The photographs was a moving one where four kids and a couple stood!
By: M S. Nazki
They stood in press enclave Srinagar to ask for what they thought was their right or the deportation back to Afghanistan!
-‘Recognize yourself in he and she who are not like you and me would be my advice. Yes they would or could be helped but right, well….that is some distance away. Anywhere on the planet you let us be practical there are no free lunches. I will give an example of an Afghan girl here!
-‘The lady (Farah) in her book was asked by another lady about her religion … She listened without interruption and she wrote. Then she told her what she believed, and I listened and told her that I see nothing wrong with listening to each other’s beliefs was the reply from the writer. I wanted to know about her religion, just as she wanted to know about mine. We can talk about our beliefs without pushing each other to feel wrong! Farah was not at all wrong to be a typical Afghan empress with a pen in hand. The book she wrote was, ‘An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky; The name Farah Ahmedi’!
-‘Her story as it could be of any refugee, but this lady got up, picked up a pen and wrote her memoirs which definitely touched our hearts and I’m sure it would be aching the hearts of the readers too. The Other Side of the Sky: A Memoir (originally published as The Story of my Life: An Afghan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky) is a memoir by Farah Ahmedi with Tamim Ansary. The book profiles the life of Farah Ahmedi from the time she was born Hola until she was seventeen years old. This book is about the struggles Farah faces throughout her life. The story begins when she was growing up in war torn Afghanistan. One day when she was seven, Farah woke up late, so she decided to take a shortcut to school. Unknown to her, there was a landmine that was planted in the field she was cutting across. She accidentally stepped on it and it exploded. After her leg was amputated and she fled to Pakistan with her mother, World Relief accepted their applications to go to America. Once they arrived, Farah and her mother continued to struggle with the new culture, language, and the speed of the modern world. The mother and daughter kept moving on but many have not been able to do. Afghanistan is the biggest tragedy on the planet for women, girls and children and the next one coming in would be the food crisis’ !
-‘Farah was fortunate that she found her way to the USA and was confident enough to say that ‘this country was built by refugees. But many Afghans are struggling. She wrote a great book but her other country mates could not! Anyway perhaps that is what being a refugee is all about’!
-‘In times of war, you often hear leaders of country’s that have remained in wars, for example the crusades, Arab-Palestine-Israel wars and the muslim conquests saying, ‘God is on our side.’ But that isn’t true. In war, God is on the side of refugees, widows, and orphans because somewhere or the other they will get refuge! If this family got one in Kashmir it was great but then how did they arrive?’ No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark. Afghanistan definitively was in the hammerhead shark Taliban but how did they (the family in picture) make their way to Kashmir? This ought to be checked?’ Nevertheless the kids look good and perhaps are of the same age group!
If told in a philosophical language basically we are all refugees from our childhoods. And so we turn, among other things, to stories. To write a story, to read a story, is to be a refugee from the state of refugees. Writers and readers seek a solution to the problem that time passes, that those who have gone are gone and those who will go, which is to say every one of us, will go. For there was a moment when anything was possible. And there will be a moment when nothing is possible. But in between we can create. That is the best possible advice I can give to the family in the picture. Do what Farrah did. Create your own world and move forward! No one waits for a standing horse who has gone all, the fighters change their steeds just too quickly to get on with the task ahead! The task ahead for refugees is simple, ‘survival for the fittest’! Though a Darwanian theory, yet it holds good in fact very good!
Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people, and there is no refugee problem. Russia did it. Poland and Czechoslovakia did it. Turkey threw out a million Greeks and Algeria a million Frenchmen. Indonesia threw out heaven knows how many Chinese–and no one says a word about refugees but it is only India who cares! India was caring for Afghanistan and things were moving in the right direction but the militarized tribe leaders had other ideas. But that would not be for long!
I know a few things to be true as I have spoken to many refugees settled in various parts of this great nation India. But they all were unanimous, ‘we did not know where we were going, where we have come from is fast disappearing and how we came is vanishing out of our memories, I am unwelcome and there is no innocence here. Our bodies are burning with the shame of not belonging, We are the sin of memory and the absence of memory. We watch the news and our mouth becomes a sink full of blood as we watch happenings in our own country! This very thing was felt by the refugees of 1947 who were under the brutal attack with swords and axes, 1969 whe Mao and Chou in China chased out the Tibetans, Bangladesh refugees of 1971 when Pakistani soldiers had set up a big butchery in towns of the then East Bengal, in the latest era the Rohingyas after escaping the gun shots in Myanmar and now the Afghans after being sent packing and rolling from Afghanistan! India has always helped those who are in distress! Afghan’s too would be but not this way! Request for help, it would be provided one way or the other!
But still I will say that the kids were lovely as they still have to travel long in life!
