This short story recalls a childhood memory connected with the tradition of singing Ramadan songs in Uzbek neighborhoods. Through the innocent perspective of a child, the narrative reflects on warmth, kindness, and the first experience of injustice. The story highlights family affection, particularly a touching moment that reveals a father’s quiet love and care for his child. It also captures the cultural atmosphere of Ramadan and the emotional memories associated with it.
Keywords Ramadan tradition, childhood memory, fatherly love, family values, Uzbek culture, neighborhood traditions
Story
I was still a small child then. It was one of those years when the month of Ramadan fell in the middle of winter. The days were short, the nights were long, and the air was cold and biting. One evening, together with the children from our neighborhood, we set out to sing Ramadan songs from house to house. The older boys came with us as guards. They never sang themselves—perhaps they were too shy. The younger children, however, would step up to the gates and sing loudly: We came to your door singing for Ramadan, May God bless your cradle with a baby boy. Ash in the hearth, money in the pocket, Please bring out a hundred soʻm for us. With that hundred soʻm we bought a horse, We sold the horse and married a girl. The girl’s name was Nigora, Poor thing, she bakes bread. Nigora ran away, And the dough was left to rise. What shall we do now? We will keep wandering, singing Ramadan!
The homeowners would come out with bread, sweets, fruit, or sometimes a little money. Four of us would hold a cloth open like a tablecloth, and the gifts would be placed into it. In this way we walked through several neighborhoods, happily singing and laughing. But when it was time to divide what we had collected, the older boys took the money and the best things for themselves. The rest—the leftovers—were given to us. Looking back now, I realize that this was probably the first injustice my young heart had ever witnessed.
When I returned home, my hands had turned blue from the cold. In my hands I carried a small bundle: dark bread, some fruit, and a few small treats. My mother looked at me with worry, pulled me into her arms, and said, “Oh, my poor child, why did you need this? Look how cold you are.” I kept telling her about the unfairness I had seen. No matter how hard she tried, I couldn’t warm up. My hands were stiff like wood, and tears slipped from my eyes.
Then my father took my little hands into his large, warm ones. Gently, he blew warm air onto them again and again, trying to warm them. Slowly, the warmth returned. That day, I discovered something new about my father. Until then, I had always thought of him as a strict and stern man. But in that quiet moment, I realized how deeply kind and loving he truly was. Every time the month of Ramadan comes, and children walk through the streets singing Ramadan songs, this memory returns to me.
Ramadan, thank you for revealing to me a father’s love.
Author Bio
Sardorjon Nabiyev is an emerging writer from Uzbekistan whose works focus on childhood memories, cultural traditions, and family values. His writing reflects everyday life and emotional experiences through simple yet meaningful storytelling.
In the heart of a golden autumn, a young kitten named Pufik saw the forest changing for the first time. While squirrels gathered nuts and storks flew south, an ancient Owl named Aqlbek revealed a terrifying secret: this winter, the “Spirit of Frost” intended to freeze the forest forever, aided by invisible “Virus-Spies” known as the Flu.
Determined to save his friends, Pufik embarked on a journey to the “Valley of Miracles” to find Grandfather Year. Along the way, he was helped by a swift rabbit, wise snails, and brave hedgehogs. Grandfather Year gifted Pufik a Golden Key, warning him to return before sunrise.
As the icy breath of the Frost Spirit began to harden the trees, Pufik reached the Ancient Oak. With the help of his friends who shielded him from the ice, he turned the Golden Key in the tree’s heart. Suddenly, a warm, golden light erupted, melting the eternal ice and driving the “Flu” viruses away.
The forest was saved. The animals celebrated a great “Harvest Festival,” and Pufik was no longer just a kitten—he was the Hero of the Forest. Since then, winter only visits for three months, and the animals stay safe and warm in their homes.
That day there was no sun, so I did not step outside. The whole day slipped away thinking of something I cannot name.
I kept looking at the sky, waiting for rain supposed to fall. The hours passed in expectation— yet not a single drop descended.
In the hush between light and shadow old leaves of spring kept falling, quietly, over and over. Green did not meet me today either.
There were words to be spoken— I almost said them, again and again— yet they remained unsaid.
Perhaps your sky too was heavy with clouds.
When all the lights of the world go still, night arrives, darkness settles. And in that darkness I see a blooming light.
In that flood of radiance I lose myself somewhere.
The rain does not fall, the sun does not rise exactly— yet in your light I am illuminated again and again.
