Unsaid

Contact me by: setaishhaidari1@gmail.com

  • 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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  • Bride Of Buried Dignity

    There comes the small will of desire in pride

    With the pain of generational trauma as a bride

    The bride to a country of unlivables, buried underneath

    Of dignity that snatches women’s lives? died

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  • Heaven Was Mandatory

    “An essay and presentation due Friday, you choose the topic.”

    It took less than a minute, and all of a sudden I recall the dear a country ruled by thieves; kleptocracy and kakistocracy -government by the worst, and a system built on the rountin violation of human rights in my country.

    How can such a delusional government system be forgotten? In my opinion, it could be debated to be the worse (There is always room for worse when it comes to politics), but they’re definitely in undeniable delusional in morals; the country in which they live is hell on earth and forces everyone into an obligatory fraud heaven.

    When I was younger, I remember I was puzzled as to why going to heaven is demanded and enforced as Sharia law, about why it is so harsh, all in a religion that they taught us in school as the religion of peace. Very vivid, I mind back (when I was in 4th grade), where I was confused with a text in our religious book which read “Everyone is brothers and equal (In literal translation).”

    I read it, and it seemed to me I was living in a different world, our books talked about things other than the ones I’ve seen every day, they taught religion was good, but what they practiced wasn’t an example of any believer’s worship.

    It all passed after years now I can think, I don’t read those books anymore, I’m busy enough with a new education system, in a new country where I have the luxury of education seen as a right government provides to me regardless of my gender. I now see, but I never thought, back then, that I would one day use my voice to call out the very system that we lived under in fear of death every single day.

    It doesn’t matter if the voice I’m trying to speak isn’t yet ready to be heard, but it will have no regrets for me later, I would know I’ve done my most now it doesn’t differ if I’m repeating all these words for an website or English assignment, this was inspired all in a few moments when I figured if my choice of essay would be about “Violated human rights by Taliban” or “Death penalty faced victims by Taliban rules,” both seem oddly similar choicess and I will start my presentation with “Dear kleptocracy, kakistocracy, and human rights-violating government of my country… “

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  • Before The Blink…

    Day by day passes, it all will ¨feel like a blink of an eye, ¨ they say. I like to hold onto my daily thoughts, sometimes writing them down on a sheet of paper, hoping they won’t disappear until the day when the blink happens, when Im no longer who I am right now. Maybe life would change for the better, perhaps I would now no longer remember who it was that wrote her life, concerns, and think above all, “Once if who she was changed me.”

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  • The night of November 27th

    It’s November 26th at 11:27 pm when we first hear about the tragic attempted murder of a Taliban member immigrant to two of the U.S’s national guards. News like this feels heavier than headlines, especially for those of us whose identities are already fragile in public perception.

    It was already the situation where immigrants are in such a sensitive situation and yet by the pass of last year’s least, less people closer to none recognizes different types of Afghan people who come to start and who come to leave the fear.

    We weren’t much surprised by the news. For people like us who live with two identities it leaves a mark, so it’s reasonable that for who invaded our country with blood it would of course not be much of difficulty to kill one or two other people, no matter the country. 

    The Hazara Association which by now believed it was only for culture not politics is now woken up to a problem it’s late to fix; When things like this happen, people stop seeing differences. They don’t see who escaped the Taliban and who supports them. And it hurts to be known with the same title as my genocider who took our land and breathed under our nose, and draines life, from them, everywhere. 

    It never ends, “The history will repeat itself,” they say, in our case the tragedy has never ended to be repeated again. The genocide from them and the forced fear for life in us survived decades and still lives within us it wouldn’t change until we change and they don’t let us change. 

    My parents are now looking for any recent updates of tonight’s hot topic and none is new information… But more than everything that burns my heart is that my immigration case would be again under process, after it had already happened twice before.

     Still I have my endless sympathy to the National Guard families, those in whose country it took place in and messed up the ideal “Thanks Giving” ceremony. What I want to say is that we have empathy with you along the way because we also have been and still are their genocide victims from Abdul Rahman Khan’s time till now and hope it ends here and not more people would be such victims of big political wars because instead of some people who come to bring violence, some come because they are trying to escape it.

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  • Phone call

    …My phone rang…

    It was two of my dad side aunts behind the phone, people I hadn’t seen in five years now. It felt like they were placed in my subconscious. I could tell I knew them, but a feeling kept me from truly knowing them. I couldn’t hardly understand their accent.

    Their deep accent was also familiar, but it didn’t ring many bells in my head. I knew what they were talking about, and it tore me into pieces. I knew I had been torn when I heard what I just knew happened, from the same people I used to see every family gathering; my aunt, it took my will to speak. I felt guilty for living in a country with basic human rights, and so that was something I wouldn’t talk about. 

