Unsaid

Contact me by: setaishhaidari1@gmail.com

  • Salsal Yet Breathes Beneath The Stones

    Bamyan’s every stone is a story, 

    Traced in nights relentless with history

    Isn’t there no one who didn’t steal from you? 

    So you’ve kept your jewelry ever since? 

    Ajdar’s cry as every day peels to night, 

    For its burned heart it cries at night.  

    My city, who hasn’t stolen your light? 

    So in Salsal’s exploded eye-

    It hasn’t seen injustice every night. 

    The soil of you is to my eye Kohl, 

    The dried blood on many innocent souls, 

    What has made you so unlikely,

    That you don’t hide longer, as Gholghole did. 

    Dance to the honor of my misery, 

    I am a girl raised outside of my city, 

    You alone are different to ever hate, 

    Hearing of Bamyan’s situation now hurts-

    For Afghanistan, hearts shed blood. 

    Baba Mazari’s statue is also stones on the ground, 

    Before it was blasted by looters of rights, 

    A leader who once saw the genocide, 

    Was more than tortured to death.

  • A 5th Anniversary of Terrorist

    Passes from the terrorist’s anniversary: 5 years
    Hell’s reservations are waiting for longer terms,
    As if a dance with no songs means the world.
    What about the world of thousands of young kids you took?

    The morals of the extremists are always ironic.
    I hope it burns you, your every step in the country,
    To drown in the tears of many Afghan girls—
    That you preserve their piece of soul in history.

    The darkness of the Talibs still hunts the country.
    A man-made, blood-debt-paying society,
    The faces of the old women haven’t yet smiled
    To the extent of the pain you caused them for years.

    Today is only a red day of misery,
    Further pushed into Afghanistan’s history.
    Your rules are based on selfish gambles,
    But our lives were your betting coins, lost in nonsense.

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  • Take Our Souls Next

    I can see the history that once seemed in the past is taking place again,
    Oppressors always took the land they desired;
    Now it’s happening to my house we built.
    I can’t believe how close I got to seeing this—
    I don’t know how the worst can happen after I said it can’t be any further away.

    That house was the dream we built for a year,
    The money’s savings for more than 2 years,
    The year we moved into there.
    It’s been 6 years, and the house is no longer ours?

    May every rock of that land burn you from within,
    Tear you apart until all your regime’s gone from within,
    May the clouds rain rocks to your head—
    And you stay alive to only thoroughly feel the pain.

    How can a country be built with no rules upon?
    Every beardful, brainless, is a law enforcer of their own.
    Now, to where will go my grandparents?
    Who’s taken shelter in that house, and now in clearance?

    Now, how can they pay the rent for another house?
    When the bloodthirsty run to any remaining remnants of life,
    How can the old couple survive that country,
    When even the young and healthy are bound to suffering?

    Of my words, it will never be enough to justify
    The dread of having pretentious, dirty devils in my house,
    In which I don’t live; if I did, it was my corpse in a burqa,
    And that house a graveyard to a family of a Hazara.

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  • At The End of The Day

    At the end of the day, it’s me again;

    My worries and dreams of the day, 

    I sit again with many wonders of tomorrow 

    With many unfinished thoughts of yesterday. 

    I see my world with my help this time, 

    I want to drive to my old house alone, this time, 

    I’d see what I lacked battles ago

    I’ll surely be kinder to myself this time. 

    Because time passes by itself, 

    It either makes or breaks a person 

    It broke me a lot. I’m bound by promises,

    I’m many broken pieces of a mosaic. 

    Yet I stand up like before, 

    Unwilling, but fish doesn’t walk ashore, 

    I’m in war with destructive ocean waves, 

    It’s a never-ending business.

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  • Illusion of Seven Skies

    Why can’t a dying star fall on the cloud’s shoulders 

    Be buried in the depths of space’s fortunes

    Unlike war victims, can we notice them?

    The way about many starving children on earth- 

    We don’t care one dirham. 

    Can we beautify the dark skies in galaxies 

    So later, can it be a roof for the unsheltered kids?

