In the afternoon, when the members of the paramilitary force were resting after mealtime, through the kitchen window, Karim had been busy observing the twenty feet high barbed wire fence around the camp. From dawn to dusk, Karim and the five Rohingya youths with him had to do the cooking and cleaning inside the camp. Most of the times, Karim was made to assist the cook, while cleaning the yard and the toilets was the responsibility of the five Rohingya youths. Prior to the lunch time in the noon, they would be given half an hour to wash themselves.

The exit or entrance of the camp was in the western end. The twenty-five feet high gate was made of timber and barbed wire. Round the clock, there were guards at the gate. Karim had sensed that they wouldn’t be released so easily. Their detention period could last for years. In the end, they could all be slaughtered, because in this killing field, the blood of the Rohingyas was cheaper than water.

A week passed like this, and then, what Karim had feared all along came true. Afsar, the youngest among the Rohigya youths, was kept in isolation for two days. He was given food separately, and the night he was allowed to return to his fellow Rohingyas, he complained about severe bowel pain. When he began throwing up blood, Karim ran to the camp commandant, pleading with him to get a doctor for Afsar. The commandant refused to pay attention to what Karim had been saying. When his lips and tongue had turned blue, Karim realized that Afsar was poisoned. Most probably the food he ate during isolation, was laced with poison. At three o’clock in the morning, the Rohingya youth died and his corpse was dumped into the River Mayu which flowed along the eastern edge of the camp. Following Afsar’s death, it became clear to Karim and his companions that today or tomorrow, the same fate awaited them. The next night, before going to sleep, they all agreed that by hook or by crook, they must flee from captivity.

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At the eastern edge of the camp, an unpaved drain ran below the wire fence before it fell into the River Mayu. The distance from the toilet to the fence was roughly a hundred yards, and then the drain covered another hundred yards before dropping into the river. Being only a foot deep, it was almost always filled with human excretion. Hence, the idea that someone could somehow crawl through it, seemed almost impossible at first. However, during a moonless night, Karim took a deep breath, shut his mouth, held his nose, and got into the business of doing just that. To avoid detection by the search lights, he moved ahead like a turtle. At one point, it felt like he would throw up everything from his bowel. But to a man like Karim, nothing was more dreadful than the concentration camp where he had been unlawfully incarcerated. To him and his companions, the camp degenerated into a symbol of death. This feeling, and his resolve to overcome it, provided Karim the will power to move ahead. The time to traverse the distance from the toilet to the river seemed like forever. Once he had reached the river, he kept swimming as if there was no tomorrow. A minute after he had dropped into the river, he heard someone splashing down, a few yards behind him. Karim was not in a state to look back. The current at this time of the year was quite strong. When he was at a safe distance, Karim rolled in water and surrendered himself to the river current. As he came near the river mouth, with each back stroke, cautiously he began getting closer to the shore. Karim picked a spot with thick greenery to come out of the river. By the time he dragged himself up onto the river bank, the slimy filth on his body had long been washed away. As he entered the forest, the night sky over his head had begun to fade away. Karim looked at the river, but couldn’t find any of his companions. He was drained of every ounce of energy. With his face up, very gently he lay down on the soft green grass along the river bank. No sooner had he surrendered himself to the ground, he was overtaken by a deep slumber.