Those who lie awake at night and say
Those who put aside the affairs of the world
Those who sacrificed their lives for their children
Mothers are great, my mother is great.
They cry when we cry, they laugh when we laugh.
May your kindness be the same for us.
They give knowledge to this tiny heart
Mothers are great, my mother is great.
Today, he did not turn away from giving love.
Mehrin didn’t fake poison.
May you live long.
Mothers are great, my mother is great.

The Remarkable Journey of an Aspiring Uzbek Youth: G’ayratbek Toshmuxamedov

G’ayratbek Toshmuxamedov, born on September 27, 2006, in Uzbekistan, is a talented and ambitious individual who has demonstrated excellence in both academics and athletics from a young age. His story reflects the spirit of the emerging generation of Uzbekistan—resilient, goal-oriented, and deeply committed to personal and national development.

From his early years, G’ayratbek showed great interest in sports and learning. His determination and hard work led him to achieve high honors in academic Olympiads, particularly in mathematics, physics, and information technology. He actively participated in numerous competitions and became a multiple-time winner, including twice securing first place in district-level IT Olympiads and once at the Andijan regional level.

His achievements in sports are equally impressive. G’ayratbek specialized in freestyle wrestling, where he earned several prestigious titles, including being a seven-time champion of the Andijan region, two-time champion of the Fergana Valley, and a national champion of the Republic of Uzbekistan. Additionally, he claimed multiple bronze medals at both regional and national levels. Expanding his athletic pursuits, he also trained in boxing and became the Uzbekistan boxing champion, while actively competing in tournaments held in Andijan.

However, in 2021, G’ayratbek faced a significant setback due to a physical injury, which forced him to temporarily step away from professional sports. Rather than allowing this challenge to halt his progress, he redirected his energy toward academics with even greater enthusiasm. This pivotal moment became a turning point in his life.

His academic journey is both rich and diverse. He began in a Russian-language school, later enrolling in a specialized institution focused on mathematics and physics. Eventually, he graduated from the Marhamat Specialized School under the Presidential Agency for Educational Institutions, an elite school dedicated to nurturing gifted students in Uzbekistan.

Currently, G’ayratbek is pursuing his undergraduate studies at Andijan State Institute of Technology, specializing in Information Systems and Technologies within the Faculty of Intelligent Control and Computer Systems. In addition to excelling in his studies, he actively engages in university life by organizing various events and intellectual competitions, demonstrating leadership and teamwork.

Despite his young age, G’ayratbek Toshmuxamedov embodies the qualities of a gifted programmer, a dedicated athlete, and a promising youth leader. His journey illustrates not only personal ambition but also the broader progress and aspirations of modern Uzbekistan. As he continues to grow and contribute to his community, his story serves as an inspiring example for other young people across the nation and beyond.

His academic interests, coupled with his discipline from sports, position him well for future achievements in both national and international arenas. G’ayratbek’s story is far from over—he is only at the beginning of a journey filled with potential and promise.

The Temperature

In one place of the world it rains

It rains much enough to grow the green

Living in peace

The opposite is firing in heat wave

Fire is burning furiously

As the human body the body of the earth is burning

It shrinks the atmosphere to lead

What does it mean the outer beauty of rain?

When the people of Gaza are falling in hunger

Fire snatches away the lives

As the little animals are crushed to the ground

In one part we sleep with sweet dreams

The other section is trapped in flame.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

25 July, 2025.

Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.

Peace 

Speaking for food

Bombs are coming in my left

Bombs are coming in my right

The smell of a coffee becomes a dream

People are targeted

Suffering

Starvation

Hypocrisy the cry for freedom

Governments they are counting their money

Over the bodies of dead children

Do you want this life

How much Human you feel today

We are all victims in the mind of narcissist

men with power

Peace

Unknown word

EVA Petropoulou Lianou 

Greece

Cis

Previously published in redrosethorns

“It’s magic,” the girl squealed with delight; the sunrise was amazing. It was the first one she’d seen this year, or even the year before, she said. Meghan had been sequestered away from her friends and family for what seemed like years but which in reality had been only four weeks. Her friend Darla stood near the window with Meghan and watched the sun peep over the horizon, the pinks and magentas giving way to the oranges and yellows of the fiery ball of unspent hydrogen. An azure sky provided the perfect backdrop to the palette of vivid rainbow hues.

