Where Have All the Flowers Gone

“The smallest clothes, no one ever lifts them to the roof.

The tiniest bed now lies in sorrow, empty.

The one who came last, Has gone away first.

That little one, who was the smallest of all,

Has emptied every corner with their absence.”

-Satyendranath Dutta

July 21st, 2025, a blood-stained date etched into Bangladesh’s history, one that will never pass silently again. On that afternoon, an F-7 BGI training fighter jet crashed into Milestone School and College in Uttara, Dhaka, extinguishing 31 young lives and taking the brave lives of two teachers. Some children were in fourth grade, others in fifth, one may have just written their first poem, ready to hand it to their teacher. But the fire that rained from the sky turned those dream pages to ash.

They were more than just students, they were storytellers of tomorrow. Little Ayat’s artwork had hung on the school corridor just a week before. Rahman, the science fair champion, had proudly said, “I want to become a doctor.” But today, they rest beneath the earth, tiny blossoms, silenced before they could bloom.

Two teachers, guardians of innocence, gave their lives protecting their students. Maherin Chowdhury, an English teacher and coordinator of classes 3 to 5, repeatedly entered burning classrooms to rescue children, even as her body succumbed to the flames. Her final words: “They’re my children too… How can I leave them behind?”

Masuka Begum, a fellow teacher from the primary English section, helped evacuate her classroom and was critically injured in the process. She later passed away in hospital, her sacrifice equally profound and silent.

Mourning families now ask only one heartbreaking question: “Why my child?”
One father said, “I walked him to school every day. That day I had an urgent meeting… he went alone. If only I hadn’t let him go…”
A mother whispered, “I forgot to pack his favorite chips in the lunchbox. He had said he'd be upset. Now, I can’t even see that upset face.”

The school’s scorched walls still echo with children's cries and teachers’ courage. Milestone's building bears burn marks not just of fire, but of resistance, of sacrifice, and of stories interrupted too soon. But deeper still lie questions: why did this happen? How could their safety be so fragile?

These deaths mark a shared failure of systems, accountability, and conscience. They are gone, but the questions they left behind remain:

How could a fighter jet fly over such a densely populated school area?

Why did fire control take so long?

Where is child safety in our national priorities?

The loss of a child erases a whole world of possibility. The loss of a teacher erases the voice that nurtures those worlds. Today, the classrooms at Milestone stand silent and hollow. Such a massive tragedy has occurred, yet the concerned authorities have shown no sign of taking any responsibility. Many helpless parents have all but given up hope for a fair and impartial investigation. The silence from the government’s side surrounding the incident was striking. Amid a storm of controversy and the haunting memories of countless lost students, will the chapter of the July 21 milestone tragedy truly come to a close? How many more innocent children must pay the price for the shameless negligence and irregularities of the state and its agencies? How many shattered dreams must families endure before you finally wake up?