He was already preparing to leave when the gunfire erupted without warning. The soldiers were shooting at civilians and burning down homes, again.
In a panic, Biak Tling stuffed two days’ worth of clothes into a backpack and fled. He covered 220 miles (354 kilometers) over two days on his motorbike, eventually making his way across a narrow suspension bridge from his strife-ridden home of Myanmar into the relative refuge of India.
A week earlier, he had sent his wife and three young children on a similar journey. "Take care,” he told them. "And wait for me.”
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