For so many years, Hamid thought he could “save himself” with music.

When he was nine, he watched a Bangladeshi film with strange, melodious objects that he had never seen before in Burma — musical instruments. He later joined a group of people who cobbled together money to buy  instruments. No one was selling them in their town, Buthidaung, so someone traveled to Bangladesh to find them. 

Hamid, now 47, supported his family by performing at weddings and parties in Burma. As a Rohingya, a Muslim minority in a Buddhist-majority country, many of Hamid’s rights were denied—including the ability to travel inside Burma (now known as Myanmar).

The leader of his all-Muslim band arranged for two Buddhist monks—a married couple—to become their managers. The husband and wife took most of the band’s earnings and the musicians divided the rest, says Hamid.

But it wasn’t so bad. The couple provided security during performances and if any artists got sick, they would find them doctors. The monks also arranged travel papers for the musicians; a violinist, a flautist, a person with hand cymbals, and Hamid who played the mandolin.

When Hamid wasn’t working, he was often sitting around with his friends, making music under the moon and until dawn. “Back when we could do that,” he says.

Sometimes, he would reach checkpoints where soldiers would barrage the Rohingya with questions of where they were heading and why, even if they had travel papers. Fortunately, Hamid’s mandolin threw them off their line of questioning, says his son, Zahid. “When they see the instrument, they forget to ask where you’re going. The only ask about the instrument, ‘Why are you carrying this? What do you do with this?’ Then he plays and they like it. They are curious about what it is.”

Those encounters with the military allotted Hamid small, basic freedoms—like accessing the Mayu river so that he could visit family in Bangladesh.

But life got harder for him and all Rohingya as the years passed. More and more restrictions were placed on them, and the government justified its actions by claiming the Rohingya were not citizens of Burma. Hamid fled in 1991 after he saw the military round up children and elderly people for forced labor. He was 19.

The family spent three days on a boat before they reached Bangladesh. At the border, Hamid says, security guards eyed his mandolin with suspicion as though it was a weapon. He started strumming it and the guards let his family through.

Over the years, they moved from refugee camp to refugee camp—”Dum Du Mia, Kunia Palong, and Naya Para,” he says. It was a dark time. He worried about how his children would be educated and whether his country would find peace. He saw border guards, known at the time as the Bangladesh Rifles, beat and arrest people before stealing their money. He stopped playing music for pleasure.

In 2006, camp guards arrested him for trying to leave the refugee camp to earn money. He says they tried to send him back to Myanmar and the United Nations’ refugee agency got involved.

A New Life

The Canadian government took in Hamid, his wife, and their seven children in 2008.

At their home in Ontario, portraits of the family, taken and mailed by the government, hang over the stairs. He says his four sons and three daughters have a future here: Zahid just earned a degree in police studies and another son is enrolling in engineering school. His oldest daughter is a nurse, the middle wants to be a teacher, and the youngest talks about someday being a doctor.

Sometimes Hamid takes English lessons at a local language school. But nearly every day, he plays music and posts his video performances on YouTube. The songs he sings take a cue from Rohingya events in the headlines.

In August 2017, he followed news of military crackdowns in Myanmar. Rohingya men were killed, women were raped, and others were abducted and never heard from again while hundreds of thousands sought refuge in Bangladesh. In October, he learned that his town, Buthidaung, was burned along with other places in Rakhine state.

This is not the time to return because the government has stripped the Rohingya of their rights and torched their homes, says Hamid. If people go back, “they will be in the same situation again. Some will die.” Still, he says, “If the country were peaceful, I would return.”

For now, he sits at home and writes Rohingya music for YouTube. He says, “If people listen to these songs, they will talk about it to friends, to school, to the world.”