A Poet's Priorities

 Zohra Saed ’00 M.F.A. Credit: Marcus Beasley

At 5 years old, Zohra Saed and her family fled the destruction of the Soviet-Afghan war and joined the growing diaspora of those leaving Afghanistan for the United States.

As a child, Saed began transcribing the folktales passed down to her by her family and has since used her writing to preserve and maintain her culture. “I’ve never been able to return to Afghanistan; my family was either killed in the war or joined diasporas in other countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, so Afghanistan is both far and close,” says Saed.

She has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, edited One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature, and is the co-founder, with Brooklyn College M.F.A. alumnus Robert Booras, of UpSet Press, an indie publication created to give a platform to people from communities and cultures overlooked or ignored by mainstream publishing. In 2021, she joined the faculty of the Macaulay’s Honors College as a distinguished lecturer.

Yet, for Saed, who graduated from Brooklyn College with an M.F.A. in poetry, her accomplishments as a poet and publisher have been overshadowed by the tragedy of the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. What started as a project to translate and preserve older Turkic languages of the Afghan Uzbek culture evolved into something bigger. She was given a manuscript of folk lyrics by a writer in northern Afghanistan just before the Taliban took over.

“He and his family are beautiful, incredible. They had been working for gender equity, developed a school for girls in a rural area, and sports programs for boys and girls, which made them a target for the Taliban,” says Saed. “They wanted the list of the girls in the sports program, and the writer burned the list to protect them. He put his family at risk to go to save these young girls.” The family applied for humanitarian parole but are still in the country.

“I haven’t been able to get them out yet,” says Saed. The urgency coming from her is palpable. “And humanitarian parole comes with a price tag. The application costs $570 for each family member—there are 12 in the family.”

And there are other obstacles. “Countries announce programs to allow Afghan refugees in but cumulatively, allowing 20,000 to come over four years, so 5,000 a year. Then they must pay to travel to the country in addition to the fee for humanitarian parole. So much can happen while they wait,” Saed says. “December was the hardest month; the realization set in that we wouldn’t get refugees out as we hoped. And winter is very cold in Afghanistan—we have 10 different words for snow.”

Keeping the family anonymous while working to get them out is another worry. “We've been trying very hard to make sure no one traces them,” says Saed. Although there are safe houses, the Taliban still find and raid them, especially targeting Afghan people who are pushing back.

“There are incredible groups that are resisting, like the national resistance front. They’re the ones standing up against the Taliban. And in the north protestors are being killed secretly; and women activists are being taken as prisoners or abducted and forced into marriages.

Since last summer, more than 75,000 Afghan refugees have made it to the United States, airlifted from Kabul Airport and flown to military bases. In July 2021, H.R.4736, Improving Access for Afghan Refugees Act, was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary to ease the way for asylum in the United States. “But right now there are refugees here in the U.S. in limbo, who have no status, and can’t get jobs because they did not come here through the regular channels of a special immigration visa.”

Saed says there are “incredible organizations giving me advice, like the Center for Women in Journalism, and Women for Afghan Women. And it is through her CUNY community, especially at Macaulay Honors College, that she was able to reach as wide an audience as possible about the poet and his family. Saed’s wants to make sure that they and the rest of the people targeted by the Taliban are not forgotten. Last October, the family’s plight was featured in an article in The New York Times.

“I was in a meeting for new faculty and Dean [Vanessa K.] Valdez from the Macaulay Honors College heard my story and said, ‘Wait, you’re doing what?’ She was wonderful. She helped get me the interview with the Times and got us help to raise funds. We raised $7,000 to pay for the humanitarian parole applications, including donations from corporate lawyers who heard about us and just wanted to help. She is currently working with individuals to find asylum for the families in Europe or South America because few humanitarian parole applications are being accepted by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.”

Of the individuals and organizations that have been helping and advising Saed, “I’ve never in my life met such kind people. I’m so moved by this community that comes together at times of great catastrophe.” And with the world now focused on Ukraine, Saed will continue to search for pathways to asylum for the poet, whose goal was to preserve the literary heritage and language of Afghanistan, and is desperately trying to get his family out of his besieged homeland.