Flower Samarkand

Millions of tourists come to see, they
Words are powerless to describe
Are surprised to see your bread,
Flower Samarkand, my motherland.

Your children will grow up ,the
Virtuous scientist, will make you known to the whole world,
You are our pride, my dear abode,
Flower Samarkand my motherland.

There are many ancient places in the world,
There is no one more beautiful than you
There are holy places like Registan in
The light my mother earth.

Everything is not as it seems

When it rained, everywhere is wet, the air is clean, I am looking out of the window of my room with different dreams, then I left my questions for a moment and I saw two couples.

   The first couple was standing near the entrance to the student residence, about 50 meters away, and the second couple were talking to each other.

   By chance, the guy from the first couple raised his hand to the girl, she stood crying for a minute and went into the bedroom. Then I noticed the second couple, and now it’s the opposite, the girl raised her hand to the guy, but the girl was very upset, and when she tried to turn back, the guy wouldn’t let her go, the girl was crying a lot.

   From my imagination, I walked without forgetting the situation of the two girls in front of my eyes. I said that there was a big difference between the first girl and the second girl.

   (after about 4 or 5 hours of wear)

   I was going to the library with my friend and I accidentally passed two more girls and I asked my friend about the two girls…. my friend knew both girls and both of them were engaged to the guys I saw next to me. .

   The first couple I saw fell in love with each other and got engaged. Are you wondering why the guy hit the girl? I asked my friend the same thing…?

   My friend said that the girl was jealous when she saw her boyfriend shaking hands with his fellow students. If you are interested in the second couple, listen, this couple is also engaged, but both of them are children who grew up in a rich family, who have passed their words on to their family members, and they will say whatever they say. The girl found out that the guy cheated on his betrothed daughter due to his wealth and wealth and had relationships with other girls, and she got angry and attacked the guy.

   My friends, do you understand that everything will not be as easy and beautiful as it seems? When you hear my first words, you still feel bad for the first girl. You ask yourself why she hits you, what is her right? from yourself …….!

Hibiscus


A little hibiscus
Penchant it's chore
Gullible a short stature
Behold her majesty
Under the trees of 
Sycamore and olive branches 
A casual symphony of 
Criss crossed margins
A little hibiscus
Redden with dusty shadows
Autumn wraps her in molten golden
Now my hibiscus is ripened
All edible in bountiful decency
October's mosaic hearts
Keeping my broached napkin
Under your solemn boughs
It revels in redness

***
tigers in the zoo:
no one sees how 
the meat is prepared for them

chest hurts
once again the heart can 
withstand everything

fork and knife pierce my body 
i fall asleep

***
I died for you
Removing freckles from face completed successfully

***
we were left with a petal and 
empty cider bottles as a souvenir
autumn has never been 
so forgotten before

***
the ant 
under my 
feet 

taught me 
to be small

***
no one will ask the foliage 
about green silence

***
the worm in my body 
cherishes the emptiness

***
love is broken like a river
glass grass river

***
my heart is looking 
for a cemetery at your steps

***
the cage asked the bird 
and received no answer

***
who dies at night while bones 
burn in the sky?

we are trying to forget 
our little betrayal

– After February 24, 2022, I will never speak Russian again, I will never be silent again. - Helga said, but the next morning this mood passed.
The next morning old Helga went to church for free milk. She took her place in line, as did hundreds of other people.
Hundreds of people did not want to stand in line, but the post-Soviet habit of poverty encouraged them to stand in line.
Pensions were paid to bank cards. banks and ATMs did not work. Stores were open. Stores that were not closed were open. Only a few shops were open. Stores that started working as a result of a raider seizure of a neighboring business do not count.
The pensioners in the queue began to argue: someone took a place in the queue dishonestly.
The pensioners in line began to argue very rudely and broke off the entrance gate of the church.
Not everyone got milk that day, although everyone was in line.
Crowds of hungry dogs began to run past the crowd of upset pensioners. The dogs, abandoned by their owners to the mercy of fate, wanted to eat.
Over time, hungry dogs began to attack the parishioners. Over time, hungry dogs began to turn on all the inhabitants of the city, including atheists like me. People are the same animals. The ring-shaped world history is a strong confirmation.
My favorite Ukrainian director (Kira Muratova) once said:
"I can understand cannibalism because a hungry person behaves like an animal. But I don't understand how you can kill for anything. Even if it's your homeland."
Hungry dogs: they live much worse than pensioners. Dogs do not have pensions, churches, public organizations. And over time, pensioners began to receive two pensions: Ukrainian and Russian. But it does not matter. By the way, I have never been to church as an adult. This in some way makes me related to street dogs. When I was a child, my parents often had puppies: but the puppies constantly ran out into the street and died.
The dogs continued to walk the streets. People continued to walk the streets. Kira Muratova once said:
"Humanity does not develop. First there was Nero, and then there was Stalin." It's good that Kira Muratova died before 2022. Over time, death begins to seem like a relative that everyone has always known about, but no one has seen. It turns out that death cannot be seen - there is no death. Especially during the war: during the war, everyone turns into walking corpses. From dust to dust, because as Jim Jarmusch (or someone else) said: "The dead do not want to leave." The dead cannot leave because their limbs are torn off. The dead cannot die, especially when air bombs forbid the very existence of life.
I want to dye my hair blonde. For some reason, this fact seems especially vital and important at the time of the shelling.
Over time, people who walked the streets began to get tired. People started dying. But no: people have died before.
Over time, people stopped giving out free milk in churches and rotten vegetables at bus stops. Over time, people got used to what was happening. People have been accustomed to what is happening for thousands of years. For thousands of years, the same events have been happening.
Once a neighbor's cat caught a mouse and ate it, but not completely. Therefore, the guts and tail (the remains of a mouse) I found just on the sidewalk. But the neighbor's cat is well fed: why did he poop on a mouse? Why didn't the cat eat the mouse's tail? Can not understand anything.
Even along the streets, besides people, cats and dogs, birds roamed. But birds have wings: just like military planes. Birds constantly remain in the shadow of human attention. Sometimes birds peck at groats at the point of distribution of humanitarian aid. They say that the point of issue of humanitarian aid is also full of pensioners in line. Then some pensioners sell this humanitarian aid on the market. Sometimes many birds flocked to the market: the birds tried to get their own food.
Birds in those days began to fly to the streets of the city, probably in anticipation of spring. But spring never came.
People in those days stopped believing that it was possible to fly and began to silently walk through the markets. Some people still continued to go to work. Some animals in those days still had owners who hadn't left.
As a child, I had different toys: plush animals, plastic constructors, toy soldiers. At the time, I didn't understand why toys weren't allowed to tear limbs off.
Meanwhile, people and animals quietly ran away wherever their eyes looked. As a rule, people left for Europe. The rest of the people and animals remained where they were. Being a refugee is either uncomfortable or expensive, depending on your financial situation.
Thus began the first month of military occupation.

