In May 2020, three wooden boats carrying hundreds of Rohingya refugees floated between the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The refugees floated there, back and forth with the winds, during the holy month of Ramadan. Their numbers shrank after they were turned away from port after port, with scores of children, elders, and others meeting death as the boats drifted. Those boats, for tens of thousands, would become hearses for the departed.

SEED: Powerful imagery ('boats as hearses') could anchor a narrative essay on maritime refugee crises and state indifference.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 677