INANI BEACH, Bangladesh — Across the ferocious waves and the churning black water, Alam Jafar could see his frantic 7-year-old son gasping for breath, his arms flailing just above the ocean’s surface.
It was raining, and a fierce monsoon storm had transformed the sky and the sea into a kaleidoscope of gray shadows that was impossible to escape. The little boy was crying out louder than he ever had in his life. He did not know how to swim.
“Papa! Papa! Help Me!”
“Papaaaaa.”
Just moments before, they had huddled together in the relative safety of a small fishing boat filled with refugees from Myanmar that was bound for Bangladesh. They were part of the largest human exodus in Asia since the Vietnam War — a colossal tide of more than 500,000 Rohingya Muslims whose homes had been torched by Buddhist mobs and soldiers.
What happened next, just 1,000 feet (300 meters) from shore, would take the lives of at least 50 people, most of them children, in the deadliest tragedy of its kind since the crisis exploded in late August. Through interviews with more than a dozen survivors, The Associated Press has reconstructed their ill-fated journey late last month — an odyssey that underscores the perils faced by all those who flee.