Dear Heaven,
i miss y’all so much. I keep begging God to bring me home. I’m just waiting until that glorious day when I can hug y’all again. I remember more and am far healthier. I’m still not free though. It feels like it isn’t going to stop. It’s so bad now that I am the fortunate one.
I’m in a smaller, different prison than the previous ones. I have my own space at least. I told the girls that I would be able to pee and shower whenever I want now. I cook and crochet. I also write. It’s still a prison though. The cameras watch my every move and there’s armed guards monitoring me. I call it Auschwitz light.
Momma and I lived in true hell. It got even worse after she died. I remembered every single story and movie about the Holocaust. It helped me to survive. I remembered the bubies with their tattoos. The pain that knew no end. The pain that lived on in every child to be born after. The pain that still marches on as the world screams for the genocides and hate to stop.
I tried to laugh through the pain like they did. I spoke my languages even more. I used the accents of my people. I danced to my music. I cooked my food. I told our stories like Shaharazad. I defied them with my bliss. I defied them with my unabashedly proud and uniquely American spirit.
Last year I was exhausted from the injustice and inhumanity. I was tired of shouting into the void with no one replying. I asked the spirit of Standing Bear and his brave warriors to watch over me. I asked the spirit of Harriet Tubman and her brave guides to show me the path to freedom. I asked the spirits of Pope John Paul II and then Pope Francis to keep me on the straight path. I asked the spirit of every Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and faithful to watch over and guide me.
I bowed to God on Ashura last year and asked that he accept the offering of my beloved parents as Zainab bint Ali did with Hussein. I asked for an end to the bloodshed for all of my people, ummah wahid, humanity itself. I asked for peace. That’s all I ever wanted, all I ever craved.
Just over a year later, I sit silenced in my tiny apartment high above the city, fortunate for the opportunity to keep screaming into the void about the atrocities committed against me and my people with no one replying.
It feels like my beloved country will never know peace because to know peace, you must know justice. To know justice, you must prosecute human traffickers and seize their assets. There is no justice when human traffickers are free and thriving while both victims and survivors remain in hell with a terrorized populace begging for it all to just stop.
I pray to God still. I still ask y’all in heaven for your guidance, wisdom and protection. I still scream into the void because
Every life matters, especially yours.
God bless Nebraska and especially Her people.
