Eight-year-old Junaid was sitting alone on the doorstep of a small house tucked inside a narrow alley in Samiti Para, Cox's Bazar. When asked about his father, he struggled to speak. His eyes filled with tears before the words came.
His father, Mohammad Nur, boarded a trawler weeks ago, bound for Malaysia. He never returned. Neither did his stepmother, who left after news broke of the disappearance.
Now Junaid and his elder brother -- who earns money offering horse rides at Sugandha Point of Cox’s Bazar beach -- live alone in the house.
As the conversation continued, Junaid's cousin, eight-year-old Mohammad Hossain, walked in. His father, Mohammad Harun, is also among the missing.
Samiti Para, in Ward No 1 of Cox's Bazar town, is a coastal settlement dense with stories of desperation. Originally formed by survivors of the catastrophic 1991 cyclone -- many from Moheshkhali and Kutubdia -- it has since drawn low-income families from across the country, living in makeshift homes secured through informal arrangements with influential locals.
It is a community built on loss, and now it is absorbing another kind.
At least five men from this settlement were aboard the trawler that capsized in the Andaman Sea in early April while attempting the perilous illegal journey to Malaysia: Nur, Harun, Shafiullah, Hamid Majhi and his brother Ibrahim Khalil.
Neighbour Mohammad Alam Maizbhandari was present on April 2 when Nur and Harun said their goodbyes.
"They said they were going to Malaysia to change their fate," he recalled, "but did not say through whom they were travelling."
Shafiullah's mother-in-law, Rahima Begum, said she pleaded with him not to go, fearing the rough seas. He told her the fishing ban would leave him unable to feed his family and left anyway.
When asked why no case had been filed, she was candid: "We do not understand whom to file a case against."
Those who arranged his journey had told the family he might have reached an island alive and would be brought back -- a promise that has kept them suspended between hope and grief and discouraged them from seeking legal recourse.
Khalil's wife, Zubaida, said her husband drove an autorickshaw and dreamed of something better. Her brother-in-law, Hamid Majhi, is one of only nine people rescued alive -- pulled from the Andaman Sea on April 9 by the Bangladesh-flagged vessel MT Meghna Pride and later handed over to the Coast Guard.
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Khalil’s wife, Zubaida, and his children are still waiting for his return. Photo: Star
He has since been named the principal accused in a case filed over the incident, in which six of the nine survivors were identified as members of an alleged human trafficking network.
Locals say Majhi had made the trawler journey to Malaysia multiple times before, and his safe returns gave others the confidence to try. They also alleged that a man named Ilias and his wife, Rozina, were key figures in an alleged trafficking operation in the area.
But the families of the missing claim ignorance of who arranged the crossings, and several residents, speaking on condition of anonymity, say traffickers have silenced them through threats and false promises, steering them away from legal recourse.
The full scale of the tragedy remains painfully unclear.
Rescued survivor Rafiqul Islam said more than 250 Bangladeshis and Rohingya refugees were on board.
"A few of us managed to survive by clinging to pieces of wood and water bottles, but many others were lost at sea," he said.
Relatives believe at least 12 passengers were from Pekua, four from Ramu, and others from across Cox's Bazar and Teknaf. Rohingya families, officials note, rarely come forward in such cases, making the true number of victims even harder to establish.
Without an official passenger list, no confirmed count of the dead or missing exists.
Former Cox's Bazar Chamber of Commerce president Abu Morshed Chowdhury put it plainly: "Such organised crimes are not difficult to stop, but there is a lack of will. Specific groups are operating along fixed trafficking routes."
Meanwhile in Samiti Para, the alleys are quiet. Two eight-year-old boys wait -- not entirely sure what they are waiting for.
