Unsaid

I looked at my relatives in my aunt’s house for the last time. Deep down in my heart, I know I won’t see them for years, but I’m choosing to lie to myself and also to them by telling them that we will come back after we become citizens of Turkey. Just five more years, and I’m just back for days. 

After a lovely and loud dinner, I went to sit on the dark stairs of the second floor with no lights at Kabul’s dark nights thinking if all these happenings were real, if we would actually leave here and start again, from zero. I had been learning the language for the last 3 months so it wasn’t something really new but being here as for last night, in Afghanistan which I never left for more than a few days felt weird, hearing the sound of my relatives’ children running. Them talking inside the house loudly with the stairs echoing it was making the thoughts in my head even louder. 

Rahille, my mom’s uncle’s daughter, was also there. She’s older, almost my age, and has nearly the same facial structure but according to distant members of the families I never saw she was the best version of a good daughter. I just remember she was there and we talked for a while until my mom called us to get back in. That night I had that feeling in my heart, that sadness that I was not great at hiding was blowing up but still, I was looking like I always was, happy and sensitive. 

I didn’t want to focus on my feelings, not even theirs. I was just trying hard to make everything so easy, I just didn’t want to cry anymore. I was watching Spongebob for the most part of the night… 

Now almost everything went like it would all the time, kids playing around the table, dads talking loudly about shared experiences or politics, and moms complaining about their kids and their laziness in front of everyone all until it was time to leave. Now everyone had gotten up and was hugging each other, the house was now really crowded to the point I couldn’t walk straight without bumping into people. For some, it was the last time we would ever see each other and some like my grandma were quietly crying with a smile on her wrinkly face, each expressive of her hard life experiences.

 I had made my way out of that crowd but when I got there my aunt hugged me for the last time. I felt her warm tears on the back of my neck, and that’s when I realized leaving was no joke. I wanted to walk to our home by myself now to get my feeling in the right place again to walk just a street down but I had forgotten here is Kabul, my dad called me before I took more than 5 or 6 steps “Where are you going by yourself? It’s not safe.” I had heard that sentence almost all my life in Afghanistan, maybe more than I ever heard my name and it was the reason I was leaving there with a dream, to walk to a shop without the fear of being kidnapped, killed, abused, or rubbed, like most of my friends did. Or what my parents told me would happen to me all the time, If I wanted to ride on my bicycle a step out of our yard.

The party had ended now, everyone went back to their houses we were all walking to our house too and I was recording the streets of Kabul for the last few days but now was it too dark I didn’t care perhaps I was doing it just trying to distract myself from everything else happening that night, maybe for Sobhan, I didn’t want stuff to be too emotional for him, I wouldn’t want to feel those if I were his age, 6 is probably too young. I felt like taking one stone from the street as something I would have from my country to remind me of everything but my parents wouldn’t like this stuff at all, I just knew it. There I wished I was like my Myna birds I freed yesterday, I wished I could go back to my grandparents whenever I got in trouble like before, all the way from Istanbul to Kabul. Now it wasn’t just about getting on a plane and leaving, it was the separation of the bond that was never a bit distant, it was when I realized what I left back there was not just my house, memories, or relatives although they were a big part I lost myself and my true joy…

                                                               Next morning

The night passed and now it was 4 am when we had gotten up and taken our stuff to the car. On the way to the stairs of our house on the 3rd floor, my uncle was there and he said to me “Zaynab also said she would miss you.” My favorite cousin, from sadness, it was the first time I hugged my uncle, ever. I used to try to push his patience limit before and was usually scared to get handcuffed by him, he handcuffed my other cousin because she was annoying him and she stayed like that for almost a day so we knew he was serious about some stuff. He was a security guard, always walking around with a huge gun on his shoulder in a police uniform. Although I grew up seeing different kinds of guns and bombs everywhere I kinda didn’t trust him but now I didn’t care at all, I just needed a hug. He quickly pushed me away. “Don’t be late.”

I was now in the yard, the fresh smell of the plants that my aunt planted in the mountains to garden weeks before was spinning around the house with little leaves and dandelions as they were there to say bye to us like my grandparents waiting for us in our basement like a garage with 5 cars all one from each house of the apartment sometimes getting into our way. Our private had made everything ready to go, there I saw my grandparents but my grandpa was also crying in a country where they believe men should be as tough as a stone he couldn’t hold back. The atmosphere was really heavy, and after a few seconds I couldn’t bear it anymore. I just got into the car and sat quietly for the whole way to the airport, we were all quiet. On the dirt roads we were all swinging around side to side and I had my head close to windows as usual and with each jump hitting my head to the window, I wasn’t crying no more, no one was, I was now used to it. 

