<i>The last call</i>
Knowing that he would die, Polash Mian called his mother to say a final goodbye.
Moyna Begum choked with emotion yesterday as she tried to recollect what her son had told her for the last time. Polash came from Latibpur village that lost 11 of its residents to the deadly fire at Tazreen Fashions Ltd in Ashulia on November 24.
"Ma, I am going to die. You will find me in a toilet," Moyna quoted him as saying.
Polash would not let him go unidentified. He told his mother that he had tied a black shirt around his waist so that she could identify him even if his face changed beyond recognition.
After the fatal fire, Moyna said, she came to Dhaka along with other villagers whose sons and daughters had been working with the garment factory.
"I checked every toilet until I found him [Polash] on the third floor," she said with tears rolling down her cheeks.
"He had that black shirt wrapped around his waist," Moyna said before she lapsed into silence.
Moyna does not know what is awaiting her in the days to come. The next hurdle for the remaining four members of the family, who were all dependent on Palash, is to search a means of living.
The case of her neighbouring family is no less painful.
Its four members -- Nazrul Islam, his wife Amena Khatun, son Nayan Mian and daughter-in-law Monira Begum -- could not be identified among the 111 who perished in the fire.
"What will happen to me now," said a helpless Chobera Begum, Nazrul's mother, as all the earning members of the family had died.
Earlier on Monday, the bodies of the identified victims were sent to Latibpur village in Mithapukur upazila and buried. In the entire upazila, a total of 37, including 24 women, died in the inferno.
Meanwhile, Farid Ahmed, deputy commissioner of Rangpur, has allocated Tk 25,000 for each of the families who lost their children and Tk.15,000 for the people who were injured in the country's worst garment factory fire.
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