The darkness that surrounds me is never greater than the light you unfold before me.
The rose-petals of dawn unfold in the gentle dance of a dove.
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.
Once when he was in grade ten in 1990, his Bangla letter was selected as the best one from Deutsche Welle, Germany Radio that broadcast Bangla news for the Banglalee people. And he was given 50 Dutch Mark as his award. They would ask letters from the listeners to the news in Bangla and select one letter for the best one in every month.
From 17 to 30 September, in 2018 he received a higher training in teaching English language in Kasetsart University of Thailand for secondary level students through a government order from education ministry.
On 06 November 2015 he achieved Amjad Ali Mondal Medal for his contribution in education field by a development organization in the conference and felicitation function for the honorable personalities at Rajshahi College Auditorium.
On 30 December 2017 from West Bengal in India he was declared a ‘Literary Charioteer’ in Bangobandhu Literary and World Bango Conference and they awarded him with a Gold Medal in their International Literary Conference and Prize Giving Ceremony.
In 2018, he achieved Prodipto Lirerary Award in Prodipto Literary Conference at Kesorhat, Rajshahi for poems in Bangla literature. He received honorary crest from the administration of Chapainawabganj District Literary Conference and Cultural Function in 2021 and 2022 consecutively.
His poems have been published in many international online magazines such as Juntos Por las L Raven Cage Zine, and Area Felix. His poems have been translated and published in Argentine and Serbian, and he participated in many international online cultural meetings.
(DOB 07/06/1973) is a passionate Indian Author-cum- bilingual poet while a tremendous Asst Professor of English by profession in the Ganjam district of Odisha. He is an accomplished source of inspiration for young generation of India. His free verse on Romantic and melancholic poems appreciated by everyone. He belongs to a small typical village Nandiagada of Ganjam District,the state of Odisha.After schooling he studied intermediate and Graduated in Kabisurjya Baladev vigyan Mahavidyalaya then M A in English from Berhampur University PhD in language and literature and D. Litt from Colombian poetic house from South America.
He promotes his specific writings around the world literature and trades with multiple stems that are related to current issues based on his observation and experiences that needs urgent attention. He is an award-winning writer who has achieved various laurels from the circle of writing worldwide. His free verse poems not only inspire young readers but also the ready of current time. His poetic symbol is right now inspiring others, some of which are appreciated by laurels of India and across the world. Many of his poems been translated in different Indian languages and got global appreciation. Lots of well wishes for his upcoming writings and success in future.
He is an award-winning poet author of many best seller books. Recently he was awarded Rabindra nath Tagore and Gujarat Sahitya Academy for the year 2022 from Motivational Strips. Jaidev Puraskar from Kavita Minar Badamba Cuttack A gold medal from world union of poets France & winner Of Rahim Karims world literary prize 2023.The government of Odisha Higher Education Department appointed him as a president to Governing body of Padmashree Dr Ghanashyam Mishra Sanskrit Degree College, Kabisurjyanagar. Winner of ” HYPERPOEM ” GUNIESS WORLD RECORD 2023.Recently he was awarded at the SABDA literary Festival at Assam. Highest literary honour from Peru contributing world literature 2024.Prestigious Cesar Vellejo award 2024 & Highest literary honour from Peru. Director at Samrat Educational charitable Trust Berhampur, Ganjam Odisha.
Vicedomini of the World Union of Poets, Italy. UHE awarded him the prestigious Golden Eagle award for his contributions to world literature in 2025.
Completed 257 epistolary poems with American poet Kristy Raines.
Bharat Seva Ratna National award 2025, International Glory award from Manam Foundation Hyderabad Telengana. On the eve of the 1979 Independence Day celebration he earned the Rashtra Ratna award & Maa Bharati Seva Sammana. In 2025 he received a doctorate in Humanity and Literature from Theophany University in Haiti with UNESCO, AEADO and the leaders of Autonomy International. The Prince of Crimea and the Golden Horde from the House of Genghis Khan gave him the prestigious title of “Honorary Bey.”
Received Sahitya Ratnakar from New Delhi 2025, Honorary Doctorate from RMF University collaborated with east and west university Florida United States of America on the eve of International Peace Day. Prestigious THE CONDOR OF ANDES from UHE Mexico 2025. PRESTIGIOUS DOCTORATE from VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF CULTURE AND WORLD PEACE 2025. Nominated for Padmashree 2025. Three-time Gold from the world Union of Poets France. Doctorate from Theophany university Haiti contribution for the world literature 2025. SAHITYA RATNAKAR from New Delhi. Dr. Mayadhar Mansigh Saraswat Samman 2025. Doctorate in Gandhian Philosophy, Peace and Humanity 2025.
