FOR AFGHAN REFUGEES IN U.S., A TRAUMATIZING WEEK

Monday afternoon, I watched my president defend his decision on pulling out the troops from Afghanistan without a message of hope. Like many of my war-surviving friends who fled Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Somalia and more, we felt abandoned and hopeless. The speech brought back painful memories that I didn’t expect would overwhelm me and my comrades, but they did. It seems like every month there’s a new catastrophe facing our vulnerable communities. I have more energy counting the stars in the universe than counting the lives destroyed facing violence, discrimination, illnesses and abandonment. I understand we have a huge homeless crisis here and are facing an unpredictable pandemic, but this manmade “exit strategy” crisis was unnecessary and avoidable, if it was better planned.

Like many refugees and immigrants who came to the United States with a dream to build a home and a new life, I felt left behind again. I came to the U.S. in the early 1980s as a burn victim at a very young age. I was the kid who never left the hospital and grew up there. I went to school there, I celebrated my birthdays there, I decorated the annual Christmas trees there, and I opened all the presents the next day there. I didn’t know how I got there. It was a normal life until I noticed how quickly the faces and names changed the next morning.

Every afternoon a hospital intern would take the kids to the rooftop for outdoor activities, but I wasn’t allowed because of my skin condition. I would sit in the game room and play “Super Mario Bros.” This past Monday afternoon’s address took me down memory lane. I was 5 years old again in that game room, with no one around me. No kids, no adults, just me all alone, an incredible feeling fiddling in my heart, slowly stretching the room narrow and darkening everything around me. It was this eerie feeling that overwhelmed me with pain weighing me down heavily. Numbness crawled on my skin and pierced right into my heart, making my heartbeat stop then beat fast and loud. The echoing of my heartbeat bounced around the room, suppressing every sound. I felt numb and disconnected, like my soul had left my body. I started asking and answering questions I had never thought about before: How did I get here? What happened to me? Where is everyone?

My heart continued to beat faster and louder. I started to choke, and a sudden burst of tears came out. My face started to burn, the tears hurt me and rubbing my eyes and face made it worse. My face burned, causing more tears to come out. I finally remembered when I was burned — a pot filled with boiling oil showering my head and everyone screaming violently around me. I was in severe pain; I couldn’t stop the emotional and physical pain. Everything hurt: my heart, my head, my hands, my face, my entire body. The pain was circulating and mutating. I had no control. I didn’t know how to put out the fire of pain.

All the tears led me to the feeling of being abandoned and left behind, hopeless, and I was so small. The realization that no one is coming struck me at a young age like it has struck everyone in and outside Afghanistan. Being reintroduced to the old domestic violence partner wearing the same beating belt and watching humans falling from the sky isn’t just shocking but painful for everyone watching.

Hearing and watching gunshots near the airport, a human stampede, people crying in the background is making us feel like we are all there suffering with the people.

We are reliving our traumas of war, death, pain and desperation again. This isn’t just an Afghan issue. It’s an issue everyone, including Americans who experienced the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, can relate to. President Biden’s message to the refugee and immigrant world was missing the famous Obama slogan “hope.”