Two kids in a cruel world

His fractured left arm was bandaged while wounds were still fresh on his forehead and cheek and in the corner of one eye.

He was sobbing, only saying: "Ammu jabo ... abbu jabo [I want to go to my mother and father]."

Nobody has an answer to this plea of Shahjalal Bari Purno, aged only two years and a month.   

To soothe the little boy, his aunt Sabina Yasmin carried him in her arms and walked from the corridor to the nurses' station of the hospital where he was undergoing treatment. 

Sometimes, she managed to hush him by feeding juice. Sometimes, she did it by showing him the world outside through the window of his cabin on the seventh floor of the National Institute of Neurosciences and Hospital.

"How long can I keep him quiet this way?" said his aunt as the kid starts crying again after momentary pauses and demands to go to his parents.  

Purno lost his father, mother and a sister in the early hours of Tuesday, when a long-haul bus and their car collided head-on in the early hours of Tuesday.

The accident took place at Daudkandi on Dhaka-Chittagong highway on their way back to the capital from the wedding of a relative in Comilla.

Four died on the spot -- his father Fazlul Bari Mithu, 40, associate professor and registrar of National Institute of Mental Health and Research; mother Asmaul Housna, 34; sister Fahmida Fairooz Sneha, 11; and house help Sima, 21.

Fariha Bushra Bari Faiza, another sister of Purno, suffered minor injuries.

Faiza, 8, a nursery student of Bogra Cantonment School and College, was given first aid and sent to their family home in Naruli area of Bogra town. Purno was rushed to the National Institute of Neurosciences and Hospital.

"What can I say to this little kid?" said the aunt when one of these reporters talked to her at the hospital yesterday.

However, she thinks Purno's condition might improve a bit when he sees his sister Faiza, who was on her way to Dhaka for further check-up.

Faiza, who was under care of her youngest aunt Nahida Yasmin Shampa, has yet to realise that her parents are gone forever.

Whenever she enquires about her parents, her relatives say her father is busy at his hospital in Dhaka and her mother is there too. Both would come home soon.

Her father used to stay in a quarter of the hospital during the work days.

Before Faiza left Bogra for the capital yesterday afternoon, our correspondent saw her playing with toys in the bedroom of her parents with one of her cousins.

After a while, she asked aunt Shampa, "Where is my mamoni [mother]?"

Faiza's relatives said doctors found some problems in her lungs. And they sent her to the hospital where Purno was admitted to.

Mahfuzur Rahman, a maternal uncle of Faiza's father, said that upon release, both the kids will stay at Sabina's house in Dhaka for a couple of months as they will need follow-up treatments.

Then their responsibility will be given to Shampa.

Shampa, who lives in Uttara with her husband and only son, has decided to move to Bogra to raise Purno and Faiza, according to Mahfuz and Sabina.

"Shampa will admit her son Nahin to a school here in Bogra," said Mahfuzur.