The Narratives – Mohamed Miah

What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?

There are certain places in the world that just don’t call out to me. Not because they aren’t beautiful, developed, or full of opportunity—but because when I look at them, I don’t feel the weight of time. I don’t feel the echo of ancestors. I don’t feel rootedness. And that matters to me.

Ironic really, considering I live in the United Kingdom—the king of all colonisers. A place that wrote its glory with the ink of other nations’ blood, carving out an empire while wiping away names, stories, and histories. But the difference is—I’m aware of it. I live here, yes. I raise my family here. I contribute. But I don’t romanticise it. I see through the cracks of castles and parliaments and hear the silence of all the voices that were buried underneath.

And that’s why there are certain countries I have no desire to visit.

Australia. New Zealand. America. Canada. Germany. I’m sure the scenery is breathtaking, and the cities are polished and modern. But for me, that’s not enough. When a place has no connection to its original people—when the native soul has been erased, displaced, or reduced to a tourist attraction—I lose interest. I don’t want a filtered history or a sanitised experience. I want to feel something real. I want to know who lived on that land, what they believed, what they built before someone else came and called it theirs.

It breaks me inside when people don’t even know where they come from. When entire communities are labelled with generic terms like “African American” or “Black British,” without ever being taught what tribe, region, or language their blood once spoke. That isn’t identity—it’s a placeholder. A name given after the original was stolen. We grow up not knowing that in our veins run empires and dynasties, resilience and royalty—but all of it buried under slavery, colonisation, or migration.

So no, I don’t want to visit those lands. Not because I hate the people—but because I mourn what’s been lost. And I can’t celebrate a place that doesn’t even acknowledge the bones it was built on.

I love history. Not the whitewashed kind—real, raw history. I love knowing that a street was once walked by warriors, poets, or prophets. That a tree grew beside a river that whispered stories to generations. That a people lived in harmony with the soil before it was taken from them.

What we do with our past matters. It’s not something to bury—it’s something to pass on. To teach. To honour. Because when you erase a people’s history, you don’t just destroy their past. You destroy their future. You make them wanderers in lands they no longer recognise. You kill their spirit.

And that, to me, is the real tragedy.

So maybe the question was “What place would you never visit?” but my answer is deeper than that.

I don’t want to visit a place that has forgotten who it is.

I don’t want to walk on stolen land that refuses to admit it.

I don’t want to be part of the amnesia.

Because I believe that history matters.

And rewriting it—well, that’s just another form of genocide.