Untreated Pain
By Dildar Aziz
—–To the Uyghur compatriots wandering around the world
My heart is heavy with an ancient sorrow.
My Uyghur people suffer in silence.
Scattered across the earth,
they wander without homeland or shelter,
carrying exile in their bones.
They call my people “terrorists.”
They name them “separatists,”
“extremists,”
“Pan-Turks”—
labels thrown like stones
to bury truth beneath accusation.
Enough.
Enough of the names.
Enough of the humiliation.
Do not bow your heads, my people.
Even a wounded cat will bare its teeth.
Strike a balloon again and again—
It rises higher into the sky.
The tighter the fist,
the harder the knot,
The more pressure builds beneath the skin of silence.
Oppression sows resistance.
Humiliation plants memory.
Enough, my Uyghurs.
Do not surrender to despair.
Every nation loves its motherland.
Every soul longs for the soil
that shaped its first breath.
No one abandons home without reason.
No one chooses exile without pain.
Wait for the morning.
Darkness is only the shadow,
that stands before dawn.
Winter must deepen,
before spring dares to bloom.
Today, the world is beginning to awaken.
Voices rise across continents.
Friends speak your name aloud.
And one day—
The horizon will break open.
A new dawn will come for the Uyghurs.
Light will return,
to a people who never forgot the sun.