Holding a Family Together
Jomila, a Rohingya woman, survived the genocide that took her husband and son but remains tormented by their loss.
We thought that the military would just come to take his books away, but it turned out they murdered him instead.
Jomila couldn’t carry her husband and her 15-year-old son with her from Burma to Bangladesh.
They would never experience the bruising, the blistering under the exposed sun, or the soaking rainstorms. They couldn’t advise or act when she encountered yet another military checkpoint. The Burmese military had murdered them during a violent attack on her village, Maung Nu.
As she trudged on, she looked down at her three youngest surviving children and wondered if they understood. Their clothes had mostly been ripped from their bodies during the massacre they were now fleeing. They wanted food. They wanted water. They didn’t yet know what it would be like to miss their father and older brother. So, she continued on, carrying her children from Burma to Bangladesh.
One baby balanced on her waist, the other two on each side. For 15 days, the added weight of one child molding into her abdomen and another onto her lower back, pulling on her hair, had rooted her to this reality: she needed to keep going. If not for the children that depended on her, she was certain her own body would have collapsed from grief. Part of her welcomed that thought.
Burmese authorities made Jomila’s family stand for this household registration photo in 2010. Her husband Abdul Aziz, 38, is second from the left. Jomila is standing to his right. Her son Jahingir, 15, is wearing a blue shirt and standing in the center, front row. Both Abdul Aziz and Jahingir were killed during the massacre in Maung Nu on August 27, 2017.
Photo: Greg Constantine
Saving Her Son’s Beloved Books
Jomila had spent the previous year planning for her oldest daughter’s wedding. She often found herself distracted by her eldest son, Jahingir. He loved to have her undivided attention so she could hear about what he was learning in school.
At 15, he had expressive features and bright, inquisitive eyes. He was too preoccupied with reading to even contemplate being disrespectful of his parents. His world revolved around school and prayers. When military officers first arrived in their village, he was terrified the soldiers would confiscate his books, so Jomila helped him hide them.
Jahingir’s school bag. Photo: Greg Constantine
August 27, 2017
The Burmese military piled villagers into a large compound. They moved women inside of a building and lined men up in a courtyard. They stripped the women and inspected their bodies with flashlights for anything of value—especially the cell phones, gold, and jewelry that many had grabbed when fleeing. The military used the women’s head scarves to gag their husbands and sons and forced them to lie on the ground face down. They tied the men and older boys together, kicked, and beat them so they couldn’t move.
The ways in which the military would then kill them varied. Some surrounded the men and older boys and shot them. Others used ropes and swords. As bullets flew through the air, Jomila saw children shot in the head. She witnessed men being decapitated. Women shoved each other to get near the window as they heard the screams of loved ones.
Jomila ran outside into the crowded courtyard when she heard Jahingir screaming her name. He was slamming his head against the brick-lined well where soldiers tied him. He had just seen his father murdered in front of him.
Military officers surrounded Jomila, pointing a gun and a sword at her. They cut off part of her finger as she rushed past them to get to her son. Some other women ran out after her and dragged her back inside. The officers turned to her son.
They didn’t kill Jahingir in the same place as his father. Instead, they took him up to an orchard on the compound where others were being murdered. She recognized his screams instantly. She made another desperate attempt to reach him before he died, but soldiers restrained her.
“We thought that the military would just come to take his books away,” she later says, “But it turned out that they murdered him instead.”
Jomila holds all she has left of her son. Photo: Greg Constantine
Holding on to What Remains
Early the next morning, the women and children left in the compound set out for the river. The military had slaughtered nearly 100 Rohingya in Maung Nu the day before. As they made their way to the river, they crept past an orchard filled with the dead bodies of Rohingya men.
Before leaving Maung Nu, Jomila asked her oldest daughter and sister to sneak back to their house. “Bring me the bag that was hanging in our kitchen.”
Jomila’s daughter handed her the school bag. She and her four surviving children began their long journey to Bangladesh. Her youngest daughter rested on her hip, two others walked at her sides. Her oldest daughter carried the younger ones when they couldn’t walk any longer. On her back, Jomila carried the school bag, which represented her dead son. The bag, stuffed with a shirt and instant coffee he had packed, is all she has left.
Years have passed since that morning, but Jahingir’s bag and its contents remain next to her in the tent she shares with her daughters and surviving family. Her boy remains next to her. Sometimes she has to hide the bag when she is overcome with sorrow, but she will carry it with her for the rest of her life. She has told her daughters to bury her with it when she dies.
She sees other boys studying or praying in the camps in Bangladesh, and it is like looking at ghosts. She asks Allah, “Where is my child? Where is my child?”She imagines hugging him to her chest and listening as he reads to her like he did on so many nights before.
Photos: Greg Constantine
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