an extension of his own bones now—worn smooth from decades of splitting ribs, hacking through sinew, and crushing joints. The shop stank of blood and iron, but he no longer noticed. What he did notice was the way customers still hesitated before handing him money, as if his Bihari hands might stain their coins.
Khalid’s widow, Farida, came every Friday to collect the rent. She never touched the doorframe.
“Next month, raise the rent,” she said one day, eyes skimming over the cracked tiles Rafiq couldn’t afford to replace. “Market prices are going up.”
Rafiq wiped his hands on his apron, the fabric stiff with dried gore. “Begum, I’ve paid on time for twelve years—”
“And where else will you go?” she interrupted, smiling. “Geneva Camp?”
That night, he counted his savings—a wad of taka hidden in a biscuit tin beneath the bed. Enough for one passport fee. Maybe two, if I skip meals.
The boy was too young for the weight on his shoulders. Rafiq had seen it—the way Arif’s fingers twitched when Bengali boys his age talked about university.
“Baba, the barbershop owner says he’ll recommend me for Dubai,” Arif muttered one evening. “They need workers there.”
Rafiq’s gut twisted. A laborer. Just like me. But Dubai meant wages that could buy Shabnam’s school fees.
He went to the passport office again. The clerk, a paan-chewing man with ink-stained fingers, snorted. “Geneva Camp? File another affidavit.”
Rafiq pressed a folded 500-taka note into the application. The clerk pocketed it and shrugged. “Allah knows when it’ll process.”
One day, Shabnam’s teacher sent a letter home: “She can qualify for the National Merit Scholarship—if she can get into a proper school.”
The next day, Rafiq stood outside a government school for hours, hoping the administration would show some generosity. The principal, a stern woman in a starched sari, didn’t let him past the gate.
That evening, he taught Shabnam to write her name in Urdu—the language of a country she’d never seen. “This is your real script,” he lied, because the Bengali schools wouldn’t take her, and the Urdu ones had shut down decades ago.
Rafiq’s parents had died in ’83—cholera in a Karachi slum, where they had fled to in 1971, leaving Rafiq with his uncle who was supposed to arrive later but never could. The news of their death arrived in a cousin’s letter months later: “They asked for you at the end.”
Now, with the Supreme Court ruling, he dared to dream of kneeling at their graves. He whispered their names into his pillow at night—Abu, Ammi—as if the wind might carry the words to Pakistan.
But the passport officer laughed when he said he wanted to visit Karachi. “You Mauras still think Pakistan wants you?”
Salma never spoke of the insults—the way Bengali women pulled their children away when she walked by, the shopkeepers who made her count change twice. But Rafiq saw how she stared at the high-rise apartments beyond the camp, where women like her had clean toilets and private rooms. They did not have to be concerned about who might see her while she was responding to nature’s call, taking a shower, or her children might wake up when she and her husband were intimate. All her social, mental, and physical aspirations have been subdued in this shanti.
One night, she touched his arm. “If we get citizenship… could we rent a room in Mohammadpur? Just one window that isn’t rusted shut?”
Rafiq promised, even if it meant selling the shop, even if it meant begging.
The final rejection came on a Friday. The passport officer tossed their files back. “No Geneva Camp applications without the local ward councillor’s approval.”
Rafiq didn’t move. “We’re citizens now. The court said—”
The officer lit a cigarette. “Courts don’t run this office.”
Outside, Rafiq vomited in the gutter. His children’s futures were rotting in some bureaucrat’s drawer.
That night, he woke to Arif’s muffled sobs and Shabnam’s feverish whispers practicing English verbs. Salma’s hand found his in the dark, her calluses scraping against his own.
He was unable to do anything. She knew!
****
Geneva Camp Shadows – 2015: The Weight of Compromised Dreams
The butcher shop in Krishi Market smelled the same as the old one—blood, sweat, and the metallic tang of cleavers on bone. Rafiq’s hands, now gnarled with arthritis, still moved with the same precision. But the face in the rusted mirror above the counter was unrecognizable—deep lines, a salt-and-pepper beard, eyes that had learned to hide despair behind resignation.
He owned this shop now. A small victory.
Yet, every morning, he still walked to the old shop near Townhall, the one Khalid had once lorded over. Farida Begum, now frail and widowed, sat on a plastic chair outside, waiting for her rent. Her sons had left for Canada years ago, sending money sporadically. Without Rafiq’s rent, she would have nothing.
“You’re late,” she grumbled, though he wasn’t.
Rafiq handed her the envelope. She didn’t thank him. Some things never changed.
Arif: The Father Who Could Not Escape
Arif’s daughter, Ayesha, was six—all bright eyes and endless questions. She attended a Bengali-medium school in Mohammadpur, her uniform crisp, her backpack filled with books Shabnam would have killed for at her age.
“Baba, today teacher said I’m the best in class!” Ayesha announced one evening, waving a star-stamped notebook.
