Burnt beyond recognition

Nilufa is all lost; hers is an agony untellable. To Saturday's blaze in Ashulia, she has lost not one, not two, not three but four of her loved ones. They were the meaning of her own self, her existence.
The 20-year-old could yet console herself if, only if, one could tell her where she could find her parents, a brother and his pregnant wife.
Of the 111 dead, 55 still remain unidentified as the bodies have been burned to coal, indeed to cinders beyond recognition. Nilufa has tried in vain to find her people from among those bodies, now at the Dhaka Medical College morgue.
"I know they are dead, but I can't believe it," she says and adds in a wailing voice: "I could have consoled myself if I could get even one body or two, and bury them. I could have told myself, 'Here lies my father or mother or brother or sister-in-law.'"
Originally from Mithapukur in Dinajpur, her father, Nazrul Islam, came to Dhaka to find his luck a decade ago. Luck he did find in Ashulia at a garments factory. About two years ago he joined Tazreen Fashions where he managed jobs also for his wife Amena Begum, 45, son Md Nayan, 25, and Nayan's wife Monira, 22.
Hoping to settle the entire family in Dhaka, Nazrul brought Nilufa about five years ago and married her off to a youth at Nishchintapur, which is about 200 yards away from the factory that was engulfed by the devastating fire.
"As soon as I heard of the fire, I ran to the factory. I saw people running for life and I cried out.
"I first called my father but he did not pick up the phone. Then I called my brother. He missed the first call but received the second. But he did not say anything," Nilufa said.
She could not get through their phones after that any more.
With these loved ones dead, Nilufa has now two younger brothers -- Leon, 12, and Ratan, 8 -- to look after. Ratan is a class-III student and Leon is helping Nilufa's husband at his grocery shop at Nishchintapur.
As for identifying the bodies of her parents, brother and his wife, she does not know where to go for help.