A mother’s agony: The burnt bag she carried was all that was left

On a quiet Thursday morning, July 24, the gates of Milestone School and College in Uttara remained locked, sealed by grief, by chaos, by the lingering smoke of tragedy. No students ran through the corridors. No bells rang. Only silence, broken by the sobs of a mother searching for her child.

Umme Tamima arrived around 11:00am with her brother Sabbir, other relatives, and a heart heavy with hope and dread. They had searched hospitals. Morgues. Morgues again. Prayed at mosques. Scoured social media. But Maryam was nowhere.

And so, they came back again to the place where the sky had fallen.

The school gates were closed. Officials had restricted access. But when a mother weeps at a gate, pounding it with her palms, screaming her daughter’s name - bureaucracy falters.

“What barrier can hold a mother?” one onlooker whispered.

Moved by her anguish, the authorities opened the gate.

Umme Tamima rushed toward Haider Ali Bhaban, the building where the fighter jet had crashed just three days earlier, obliterating classrooms, lives, futures. She scanned every corner, every shadow, every pile of debris and found the burnt backpack.

She dropped to her knees, clutched the small, charred bag blackened at the edges, its fabric melted in places. It had once belonged to her daughter, Maryam Umme Afia, a bright-eyed Class III student at the Sky branch of the school.

Then, slowly, she stood up and walked out, clutching the burnt bag that had been found near the wreckage. A relative had recognised it. “It has her name tag,” he said. “It’s hers.”

It was the only piece of her daughter she could hold.

Later on the day, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) released its latest DNA findings.

One sample, taken from a fragment of remains at Dhaka CMH, matched perfectly with the DNA provided by Umme Tamima and her husband, Abdul Qadir.

Maryam Umme Afia was gone.

The bag was not just a school bag. It was a relic. A final trace. A mother’s last connection to a child who would never come home.

Sabbir, Maryam’s uncle, could barely speak when reporters approached. “Our home is in Chandalbhog,” he said, voice trembling. “We… we can’t talk. My sister – her mother – is broken. She hasn’t eaten. She just cries. Everyone… please pray for us.”

Earlier that morning, the school’s administrative officer, SK Solaiman, had stood at the gate and said families could enter with ID to search and receive information from a help desk in Building 5.

Counselling was available. Support was promised.

But no counselling can heal the hole left when a 9-year-old girl’s laughter is silenced by a falling jet.

No help desk can return a mother’s child.

And now, all her mother has is a burnt bag – and a memory that burns brighter than any flame.