For weeks, the embankment shielding East
Dhangmari, in the Khulna district of southwest-
ern Bangladesh, had been threatening to sink
into the Pasur River. First, a ferocious storm had
ripped into the outer layer of concrete. Then,
at the end of 2017, the river had begun eating
into the porous earthen wall itself. Locals rushed
in sandbags, but that bought only a few days’
respite. When the river finally surged into the
cemetery across from Haldar’s garden, disin-
terring skeletons and contaminating the village’s
drinking pools, it filled her one-room hut waist-
deep in muddy brown water.
“There was nothing else I could do to pro-
tect my house,” she said. “We were powerless,
like children.”
Haldar, a meticulously dressed widow
of about 50, had at least had some inkling
of what was to come. She’d watched as the
nearby Sundarbans, a vast mangrove forest
that flanks the village, had retreated, its trees
looking increasingly weedy. She’d noted how
the water appeared to draw strength from the
forest’s weakness. The only surprise, Haldar
insisted, is that the village’s earthworks held
out for so long. “The trees defended us, but we
treated them very badly,” she said. “So now we
are all suffering the consequences.”
It was when the
body of a long-dead
friend surfaced near
her front door that
Bulu Haldar knew
her house was as
good as gone.
138 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC