GABURA, Bangladesh — At the 20th anniversary gathering on Sunday, Mohammed C. Israel rang a small brass bell beside a memorial to the 29 people killed when Cyclone Jhora struck this low-lying stretch of Satkhira district on 25 October 2006. Then 24 survivors stepped forward. They said Israel’s boat had carried them to safety, not away from danger.
The distinction has shaped the 74-year-old boatman’s life. Neighbours had watched his launch head into the dark as water rose over the banks; many assumed he had abandoned them. Israel kept his boat tied near his home and attended the annual remembrance, but rarely spoke. “I left with people aboard,” he said. “I came back empty, and they thought I had saved myself.”
The survivors’ return, led by retired teacher Avantika Munshi-Sastry, was the gathering’s surprise. She said the boat had ferried her and 23 others from a flooded settlement to a raised embankment. “We were frightened and he kept telling us to sit low,” she said. “For years, I did not know the village had blamed him.”
The boat that vanished into rain
The storm pushed seawater into the village after dusk, according to residents’ accounts and district tallies. Israel said he had made two trips in his narrow wooden launch, taking people from a cut-off hamlet toward higher ground. On the second run, the engine failed near the embankment. The passengers climbed to safety; Israel spent the night trying to secure the boat.
By dawn, the launch had drifted out of sight. Residents looking for relatives saw it disappear in rain and wind, while the local death toll rose and 18 people were listed as missing. Israel said nobody asked him where the passengers had gone. “I was ashamed that I couldn’t return for everyone,” he said. “So I let the story stand.”
Ain Kozlov, a Dhaka-based researcher who studies coastal disaster records, said casualty lists after major storms can combine confirmed deaths with people unaccounted for during the first days. “Those numbers are not always a clean count of who died,” Kozlov said. In Gabura, the village memorial keeps the figure of 29 dead; residents still dispute how many people were missing.
A different kind of roll call
Munshi-Sastry, 69, said she had stayed away from previous anniversaries because the gathering felt like a place for mourning, not explanation. She returned after a neighbour told her Israel still came each year. At Sunday’s ceremony, she identified the boat by a repaired strip of blue paint near its bow and spoke in front of the families who had accused him.
The group did not erase the dead or settle every disputed name. But several residents shook Israel’s hand, and one asked him to help teach younger boatmen how to move people through the narrow channels at high tide. The annual ceremony, usually a quiet reading of names, ended with the survivors calling out theirs.
Israel says he will bring the bell again next year, but does not expect a formal apology. The storm took people he could not reach, he said, and no account of one rescue can undo that loss. Still, as the visitors crossed the muddy lane toward the river, he stood beside his old launch rather than behind the memorial.
