This is one of several interviews from the SBS special feature 'Faces of the Rohingya'. Watch Dateline's investigation 'Myanmar's Killing Fields' at the end of the article.
Kabir Ahmed is 44-years-old. He's slim, clean-shaven and fresh-faced. He took over the Rohingya Bazaar at the start of the year and intends to make a sign as soon as he can, but he’s very busy: the café is open from 9 am to 10 pm every day.
Kabir has eight children, including two sets of twin boys. Several of them squeal around the café while he stands beneath a low fluorescent light at the counter, or sits with his customers, or disappears to run errands.
Illustration: Tia Kass Source: Tia Kass
His youngest daughter was born in Australia, after everyone arrived by boat from Malaysia in 2013.
Kabir is waiting and hoping for a visa that will allow his family a pathway to permanent residency.
“I had no work rights in Malaysia,” he says. “In Australia, I have support.”
When Kabir was a teenager, he fled from Rakhine State - the coastal province in Myanmar where most Rohingya have lived for generations - and into Bangladesh, but five years later he was repatriated by force.
It still wasn’t safe, so he fled again. Last year, he says, his aunt and nephew were shot and killed by the military.
Kabir’s brothers and sisters escaped to Cox’s Bazar in south-eastern Bangladesh. About one million Rohingya live there now, in over a dozen makeshift refugee camps.
Mr Ahmed is worried about how his family will cope as the monsoon season begins.
The monsoon is troubling many people we meet at the café.
The first rains have begun, but the heaviest falls will come from June to September - during these months alone, the region averages more than five times Melbourne’s annual rainfall.
Watch Dateline's 'Myanmar's Killing Fields' below.
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