Rain by Leila Zak

And there was blood—so much blood.

I tried to shield my eyes, but it was impossible not to catch a glimpse. My body felt heavier than it had ever felt in my life, and I went rigid. My arms went numb; my jaw couldn’t even drop. I was trying—I really was—to fight the bile rising in my throat as it clawed its way up my insides, leaving ineffable rifts of shock and gaping scars of grief in its wake. I stared at the wreckage that we used to call home, and wondered, perhaps in vain, if this was all just a dream—a hallucination, sown through the seeds of the unrelenting hunger that continued to effervesce through me.

It wasn’t just horrifying. It was petrifying: soul-weathering, to say the least. There was a force at play inside of me, crying out as if to tell me, from the deepest troughs of my being, that this was not right. It couldn’t be. The sheer quantity of horror worming its way inside of me pressed hard against my chest, opening up a void in my heart. I couldn’t think. The unforgiving abyss spiraled into every groove, crevice, and chasm of my chest, pouring out into my lungs and locking its searing grip over my ribs all at once. And yet, I still drew up the courage to take a step outside the little shelter that our now-damaged-tent offered, my bare feet sinking into the crimson grass with a sickening squelch.

It wasn’t over. This time, I couldn’t will the nausea away. A parched gasp escaped my lips as my eyes locked onto the body of a woman, laying face-up and splayed out across the beaten path in front of me. I surprised even myself when I bent down to gently prize a strand of hair out of her face, tensing up at the touch of the unsettling cold that had seeped into her skin. The woman’s countenance, twisted in what looked to be a sorry mixture of shock, pleading, and agony, stared back at me, as vacant as her eyes were hollow.

My breath caught in my throat as, for a second, beneath the blood and bruises marring her face, I thought I recognized who she was.

It can’t be.

With emotion welling up in my throat, I fought to reorient my gaze. I was going to be sick. Those telltale eyes bridged a path for so many haunting memories to flood back into me.

Khadija.

I thought back to my first menstruation, of which accompanied our first interaction, envisioning her kind eyes as she explained to me that this was in fact the first sign of womanhood. The first sign that I was growing up, maturing. She taught me how to weave a rag out of banyan leaves to soak up the blood. I recalled what she told me as she scaled the tree’s trunk, reaching for a cluster of leaves with her feet lodged in the deep crevices of its aerial roots.

“You need to remember what I show you, Arafa.” Her tone was warm as she looked down at me. “Because from now on, this is going to happen every month.” She leapt down from her foothold, elegiac reminiscence clouding her eyes.

“Back home, we used cloth to soak the blood, but this will have to make do.” She nodded toward the leaves as she started weaving, starting at a slow but rhythmic pace so I could see when and how each and every leaf was braided, woven, and folded. “We have to stay clean,” she warned. “Especially now, with all the walking and travel ahead of us.”

I recalled a twinge of uncertainty encroaching on her tone as she spoke of our journey. As Rohingya, we knew it was dangerous to travel through Arakan, especially with our large group. But it was necessary. We had to make it to the Bangladeshi border.

And we’re almost there, I thought, bitterly. We’re so close, and now Khadija’s gone. She’ll never see the lights of liberty, a phrase that Aunt Hanifa often used to describe the border when ‘tomorrow’ was looking bleak. We made it so far, but the one night where we set up camp to relieve our sore legs, we’re attacked, yet again, by the military.

Khadija had always been like a big sister to me, and I wanted her back. I needed her back. Please wake up, I begged, stroking her stone-cold cheek, half- expecting her to stir at my touch, half-expecting the warmth to return to her skin and the light to her eyes. Please.

I dragged my gaze away, looking up as hot tears brimmed in my own eyes. I forced them to harden, acknowledging that I was already thirsty enough—I didn’t

need to be even more dehydrated. Still, a lone tear managed to escape my grasp, whisking down my cheek and trailing its signature salty stain.

Pieces of cloth we carried throughout our journey that used to be held upright by clothespins to adorn tent walls, once vibrant and wind-whipped, now scattered the ground, torn and muddied from the unrelenting rain.