Doctorate from Victoria University for Peace 2026. UHE of Peru appointed him as a World Ambassador for Peace and Justice 2026.Valiant of the Nation Award 2026 on the eve of the 129th birthday commemoration for Subash Chandra Bose.
INTERNATIONAL BOOKS
1.Psalm of the Soul 2. Rise of New Dawn 3. Secret Of Torment 4. Everything I Never Told You. 5.Vision Of Life National Library Kolkata 6.100 Shadows of Dream 7. Timeless Anguish 8. Voice of Silence 9.I Cross my Heart from East to West and epistolary poetry with Kristy Raines, published in USA.
In an age when old letters bent into sharper shapes, when hoods were traded for flags, he triumphed.
Chaos became custom. Anti-rule. Anti-order. “Burn it down,” they murmured. “Surely he can do no worse than the fools before him.”
“Less government,” the crowd reasoned as the State moved quietly into bedrooms.
“Lower taxes.” Yes, for those already gilded.
Then came the Plague. “It will thin the herd,” some said. “The frail are costly.” As if breath were a ledger. As if mercy were excess.
“Better health care,” they shouted from the rafters. Better how? By subtraction? By the swing of an unseen ax? By absence dressed as reform?
“I am your greatest ally,” he boasted. Yet histories dimmed on the walls. Names faded from plaques. Portraits vanished from the gallery.
“I will protect you,” he proclaimed. And gates rose higher. And cages appeared where cradles had been. And sirens shrieked through the night of our cities.
“I have ended wars,” he declared. Yet embers glowed beyond the fence line. Carnage in fits and starts.
So many trespasses. No one looks up. No one wants to.
“Give him a prize,” someone whispered. For vision. For victory. For greatness.
The house still stands. The banner still flies.
But listen closely and you will hear the beams strain. The foundation shifts inch by inch.
It’s been almost six weeks since I began my involuntary servitude and incarceration at the retirement home. It’s real name is Excelsior Villa, but I call it The Village. Sally is a harsh taskmaster. She has me chained to the heavy metal frame of our waterbed and demands that we have sex at least six times a day. Which would be hard enough, so to speak, but my girlfriend, Sadie, insists on trysting with me two or three times daily, when Sally is out with her alcoholic friends, enjoying 4-martini lunches and other debauchery. The physical demands on me are so great that I now consume at least 12,000 calories a day, like a mountain climber scaling Everest or something. Still, I feel lightheaded–low blood sugar, probably. Lemme grab an energy bar.
How are things with you in Tehran? The old man was on the news today, bragging about bombing Iran back to the stoneage. What an arsehole. I’ve taken to Twitter (X) and have been giving him what for. Oops! I just heard the door. Sally is back home; she’s singing German drinking songs, for Chrissake! Gotta go. I’ll email you again later.
Duke
June 21 2025
12:05pm
Hi Maysam,
Sorry to keep you, but Sally had “an itch,” she said. It took longer than usual this time. She brought me my dinner: white hominey and boiled chicken. Ugh! She told me she’s going to release me for a while on Thursday night but I better be on my best behavior. She’ll have a taser, she warned. She wants to take me to a communal supper here at The Village. Sally is entered into a chili competition, but it doesn’t bode well. She makes an incredible glop she calls bison-head chili. She plops a full-size, 60-lb. bison head, fur and horns and all, into a 10-gallon stock pot and cooks it to death. Then she adds tomatoes and beans and onions and all the rest, and she calls this chili. I hope she doesn’t make me eat it. It’s not fit for man nor beast. I’ll write you again in a few days, Maysam. I hear Sally again–gulp!
Duke
June 23, 2025
10:32am
Hello again, Maysam,
Well, the chili supper was a fiasco. Not only did the apartment reek from the simmering bison head all day and all night, but another resident–that’s what we’re called, residents–made bison head chili as well. Sally got so pissed that she secretly emptied a large bottle of Geritol into the other woman’s concoction and everyone got the runs. Oy veh!
How is your writing coming along? I subbed to a newly “literary” rag that once deigned to publish me, but now has an acceptance rate of <1%. Miserable shitheels! I subbed them my much-acclaimed story, the old reliable “Brainy Bike,” you know, the one about the dipshit actuary from the future that buys an AI motorcycle. Well, the publisher, Charlie Fishface, turned his snooty nose up at my creation. But I fixed him: I learned the location of his office in the UK, and I hired a guy to ring his doorbell and run. Gotta go: Sadie just peeped her pretty blonde head in through my window. Luckily, I saved a bottle of that peach vodka.
