Entire day from morgue to morgue

Spent the entire day going from morgue to morgue before returning home. During this whole time, I did not have the courage even once to point my phone at any bereaved parent and ask a question. The small bodies of children, charred like coal, were laid out in rows in the morgue. My eyes welled up, my feet staggered, my throat tightened. Pushing all those emotions aside, I coldly planned the news with my team. But I did not have the courage to point a camera at the grieving parents and relatives of the deceased. At this stage of journalism, I find myself becoming useless.

The heart-wrenching cries of relatives standing at the door of the burn unit in DMCH—oh, how painful! One mother was beating her chest and saying, if my son gets even a scratch, I feel the pain in my body. Today, his entire body, even his hair, has burned away. His whole body is on fire, and I can do nothing.

Amid all this, I saw a commotion outside. When I went out, I saw a photo session going on. Hundreds of cameras were pointed at our fate-makers. They had rushed in with hundreds of leaders and activists to express condolences. For a moment I felt, I have countless questions in my mind about this situation. Only these fate-makers can answer them. Should I raise my voice and ask those questions, as far as my voice can reach? But immediately, the image of the child burnt by fire, running naked alone to save his life, came to mind. It looked like my own child’s face! Feeling that pain in my body, I kept my mouth shut and left the place.

When I reached the Kurmitola morgue, it was late afternoon. The bodies of two little girls were wrapped together in the same bag. No relatives had been found yet. The same girls who were running joyfully with friends in the school field in the morning are now nameless. At first, the police officers showed great sympathy, but when they learned I was not a relative, they rudely told me to leave. The two children were being taken to the CMH morgue. The police said, go check there, there is nothing more here.

Before darkness fell, I stood in front of the CMH mortuary. Dead bodies from various hospitals were being brought in one after another. The smell of jet fuel was strong on the bodies. The entire mortuary felt like a fuel storage! I nervously glanced at a corner of the morgue, fearing that Sukanta’s insignificant little matchstick might be lying there again? I was afraid they might scatter again across the city, the towns, the villages—from horizon to horizon.

In the adjacent room, a mourning mother said her son was burned when fuel spread everywhere right after the plane crash. Looking at the morgue door, she murmured, ‘Kutu, Kutu, are you in pain, my son?’

I fled and came to the parking lot to catch my breath. Even there, a young man sat on the ground crying, ‘Oh mother, when the fire broke out, did it hurt a lot, were you scared, my little doll? Did you look for your mother?’ My colleague put a hand on the young man's head and said, “Hey Leon bhai, don’t lose yourself, brother, have some water.” She told me, “Apa, this is Leon Mir bhai, his niece died.”

In the meantime, the handover of the bodies began. The bodies were given to their relatives after accounting and matching numbers. The thought of how the families would bathe these tiny bodies, how they would shroud them, didn’t go very far.

Hearing weeping, I looked beside me and saw another gentleman had come to search for his wife's body. The mother died while picking up her son from school; the burnt son is writhing in pain in the hospital. Relatives helped the man into a car and took him away.

I stood in the deep darkness and watched them go. The camera was still in the bag. I could not lift it. I have not yet become brave enough to capture such a scene.


Translated from Bangla by Tariq Al Banna