Braving 2025. No more silence!

2024 went silently by.  There were so many things you could complain about, but you didn’t. You felt as though you had no right to complain. You were not in Gaza, or Congo, or Ukraine or Sudan. You were not a refugee. You did not flee your burning home, past burnt bodies of children buried under a mountain of rubble that was once a hospital, to seek refuge in another world that only saw you as hostile. You were not a government critic or an opposition leader in Tanzania, or Kenya, getting murdered by “unknown” assailants, or disappearing from the face of the earth without a trace and no one to hold accountable. You did not faint from extreme heat, die of famine, or lose everything in a flood, while world leaders refuse to act with the urgency the climate crisis demands; where those whose so-called development continues to plunder at the expense of the most vulnerable get to preach zero carbon and act like the earth is theirs to kill.

You did not complain, when, at the Helsinki Book Festival, one author told you, “I guess you are the kind of immigrant Finland wants”, as though it was a compliment, while grown men and women shamelessly harassed a biracial child who was voted Lucia that autumn.  You were not supposed to complain. You were supposed smile quietly and nod, keep your head down, work hard, be a good immigrant.  Be happy, you are in the happiest country on earth, goddammit! Show them your passport again. Let them random-search you in every single airport, again. Clap when they talk about wanting more immigrants in the workforce to counter their ageing nation, and watch the ones already there struggle with finding employment. Hear them say – learn the language, that’s all you need. See them learn the language, and still come out empty.  I guess you aren’t the right kind of immigrants after all. You are too black, too brown, too Muslim, too third world, not enough white.  

Then you come to the motherland and hope for some respite. You hope the warmth of a tropical January will hug the insignificance away. Finally, a place that can see you for who you truly are. Human. You visit a popular establishment, yet as a local, you get treated like a second-class citizen. You get kicked out of a resort in Zanzibar because you are not Italian. You are refused, served poorly, served last. At a beachfront restaurant in Dar, you sit on the same table you sat with your “mzungu” husband before and receive wildly different level of service by self-hating local staff. You want to blame them, but the wounds of colonization cut deep here. You know, they too are victims of this unjust world, the same world you want to ignore. You, too, are Gaza or Congo or Sudan, even when you don’t want to see it.

In 2024, the world screamed blatantly in your faces, that some of you are not human enough. You watched helplessly as the value of human life from some corners of the world was vetoed by monsters in suits. You chewed on your nails as their bombs landed on innocent children, yet the media vilified the children instead of the bombers. The scream you held in for so long faded into a faint howl. You felt numb. You grew tired of watching the world burn. You’d demand justice if you could find the strength to claw your way out of the rubble of hate the world gave you. If you could find the words sharp enough to pierce through their righteous bullshit, you’d tell them you are human too, equal, no more, no less.

But not 2025. This year, you are ready to scream. You are ready to fight. Let them come at you and face the wrath of your pen. Let them come at you and face the wrath of your collective rage. In 2025, As Dylan Thomas says, you “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Thank you.

Here is a poem I wrote in the 2023 New Year's Eve. Sad that it still applies today.

NYE Fireworks:

I am not in pain,

not today anyway,

Love surrounds me

even the frigid mist does not freeze

the freedom in my pen

I scribble memories that hug me tight

even as I watch the rest of the world burn

I imagine a bonfire

the crackling embers

on a cool tropical night

I pray for you

You who trot in the night

hoping to skip the mines buried in your backyards

and find safety in the cover of the forest

When the fireworks start

I pray the hellfire missles

do not wipe the dreams of your sleeping children

I hope your prayers reach God first, and fast

that he sends you rain where it burns

that you find peace and justice

at last

I look for signs of hope in the  sparkling sky

I admit, I do not think of you always

but when I do,

the calm in my street

reminds me that this peace comes

at the price of your bones

crushing in the rubble

of their destruction

and my silence.