Duke
July 25, 2025
10:06aj
Good morning, Maysam (I guess it’s evening where you’re at),
Sally decided that my drinking had gotten out of control, so she sent me to AA. But, because she said she can’t trust me to be out and about amongst hoi polloi, she instead purchased some AA videos which she instructed me to watch on the flatscreen TV in our bedroom while I’m chained to the bed.
I thought, what the hell, I’d give it a shot, and so I turned it on. It was a talk given by the Reverend Over Berring, some evangelical televangelist and was he ever full of shit. He had a 13-step program. I know, you’re gonna say that AA is a 12-step program. But Berring’s program had an additional step, which is to send him money.
They had a “counseling” number on the screen and when I called, they insisted that I give them my credit card number, the card’s expiration date and the three-digit security code on the back of the card. I told the girl who answered the phone that she could go fork herself and went off on her for ten minutes before I realized she was a bot. Somehow, through our telephone connection, she managed to get the info she wanted and now I’m in for $100 a week. Yikes! I don’t know what I’m going to tell Sally. Hold on, I hear her footsteps down the hall. I’ll get back to you.
Duke
July 25, 2025
11:00am
Hi again,
Sally got our American Express bill and I had to confess. As punishment, she took away my telephone privileges. Which is shortsighted, really: the Reverend Over Berring is on the internet too. Maybe next time she’ll break my fingers so that I can’t punch the computer keys. I’ll talk at you later, my friend.
Duke
August 15 2025
1:00pm
Dear Maysam,
I’m worried about Sally. She hasn’t been nearly as affectionate as she was before; I think she’s taken another lover! It’s not like I can follow after her, since she’s still got me chained to this blasted bed. So what I did was, I hired a PI to chase her down. I got the first report in my inbox today. The detective wrote that Sally has been spending a lot of time at Mar-a-Lago, a garish resort in W. Palm Beach, a community about 20 miles East of The Village. This comes as a great surprise. What could be up? Maybe Sally has taken up golf. I’ll contact you when I hear more.
Duke
Feb. 11, 2026
11:15am
Greetings, Maysam,
Sorry I’ve been out of touch for so long, my friend, but there has been a lot going on. Basically, I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news first: Sally was in fact having an affair. The good news: it wasn’t with a man. No, wait, let me back up. I didn’t mean that. I meant that it wasn’t with a human being. That doesn’t sound much better, does it? Let me start over: Sally was having AI sex.
I asked Sally how I could possibly compete with an AI lover and she said I virtually couldn’t. Ha-ha. Sally’s a pippen. Well, it sounded funnier when she said it. So now Sally’s heart is devoted to another. And while I’m not getting the physical workout I once did, I keep eating the huge meals I had consumed before. To make a bad situation worse, my paramour, Sadie, found a boy her own age. Did I mention she was 19? As a result, I’ve ballooned from my svelte 166 lbs. to more than 600.
Sally no longer has to chain me to our bed, because I can’t fit through the bedroom door. Sally didn’t seem to mind my enlarged girth, however, since she’d moved into the guest room, which she shares with Alexa. I decided to take matters into my own hands and contracted for a liposuction procedure. I contacted a company off the internet that had a good reputation. But when they arrived, it was this old guy in a Spiderman costume, wheeling in a Craftsman 16-gallon Shop Vac, and I threw them out.
I don’t know what to do, Maysam. I hardly see my wife, except when she delivers my meals. She’s always been a remarkable cook, and she seems to have found the most succulent, delicious, fattening meals out there. I keep gaining weight. I think my wife’s trying to kill me, Maysam.
Duke
March 2, 2026
(The clock on my PC is broken)
Dear Maysam,
I feel rather odd writing this message, Maysam. First of all, I want to genuinely thank you for letting me capitalize on your generous nature and use you as a sounding board. I can’t tell you what it’s meant for me to have someone I could communicate with. Although we’ve never met in person and live thousands of miles apart, I feel I know you like a brother. You are my best friend, Maysam.
I was rather disquieting to hear from your sister that you had in fact passed away some nine months ago, succumbing to the violence rained down by American bombers. I am profoundly sorry you are deceased, Maysam. I hope this will not stand in the way of our future communications. Talk to you soon.
