Chapter 2

LOSS

Dying Embers

Photograph

For undergraduate studies, I was privileged to be accepted to Colby-Sawyer College into History & Political Studies program, and to receive substantial financial aid that made my attendance possible. I parted with all of the communities I became a part of, and left to live and study in the USA by myself.

Two events occurred at about the same time - I learned about historical injustices, and Anika died.

Dying Embers

In 2019 a drunk son of a policeman in Tajikistan drove his red racing car into an old Opel operated by my cousin, who was waiting at a red light with 3.5 more passengers on board. Street camera recorded the event.

The impact ended Anika’s life. Bloody broken glass, broken lives, broken bones - elderly aunt, pregnant cousin, and the cousin at the wheel all had to spend several weeks in a hospital. The perpetuator did not help them, instead quickly driving away.

For the next 15 months, cousin was dragged through courts and blamed for the accident, by the father of the red car driver. Who could not be brought to any responsibility, in spite of the evidence. After a while, cousin had to take the only way out of corrupt courts system.

Phantom heart

Acrylics, construction poster paper, marker

A3

When my mother called me that winter evening, I was looking at the twilight sky above Colby-Sawyer’s campus. In a shaking voice, she told me about Anika and the rest of the family. How my heart ached for them, an ocean away, in Dushanbe!

Leaving to the funeral was not an option in the middle of semester with the visa I had at the time. Over 350 people showed up to Anika’s farewell, mourning the tragedy together, but I stayed in the USA for the next couple of years, seeing my mom for a couple of days 10 months later.

Unfortunately I did not have a strong support system in college, the friends I made were not equipped to help me deal with the loss, and therapy was not accessible financially.

The fact that my beloved parent figure has died, and the person who caused it did not help anyone after the accident, and tortured my remaining family with his unjust prosecution for over a year, was a constant source of pain that I tried to suppress, joke about, or build barriers against with newfound cynicism for the next several years.

Time came to take more advanced history & political studies classes.

It was an existential shock to discover that what was taught as “Age of Discovery” in Russia-influenced Tajik schools, was actually colonialism - systems that produced genocides, horrific exploitation, epistemic violence and cultural erosion, and destruction of human dignity, not even mentioning the ecology of the places colonized. When I learned about how it worked, how widespread it was, and how long it lasted, my worldview shattered. I did not know humans were capable of such cruelty. How come I learned about the horrors of WWII in Tajik-Russian, French and American public schools, but not about this?

I visited Europe several times before, and found it to be beautiful and populated by “more culturally advanced“ Europeans. When it dawned on me that all of this beauty was stolen and paid for in generations of human suffering, and that the people who created and perpetuated these colonial systems believed they were more “civilized”, morally superior, and classified other humans in hierarchical categories while praising themselves for being humanistic and Enlightened, I lost my belief that the world is made of people who value integrity and want to help each other. I saw the traces of Eurocentrism that invaded my mind too.

When I learned about neocolonialism and neoliberalism, I lost my belief that human history is a march towards improvement and equality.

When I learned about the interconnectedness of oppressive systems and how they form the present, I lost belief in my own agency and power, becoming cynical, apathetic and fatalistic. I stopped seeing the point of grades, diplomas, and building a career.

When I realized my college campus is built on stolen land, and that American Manifest Destiny cost millions of indigenous destinies, I did not want to continue being in the US.

When it came to me that Tajikistan was also colonized, and I have a Russian name, I lost my sense of identity.

During these undergraduate studies, I also realized that history itself as a subject is fascinating, but is not a concrete truth, like I previously thought. Each person who analyzes and researches the past, or who lived through events of history and recorded them, does it through the lens of their own interpretation and socially approved constructs.

In the best case scenario, even if they are intellectually honest, they are still understandably limited by the information they know or have access to, as well as by the cultural norms that shape that researcher’s experience of reality. And in the worst case, they can be intentionally trying to obscure or highlight certain facts, to influence other people’s understanding of history in order to get them to act in a certain way today.

So how can we actually know anything? Is there anything objective in the world? Is there Truth? Who defines it? Or is knowledge shaped by power structures?

Digital Collage Poster

Photoshop, image and font manipulation. Background image and font sourced from public domain

Notes and doodles from class

Can we ever have unmediated access to reality? Or is all our understanding filtered through language, culture, and our own subjective biases?

Is there an unchanging essence to things and people? Is there a “real” me? Who am I?

What is my nationality? What does it mean to be a part of a nation? Do I have a “home” in the world?

Do my actions contradict what I believe in? What do I believe in? Why do I believe in the things I believe in? Do I have my own moral compass that I calibrated myself after careful choices and consideration? Or did I just pick and choose qualities and beliefs from books, movies, people around me that got me accepted by others, without critical thought?

Do I have free will? Does the world have a chance of producing less suffering and exploitation, or do the systems in place right now determine our future forever? Are we enslaved? Is capitalism a form of authoritarianism that limits and commodifies our connection to each other, inner selves, and the natural world, and incentives exploitative hierarchies?

And was USSR’s system better if so many people died and lost their agency during its existence? What’s the best way to organize a society and economy?

Why is there such a big difference between Takob Kollektiv and the US culture? Am I wanted here, does anybody care if I live or die? Does anybody care about each other if they are not gaining something from it? Is there altruism in general? Am I idealizing Takob and all the previous memories?

If people in the US identify themselves with brands and try to signal their economic/ cultural class or status that way, what if I don’t want to have a brand to identify with? How do I dress and present? What do I buy? How should I earn money if I don’t want to exploit or be exploited?

What is “beautiful”? Who decided what is beautiful, and why? What is “valuable”? How do I make art if I don’t know how to make it valuable for others or myself, and why make it? Is it worth it? Am I an artist if I don’t feel driven to create or live anymore? Am an artist if I don’t produce perfect lines from the first stroke to the last? Is there high and low art? What is the difference? Who decided that?

Am I making the world a worse place by taking up space in it? If I cause someone’s suffering, do I have a right to exist, when there is already so much darkness? What if I make things worse with my actions, words, creations?

What is the point of anything if we are just tiny powerless specks in the universe that will all die anyway?