Solastalgia

“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.”

“Ever since college, I have had only one goal: to become minister of education and change the system in Afghanistan […]. I have worked so hard to reach this goal. Every night before going to sleep, I imagined myself in a ministry chair as secretary of education, but now I find myself imprisoned in the corner of a room.” With “tears in (her) eyes” a psychology student from Kabul University recalls August 15, , the day her “palace of dreams” was shattered.

“When our colleagues are threatened by murderous power, we bring them close to us and make a home together,” Carter J. Carter wrote in his introduction to “Names Withheld: From Afghanistan.” This is not a single essay. It is a communal cry for help in the midst of crisis and terror. Along with messages sent by two psychology students from Kabul University whose futures are now unthinkable, “Names Withheld” holds a poem in the form of an email sent from their professor Sayed Jafar Ahmadi and the story and image of a precious painting that Dr. Ahmadi has taken with him into hiding.

Sayed Jafar Ahmadi was one of the many mental health leaders who, over the last twenty-one years, took part in a national plan to integrate mental health and social support services into public schools, health clinics, juvenile justice centers, and women's NGOs. The program spanned all of Afghanistan's 491 districts, both urban and rural. Because his teaching, publications, and fieldwork attracted significant interest and because he is a member of the Hazara community, a group of people the Taliban has vowed to eliminate, Dr. Ahmadi is, at the time of this publication, in mortal danger. There are thousands of individuals who, like Dr. Ahmadi and his family, have been placed on evacuation lists but remain trapped in Afghanistan because