Tears are mystery
Smiles a mystery
Love a mystery
The tears of that night were the smile of my love
I am not a tale to be told
Not a song to be sung
Not a sound to be heard
Or something that you can see
Or something that you can know
I am Common Pain
Cry me out!
I have wept in blazing solitude with you
For the sake of the living
And have sung the most beautiful of songs,
In the darkest of graveyards
For the dead of this year
Were the most loving of the living.
It has been one year since my sister, daughter, precious, dearest, and hope died. Last year on this day, more than 80 innocent children were killed in this place, tens of others were injured, and thousands of others were left grieving. Whom shall we ask? What shall we say? My mother wept to blindness, my father broke under grief, my brother wanted to stay strong, but sorrow broke him too and made him old in his adolescence.
One year passed, but we still do not know the perpetrators nor have they been punished.
One year passed, but like many other incidents, this crime is also forgotten and not spoken about.
One year passed, but no one asked what the families of the victims went through.
The martyrs are missed dearly and their memory shall live forever.
But those children who lost arm, leg, or got injured in other parts, what are they going through? In a country drowned in poverty and destitution, did anyone ever pay a visit to the injured or relatives of the victims whether they have any means for treatment and paying the bills? What a heavy burden did the expenses of treatment of the injured bring on the shoulders of the mothers and fathers of the victims? How did the parents of the injured suffer from the suffering of their children? Remember that these families are the poorest of the society and most exposed to poverty.
Contemplate! What wounds did that incident leave on the souls of the victims and their families? Imagine what they go through when they hear spring thunder, doors or windows slamming, or a sudden abnormal honk of vehicles. Their trauma is triggered by the noise and they pass out. These are not stories from horror movies, but everyday lives of the survivors of that attack.
Today, we have come together to:
1. Remember the pain we went through and the wound which stills bleeds;
2. Raise our voice for holding the perpetrators of this attack into account and their prosecution by law;
3. Call for genocide of Hazara people to be acknowledged officially and measures be taken to protect Hazaras and save us from genocide;
4. Call for standing by the families of victims and providing material or non-material support for them;
5. Call for including an article about this incident and the victims in the school textbooks; and
6. Call on the countries of the region and the world to support and work for ensuring security of Afghanistan which in turn ensures security of the region and the world.
