A recent find of this photographer and speaker, is of three women and their life stories:
“We already have one foot in the grave! We are too old now; we haven’t got long left. But we are happy together. Even now every memory of our friendship feels so fresh. We are from the same community. We got married in the same village at a very early age. In our village, people got married between six to seven years old. We became friends after our marriages. We remember every joyful and every miserable moment we have passed together.
We three have lost our husbands in the year of 1971 in the war. After that war, we came to this slum with our children and other villagers. Living in this slum the last 45 years has been a matter of life and death. Before this incident life was truly perfect. We had our families, husbands, our beautiful lives and everything.
Now we have to work in different places from early in the morning till the evening as servants. But we always look forward to the evening. After coming home, we try to see each other all the time and come here to talk in the evening. This is the only time we can talk, laugh and take delight in each other. We love to talk about our village and our beautiful memories and laughs together. We discuss our family problems and share each other’s difficulties.
Jobeda is a little older than us and she feels more flustered sometimes because of some of her problems with her son and sons-in-law. She says, “I don’t want to live anymore, why doesn’t God take me with him. Lots of people are dying. Why I don’t I die?”. But you know what; she is really scared to death. When a train goes by here she runs to the room for better safety.
Our friendship will end when we will die; not before that. We have no one to take care of us but we are lucky we have each other. We take care of each other when we get sick. We cook for each other and we feed each other. We give baths to each other and even we share our rice when we don’t have anything to eat. We were discussing today who will take our dead body to our village when we will be no more? But we know someone will. At least one of us will be there for the three of us.
Jobeda 65.
Rabeya 60
Nureja 55.”