    Maybe drink to them the Milky Way galaxy

    Because no one provides drinkable water from the Earth’s seas

    Would they be familiar with the dark holes?

    Like their governments in search of inhaling new wars

    Of which treasure do we introduce them more?

    The many planets of diamonds, or basic human rights?

    It can be even harder to explain-

    For the war lost parent’s children. 

    Let’s just say their parents are the stars of the sky. 

    And the government’s God wants gold of seven skies.

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  • My Mind In Revision

    Days pass, and as I get older, my existing schemas of the world around me change, and it troubles me to speak about them without a list of research, as it appears to me that understanding these controversial topics may need years or experience in the specific topic, or a Harvard degree.

    Sometimes I think I might have the topics that include experience, like immigration and racism, which cannot be debated on since I lived through them, but as I spoke about them very often, intending to educate people around me, I lost track of what the topic is that I can just share.

    This, of course, will not limit my writing as I started to educate myself more on world history, feminism, and politics. But the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know about it and feel as if I’m pulling the clouds all around the sky to my arms, but the start needs to be from somewhere anyway.

    Now, I will try to write about the changed mindset as I reach a final state that might never be, given how diverse the ocean of right writing is, let alone the topics to write about.

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  • Sore Throat

    Why do voices get cut when just about to speak up?

    What is it that keeps us down to what we shall stand up?

    If such a perfect world, then why were we intended to protestingly speak?

    If the world were created to be this, why were we given a voice to speak? 

    Maybe we weren’t; it was just a delusion.

    Maybe it’s the unchangeable truth with an illusion

    To the highest in the world that was created

    The idea expressed was meant to be “confusion.”

    But if so, who made the system?

    Who wrote what to be and not to be righteous? 

    Why did we abide by it when it changed?

    Weren’t we on the threshold of noticing when we disarranged?

    Again, who am I to question this dynasty? 

    There are a thousand answers to my few questions, profoundly. 

    Nothing will change if no one brings it up

    Why do voices get cut when just about to speak up? 

  • Between Lines and Lands

    “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

    -Constitution of the United States- First Amendment

    We are supposedly given the right to speak freely, to protest, and immunity to be protected even if written what is against the government’s wishes. Still, people get arrested in ICE protests. International students face undercover police operations for posting their opposing views on war, and the immigration processes stop when the “King” of the state wishes so. 

    Yet, I come from a country where basic human rights are seen as far too impossible to reach. So much so that every day I must be grateful that I didn’t die under a terrorist attack, grateful I’m given the right to exist in public despite being a woman, and that I can sleep with my stomach full of what I could have to eat. Of course, at a higher level, I can list education, independent choice of grooming unrelated to religious beliefs, and a job for my parents.

     But so far, I have lived in this country for almost 4 years now, and God knows I don’t belong to a country, but a given geographic map in which the rulers want my ethnicity off the surface of the earth, and have tried mass genocides, by which I doubt my choice of the phrase “my country”. 

    It reminds me of when I heard “Wherever we live is our country. Every city that we are in is our city.” I either heard from my father or the masjid sheikh. 

    I wonder whether I can belong to a country that shelters me but doesn’t guarantee till when, or how I’m a citizen of a country in which my ethnicity and existence are denied and unwelcome? 

    Maybe I can choose to stick with one when secretly also thinking of the other, but which struggle am I capable of speaking of when both are such stimulants of my life, and unfavored by the government that can choose my faith?

    Will we writers, poets, artists, musicians share too much of the disturbance of what we see that numbs people the way it numbed me? People are already exposed to such cruelties; they are numb in their own special ways. 

    In a world where some voices are shared but no actions are taken, all we do is to continuously suffer in what we acknowledge as wrong, but it’s not beneficial and doesn’t match the aesthetic of our lives to connect to it, any move that might ostracize us from the norms of how we grew up.  

    But to close the loop? The loop never ends until a formal action is taken, enforced by “We the People of the United States.” 

