The last Eid
It’s this eid-ul-Adha. I sit outside at night time on a traditional charpai in the village. Baba’s village. You can see every star out here. It’s where Baba got his passion from. But for now, there’s a thick cloud cover and I can’t see a thing.
It’s six years later. I’m eighteen now.
Baba is still not back.
I wonder if he will recognize me when he In Sha Allah comes back. I wonder if I’ll recognize him. What if I’ve changed too much? What if he’s changed too much?
I also think of something else.
All these years, we’ve tried to hide it, blend into the background, play an endless act. We say it’s so that people don’t pity us or isolate us. But it’s also because we fear ‘them’.
There are many activists and journalists out there who simply spoke up for missing persons and ended up disappearing themselves – journalists Matiullah Jan and Sajid Gondal are yesterday’s examples. There are many people out there who have received threats for actively pursuing their cases in court. And that is why the families and children of the missing stay silent.
But that’s what ‘they’ want.
They want all these cases to go unnoticed. They want to scare us so that we stay shut up. It’s just another way of torturing us; taking our loved ones away and then not letting us do anything.
As I sit in the place of my Baba’s roots, I realize that it’s now up to us, the youth left behind – especially the women – to speak up for the forcibly disappeared. They like to bother high profile people who take a stand. But even in the shambles of what’s left of our democracy, they’ll still think twice before threatening kids.
And anyway, forget all the hero stuff. I just want to make peace with myself. I just want to be able to stop living with guilt. I just want to be able to look my Baba in the eye and say that I did at least a little something for him, that I tried.
So, I sit under that night sky and break my silence, scribbling out the first draft of this story. Not the story I was writing five years ago – of dragons and ninjas and evil robots – but my story, and the story of thousands of children across the country who have been trained not to tell it, for a very, very long time.
I’m forced to go through every stage of it again, reliving the first moment of horror, all the way to seeing my grandmother’s tear-stained face yesterday as she prayed for Baba. I tell the story that I have always wanted to tell, but have never been able to, as I agonizingly pull out every memory and place it in chronological order.
It’s difficult, but it’s almost like therapy. I feel better after writing it down.
If you have a story to tell, whether it’s like mine or about any other form of oppression – I beg you to say Bismillah and tell it. If you don’t have such a story to tell – I ask you to listen to those who do. Don’t pity us. Don’t alienate us. Just know. Know what it’s like to live as the daughter of a missing person, or the son of a deported immigrant, or the child of a refugee.
I close my diary and glance up. The clouds have parted. The picture I’d cut out for Baba and then crumpled up on day one looks down at me from the night sky.
Refusing to Disappear
Source: Global Pinoys PH
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