From My Diaries in America: Between Bitterness and a Bitterer Experience

Yemeni mp

Ahmed Saif Hashed

A dear friend wanted to help me with his legal connections, breaking the isolation that had been tightening around me. He lifted my spirits and engaged me in a field I love, pulling me out of a depression that had been suffocating me.

This friend tried to open a new horizon against the darkness surrounding me. He sought to create a path in the face of the obstacles preventing me from stepping into the world and freeing myself from the shackles that others wanted to bind me with for life, making my existence feel like a grave until the end of days.

For a long time, my friend understood my passion for the field of rights and freedoms, a space I cannot live without. He recognized the disappointments I had faced and the opportunities withheld from me. I often felt the absence of equality and the lack of equal chances, realizing how unfortunate my fate had been.

* * *

Desire and illness battled within me—dignity and death. I tried to keep things in a state of postponement for the sake of my health, weighing what was important against what was even more crucial. Yet, this did not stop my friend from recommending me to his friend in an effort to take the first step: participating in an international conference related to freedom of religion, belief, and peace building. My friend wanted to help find a gathering that might offer me an opportunity or choice I could use.

My health was a priority, but as my doctor appointments grew sparse and time dragged on, my dignity suffered more each day. I began searching for job opportunities in any country that might offer work aligned with my desires or skills—something that could help restore my wounded dignity. I sought any job that could alleviate the oppressive situation I was living in, a dignity intertwined with that of a wasted homeland trampled by its rulers.

Finding work here seemed impossible, and obtaining a work permit was nearly out of reach without asylum or residency. I did not want to end my life as a refugee, displaced and searching for a nonexistent homeland. I began looking for work, even if it meant leaving America for other countries for both employment and treatment.

My priorities shifted out of necessity—a forced choice between bitter and even more bitter, between difficult and more difficult. Instead of seeking health, I was now in search of a job that could lift me from the profound oppression I was experiencing. Instead of pursuing health, I was seeking dignity that was being slaughtered, suffering, and in pain every day.

A glimmer of hope came from two women I met at the conference. The first is named “Holda,” and the second is “Hoferinanda San Martin.”