KOLKATA: Each night Gulshana Begum (name changed) will go back home and spend sleepless nights sitting at the door of the plastic-bamboo shelter house at the camp. She would fold her knees and bury her head there to find a solace from the memories that have been haunting her. The woman was raped and saw her niece getting brutalized by the gun totting men before she managed to flee her home in Myanmar When Gulshana Begum reached the shores of Bangladesh after staying hungry for seven days and walking barefoot, she thought that her miseries would come to an end. But whenever she closed her eyes, images of tormentors would start haunting her. She would wake up from the sleep and the nights seemed without an end in sight. “We could not share anything with anyone. It was shame and a lot of it. We tried to bury those memories inside, but they would surface again,” the woman in her mid-thirties said.Women like Gulshana Begum had food and shelter in Bangladesh, but the nights in Myanmar have left them completely tattered and bruised. “Often they go through flashbacks. They recount the hazardous journey, brutality they experienced and the trauma. It creates a mixed feeling among them. It gets complex when they face an uncertain future,” said Kalyan Velivela, medical coordinator of Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF), Bangladesh mission.Arwa (name changed), a community volunteer at a camp in Kutupalong had seen around 500 men getting killed in Myanmar. In Bangladesh, she looked for ways to come out of it before she found a “Shanti Khana” (community space of peace)—often called Women friendly space by the humanitarian agencies working in Bangladesh. “I started getting involved with others who have faced violence. Gradually I learnt about how to respond to such situations,” she said.“Many women who have been raped are abandoned by their husbands or families and communities often have to raise children on their own. They give birth to children born of rape without the support of their loved ones. We get to hear such stories time and again,” said Roy Wadia, regional communications advisor of UNFPA, Asia-Pacific. “We have created counselling spaces trained counsellors try to talk to them. They also work with Rohingya community volunteers. Day to day requirements of life can push things aside but it is always there with a victim and manifests in unexpected ways,” he added.In a Joint Response Plan for Rohingya Humanitarian crisis, UNHCR has identified psychological issues as one of the key challenges. The situation has aggravated further with the onset of monsoon where the Rohingyas had to endure the nature at its worst with women and kids as the most vulnerable ones. “It is not that we are always comfortable. I continuously cry inside. But I find a bit of solace when I manage to help others like me and bring them to Shanti Khana. That helps me to feel that the brutality has not drained me off completely,” said Gulshana Begum.