Tragedy-struck

Description

“This cannot be Rana Plaza”

In the midst of all the deepening despair, a young man pops up about a hundred yards from the doomed Rana Plaza in Savar.

Wearing only trousers, he walks with his weight on the shoulder of another.

Suddenly, there is a cry. Two men from the crowd rush towards him in unbounded joy. It is a moment to behold as the hysterical hugs continue unabated. Around them, people heave a sigh of relief in the knowledge that at least one family among hundreds has had its loved one back from the collapsed ruins of the eight-storey building.

“I know him. His name is Rana and he works in New Wave factory in Rana Plaza as a line supervisor,” says a man in the crowd. “My name is Sujon,” he continues. “I have two shops in that plaza from where Rana buys clothes. And I did not open my shops today because he warned me about the cracks yesterday.”

A few blocks away, a man in his 40s collapses to the ground and some people carry him to an empty space of grassy land. He has fainted on getting news that his wife working in Rana Plaza has died.

18-year-old Shahnaz, trembling on a rickshaw, is looking for a cell phone to let her husband know that she has just been rescued from the seventh floor.

“Mobile phones are not allowed inside our factory. So I left it at home,” she said.
Asked how she escaped death, Shahnaz said: “I was trapped on the sixth floor. I could crawl between the two roofs and move to a corner of the floor when someone pulled me out. But I have seen some of my colleagues with parts of their bodies pinned underneath the rubble crying out not to be left behind.”

Another girl, Kohinur, should be feeling lucky to have got a new life. Yet she does not seem to feel that way because she is yet to find her younger sister Jarina. As the building crashed at around 9.30am with a thunderous bang, Kohinur started running, getting stuck on the staircase on the second floor for about half an hour before rescuers pulled her out of the debris.

Abdur Rahim, 25, unable to bear the shock of the collapse and with no news of his sister and mother, has clearly lost his reason.

“This cannot be Rana Plaza; it’s a nine-floor building,” he screamed, “You are lying.”

“Take me to the garments, please,” he pleads before everyone.

Enam Medical College Hospital, about a kilometre from the doomed building, is where dead bodies and injured workers have been taken and where Tania Akhter is looking for her husband. Her feet appear heavier every time she takes a step towards the next body. Thirty-seven corpses lie lined up at the hospital, waiting to be identified, touched by a loving hand. She stops before seeing each face, shudders and wishes with all her heart that it wouldn’t be her husband’s.
“Oh Allah, please save him! I haven’t found my husband yet,” she wails. Tania resides in the nearby Majdipur area with her daughter and husband. “My husband was wearing black trousers,” she says through her tears. “I have a three-year-old daughter for whom her father is everything. What will happen to her?”

All the way from Enam Medical College to the collapsed Rana Plaza people, are wailing for their near and dear ones. Some are carrying photographs. “Can you tell me where my brother and father are?” asked Ripa, holding up pictures of the two men.

Sharmin Islam is wailing before the main entrance to Enam Medical Hospital. She is searching for her younger sister, who works at Phantom Apparels Factory on the fourth floor.

“My sister would not have gone to the factory today. But the line supervisor forced her to join work,” she says. Her heart nearly breaks.

Another woman shouts abuse, hurling it at Rana Plaza.

“This is an evil building. I had told them not to work here.”