Silenced
A Letter to the Women of Afghanistan
By Anni Ponder
Dear Sisters, Mothers, Daughters. Dear Aunties and Grandmas and Lonely-Hearted Women, Girls, and Aged Ones.
I heard the news this morning.
Devastating.
Heartbreaking.
Unimaginable.
And yet, this is your reality. No more talking. No more conversations. No singing, no connection, no solidarity. You are being pushed into oblivion, one heartbreaking edict after another.
I read in an interview with one of you (and then wondered how that had occurred—at risk to your life, to be sure) that you feel utterly forgotten, abandoned, isolated. That you have no hope. That the world has turned its back on you and you are left alone to endure the dominance and mockery and abuse. There is no one to hear your stifled cries as your freedoms are stripped from you.
It’s enough to drive a person to madness.
I understand many of you have chosen death over this oppression. That you would rather take your own life than live in the suffocating prison the Taliban has crafted for you.
I can’t say I would do any differently.
My Sisters, how great your pain. How intense your suffering. How unbearable the weight of your despair.
I can scarcely imagine how my words may reach you, but if by some grace and goodness they do, please know I hear you. Your cries do not fall on deaf ears, and although I do not have the first idea of what to do to help, if any one of you is reading or hearing this, please know I love you and am so very sorry for your suffering.
You are not alone.
You are not forgotten.
I weep with you. I long for your liberation. I long for you to lift your voices again, joining the chorus of humanity that knows: this injustice is not only against you, but against all women, all children, all people, all sentient beings.
If you can’t hold out hope for a better future, dear Sisters, I understand. Sometimes the darkness around us is too thick to even imagine a way through. If despair is your only option, you can know there are many of us around the world who believe in a sunrise for Afghan women, and we will carry the hope of that day in our hearts while you weep and wait.
And we will weep and wait with you.