While Meghan gazed, enraptured, Darla’s eyes were swimming with tears of sorrow. She couldn’t fathom what her friend, younger than her by one year, had gone through over the past month. Meghan had been abducted and kept hidden away at some horrible “camp,” the unwilling target of a conversion therapy engineered by her parents and her minister to make the fifteen-year-old cisgender.
– – –
Meghan awoke with a start. There were two strange men in her bedroom, plus one that she knew–Pastor Bob. Before she could speak, Pastor Bob said. “Get dressed, Meghan.” He tossed some garments onto her bed.
“What…?” she began.
“C’mon,” said the minister curtly, yanking the sheets down, revealing her nakedness.

Meghan grabbed for the sheets, but without effect. Before she knew what was happening, the two strangers seized her from her bed and began dressing her, like a child, in sweats. Where were her parents? she wondered wildly. She cast her eyes about the room and saw by her clock radio that it was only 3am.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, finding her voice at last. In response, one of the men turned her around, pushed her down against the mattress and bound her wrists with those plastic ties they affixed to the wrists of criminals when taking them into custody. As a final degradation, one of the men stuffed a thick cloth, smelling of alcohol or gasoline or something, into her mouth. Next, they pulled her to her feet and marched her from the room.

The trip to what Meghan came to regard as “The Camp” was a long one. Bound and on the floor of a van, she didn’t know in which direction they had set out.
– – –
“Dar’, look at the sky,” said Meghan, marveling at the rising sun. “It’s God’s work,” she insisted. “All good things come from the Almighty One.” She turned to regard her friend.
“That’s right, Baby, it’s beautiful,” replied the older girl.
“What is it, Dar’, what’s wrong? You’re crying.”
“Tears of happiness,” lied Darla.

At this Meghan smiled widely. “I’ve got a date tonight with Timmy. Do you think he’s cute?” Then an awkward pause. “Oh, I’m sorry, Honey, for a moment I forgot that, well…” Tim Fisher was a member of the congregation to which Meghan and her family belonged.
Darla held her breath. She was afraid she would receive the lecture about how “broken” and “dysfunctional” and “abnormal” non-binaries and other LGBTQs were. She’d already heard it twice before. For whatever reason, Meggie didn’t go on about it this time. Darla took this as a positive sign.

Darla grew wistful, remembering the almost one year during which the girls had existed as secret teenaged lovers. Whether it was lying close on the beach or in bed or innocently holding hands at a school event, the sweetness of the experiences remained fresh in Darla’s mind. Her thoughts returned to the present and the awful dilemma before her.
Several days after Meghan had returned from the conversion camp, when she was finally allowed visitors, she had confided in her friend about what occurred during her 30-day hiatus.
– – –
Meghan leaned against the wall of the cold, windowless room into which she’d been deposited upon her arrival at The Camp.
“Stand up straight!” bellowed a harsh voice from a speaker on the wall.
She sprang erect again but, after shifting restlessly from one foot to the other, she leaned on the wall again and then finally, sat on the floor. Time and again the PA screamed for her to come to her feet but at length, she ignored it.

Into the room burst a matron, dressed in nurse’s white, but Meghan knew she was no nurse. “Get to your feet, Meghan!” she shrieked. But when Meghan refused to comply, the woman beat her viciously with a broomstick.
“Ow, shit!” rasped Meghan, coming instantly to her feet. But still the beating continued, over her calves and thighs and arms. “Why are you doing this?” screamed the 15-year-old, whose parents had never so much as spanked her.

“You’ll learn,” snapped the matron, delivering a final blow to Meghan’s arm, drawing a thin trickle of blood. “You’ll learn to get your mind right!” she said.
Darla also remembered how her friend told her that she had been subjected to perpetual indoctrination, endless talk, both one-on-one and in a kind of group setting.

