The line of difference
between a survivor and a victim
is a very thin one.
One builds a future out of rubble,
the other builds excuses out of memory.
That thin line of difference
is called accountability.
There are countries that invent tomorrow.
They build machines to replace exhaustion,
dreams to replace hunger,
and systems that outlive governments.
We call them first world;
not because they were born rich,
but because they invested in becoming so.
And then there are others —
countries that borrow those same machines
to film conspiracy theories
about a past no one alive has seen,
no one dead can verify,
and no one sane would wish to return to.
They build castles of ruins
and call it heritage.
They delete dissent
and call it discipline.
They chant progress
while worshipping fossils.
And the citizens cheer,
because noise is cheaper than thoughts.
I wish I could name the country,
but the good men running it insist
that naming it is treason.
That questions are infections.
That disagreement is blasphemy
unless printed on official proclamations.
And if a good man says so,
it must be true.
After all, I’m just a stupid, illiterate nobody
in a nation of bike-riding godmen
and monks selling governments.
Imagine a country so haunted by history
it begins to exhume it for dinner,
where erasing centuries of pain
is sold as repentance
for centuries of pride.
Where textbooks are rewritten like scriptures,
and truth is a circus of convenience.
Where good men insist
that rewriting the past
is the first step to correcting the future.
And if good men insist,
it must be true.
How would I know any better?
I am but a stupid, illiterate nobody
living under the fluorescent faith
of slogans and empty speeches;
where faith wears crowns,
and gods endorse decrees
while the dead scroll through our mistakes.
In this country,
the present is always an inconvenience;
too modern to be sacred,
too corrupt to be celebrated.
So we export the future,
import nostalgia,
and call it civilization.
We curse colonizers
while colonizing reason.
We declare wars on ideas
and call it patriotism.
We topple statues
and call it purification.
We erect new temples
and call it ambition.
We rebrand memory
like toothpaste: fresh, white, and forgettable.
The good men nod,
halos fueled by power,
sermons sponsored by fear.
They preach restraint with sirens.
They tax morality.
They subsidize silence.
They invent synonyms for obedience.
And if you refuse to learn the language,
you become the lesson.
So I’ve learned my place —
to whisper, not speak.
To ask in metaphors,
to protest in poetry.
Because even irony here is under surveillance.
Because even laughter needs clearance.
Because even hope comes with conditions.
And yet,
the survivor in me still hopes.
That someday,
accountability will not be exile.
That dissent will not need disguise.
That good men will stop measuring patriotism
in decibels and donations.
That this country will stop treating its citizens
as children with opinions,
and start seeing them
as adults with rights.
Until then,
I’ll remain what I was born to be —
a stupid, illiterate nobody
in a nation that punishes remembering
and worships forgetting.
A survivor, not a victim.
For that thin line of difference
is still called accountability.
And when the good men smile down from their thrones,
counting obedience like coins,
I will whisper back,
"I survived your sermons,
your statues,
your history-washing factories,
and I am still standing.
I am the question you cannot censor.
The dissent you cannot tax.
The truth you cannot rewrite.
I am the echo of every word you deleted,
the laughter of every citizen who learned to think,
the ghost of your good intentions,
the shadow of your legacy…"
And when the next generation asks,
“Who fought?”
I will let silence answer.
Because the survivor
never needs permission.
And the victim
is already history.
