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Mahfuza’s day begins at 5am. She wakes for dawn prayer and quickly gets ready to head out. There’s no time for a proper breakfast, just a cup of tea or maybe some leftover fish if she’s lucky. Usually, by the time the sun starts to rise, she’s already out on her boat, gliding over the river.
At the end of the day, her hair flecked with sand from the river and dust from the road, she comes home and bathes in the pond close to her house. Sometimes she swims for fun.
Mahfuza catches about five kilos of fish a month. She keeps 1kg for herself and Lavlu and sells the rest, earning about 10,000 taka ($10), which the two must survive on.
Some fish, like sardines and mola carplet, are found all year round. But her work otherwise changes with the seasons. In warmer months, she catches shrimp and hilsa, and in the cooler months, she goes after bigger fish and crabs.
“The seasons dictate everything,” she says. "You have to keep up with the water, or you’ll fall behind."
On a good day, she makes a few hundred taka, enough to cover her expenses, which include the constant burden of renting her boat. The work is always unpredictable. "Some days are good, some are empty," she shrugs.
The seasons pose other challenges. Annual government bans lasting a total of five months during fish breeding seasons to prevent over-extraction make things harder. In those months, Mahfuza and Lavlu are often forced to borrow rice or money or sometimes go hungry. "If the government wants to protect the species, then they should protect us too," she says.
From May to October, the monsoon season, Mahfuza risks being caught in a cyclone. She is adept at reading the weather, relying on the wind, the colour of the sky and the patterns of the waves to gauge whether a storm is coming. "The sky darkens, the wind shifts - then I know I need to get back to shore," she says. Sometimes the weather turns quickly. "You can feel it in the air before you see it," she explains, "but there are times when the wind changes and you know it’s already too late."
When she’s been caught in a storm, she has had no choice but to hunker down in her boat and wait for it to pass, bobbing helplessly in the churning waters.
Mahfuza has been caught on the water in some of the worst storms, including Cyclone Aila in 2009, which killed more than 100 people and caused tidal surges and flooding, displacing half a million people.
Sometimes she has had no choice but to fish, even when the weather doesn’t look promising. "The sea doesn't wait for you to feel ready," she says. "I have to fish to survive - cyclone or no cyclone.”
Pirates also prey on small fishing boats in the remote waterways, especially those with lone fishers like Mahfuza. They often demand money and fish, and though raids aren’t daily, they’re enough to keep villagers on edge. Sometimes, they hold fishers for ransom. “They usually are here for money. They think that we have money. How foolish they are!” says Mahfuza.
Seven years ago, Mahfuza and her older brother Alamgir were fishing when they were surrounded by five unmasked men in boats armed with guns. They demanded 12,000 taka ($98). Mahfuza and Alamgir said they didn’t have it, so the pirates forced them onto another boat close to the shore. “They are very dangerous. They kidnap and sometimes even kill people if they refuse to pay money. I was very scared,” she says. They were held for hours until a coastguard vessel appeared in the distance, and the panicked raiders pushed Mahfuza and her brother into the shallow shore waters.
To this day, sudden noises in the water from another fisher make her jumpy.
But as the sole provider for her children since the age of 30, she has had no choice but to fish. "When my children cried for food, I did not care about the pirates," she says.
She now jokes about that experience, but her laughter is brief. Even now, she hides her earnings in different places and rows faster when the sun starts to go down and raiders tend to strike.
For the last 44 years, she has braved tigers, crocodiles, cyclones and pirates and stood up to her own community to provide for her family.
"I need no man. I row the boat on my own. I go to the forest alone. I can fish and bring wood from the forest. I need no man," she says, laughing, her voice tinged with pride.
