Ibrahim: Pozabil sem, kako biti optimističen

Z vami delimo pesem prosilca za azil iz Turčije, ki iskreno spregovori o stigmatizaciji zaradi spolne usmerjenosti ter o boleči izkušnji življenja v izgnanstvu. Gre za pretresljivo pričevanje o nasilju, zavrnitvi in izgubi doma, ki zaznamujejo vsakdan veliko ljudi.

Žalostno je, da številne osebe iz LGBTIQ+ skupnosti tudi danes ostajajo tarča sovražnih incidentov, diskriminacije in izključevanja – tako v državah izvora kot na poti v varnejše okolje ter tudi v državah, kjer iščejo zaščito. Ti dogodki ne vplivajo zgolj na njihovo fizično varnost, temveč globoko posegajo v njihovo dostojanstvo, duševno zdravje in občutek pripadnosti.

Z objavo želimo spomniti, da je za osebe, ki bežijo pred preganjanjem zaradi spolne usmerjenosti ali spolne identitete, dostop do azila in ustrezne oblike zaščite bistvenega pomena. Njihove zgodbe nas opominjajo, da ima vsaka oseba pravico do varnosti, nediskriminacije in enake obravnave, kot to zagotavljajo temeljni dokumenti o človekovih pravicah.

I Forgot How to Be Optimistic

I. The Explosion
2013.
Reyhanlı split open—
the sky ripped with smoke,
the streets shattered with sound.
More than a hundred lives
>scattered like shards of glass.
I swallowed dust instead of breath.
I carried the silence of the dead inside me.
And the world kept turning,
as if nothing had happened,
as if our ashes were merely a shadow.

II. Exile of Love
Then came another blow.
Not a bomb—
but the word that cast me from my home.
“Gay,” they said,
and that word became a knife.
Even my mother,
the woman who gave me her soil,
refused to grieve me.
Three funerals—
three times I was forbidden to cry.
No farewell, no prayer,
no handful of earth to let me grow.
Grief became a ghost,
living now inside my ribs.
A stone that never leaves my shoulder.

III. Drifting
Ten years.
A decade of drifting.
Ten years carrying an invisible coffin.
Now Slovenia.
The land of trees,
the land of foreign tongues.
But no soil knows my steps.
No door says “my son” to me.
I live in borrowed rooms,
walk borrowed streets,
breathe borrowed air.
Everywhere a guest,
nowhere at home.

IV. Cry
My God—

how long will this shadow last?
I whisper to the darkness:
Enough. Enough.<
My mind slips from my hands.
I no longer know what I am doing,
or why I even wake.
Hope is a language I’ve forgotten.
Optimism, a lost trace.
Even myself, I have forgotten.

V. Smoke
And I take refuge in smoke.
For years
I have merged myself with the green dust of hashish—
a false fire,
a temporary sanctuary.
It dulls the pain,
paints the night in softer hues,
but when the mist clears,
the wounds remain,
the ghosts return,
the exile continues.

VI. Immovable Burden
What remains of me?
A walking body,
a locked heart,
a soul waiting at a station—
but no train arrives.
My grief has no grave.
My love has no home.
My hope has no language.
I forgot how to be optimistic.
I forgot how to believe.
But I still remember how to plead:
My God—
if You still see,
if You still hear—
send me a sign
that I am not already dead.