A man in a doctor’s smock, who didn’t give his name, but who wore a stethoscope about his neck, as if for effect, addressed Meghan and two other “students” in another windowless room, this one with a sofa, on which they all sat.
“Gays and lesbians are filthy,” he told them. “STDs, AIDS and other maladies of Biblical proportions, have decimated the ranks of young people over the last four decades.”

Meghan watched another girl, her age, nod in agreement with the doctor. She wondered if the girl were a plant.
“I am so much happier now that I’m back on the hetero track,” said another young woman. “I was led astray for a while,” she went on, “but God saved me. God loves you, Meghan, and He won’t let you down. Just trust in Him, alright? Our whole lives are ahead of us. We can have many, many babies!” she gushed with a sort of dreamy look.

Meghan, after innumerable, endless such encounters, found herself nodding in agreement. She wanted to believe, to be a part of the prevailing culture, to forsake the life she’d left behind.
Remembering these revelations, Darla touched Meghan tenderly on the arm, but the other girl recoiled as if stung. Darla let her hand fall to her side.
“Thank you,” said Meghan stiffly, “for understanding,” and then turned away, stared at her reflection in her dresser mirror.

“What are you thinking, Meggie?” asked Darla, concern and love for her friend in her voice.
Megan smiled shyly, replied, “Whether or not I’ll let Timmy kiss me tonight,” and she giggled. Darla forced a smile. The difference between Meggie when she first came home and this morning was much more than just night from day.
– – –
“They gave me shots,: she’d told Darla. “I don’t know what they were but they made me dopey, like I’d drunk a six-pack or smoked a joint. It’s weird, Dar’, but I started to look forward to them.”
Darla had met another girl, who had also been a resident at one of the camps, who told her that they put a small bit of some addictive substance–morphine? heroin?–in with the psychoactive drugs which reduced the victim’s natural resistance to suasion. The stories had made Darla’s blood boil but even now she didn’t know what to do about it. She was only 16.

A final tale was the most harrowing of all.
Meghan lay naked on a bed in yet another windowless room, her wrists bound behind her with metal handcuffs. Into the room came one of the camp’s other students, a boy Meghan’s age, who stood and stared down at the helpless girl. She heard him unbuckle his pants and soon he was brutally raping her. When she begged him to stop, he told her to tell him he loved it. When she refused, he pulled her hair violently, tearing some of it out by the roots until she complied.

“I love it,” she cried, weeping.
“I knew you would. It’s all a matter of muscle memory,” he remarked, and chuckled. This trauma was replicated that evening, then the next day and the next.
But now, Meggie didn’t seem to recall any of the abuse, torment and torture she had suffered at the hands of her inquisitors at the camp. That had bewildered Darla when she first stepped into the bedroom today. By observing Meggie closely she could reach only one conclusion: her closest friend was heavily medicated.

After their first meeting following the camp, Darla hadn’t been allowed back for several days. She wondered if there was a camera or a mic hidden in Meggie’s bedroom. Her eyes scanned the walls and ceiling inquisitively. Meggie was speaking. Darla looked back at her friend.
“Ooh!” said Meggie, “I’ve got to get dressed, I’ve got a meeting with my pastor in just 30 minutes!” She looked a little harried. So that was it, thought Darla. She was attending “refresher courses” of supplemental brain-washing. Meggie, Darla decided, was in their eyes still but a work in progress. The last thing that Meghan had told Darla, just after returning the week before, was the identity of the teenaged rapist: it had been Tim Fisher, her date for the evening. The enormity of the situation left Darla stunned and afraid.

“You’d better go, Dar’.” murmured Meggie softly. “Mom said you shouldn’t stay too long today…” Darla turned and opened the door. “I love you, Darla,” said Meghan warmly. Darla turned and stared at her friend wistfully, hopefully, for a moment. Then Meggie blushed and added, “I mean, like a cousin, of course.” Easing into the hallway, Darla closed the door silently behind her.

Rizal Tanjung 

A Poetic Review of the poem “I Wish” by Eva Petropoulou Lianou.

In the poem “I Wish”, Eva Petropoulou Lianou threads her longings into soft strands of silence—each line a whisper of absence, a sigh folded into the shape of hope. This is not merely a lament; it is a portrait of the soul reaching for the intangible: love without conditions, friendship that listens, understanding that needs no words. The poem blooms from a soil of longing, watered by what the world withholds.