I don’t remember well but I like to remember that we got down in something like a police department from the way, there were no phones allowed. Grey almost white empty walls and men in uniforms with even bigger guns for security, almost like everywhere you would go in this country. We covered our shoes with plastic and walked on unusual wooden floors. My dad in a black suit shook his head a little like a signal for me to put back my phone in my pocket. I did. She talked about something for minutes. It seemed important but I think it wasn’t something important but like the last check-in before leaving. Or seeing a friend, I didn’t care enough to listen but it didn’t get into our way there. After that, we got to the airport. Everything seemed beautiful and colorless at the same time. I was already mad and also I  had seen beautiful buildings but this one was something special. Anyway, we sat in those seats and waited for hours on our flight. Still no phone policy for airport security. Well, after a few hours, we got on the plane and soon then the country…

I was having the time of my life on a plane, watching different kinds of movies, playing games, listening to music, basically whatever I wanted for a long 8 hours of flight until we landed. Taking different buses to get to my other aunt’s house who came there a few months before us I would look around me with joy but mentally I was still in Afghanistan worried about my grandparents more than everyone. The voices in my head were all arguing loudly what would happen now? but I was sitting next to Sobhan, I didn’t want him to see us worried so I would show him every shopping center, people with different costumes, and everything new to distract him and myself.

                                                               New start

We got off the bus, now we were just some Afghan migrants. It didn’t matter who we were back in Afghanistan. Now we were waiting on the sidewalk of a big street in spring cold with people passing by in front of us, shaking our arms for some taxi to stop by and get us in, cause it was how it was back in Afghanistan, where I lived 90% of the time someone would just get you in their car and get you where you need or you shake your arm for a bus or car to see you and negotiate for the price and get in. Forget private drivers back there, the taxi drivers were really mean. I remember one time he said it took 3 cars for us to fit in our stuff and after we said we couldn’t find he said “You immigrants are everywhere, our country is filled with you Afghans. Just get back to your country” and he drove by. At the moment I wished I had never known Turkish to know what he said but my parents didn’t understand, I didn’t have to translate that, I didn’t. People don’t want to leave everything behind to take space in your country. I don’t say all, I absolutely can’t but there are racist people in every part of the world and it was my first time to ever hear these and it left me speechless.  

I was freezing with my dad’s coat on me, my mom and brothers all sat next to each other farther away than us on some bench and my dad called my uncle here to find an Uber for us, seeing that my heart was on fire. More than any time now I wanted to cry. I wanted to blame someone for my situation. To grab someone’s collar and let my anger out. I had now realized what I left behind. In Afghanistan we would never be standing somewhere in this cold; My dad would solve everything with a call, to a friend, at a college or a relative. Now after seeing that much respect everyone had for my father, seeing him calling someone else for that small help seemed like the end of the world for me. I wanted the sky to fall on me. I would have rather died many, many times but don’t see that. The feelings were now even more intense. It was actually how I felt until the next year, until I got used to everything but still, everything we did felt like a thorn inside my eyes. I wanted to drag the president of Afghanistan and show him how I was treated differently. I wanted him to see how many dirty stares I had taken from people who saw me as an illegal citizen just because my blood belonged to that piece of the world. If I could just show him what we had to sacrifice for a peaceful life and still wouldn’t be able to afford it.And it was just a new start… But here I didn’t even have any friends, even my old friends. My mom took my phone away. And for my aunt, she believed a daughter, a girl, must be the strongest but the way she would have shown me her love made me miss Afghanistan even more. She wouldn’t rethink an action before doing it or saying ,and it hurt me because until yesterday I was my dad’s princess now they would call me dark burned skin Qasim’s daughter in front of me, I was then never dad’s princess after that and I don’t think I can ever be, it killed me right away they knew how much I loved him. His skin was sunburned when he used to work on my other grandpa’s farm. It was the way to get a life for them. And I respect that but my aunt didn’t. My dad had to leave after 2 months. Now we were alone for the first time in a foreign country, with different people, language, culture and point of views and I was different also for them. Although she knew how sensitive I was about my family she always managed to find new ways to insult him just in front of me. At some points, I felt how easier it was to jump out of the window of their 7th floor rather than listen to her insult my whole father’s side of the family. With all these I didn’t have permission to stand up for any of us by Mother, she said that it was her love language. The love language that still breaks me into pieces like shattered glass every time I remember these, the language that reminds me how she made me lonelier when I needed the most support. Thanks to her I would have forgotten  Afghanistan, I had to deal with something bigger. She wasn’t always bad, she would sometimes buy us stuff and celebrate my birthday but one time I had to apologize to her for getting food poisoned in her house and not mine, for drinking cola that she bought for herself or for not doing whatever she told me to but as I said she wasn’t that mean, right now she probably had forgotten these but for me being 11 years old again can be a great nightmare for many reasons I couldn’t write about, for the days that sadness wouldn’t exist for little kids like me for all the nights that I looked at the moon helpless waiting for some miracle to happen, I wanted God to answer to all my tears. I would ask him if he lost me from Afghanistan to where my eleven-year-old used to send paper planes with letters written on them for him. Maybe one day he would open those letters and find me back. Although I lost who I was, maybe he would have helped me make a new me.

(p1)