Red Plastic Dust
My childhood began
with a metal spring
curled on the carpet.
I opened it.
A hand closed my mouth.
The light went out.
I stood
on a narrow shelf,
facing the wall,
learning fear
as a location—
in muscle,
in breath.
Even now, decades later,
when I wake in the dark,
my body still asks:
Is there ground beneath me?
My uncle brought me a gift.
1976.
I was five.
She was beautiful—
the doll with painted eyes,
dark braids,
and nails—
bright red,
glossy, perfect.
I held her like treasure.
“Bad girls wear nail polish.
Take it off.”
Water. Soap.
My small fingernails
scratching at the color.
“Use the scissors.”
Clip. Clip. Clip.
Ten tiny nails
falling to the floor—
red plastic dust.
They raised us
to fear soft things.
Color.
Touch.
Wanting.
I learned early:
desire is something
you bury.
But the body keeps records.
Even now,
when something good arrives—
a hand extended,
a voice that says stay—
something in me
still reaches
for the scissors.
On the floor,
a red dust
only I can see.
In the New Uzbekistan, the Voice of a New Generation
Why should I not praise you before the wide world, calling you “my Uzbek,” When my era has granted me the chance to know my true self, my Uzbek.
— E. Vohidov
As I write these lines, two drops of pearl-like tears roll down beneath my glasses. Recently, I traveled to the Tian Shan mountains. Those three days felt like three years. On my way back, the very moment I set foot on my beloved Homeland, my chest filled with the scent of serenity. I felt the taste of peace and happiness. As I got into the car, these lines echoed in my heart:
My Homeland, you are my pride,
The soil where traces of my childhood remain.
You see me off when I leave and wait until I return,
I feel your love like a mother’s embrace.
I have seen many lands, I have seen the Tian Shan,
Yet I understood your true worth even more, my dear motherland.
I do not need Paris and its Eiffel Tower,
A handful of your soil is honor and glory for me!
With these thoughts, I continued my journey. At one moment, I noticed a girl sitting nearby, quietly reading a book. Again, I sank into reflection:
In which country does a president give a car simply because someone reads a book?
In which country does the state reward you by funding six months of education if you learn a foreign language for just two months?
In which country is an entire Olympic town built freely, solely for young people?
The answer to all of these questions is one: Uzbekistan.
Indeed, today Uzbekistan is a country of youth. For the first time in history, practical solutions are being implemented to support the dreams and initiatives of the younger generation — solutions that nurture their pursuit of knowledge, creativity, sports, and a rightful place on the international stage. As a result, every young person today has the opportunity to make their voice heard, to present their ideas, national values, and identity to the world.
Yes, today’s generation is educated, healthy, and confidently proving itself on the global stage.Young Uzbeks are studying at the world’s most prestigious universities — Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, and many others. And if we speak of sports, you have surely seen our flag proudly waving atop the world’s greatest arenas at least once. Our young innovators, meanwhile, present their inventions at renowned platforms such as the International Innovation Expo and UN & UNESCO Youth Forums, consistently being in the spotlight of international investors.
Let us speak through simple facts from 2024–2025:
For the first time in history, UNESCO’s General Conference was held outside Paris — and that city was Samarkand. Uzbekistan became the first country to make this happen. Moreover, Uzbekistan became a member of the UN Human Rights Council. International education standards were introduced. Transparency and openness were promoted in politics.
For the first time in history, our female karate and judo athletes stood atop the podiums, bringing chains of medals back to the Homeland. For ten consecutive years, our boxers have once again proven that they are among the world’s strongest. In 2025, our footballers carried the Uzbek nation onto the FIFA stage. At just 20 years old, Sindarov once again proved to the world in 2025 that he is the “King of Chess.”
When we analyze these developments, it becomes clear that in recent years Uzbekistan has secured a strong position internationally as an open, reform-oriented country that ties its future to its youth. Remarkable victories in sports, achievements in science and innovation, young men and women studying at leading global universities, and active participation on international platforms are tangible results of this transformation.