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  • The Protest That Wasn’t

    Friday March 13
    11:25 pm

    There were many Instagram stories about the upcoming protest that was supposed to take place on Friday from 11:05 pm to the end of lunch by students who wanted to make a move against the current President Trump administration and ICE.

    Unsure of how this move of mine would affect our immigration status, I grabbed my lunch and walked outside the cafeteria, where we were supposed to meet, then protest and maybe march.

    By 11:15 p.m., not many students were ready, and the protest organizers were confused about what to tell.

    “You guys can just come up and say what you want.”

    A girl came and stood on the round metal green table. She said I’m going to march outside of school. How many of you are brave enough to come and march outside the school area, where it’s safe to be outside, and show our move to most of what we can do?

    Almost everyone agreed and walked the way she was leading in the march. I hadn’t brought any mask and didn’t have any hoodie to hide behind, but what is the cost, I thought.

    Around 40 people walked in her direction; other students from in front of us were either confused or laughing.

    “Some people left already.”

    “Where exactly are we going to?”

    “This is embarrassing.”

    “Wait, why is she so far in front?”

    3 of the security guards were outside, supposedly ensuring security, but it didn’t take much longer than five minutes before the groups separated.

    Some said it was too cold to walk the full route. They suggested taking a shortcut. Some said we go from outside to march outside of the school field and gather students, and there I was, wondering why we were marching to the school track field, which is so private inside the school, with limited people who are only there during lunch to play some sports, if we truly wanted to make a move?

    The girl who had stood up on the table earlier was far gone in front with some people following her. We were in the middle, standing near the school fence, wondering where we were going, and the last part met their friends and walked back to school.

    “Does anyone have her number or people with her to ask where they are?”

    No one knew really, we were just standing there, 6 people and 2 posters.

    “Was that it?” Asked one of the security councils of our school, watching half of the protesters go, and us walking to the school portables.

    “No, we are going from the shortcut to the field.” Ensured one of the girls.

    We did walk to the field, which was almost empty, and no one who was protesting was there from the front part of the group. Security had come with us, but more than our disappointment, I felt bad for him for believing there would be a crowd.

    It was then so clear, to me it seemed like one little and clear representation of how so many corrupt governments stayed for long, and people didn’t overthrow them. The truth is, people tried to stop the tyranny, but it’s impossible with the lack of communication, commitment, and clear organization.

    Like the people who went to the field and came back disappointed, I also came back, only to find out some people were waiting outside the cafeteria now!

    After 30 minutes of a hollow, boneless, uncommitted attempt to make remarks for effect by a “protest.”

    Yet I’m proud that the school at least had some students who sacrificed their lunch time on a Friday for something with a significant “idea,” since the action was not very effectively organized.

    I hope this will be a great opportunity to learn from our mistakes for the upcoming ones; however, it’s still good to know some people cared enough to come. Maybe this leads to better protests in the future.

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  • “How Dare She?”

    What to be feared more

    Then a woke woman 

    Then one who sees behind the circus curtains

    Then one who doesn’t follows blind the oppression

    She is dangerous to patriarchal culture 

    A theath that refuses to worshipfully suffer 

    How dare she speak with a mind of her own?

    Definitely her faith that is by the West blown

    Sacrifices are only glorified if they are from her

    A load of labor is only praised if it is on her

    She’s a mother, a paidless worker, and a woman of career 

    A “second-hand” human, a limited dreamer

    She can dance, swim, row, ride, wrestle, and shoot

    With the elegance of forever standing diligence 

    She creates the world in which she’s imprisoned

    Her presence is a blessing, her voice a song, and her picture a portrait 

    Education frees her from others’ on her tightened blindfold

    Independence is how she calls it out, “oppression.”

    The fear of one who can’t force her to continue a patriarchal succession

    The one heaven’s promise of endless good deed accession 

    Yet she lives on his earth with restrictions

    Her dreams are sacred as her beliefs and fictions

    Does the world itself dare bind her?

    Sensitive like a lily and tough like armor

    This is women

    A woke woman

    The feared one

    If sees behind the curtains

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