Arif ruffled her hair, his throat tight. He never told her how, at her age, he had been turned away from schools for being “Bihari.”
His wife, Fatima, heavy with their second child, placed a hand on his shoulder. “She’ll go further than us.”
Arif nodded. But sometimes, when he shaved customers at the salon where he now worked, he caught his reflection—a man who had once dreamed of being a teacher, now trimming the hair of boys who would grow up to call him “Maura” behind his back.
Shabnam: The Mother Who Studied Through Her Son
Shabnam’s son, Rizwan, was eight. His English-medium school had a playground, a computer lab, and teachers who didn’t know his mother was a garment worker.
Every night, she sat with him as he did homework, sounding out English words she didn’t understand.
“Ma, what’s ‘opportunity’ mean?” Rizwan asked once, echoing her own childhood question.
Shabnam hesitated. Then, softly: “It means… you won’t have to beg for what should be yours.”
Her husband, Javed, drove executives in an air-conditioned car, his uniform neat, his back straight. But at family gatherings, the older Bihari men still clucked their tongues. “A driver? In our time, we were officers in Pakistan—”
Shabnam tuned them out. Pakistan was a ghost. Her son’s future was real.
Rafiq’s Unfinished Pilgrimage
The passport had come too late. By the time Rafiq could afford the trip to Karachi, his cousin who tended his parents’ graves had passed away. The addresses in his letters led to demolished buildings.
He stood at the Karachi airport, lost in a city that had no memory of him.
At the cemetery, the caretaker shrugged. “No records for Biharis from the 80s.”
Rafiq knelt in a dusty corner anyway, pressing his forehead to the earth. Ammi, Abu, I tried.
Salma’s Quiet Defiance
Their rented house in Mohammadpur had a window that didn’t rust shut. Salma kept it spotless, her only rebellion against a lifetime of being called “dirty.”
Sometimes, she visited Mitu—now a doctor—who still gave her old books. Not for Shabnam anymore, but for Ayesha and Rizwan.
“You could’ve been a teacher,” Mitu said once.
Salma smiled. “My granddaughter will be.”
The Camp That Still Holds Them
Geneva Camp hadn’t changed. When Rafiq visited old neighbors, the alleyways still stank of stagnant water, the children still played barefoot around open drains.
A young boy stopped him. “Uncle, is it true you live in Mohammadpur now?”
Rafiq nodded. The boy’s eyes shone with the same hope Shabnam once had.
That night, he dreamed of cleavers, court orders, graves he couldn’t find, and a country that had never wanted him.
But when Ayesha climbed into his lap with her schoolbook, he traced the Bengali letters with her tiny fingers.
The war wasn’t over.
But the next generation would fight it with pens, not machetes.
Geneva Camp – February 21, 2016: The Language of Survival
The narrow lanes of Geneva Camp were draped in red and green banners for Ekushey February, their frayed edges flapping against the corrugated tin walls like wounded birds. The camp had taken on a strange, almost festive atmosphere—children from the NGO school had painted murals of the Language Movement martyrs on plywood boards, their amateur brushstrokes rendering the faces of Salam, Barkat, and Rafiq into wide-eyed, almost cartoonish heroes. The smell of jhalmuri and cheap oil paints mixed with the ever-present stench of open drains.
Rafiq’s family walked through the familiar shanties maze, stepping over puddles from last night’s rain. The camp was quieter now—many families had managed to leave over the years, their empty huts standing like broken teeth in the cramped alleyways. But for those who remained, the weight of decades pressed down harder than ever.
At the Hussains’ one-room home, the air was thick with the scent of cardamom and firni steaming in earthen pots. The single bulb overhead cast long shadows on faces that had aged far beyond their years.
Ayesha, Arif’s eight-year-old daughter, swung her legs from the edge of the makeshift bed, her shiny black shoes—purchased from New Market for her school’s Ekushey program—kicking absently against the wooden frame.
“Ami shobgula kobita mone mone porte pari!” she announced proudly to Rizwan. (I can recite all the poems by heart!)
Rizwan, ever competitive at ten years old, rolled his eyes. “Ami to aagei porte shikhechilam, tumi to khali school-e shunecho!” (I learned to recite them way before you, you just heard them at school!)
Their Bangla was effortless, unaccented—nothing like the hesitant, Urdu-laced speech of their parents’ generation.
Mrs. Hussain, her hands busy ladling out sweets, smiled faintly. “Our grandchildren speak Bangla better than we ever did.”
Her husband, Musa, nodded. “We didn’t teach them Urdu. What was the point? They’re Bangladeshis now.”
A silence settled over the room. Rafiq stared at his calloused palms. Urdu had been his mother’s lullabies, his father’s curses, the language of a homeland that had abandoned him.
