Welcome to our episode finale of this season of The Design of Return podcast.

Our episode 9 is the story of Nida and her longing to return to her homeland in Afghanistan while rebuilding a sense of home somewhere else.

Poet Adrienne Rich wrote « It is always what is under pressure in us that explodes into poetry ».

When home has been taken away, longing is like that pressure that lurks in the darkness until art can give it a place in the world, even though this place is never fully rooted but rather oscillate in between home’s absence and presence.

Nida took asylum in Germany with her family after having to flee her land. Even though her physical presence was no longer something she could offer, she never stopped working with and for women in Afghanistan though her work with Pangea Onlus, a foundation that has been operating in Kabul since 2003 working at empowering Afghan women to become part of the world again by coming out of a daily life of violence and discrimination.

In our conversation we explore both the tenderness and the pain of Nida’s relationship with her homeland; how her work with Pangea Onlus shaped her purpose and about what it means to dwell with longing and rebuild a sense of home through poetry.

The interview is in Farsi, Nida’s original language, interpreted and translated in English for us by Iante Roach.

Thank you for listening.

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