Rohingya’s shoes

We respond (or rather, react) differently to war and disaster reliefs if we refrain from putting ourselves in people’s shoes. Operating by that imagination we can lose our balance and perspective. Take the situation of the Ukrainians versus that of the Rohingyas for a moment. The Rohingyas, no less innocent, flee from violence no less pressing and no less unjust; the drag has been decades rather than years; the scale of the exodus is higher by orders of magnitude. Yet far more people are able to imagine themselves in the Ukrainians’ shoes, “What can happen to the Ukrainians can happen to me, that is so frightening so I must do something to support them!” That is more a reaction and a projection, answering to one’s own interests and needs, rather than any collected response to the Ukranians’ needs.

With the wildest imagination far less people are able to imagine themselves in the Rohingyas’ shoes. The Rohingyas have been stateless for generations, without any citizenship to any nation. They escape by foot, not by train or par avion. They do with a yoke across the shoulders to carry the infirm. On arrival they get shooed rather than receptions. And they are not white. To people’s wildest imagination all these attributes are way too remote and far too removed to identify with. Most can’t picture themselves as destitute. So we don’t hear shouts of support for, in fact hardly ever a mention of, the Rohingyas.

We don’t need to put ourselves in people’s shoes. We just need to be with them. The Rohingyas taught me about running and hiding. They taught me in a way no one else could have. It was an evening when we finished our weekly class. Down the backlane behind Pacific Megamal we waited for the van which usually took them home and dropped me off at the ferry terminal. And then I noticed a police car cruising pass the main road, some distance away, perpendicular to the backlane. That same instant I found myself all alone. Not a soul was with me. The Rohingyas vanished into thin air. Just like that. Not a shadow. Not a pin drop. I was a-l-o-n-e. I didn’t see or hear any movement. Zero sound. Zero movement. Ladies dressed in full Muslim gowns from head to toe, who wrapped themselves around me until the split-second ago, disappeared into thin air without a trace.

There I stood, all by myself, down a rundown backlane far from my comfort territories. I acknowledged that, but then what place had I not been. I felt eerie right into the bones not for my personal safety but for that fear—that fear seeded across generations in undocumented people programed to run and to hide. A wholly different timbre of fear I hadn’t known. They went out of radar until two days later, “Sorry sister, we desserted you. We were too frightened.”

We don’t need to imagine ourselves in people’s shoes. We just need to join them and be among them.

For anyone who really wants to get in people’s shoes—I think the ultimate pilgrimage would be to get on those migrant boats that can sink anytime, with liveless bodies packed left, right and center like sardines.