Fire shatters Shefali's dreams

From right, Jamil-Runa and Asma-Alamgir -- two couples whose marriages were arranged on Wednesday at the Gano Bhaban -- pray at Azimpur graveyard yesterday for the family members and relatives killed in Nimtoli fire on June 3.Photo: STAR

She came to Dhaka for a few days. A pleasure trip it wasn't.
She came to see for herself the spot where her only son died a heroic death trying to save a baby.
Shefali Akhter, 33, came to Dhaka burying her 14-year-old son Jasim Uddin at her home in Hosnabad under Muladi upazila of Barisal.
"How can I stay in Dhaka when my son is at my home. I just came to Dhaka to see the building where all my dreams burnt to ashes," said Shefali when asked whether she would stay with her husband in Dhaka.
She was married in 1991 at the age of just 14. Her husband Bachchu Halder mostly stayed in Dhaka. She was abandoned by her husband in 2000 and he remarried that very year.
She showed a laminated photo of her, her son Jasim and daughter Sheuli to The Daily Star correspondents.
"Jasim had gone home during Eid last year. But I was sick then. He took me to Muladi upazila for treatment. He also told me to have a picture taken with him and Sheuli [her eight-year-old daughter] fearing that if something happened to me they would not have anything to remember me by," she said.
Jasim was a class-VI student of Nabakumar Institute. He used to stay with his father and stepmother in Dhaka.
Shefali said she used to talk to her son over the telephone often and she had talked to him five days before he died in the Nimtoli blaze.
"Jasim had a cell phone that he bought for Tk 1,600 and he often talked to me. As I have no phone, I would just give a missed call from a neighbour's phone and my son would call back," Shefali said.
When Shefali was struggling to make both ends meet, Jasim took a part-time job at a shop on Shia Goli in Hossaini Dalan in Dhaka where his father and stepmother Bilkis Begum lived.
Shefali said she had pinned all her hopes in Jasim. She knew someday he would become something.
With his good behaviour and personality Jasim became almost a family member of shop-owner Shimul Hossain.
Jasim's father Bachchu said Shimul helped him get Jasim admitted to Nabakumar Institute. Shimul also died in the fire.
Shimul's close friend Abul Khayer said Jasim died when he braved into the inferno to save the three-year-old son of Shimul.