It begins with:

“I wish I had a love / A love as it should be / No more take and take…”

—an aching simplicity that cuts deep. This is not just a plea for affection but a cry for reciprocity. Love, here, is not a garden tended together but one constantly harvested by one and ignored by the other. The repetition of “take and take” conjures a love that has turned into erosion—steadily wearing away the giver.

Then comes a yearning for companionship:

“I wish I had a friend / As friends should be / Be close to hard times / Listen to our wishes / Support us”

—these lines unveil the poet’s belief in friendship not as a social transaction but as a sanctuary. A friend is imagined here as a lamp in the storm, a listener in the age of noise, a presence that anchors the ship when the sea rages. These lines echo with the warmth of what is absent.

The poem deepens further with:

“I wish I had met a person / That could understand me / Only from my eyes / Or my mood”

—here lies the quiet desperation of the soul: to be seen, truly seen, without having to translate the heart. The poet dreams of a connection so intimate that even a glance or a silence is a complete sentence. The “eyes” and the “mood” become symbols of emotional language that words cannot reach.

And then, the turn:

“But if I had all that / Maybe I would never write poems”

—this is the fulcrum of the piece. It is the poet’s revelation that from the void, from absence and longing, poetry is born. Fulfillment may quiet the pen, but it is the ache that sharpens the ink. This is not resignation—it is recognition: the wound is the wellspring.

Finally, she declares:

“Poetry is my path / Poetry is my strength”

—these last lines are not just affirmations but a reclamation. Poetry, for Eva, is not a luxury—it is the scaffold of her being. In it, she finds her breath, her power, and her purpose. It is the road she walks when the roads of love and friendship remain closed. Poetry becomes her sanctuary, her mirror, her rebellion.

Meaning and Metaphor:

“I Wish” is a quiet but potent poem that reflects the emotional architecture of a soul that has learned to live in longing. Each stanza unveils a universal hunger: for love, connection, and understanding. But it is not sorrow that defines the poem—it is what the sorrow creates.

This poem suggests that beauty does not always arise from joy. Sometimes, it is the lack of what we seek that compels us to create. Absence becomes a muse, and poetry becomes the home we build when no one waits for us.

Eva Petropoulou Lianou doesn’t simply write poetry—she transforms solitude into song. In this piece, she offers not just a glimpse into her own heart, but into the shared human experience of yearning, and how that yearning gives birth to art.

In the end, “I Wish” is not a poem about what is missing, but about what emerges because something is missing. It reminds us that in the quiet corners of longing, poetry grows like wildflowers in forgotten fields.

West Sumatra, 2025

………

EVA Petropoulou Lianou 

Poem 

I wish i had a love

A love as it should be

No more take and take…

I wish I had a friend

As friends should be

Be close to hard times

Listen to our wishes

Support us

I wish i had met a person

That could understand me

Only from my eyes 

Or my mood

But if i had all that

Maybe i would never write poems

Poetry is my path

Poetry is my strength

Muslima Academy is an educational and motivational initiative founded by young leader Muslima Olimova. The project aims to equip students with skills in technology, global education, scholarships, and leadership. So far, it has reached over 1,000 young people in Uzbekistan and abroad.

Muslima Academy held an inspiring youth presentation in Andijan, Uzbekistan. The goal of the event was to inspire, educate, and empower young people with opportunities that stretch from local to global.

Although traditional media did not attend and some invited guests couldn’t make it, the energy and passion in the room were undeniable. The event was filled with hope, determination, and the belief that true change begins with us.

During the presentation, young participants learned about how to apply for international programs, ways to earn certificates, how to develop skills, and how to build self-confidence. The day was enriched with live workshops, motivational speeches, and moments that lit up hearts.

Muslima Academy’s founder, Muslima Olimova, stated:

“Even if the cameras didn’t show up, the world will continue to hear our voice. What we’re doing truly matters.”

This event was a powerful reminder that to make an impact, we don’t need an audience — we need action. And this time, the youth of Uzbekistan took a bold step onto the global stage.