SRINAGAR, India — In the cramped lanes of Indian Administered Kashmir’s Jammu’s Narwal slum, Kiryani Talab Camp, 8-year-old Noora awakens each morning to the same devastating reality: Her parents are not there to greet her.
For nearly five years, her father and mother have been detained at the Hira Nagar Detention facility, leaving Noora and her sibling — 16-year-old Haleema— to live without the fundamental anchor of parental presence.
It was in July 2022 when ReligionUnpluggedfirst reported these children’s stories, documenting their struggles as they waited for their parents’ return from detention. Their situation remains unchanged.
“Since then, nothing has changed”, Haleema said. “We are still waiting for our parents to return like we used to … and years have passed without them.”
On March 6, 2021, Noora and Haleema’s parents — Mohammed Ibrahim, 49, and Sajida Begum, 37 — were sent from Jammu’s Kiryani Talab Camp to a jail that had been turned into a detention center in Hiranagar, a town in the Kathua district of Jammu-Kashmir. There are dozens of Rohingya children growing up in the camp.
Haleema has been counting the days — not in months or years, but in sunrises — without her parents. Noora was only four when her parents were taken away in a pre-dawn police raid on their tin-roofed shelter in the Kiryani Talab Rohingya camp.
“Now she is going to be nine,” Haleema said of her sister.
Noor Habba, has been raising her nieces Noora and Haleema alongside her own children.
This story was originally published in religionunplugged.com. Read the full story here.
