On 3/11/2018, a special expo was organized to launch the book “Refugeehood between Two Banks” during which many photos and private belongings of the Rohingya refugees were showcased. These had been brought from the camps to create a feeling and some kind of a relationship between the visitor and the refugee’s image.
The book was the outcome of several trips to the Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh as these people were forced to leave their houses and towns in Burma.
The stories told in this book are “real” with no drama plot. They are “humanitarian” without looking at the roots. They carry the minute details: Their lives, how were they? And who did they become? How did they flee? What roads did they cross? And what threats did they face?
The images in the book are “beating” without a heart, and “they speak” without vocal cords. You do not merely look at those images. They rather take you to faraway places to live through them the lives of the featured people. You thus feel that your feet have indeed walked the land of the camp without having to bear the tedious travel or the wet weather.
For this reason, as you move across the book, you are not merely reading it or turning its pages; you are rather living with its protagonists and moving with them in a boat between two banks: From Burma to Bangladesh...
Publishing this book was a humanitarian duty in order to introduce these people’s cause and to support them by dedicating the revenues of the book to provide basic aid to the refugees.