    “What are the Taliban doing now?” I kept trying to change the subject myself; it was painful hearing about the situation people are in and especially when it’s my aunt; when I played in their house as a kid, when I felt their love, when I knew them.“We never had a country,” I said after listening to them. I didn’t know what else to talk about.

    After a time, both my aunts talked to each other; the two sisters who were living together till the last month. There, I deeply realized how much we sacrificed in a war that is not about us. “War’s face is always ugly,” used to say my Mother, and I see it. Many wars are happening always, but it’s not as heart-wrenching as it is when there is something about you involved in it. 

    Who owes me my last 5 years of migration away from relatives, house, and friends? -War

    What will I answer my cousin when she asks where we are really from? 

    -War

    Why do I feel guilty about having basic human rights when my relatives overseas don’t?

    -War

    What if human rights exist, and we are not the right kind of humans destined to peace? 

    -Then there must be a Nobel Peace Prize for Trump 

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  • Our Symposium

    was a symposium on the Hazara genocide and exile taking place in Philadelphia at Handford College. According to my traveling experience in America, it wasn’t that long, 3 hours from where we are, and if I could turn back time, I would have joined as many times as possible, but this time with more sleep.

    Many people came to the podium and talked about the Hazara genocide and how even killing one person because of their heritage is genocide. Which I didn’t expect. Hearing the name of my ethnicity in another country felt so different, like I couldn’t help but pay attention to everything, and I ended up taking notes on almost everything. And probably would have taken more if their accent was more familiar to me, which was unfortunate.

    The schedule was copied and passed out to us before the symposium. As a student in high school, my eyes flashed when I saw the name “Yale,” which turned out to be one of the universities where a Hazara professor taught, and the other one was Harvard. There were absolutely experienced and knowledgeable people discussing the hardness our blood had carried for a long time and the effects it has had from then to now. And without a doubt, being who we are wasn’t easy in the last 124 years.

    I imagined myself there for a few seconds; it was me standing next to the big board with slideshows. Although not much, who doesn’t want to do a favor to their people, and for me, it was the biggest I’ve seen about Hazaras, and I wanted to be a part of it. I’ll choose to hope I will be one day. Photographers soon arrived, taking photos from almost every corner of the room. “Will this leave any effects?” I asked my dad, “We are doing this so it will leave an effect,” he said.
    And so I hope to see the effect, soon or later, like how karma works. Maybe another symposium, but this one with genocide survivors.

  • Every little counts…

    It has been 5 years since I’ve been out of Afghanistan. Since the country is in civil tensions within itself, the only thing that provides a sense of belonging is my culture, Hazara culture. Yet I don’t know it well enough to know how to embrace it. Born and raised in Kabul, neither my city nor village nor traditions and stories. 

    I wish we had more writers about our stories. I wish we kept our traditions alive after Islam arrived in the country. I wish I knew more about those before me. I have so many questions about them, but my knowledge is limited to “there was a war going on at the time”. To know how they were taught, how they lived, and so many more, yet all became known to the next generation of us minorities, is the scent of blood that follows till later. 

    I usually tell a lot of people to write about their lives as if in a book; who knows who was that carried their life burdens for the betterment of all, the ones that we never got a chance to meet, but with a picture of the author, a text someone can read, no doubt how someone can be immortal. Even if no one reads the book, it’s here to say I existed, I was also a person with interests, ambitions, and dreams once…

    Many don’t realize that their life experience can be similar to many more, and some books can help other people more than you can imagine. It’s to keep living forever, in the tongue of those who read the book and the mind that remembers it.

    Every little thing counts, everything that makes you feel alive, art, music, poetry, dance, and for me, literature, if not to anyone, to yourself. For a better understanding of my means, the movie “Freedom Writers” portrays the central idea.  

    But I’m no more than a writer, it’s my idea as someone who writes, this view can be different for everyone, regarding what they are most interested in and know the best. So, to me, making yourself immortal is as simple as doing what makes you alive.

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  • Journal books

    Last year my freshman year, my creative writing class teacher would tell us to keep a little journal with us and write it down when something interesting happened or we had any sudden ideas that we might forget later on the day. I did mine as assigned, maybe sometimes rushing through when she was checking them, but I was sure I wanted the grade. 

    Eventually, she stopped checking the notes after a while, and so did I, but now, a year later, I got a new mini notebook and am writing again, just this time she isn’t my teacher anymore… I sometimes see her in the hallways and wave to her, hoping she would do the same, but either way, I’m always happy to see her; someone who brought change to my life this much, to be honest, I think everyone you meet is a teacher to you in different ways, regardless of age, rank, and gender, they leave something to you if nothing at least a memory.

    There are a lot of movies about good teachers and how they change students’ lives, but some are secret heroes to some, only known by their students, and can the same teacher in the same class be someone else’s hated teacher? Chances are, so and so it’s a two-sided bridge for the teacher to be someone’s hero or villain and for the student to change the teacher into better or worse…

    –Thought to me by those everyday simple sentences journaled every day. 

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