THETKABYIN, Myanmar: In her dreams, Setara walks hand in hand with her Muslim husband through the streets of the seaside Myanmar town they grew up in. They visit old friends, share a meal with family, dip their toes into the warm surf of the Bay of Bengal.
But in the hate-filled reality of the world they live in, Setara can only do these things alone — when she takes off her Islamic veil and crosses through a pair of checkpoints into the predominantly Buddhist state capital, where her government will not allow the love of her life to set foot.
That’s because Setara’s husband is an ethnic Rohingya Muslim, a group the UN has called one of the most persecuted on the planet. Setara, meanwhile, was born a Buddhist and part of the ethnic Rakhine, who despise the Rohingya and see them as foreign invaders from Bangladesh.
Marriage between the two communities is extraordinarily rare. It’s also risky in a nation where security forces have driven more than 730,000 Rohingya into exile since 2016, carried out large-scale massacres and burned hundreds of villages in a campaign the UN and human rights groups have described as “ethnic cleansing.”
In Sittwe, Setara tells no one she is married to a Rohingya. Because “if they knew, they would kill me right away. So I’m always careful.”
The 24-year-old’s fears are not exaggerated. Even Rohingya who have ventured into Sittwe on rare trips escorted by police in recent months have been attacked by mobs and killed. Hard-line Buddhists regularly march through the city’s crumbling streets, past ruined mosques that have been closed since June 2012, when the Rakhine burned most Rohingya homes and drove more than 120,000 into camps for the displaced.
Setara, then a widow, met her husband, Mohammad, about eight months later at a market on the edge of a Rohingya village where she had come to sell vegetables. Rakhine traders, who can travel freely, regularly sell goods to Rohingya at marked-up prices.
They exchanged phone numbers and she began visiting him at a pharmacy he ran nearby. Mohammad, 32, bought her small gifts, teased her to make her laugh and took her for rides on his motorbike. He was amazed to meet a Rakhine woman who didn’t treat a Rohingya any differently than her own. He told her he loved her.
Setara felt the same way. She thought he was the kindest man she had ever known.
But when she told her family — after much reluctance — that she was dating a Rohingya man, they became enraged. Her brother beat her severely. They told her she could not go back. Then, her family kicked her out.
The move pushed her closer to Mohammad. In late 2013, she converted to Islam and they married in a small Islamic ceremony held before local religious leaders. No one from Setara’s family attended.
In the years since, Setara has reconciled with her three sisters. But she has never been able to return home. Her parents passed away when she was young, and the brother who helped raise them all still refuses to speak to her. Residents of her old neighborhood have also made clear she is no longer welcome; they call her a “Kalar’s wife.” Kalar is a derogatory word for Muslims that is frequently used in Myanmar.
Mohammad characterizes their relationship in much the same way his wife does. “She sees me as a human being and I see her as a human being, and it’s that simple,” he said, when asked how they had overcome the huge societal obstacles to marry.
Mohammad is a quiet man with a calm manner; Setara is more outspoken. They are a couple clearly in love, glancing at each other and smiling as they talk. The AP is identifying them by their first names only for their protection.
They live in a Rohingya village adjacent to a network of Muslim displaced camps, with Setara’s 2-year-old niece and her 9-year-old daughter from her first marriage. Setara says the Rohingya have welcomed her warmly, as one of their own. But she misses her old friends and her old life.
While Mohammad, like all Rohingya, is not permitted by the government to travel, Setara makes regular trips to Sittwe, about half an hour away, to buy supplies for the small pharmacy and shop they run beside their home.
Before going, though, she smears a pale cosmetic paste on her cheeks called “thanaka,” which is commonly used by Buddhists in Myanmar. She takes off her veil and puts on a blouse. And she never forgets to bring her national identification card, which includes a critical line indicating she is Buddhist. Without it, she could never cross the checkpoints — one manned by police, the other by soldiers — to town.
The contrast between the two worlds is startling. The Rohingya side is dry and dusty, devoid of trees and filled with despair, with little to do. The Buddhist side is lush, with schools and a university, paved roads, a karaoke bar and restaurants that serve wine by the sea.
In Sittwe’s main market, Setara visits friends and sometimes her sisters. But she also overhears Rakhine gossiping about the latest news, and cursing the Rohingya.
Sometimes she goes to the beach, where teens hang out at seaside cafes on plastic chairs, and watches the sun go down. But when she thinks about her husband — the fact that he cannot be there — her thoughts turn dark, and she wonders “if our lives will just end like this.”
“I always wish I could go out with my husband and go to the fun places in town ... especially when I see other couples going around,” Setara said. “I just want to cry sometimes.”
Mohammad imagines the same, impossible trips. But he also worries each time she goes. “I worry something might happen, that someone might find out she’s a Muslim, that she’s married to me,” he said.
Both said they want children of their own because they love each other. But they know it would not be easy for a child, who would be half Rohingya and not recognized as a Burmese citizen.
The marriage has given Setara a profound insight into life in the camps for the Rohingya displaced.
“It’s just like hell,” she said. “They have no hope. They have no medical treatment. People are more and more scared.”
Since Rohingya insurgents staged dozens of attacks in the northern half of Rakhine state that triggered a major backlash by security forces in late August, life in the south, where Setara and her husband live, has stayed calm but only gotten harder.