State-led youth policy, investments in education and sports, and cooperation with influential international organizations such as the UN and UNESCO have elevated Uzbekistan’s global standing.
Particularly, initiatives that bring youth rights and opportunities to the international level clearly demonstrate the country’s strategic vision.
Shokhida Nazirova — Andijan, Uzbekistan.
Ambassador representing Uzbekistan for several international organizations and a regional leader actively involved in ongoing social initiatives. At the age of 21, she joined Worldwide Professional Women, becoming one of Uzbekistan’s young and promising female leaders. Through her volunteer work, unwavering determination, and selfless commitment to helping others, she continues to inspire and empower many young people across the region.
Alan Patrick Traynor is an Irish poet from Dublin whose work has been described as “the mystical galvanic paint that sets the fields of Provence on fire.” His poems shock the eyes and the soul at once; they are, in the words of one critic, “deep veridicous spears in a rachis sky of black feathers that will unlatch and unhinge you.” Traynor is the author of ‘Seven Days of Ashes’, a collection written on the spirit of the Holocaust and published by Albino Crow Press. He also has two other poetry collections published ‘Edit Not my Soul’ and ‘Until the Broken Clouds Answer’. His poetry has appeared in literary journals around the world, and he is held in high regard by his peers. Two of his own phrases—“Edit not my Soul” and “Edit not Blood”—capture the fierce integrity of his voice.
The Silence of the Desert is Alan Patrick Traynor’s first novella. It is a work of fiction and truth woven from the living fabric of his poems and life. The narrative follows Liam Bird, a solitary Irishman, and Elise Moreau, an Explorer and Swiss rider of motorcycles who loves mountains, as they travel from the light of Florence through the Atlas and the Sahara, across the Serengeti, into the Alps and the quiet of Vevey, through the rain-wet streets of Wicklow and Paris, the orange groves of Seville, the jazz sanctuaries of San Francisco, and finally into the long northern darkness of Norway under the aurora. At every stage the poems travel with them—read aloud under desert stars, mountain wind, and city lamps—while the music moves from Mozart’s elegant yearning to the searching, unfinished prayer of John Coltrane.
Traynor’s art is not confined to the page. He experiments with German Expressionist painting—its raw colour, its fractured vision, its insistence that emotion is a form of truth—and with jazz guitar, an instrument of listening as much as of sound. These dual fascinations shape the novella’s deepest current: the idea that love, like a poem or a Coltrane solo, is less a destination than a continuous act of attention and listening. The silence that follows every note, every line, every shared night under open sky, is itself a kind of music.
Readers familiar with Traynor’s poetry will recognise the landscapes, the birds, the winter roses, the broken branches that speak an Igniparous language, and the starling that sings in the soul.
Those who come to him for the first time will find a journey that is both outward and inward—a road that begins in solitude and ends in a listening so complete that the boundary between one soul and another grows thin. This is a novella for those who still believe that poems can hold a winter at bay, that motorcycles can carry more than just lonely people, and that the sceptriferous wind moving through the trees above a quiet grave is worth hearing with someone, especially in Vevey.
Through sleepless nights, her prayers rise for me,
She trusts my future more than I can see.
One gentle look from her becomes a prayer,
For mothers are heaven walking everywhere.
Your name upon my lips makes my voice shake,
A thousand thanks are far too few to take.
Your love—an endless ocean, deep and wide,
When storms surround me, you are still my guide.
You were my mother, father, strength, and light,
Allah’s greatest blessing in my sight.
Shokhida Nazirova — Andijan, Uzbekistan.
Ambassador representing Uzbekistan for several international organizations and a regional leader actively involved in ongoing social initiatives. At the age of 21, she joined Worldwide Professional Women, becoming one of Uzbekistan’s young and promising female leaders.
Through her volunteer work, unwavering determination, and selfless commitment to helping others, she continues to inspire and empower many young people across the region. She is fluent in Italian, German, Russian, Turkish and Kyrgyz.
