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A Man Surviving All His Life

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Sajjad Ali Zaki is a someone who has been living a difficult life having to survive and scrounge his way through life from Kabul, Afghanistan onward. He took some time to talk to me. I, quite naturally, asked about his life growing up.

“For me, the life means very different. I have been surviving and lingering all my life. The moment my mother died the tragedy started and I think I have learned a way of knowing myself and accept the fact that I have grown up into a different human being,” Zaki stated.

Zaki was the ninth, and last, child of his mother. She is now dead. Zaki’s mom died from heart disease. His older brother died from the war between the Mujahaddin in the mid-1980s and the  government. This was prior to his birth.

He said, “In our culture there is superstition, that if a family leaves no son the parents’ soul  always will be wonder because they don’t get any prayer from the son, so my mother had to give birth to a son despite warning from doctors that it would worsen her illness (now I am wandering, and helpless and stateless like that of my mother’s soul).”

His 3-year-old sister ,with mental disability  and 2 years old brother and two 15 days old infant twin brothers died. He has four sisters. All married. Those five (including him) are the survivors of his mother’s children.

When  Mujahaddin took over the government , he had five years. The Kabul War started. It was a famous ethnic and sectarian, and religious, war. It is notable for the war crimes and human rights violations there. He is from minority called Qizilbash. Zaki’s hometown is Afshar-e-Silo. It was under attack by many parties because of being a stronghold of the Shiite Minority Hazara. He family is Shiite as well.

“We had to move to other save  place in Kabul and later we moved to the Northern part of country Mazare Sharif. In the late 1990s, when the Taliban invaded northern part of Afghanistan ,” Zaki explained, “they started killing  all Shiite for one week. Fortunately, we were survived since we used to live in the region where there was no more Shiite.”

They were searching through every door and one group parked near their house and conducted a prayer.

My grandmother once said when I was born, I was looking towards lights of delivery room .as I  have been  growing up I was  wondering about things including that idea of Muslim God or Allah,” Zaki opined.

He views himself as a different kid. He notes this as a reason for becoming a different adult. Someone with six family members who are dead, which made him a different person. While growing up, he was forced into learning the Koran in Arabic at age 7. Based on being displaced and then the migration, he had to end religious education.

He went to Pakistan at the age of 11. Zaki said, “My father persuaded me to learn English and at the same time working (weaving carpet, the profession I started to learn when I had 7 years back in Afghanistan where child labor is common).”

By learning English, he developed intellectually but not economically. The idea was to be a translator for the foreigner forces in Afghanistan. Even though, he knew working with the military was difficult.

“After living as a refugee for four years in Peshawar, we returned to Afghanistan especially after collapsing of Taliban Emirates by coalition forces. We started a quite prosperous life with my father involving in construction work and I was studying,” Zaki stated.

At the age of 12-years-old, he found that six members of his family, including his mother, died by either natural causes or war. It felt like a big trauma to him. That he found out his stepmother is not his real mother and then six family members died unfairly.

“Nevertheless, later, I accepted that the cause of death of my mother and brothers and sisters can be explained and no one has to be blamed. It was the same time that I start to be what I call myself an un-denier about my reality and accepted denying the existence of so-called just and righteous God or Allah,” Zaki shared.

In eleventh grade, he was in high school. He began not to  believe, and his awareness and conscience were, raised about and started questioning and critical thinking and living in a mindful way in order to be content with him.

Zaki found himself a refugee and an exile in the world. He felt alone and like a stranger in the world. He found living in these kinds of aforementioned experience and countries worse than asylum camps and did not share anything intellectual.

It felt, to him, like a completely odd, strange life.

“I have never been able to feel part of society because of the language problem. Although, I found some good friends who helped me a lot during my time here in Serbia,” Zaki explained, “As an educated person I am, it is very difficult to accept the attitude of citizens of Europe colleague, and European humanitarian organization employees and their assumption about me, because they are a little biased with me  and see you as common migrant, not an intellectual and humanist.”

He considers himself an exile. He feels nostalgic for a place of origin, family, and people and culture. Back in Afghanistan he  found himself  being hated by people whom he does not share belief.

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Image Credits: Pixabay

The post A Man Surviving All His Life appeared first on The Good Men Project.


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