Rafiq felt Salma’s hand tighten around his—their own children, Arif and Shabnam, had grown up speaking a broken mix of Urdu and Bangla, their speech immediately marking them as Biharis. Now their grandchildren spoke a Bangla so pure it erased generations of history.
“We had no choice,” Musa muttered. “Either let them learn Bangla, or watch them get spat on like we did.”
Salma remembered carrying a feverish Shabnam through monsoon rains to the free clinic, how the Bengali nurse had made them wait for hours, muttering “Maura der aage daktar dekhabena” (Won’t see the Biharis first).
Salma remembered the taunts—”Maura! Razakar!”—hurled at her when she carried Shabnam to the clinic. “Better they forget,” she whispered.
But Shabnam’s voice was raw. “Bangladesh fought for its language. We’re fighting to erase ours.”
Rafiq thought of Karachi’s lost graves. Of cleavers and court orders. Of the passport that had come too late.
“We’re not forgetting,” he said slowly. “We’re burying. So they can walk lighter.”
“Maura ki?” Ayesha’s sudden question cut through the murmur of adult conversation. (What’s ‘Maura’?)
The room went still. Rizwan, worldly beyond his years from playground politics, didn’t hesitate. “Oita ekta gaali. Jemon America-e kalo manushderke ‘nigger’ bole.” (It’s a bad word. Like how they say ‘nigger’ to Black people in America.)
Shabnam’s firni bowl almost slipped from her hands. “Ke tumader ei shob shikhalo?” (Who taught you these things?)
“School-e,” Rizwan shrugged, already losing interest. “Kintu ami Bangali der motoi Bangla bolte pari, tai keu amake Maura bole na.” (But I speak Bangla just like Bengalis, so no one calls me that.)
After the children were shooed outside to play, the adults silently sat. The tin roof creaked under the weight of unsaid things.
Shabnam, usually so quiet, slammed her palm on the plastic mat. “People bled for their language in this country. And us? Our children must forget ours?”
Rafiq stared at the cracks in the mud wall—they looked like rivers on a map, like borders that kept shifting. He thought of his mother singing “Laili Laili” as she rocked him to sleep, the Urdu lullabies that had died with her in a Karachi slum. “We’re not forgetting. We’re paving the way. So their feet don’t bleed like ours did.”
These children who would never know the shame of a mispronounced word, who would never see their parents flinch at the sound of “Maura”—was this freedom or erasure?
****
Epilogue: The Unmourned Graves of Memory
The television droned on in the corner of Salma’s small, tidy room in Mohammadpur. Rizwan, her bright-eyed grandson, was animatedly recounting what he had learned in school about the Liberation War.
The same war that had birthed this nation had orphaned her people, left them floating between a country that despised them and another that had erased them.
As she lay in the dark, she recalled news —a report about the government honoring the Birangonas, the women raped during the war by Pakistani soldiers and their collaborators. Their suffering had been given a name, a place in history, even compensation.
But what of the women like her mother?
She remembered the night, years ago, when her mother had clutched her wrist too tight, her breath reeking of betel leaf and despair.
“They came during the war,” she had whispered. “Bengalis. They said we deserved it—for being Biharis, for being ‘collaborators.’”
Salma had been young then, but she understood the tremble in her mother’s voice. Understood why her mother had scrubbed her skin raw at the public tap every evening.
And then, when Salma was sixteen, it had almost happened to her. A group of Bengali boys had cornered her near the camp’s edge.
She had been saved—not by justice, but by chance. A neighbor’s shout had scared them off. But the damage was done. Within weeks, her mother had married her off to Rafiq. “Better a hasty wedding than a ruined girl,” her mother had hissed.
No one spoke of it. No one ever would.
Outside, Rizwan and Ayesha’s laughter drifted in—pure, unburdened. They would grow up proud Bangladeshis, fluent in a history without room for people like her.
The Birangonas would be remembered. Their pain would be validated.
But her mother’s screams? Her near-ruin?
They would die with her.
Because some pain is only mourned if the world deems the victim worthy.
And Bihari women—Maura women—were never worthy.
Not to Bangladesh.
Not to Pakistan.
Not even, sometimes, to themselves.
Salma turned her face into the pillow, the fabric swallowing her quiet, exhausted tears.
Some wounds never close.
They just stop bleeding in silence.
SYED SHAHNAWAZ MOHSIN (pen name: Simon Mohsin) is a multidisciplinary professional with 15+ years of experience in political science, foreign affairs, business management, and media. An entrepreneur with agro, toys, and artwork ventures, he also consults in training, recruitment, and sports/health sectors. Mohsin is a certified fitness trainer and former professional cricketer, a published writer on sports, politics, and foreign affairs. He works as a translator, editor, public speaker, and adjunct faculty member, known for his direct communication style. Recently, he has ventured into fiction, publishing children’s stories and a Bangla sociopolitical novel (2025). Mohsin is now expanding his work in academia and research on business and social sciences.
