The title of the book, The Unsent Condolences, on its own, shows how Haidari puts unlikely words together to take us to the particularities of the dire situation he and so many other Hazaras endure. Those of us who are migrant-settlers (on colonised lands) fortunate not to have experienced being ripped away from immediate family members, larger kinship, and our entire communities, are able to send our condolences freely and without consequence. When someone from our family, our kinship, or our community dies, we send our written, verbal or in person expressions of sympathy and sorrow. They are received and then comes an exchange of grief and sadness, love and solace, between close relations and the wider friends of the endeared one who has died. How privileged we are that we can take part in this significant ritual. How ungraspable and shameful to read this title and know that the writer is swelling with condolences for so many of his beloved family members and close friends. He is unable to send them without severe consequences inflicted on those who have remained in Afghanistan and unable to send them because he is a refugee with no rights to many fundamental practices, including sending condolences to people he has lost to genocide.

The book’s structure is another awakening, as it is imbued with Hazara sensibility. There is a capitalised, opening address, reverberating with a sense of theological endurance:

I AM ALL YOU NEED.

A teaching, as well as a reliving, imbues the collection. This gives it an omniscient quality like that of Khalil Gibran’s poetry. In fact, in an interview with Haidari by NZBooklovers on 6 March 2024, Haidari references The Prophet by Gibran as one of his favourite books.

Haidari’s collection is divided into six sections, beginning with the ‘Prologue’ with its vivid evocation of “a quilt of rhymes”, “a jar full of fresh scars”, and that “every hymn is a portion of my bare lungs”.

After the ‘Prologue’, the next five sections each begin with a Persian proverb or a saying originating from Hazara culture. They are written in Perso-Arabic script and their translations into English are eloquent, along with the insightful accounts of their origin and influence for the author. For example, section IV begins with a Persian poem that Abdul’s father would recite:

BIRD IN THE FROST /

While section II is a proverb often recited by Abdul’s grandmother:

A THOUSAND MOONLIT CROWNS

By way of explanation for this second proverb, Haidari writes:

My grandmother often recited this proverb, emphasising the transformative power of education and the wide-reaching impact it can have on society.

The poetic wisdom of Haidari’s heritage are the foundations from which he gathers and places his poetry. He also utilises an overarching chronology as the poems begin with the visceral experiences of the Taliban atrocities and injustices, then move into the relentless cycle of post-traumatic anxiety and neglect endured as a refugee in Indonesia.

The four-page poem, ‘Troops of rented boars’, has the sensibility of an epic, beginning with a strong atmospheric foreboding and arrival (excerpts from the beginning):

into Christmas trees.

of rented boars

Building towards the final scene:

dumped in Kandi Pusht.

The end notes for this poem include a description of ‘Kandi Pusht’:

A place located in Zabul province of Afghanistan where the Taliban and locals in the 1990s murdered thousands of Hazara people.

This poem ends with two lines that should be the catchcry for all the countless humans who have incurred invasion, expulsion and the dehumanising process of being a refugee:

but how should I survive the traumas?

Section V’s first poem is titled ‘Diluted sharbat’. The word sharbat is derived from Classical Persian. It’s a sweet drink prepared from fruits and flower petals, sometimes with rose petals; the syrup is then diluted with sugar, water and ice, and here, it is likened to blood. This poem has nine stanzas that end with an italicised refrain or lyrical echo (the two final stanzas):

and guide us home.

and guide us home.

The collection then turns towards Indonesia and the makeshift shelters on the streets of Kalideres for the hundreds of Hazara asylum seekers (who have nowhere else to go as they camp outside the overfull detention facility). The poem ‘On the pavement tonight’ captures the specifics of how the pavement becomes the dwelling for:

and roadside exhaust fumes.

or flow across The Styx?

Given that The Styx references the river and the goddess of the underworld in Ancient Greek mythology, this final question mediates the continual spilling of Afghani blood. It weighs up the value of life when it’s spent living on a pavement, and when dying is easier than eating for children who are described in the poem as ‘Ghazni baby sparrows’.

On either end of Haidari’s poetry there is the Foreword by Raimond Gaita and the Afterword by Behrouz Boochani. They can be likened to supportive bookends as both articulate the core of the collection with intellect and gratitude. The indomitable Behrouz Boochani – poet, journalist and author with lived experience of invasion and detention – has this to say about Haidari’s poetry:

empowerment for resistance.

I concur with Boochani and add that in The Unsent Condolences each and every poem builds the unconquered fortress within the human who has endured the horrors of evil. Haidari’s erudite vision galvanises us to speak up and against the ongoing persecution of Hazara people in their homeland and the appalling treatment of asylum seekers.

It is at the intersection of lyric and resistance, music and protest, song and rally that Haidari’s poetry stands and addresses the poet as advocate, and the advocate as poet; shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Yiannis Ritsos, Nazim Hikmet, Paul Celan, Heba Abu Nada, Refaat Alareer and so many other poets who have been tortured, imprisoned, exiled or killed by regimes backed by military, arsenal and rogue politics.