LEDA, Bangladesh — The four young sisters sat in a huddle, together but alone.

Their accounts were dramatic: Their mother had died when their home was burned by soldiers in Rakhine State in western Myanmar. Their father was one of thousands of Rohingya Muslims who had disappeared into official custody and were feared dead.

Somehow, the sisters — ages 12, 8, 5 and 2 — made their way to refuge in Bangladesh. An uncle, who had been living for years in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, had taken them in, adding the girls to his own collection of hungry children.

“My parents were killed in Myanmar,” said the eldest girl, Januka Begum. “I miss them very much.”

I was reporting on children who had arrived in the camps without their families. An international charity, which had given financial support to the uncle, brought me to meet the girls.

Within an hour, I had a notebook filled with the kind of quotes that pull at heartstrings. Little of it was true.