We Are Displaced

Ajida informs the reader that she grew up in a small town in Myanmar, previously known as Burma. She and her husband were friends as children and married when she was 15 in what she calls a “love marriage”, rather than an arranged marriage which she says is common in the Rohingya community.

Ajida and her family awoke to gunfire one night, they knew they should flee, as they heard that the country’s police and military had been terrorizing other Rohingya communities by burning their homes and murdering and raping inhabitants. Ajida and her family fled into the forest, where they waited for the army to leave. After several days they realized that it would still not be safe for them to return, and that everything in their town was destroyed. With no extra food or resources, Ajida, her family, and a few hundred people from her village fled Myanmar through the jungle to neighboring Bangladesh. On their journey, they came across the bodies of other Rohingya people who had been murdered. Ajida attributes these deaths to “Buddhist extremists” who wanted to eliminate the Rohingya, who are predominately Muslim, from the country.

After nine days of walking at night and living off leaves, Ajida and her group arrived in Bangladesh.