International aid for displaced camps has been held up by authorities, and humanitarian workers have been forced to scale back visits. Hussein said the government has also stopped Rohingya from fishing, a critical source of income, until they accept “national verification cards” which identify them as “Bengalis.” Many have resisted because they insist on being identified as Rohingya, a term the government does not recognize.
In her despair, Setara sometimes tells her husband she is going to leave. When he begs her to “stop saying that,” she tells him she doesn’t mean it.
“It doesn’t mean that I don’t love him. I just don’t like the way we have to live here,” she said. “I keep telling myself every day that I need to be strong .... but sometimes I just want to fly away.”
Still, she says, that is something she will never do. “The future for the Rohingya is bad,” she said. “But I will never leave ... it is my destiny to be here, to be with my husband.”
In strife-torn Myanmar, love trumps hate for a rare couple
In strife-torn Myanmar, love trumps hate for a rare couple
Why this US cold snap feels bone-shattering when it’s not record-shattering
The brutally frigid weather that has gripped most of America for the past 11 days is not unprecedented. It just feels that way.
The first quarter of the 21st century was unusually warm by historical standards – mostly due to human-induced climate change – and so a prolonged cold spell this winter is unfamiliar to many people, especially younger Americans.
Because bone-shattering cold occurs less frequently, Americans are experiencing it more intensely now than they did in the past, several experts in weather and behavior said. But the longer the current icy blast lasts – sub-freezing temperatures are forecast to stick around in many places — the easier it should become to tolerate.
“We adapt, we get used to things. This is why your first bite of dessert is much more satisfying than your 20th bite,” Hannah Perfecto, who studies consumer behavior at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote in an email. “The same is true for unpleasant experiences: Day 1 of a cold snap is much more a shock to the system than Day 20 is.”
‘Out of practice’ because of recent mild winters
Charlie Steele, a 78-year-old retired federal worker in Saugerties, New York, considers himself a lover of cold weather. In the recent past, he has gone outside in winter wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and has even walked barefoot in the snow. But this January’s deep-freeze is “much, much colder than anything I can remember,” he said.
Steele’s sense of change is backed up data.
There have been four fewer days of subfreezing temperatures in the US per year, on average, between 2001 and 2025 than there were in the previous 25 years, according to data from Climate Central. The data from more than 240 weather stations also found that spells of subfreezing temperatures have become less widespread geographically and haven’t lasted as long — until this year.
In Albany, about 40 miles from Steele, the change has been more pronounced than the national average, with 11 fewer subfreezing days in the last 25 years than the previous quarter century.
“You’re out of practice,” Steele said. “You’re kind of lulled into complacency.”
Coldest week someone under 30 may have felt
Climate change has shifted what people are used to, said several climate scientists, including Daniel Swain of the University of California’s Water Resources Institute.
“It’s quite possible that for anybody under the age of 30, in some spots this may well be the coldest week of their life,” Swain said.
Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts, said, “humans get used to all kinds of things — city noise, stifling heat, lies from politicians, and winter cold. So when a ‘normal’ cold spell does come along, we feel it more acutely.”
We forget how cold it used to be
People forget how extreme cold feels after just two to eight years of milder winters, according to a 2019 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Americans have gone through a much longer stretch than that.
Over the past 30 years, the average daily low in the continental US has dropped below 10 degrees 40 times, according to meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But in the preceding 30 years, that chilly threshold was reached 124 times.
“People have forgotten just how cold it was in the 20th century,” Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler said.
Their wake-up call came late last month, when the country’s average daily low dipped below 10 degrees three times in one week.
Regardless of how it feels, extremely cold weather presents dangers. People and vehicles slip on ice, power can go down, leaving people freezing in homes, and storms limit visibility, making commuting to work or even doing basic errands, potentially perilous. More than 110 deaths have been connected to the winter storms and freezing temperatures since January.
Shaking off our cold ‘rustiness’
As this winter’s frigid days stretch on, people adapt. University of San Diego psychiatrist Thomas Rutledge said people shake off what he calls their “weather rustiness.”
Rutledge explained what he meant via email, recalling the period decades ago when he lived in Alaska. “I assumed that everyone was a good driver in winter conditions. How couldn’t they be with so much practice?” he wrote. “But what I annually observed was that there was always a large spike in car accidents in Alaska after first big snowfall hit. Rather than persistent skills, it seemed that the 4-6 months of spring and summer was enough for peoples’ winter driving skills to rust enough to cause accidents.”
That’s Alaska. This cold snap hit southern cities such as Dallas and Miami, where it’s not just the people unaccustomed to the cold. Utilities and other basic infrastructure are also ill-equipped to handle the extreme weather, said Francis of the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
While this ongoing cold snap may feel unusually long to many Americans, it isn’t, according to data from 400 weather stations across the continental US with at least a century of record-keeping, as tracked by the Southeast Regional Climate Center.
Only 33 of these weather stations have recorded enough subzero temperatures since the start of 2026 to be in the top 10 percent of the coldest first 32 days of any year over the past century.
When Steele moved to the Hudson Valley as a toddler in 1949, the average daily low temperature over the previous 10 winters was 14.6 degrees . In the past 10 years, the average daily low was 20.8 degrees .
As a younger man, Steele used to hunt in winter and sit for hours on cold rocks.
“I could never do that now,” he said. “I’m rusty. I’m out of practice.”