Rain: the mercy of the elements — our camp’s drinking water and only source of cleanliness. Rain that once instilled relief over our camp, wherever we set up shelter, now drew its caress over grief and bullet wounds alike, coaxing out ear- splitting howls of pain, agony, and inexplicable sorrow, as if it wasn’t loud enough to be caught amidst the crossfire. I could still hear the bullets faintly in my mind, firing in time with the blood roaring in my ears as they exploded through air. I flinched, unable to repress my grimace at the mere thought. I never thought I would lose the sensation of the sky caving in around me as we hid, shriveled inside the tent that we thought we could call home—numb with fear. No one spoke; the commotion compelled us all to silence. I had gotten so used to the normalcy of our lives: walking on empty stomachs, stopping to source shelter, foraging for any food and searching for any water source we could find, then having the cycle repeat itself, that even the hunger gnawing at my stomach faded to just a dull pang at the sight of soldiers, black-clad and carrying guns, streaming into our camp — our home, if just for that night.

Now we’re on foot again.

Behind me, my brother Omar let out ragged, effort-laden exhales with every step, whilst Aunt Hanifa paced ahead, a mud-clad water jug slung over her shoulder. Knock-kneed and stumbling over the undergrowth, I was too exhausted to offer even a word of concern to Omar as I summoned all the effort I had left in me to turn around, only to catch a glimpse of the deathly pallor that had washed over his face, before heaving from the effort and turning around once more.

It seemed as though lifetimes whisked by before we finally reached the sandy shores of legend. A glimmer of hope blossomed inside of me as my feet were enveloped in sand. It was as if a spark had lit aglow amidst the ashes; a flicker of light shining through a sea of darkness. The tide’s gentle ebb and flow drew into earshot, and with every next wave’s lap at the shore, shivers of electricity whisked through me, rejuvenating my thin, stunted frame.

At long last it seemed; we mounted the tiny bamboo raft waiting for us. The lights of liberty were so close.

***

I soon realized what a long journey we had ahead of us as we made ourselves comfortable — or at least as comfortable as we could get, crammed against what had to be at least thirty other people on this tiny vessel of bamboo poles, steered by a Bangladeshi smuggler who had offered to take us to Cox’s Bazar in exchange for our valuables. Many were reluctant to relinquish their jewelry, stolen phones, and bits of money, however worn their possessions were, but we couldn’t go back. We had to oblige, for the sake of our futures.

The bamboo creaking underneath us was dangerously flimsy, some poles shifting at every sudden move, not to mention that the raft lurched at even the smallest of waves. Even despite the precarity of the situation, though, an air of hope hung over us all. I tried to put to rest the images of Khadija that infiltrated each and every one of my thoughts as I looked out over the waves, over the horizon, over the setting sun, and toward a better life. I couldn’t help but let the sentiment of my nostalgia guide me to a mental image of my parents, who had passed on just like Khadija, in another instance of military assault. At the thought of my parents watching over me, omnipresent as angels who lingered on this world to guide me until it was my time to join them, all of my worries were allayed. It would be alright, I assured myself.

And I was right. Everything was going to be alright —

— until the storm came.

With no shelter against the entourage of rain and biting wind, nor to the crashing waves leaving us drenched in icy seawater, all we could do was stand through the night, helpless against the wrath of the elements. We made space for children and elders to sit, and the scarce few in possession of tattered umbrellas held them up for the limited shelter they provided, before they were inexorably blown inside out, boasting rips and tears in every direction. I was sick to my stomach as we

were rocked around with the tide, thrown from one side of the raft to another time and time again, pleading desperately to Allah to relinquish his mercy.

I didn’t know whether the chill running down my spine was from the unease creeping beneath my skin, or from the all-consuming cold that chilled me to the bone. I begged for the tide to wane as I crouched down, clinging onto the rope of which held the raft’s bamboo poles together for dear life, clothes drenched and sticking to my sides.

We’re stranded, I thought. Stranded in the middle of the ocean, with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.

We’re refugees, and yet refuge is but an afterthought. We’ve faced pride and prejudice alike, and we’ve seen pain and suffering time and time again.

But this...
What had we done to deserve this?

Leila Zak is a high school freshman originally from America but currently living in Hong Kong. She is an ardent human rights activist, having founded the student-led organization, “Advocates for Action”, where journalism and written advocacy is used to incentivize action against societal persecution. She has since dabbled into creative writing, particularly in the realm of short, contemporary fiction that commentates on current crises through the perspectives of those living through them.