My dad used to say
Just because you have the freedom of speech
You aren’t entitled to hurt someone.
Was I selfish for leaving?
I contemplate, as snow collects on my windowsill.
Everything is so new.
Not even a thousand miles away
They killed someone like me.
Someone who neither belonged here
And it was made abundantly clear that
They didn’t belong there, too.
And I think how this snow contrasts the summer rain
In my hometown.
I still eat with my hands,
The same machher jhol–bhaat
To hold on to the last straw of my identity
Because my identity is so omnipresent,
It’s jarring.
It is there in the sneers and snickers in trams
It is there the moment I start speaking up
I know I don’t belong,
But I’d love to believe in an alternate reality
Where at least I belong in my own country.
And it’s this identity that they kill to preserve
They have for a thousand years or so.
And more often than occasional
An unsuspected trespasser trapped
In the recesses of time
Loses their life because of their identity,
Thoughts, emotions, and existence
Are not as important as others.
I stopped belonging there
The day my NEET scores weren’t enough.
I stopped being important enough to lend an ear to,
I shouldn’t complain or speak up, because
I’m not as good as my cousin and classmate.
People in my country have made it obvious
In the past few weeks
That we deserve to die because we left–
That we are traitors of some degree
Even when there is an actual war going on.
I could say many things
Use my words as pointed arrows
To tear and mutilate those around me
Point out their bigotry, their hypocrisy.
But I know, just because I have the freedom of speech
I cannot possibly end all evils.
And that a student who left the country for whatever reason
Is entitled to protection, because hate is so abundant.
The person who died deserved a future like their peers
And I do too,
And just because you have freedom of speech
You aren’t entitled to spit on a dead body.
Basudha Goswami is a 20-year-old majoring in Chemical Engineering in Prague.