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How do you keep your culture alive, when you’ve had to flee and create a whole new life in a country you never chose yourself?

Sarah Baharaki was born in Badakhshan Province and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan. But rather suddenly, the year she graduated from high school, the situation in her country took a radical turn. In just a few days after the fall of the capital city of Kabul, Sarah, just a teenager at the time, had to flee her home country with her family and has never been able to return home since.

In this conversation, Sarah walks us through being uprooted from her home country, landing in the UK, the culture shock she had to overcome, and how she balances her new culture with her home culture. When we speak of the differences in languages we also go into the topic of humor and ‘how to be funny in a foreign language’.

From a world away, she watched as her friends and classmates back home became stripped of basic human rights. Driven by a deep conviction, Sarah is a huge advocate for The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4 which advocates for Quality Education, and SDG 5 which advocates for Gender Equality. Today Sarah takes charge of the topics dear to her heart. She has carved a path out for herself and is currently a Global Youth Ambassador for Their World, and a UK Youth Delegate to the UN Women in the UK. With a focus on Afghan women, she was also the Opening Keynote speaker at ECOSOC2024 at the UN Head Quarters in New York.

Episode mentions:
Afghanistan is not what traditional media portrays. Yes, security risks exist, but there is more to the country than just the Taliban’s unsettling presence. Learn more about Afghanistan and one of the most famous poets who comes from there in the following links:

• Omar Haidari — Human Rights Advocate and Blogger from Afghanistan
• The Afghan — learn more about Afghanistan through the eyes of an Afghan
• Yes Theory — 96 Hours Inside of Afghanistan in 2020
• About Rumi — Molana Jalal al-Din Mohammad-e Balkhi
• Rumi’s Poetry translated into English

In a wonderful twist of fate, this quote by Rumi (translated into English) feels incredibly fitting for this episode:

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

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Original music is composed and produced by Malik Elmessiry.
The inbetweenish pod is created and hosted by Beatriz Nour.

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