The Washinton Post
Story by Rebecca Tan
Photos by Turjoy Chowdhury for The Washington Post
April 7 2023
Story by Rebecca Tan
Photos by Turjoy Chowdhury for The Washington Post
April 7 2023
COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh
As smugglers ordered the refugees onto a boat waiting in shallow water, Gul Baher handed her young son to a stranger while she waded toward the vessel and tried to clamber aboard. But before she did, the 6-year-old slipped out of the stranger’s arms into the sea, the boy’s family later recounted.
Baher, veiled in a black burqa, thrashed back toward him through chest-high water. In the darkness, someone pulled the boy’s frame out of the water. He was alive. But he wasn’t moving.
As smugglers ordered the refugees onto a boat waiting in shallow water, Gul Baher handed her young son to a stranger while she waded toward the vessel and tried to clamber aboard. But before she did, the 6-year-old slipped out of the stranger’s arms into the sea, the boy’s family later recounted.
Baher, veiled in a black burqa, thrashed back toward him through chest-high water. In the darkness, someone pulled the boy’s frame out of the water. He was alive. But he wasn’t moving.