He thought they were dead, but Indonesian TV changed everything.
Without news of his wife and daughter for months, Nemah Shah discovered that his family was alive during the broadcast of a report on Rohingya refugees landing on the Indonesian coast “When I recognized my wife and my daughter "He said," it has been the happiest day of my life.
When, six years ago, Nemah Shah left Burma for Malaysia where he plans to work, he left his family there.
Arrived in this predominantly Muslim country, Nemah Shah lives like most Rohingya refugees on the margins of society, with no hope of acquiring Malaysian nationality.
In Burma, where the Rohingya are persecuted, his wife is "afraid of being killed," she said.
Exactions of the army push her to leave in turn.
She and her daughter succeeded in reaching neighboring Bangladesh where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees live.
But her husband gives up on bringing them to Malaysia for fear that the trip will be too dangerous.
"I was just hoping to be happy"
Secretly, however, Majuma saves money on the money sent each month by her husband, and in February she has enough to pay a smuggler and go to sea with her little girl.
Usually, a deposit of $ 2000 per person must be given before the crossing.
“I was just hoping to be happy and was thinking about when I could live with my husband again,” she says.
The trip should last a week.
Nemah Shah watches, searches for information on the boat which embarked them.
But the months go by and he has "no news" from his wife.
A religious service is even organized as a funeral ... Until he sees his wife and daughter appear on videos.
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A phone call to confirm the extraordinary news.
And the young man leaves to join them in Indonesia, by traveling illegally to the port of Medan 300 km away before infiltrating the Lhokseumawe camp where they have found refuge.
“If the UN had sent them to another country and I had stayed in Malaysia, we could still have been separated,” he says.
But the future remains uncertain.
Nemah Shah is once again a refugee, he has no right to work, the family no longer has any income or prospects to offer little Fatima.