JOONAM – Finding identity as an immigrant woman

We all eventually turn into our mothers.

It’s what nature taught us. The older we grow up, the more we see our mothers in us, and us in them.

And the three generations of Iranian women in this film, are no different.

It had to take an innovator, a pioneer like Sierra Urich, a filmmaker, to unravel the mystery of those three women, and bring their different worlds together. It had to take a brave woman like her to bring women’s stories to the table and unwrap the cellophane, the layers and layers of dust that women use to cover up their lives and put it out into the world.

The link was the mother, Mitra, who was the heart of both languages, the bridge between two distinctly foreign worlds. Sierra represented the new world, while the grandmother represented the old world. Mitra brought these two worlds together, through a shared love between the three women of storytelling.

I felt Sierra’s isolation in her language barrier bubble, how her grandma, Behjat was happily enjoying the culture she held close to her heart, how comfortable Mitra was freely moving from one culture to the other, her peace and easiness evident through her daughter’s camera. Sierra on the other hand was the one most bothered, or uncomfortable in her skin. I related to her feelings of difficulty adjusting to her mother and grandmother’s heritage or their adaptation to their lives. Mitra and Behjat seemed in harmony, while Sierra seemed lost and grappling with her sense of self. How easy it used to be for the older generations, while we are usually stuck with how we view ourselves, how the world perceives us, and what we want from the world.

Sierra’s use of imagery and poetic interceptions threw me in the middle of the culture, the mesmerizing stories that her grandmother told as the backdrop to an already active mise-en-scène, there was constant movement and a powerful sense of space and presence in Sierra’s film, and that allowed the viewer to enter her world at the pace and time that she fully decided.

JOONAM felt like a journey through womanhood, as each woman discovered her path individually from the other, but brought together they navigated it together as one. In different cultures, times, and ideologies, all three women had their own battles to conquer, wounds to cover, and intergenerational trauma to come to terms with. Sierra perfectly gave her subjects the air to breathe and exist in an environment without judgment or disdain. It was the perfect safe space for these women to share stories and bond over their family history as they each tread a different spot on the spectrum of life. Sierra didn’t overuse intimate feminine moments as breaking points for her narrative, each point was present in the right spot, like her mother having her hair done at the hairdresser’s and getting bombarded with serious interrogative questions, or her grandmother beautifully recounting the time she had her first period. None of it felt forced or created a false sense of feminine mystique but rather a milestone in an intricately structured narrative, not built on women’s bones, but from their tales around the -hypothetical fire- as they rebuild each other up, bones and all.

EPHEMERAL

Man only has but two nights: the night he was born, and the night he died.
When he was born,
Joy and mirth pervaded the room,
And cacophony of laughter erupted like fireworks in the night.
Like a tiny vine, he clung to his mother, drawing sustenance from her precious sap,
Like a fledgling bird clinging to its mother’s wings.
With his squeals and gurgles, he shared his babble
Like a child blooming in its mother’s love.
Half a dozen of age; everyday objects of the home became a kingdom of marvels, a realm of
infinite delights, as his imagination turned pots into castles and spoons into swords.
In the hot kitchen, his mind scented the air with the sweet fragrance of his hunger but he cared
not for the heat or the sweat; only for the succulent flavors to come.
Every morning, a new day beckons, a playground of delight, in the eyes of a child
Running across the beach, gathering up the grains of sand– like precious pearls–
As the moon casts its light upon the sea.
The day he died,
Deluge of sorrow choked the room, & the air was dense with wails.
So many, like clouds of houseflies.
The mighty man,
heavy with weight of accomplishments,
Threatened to hump the bier that transported him into his abode of delight.
When he was lowered into the Earth
(beneath the world of men),
A new home hewn in the belly of the earth,
His bones rotted like detritus.
What is death? A beautiful ending or loss?
There is but one conclusion:
That he was born to die, to live as he pleases and return to the dust that made him.

Chukwuemeka Victoria Chiamaka is a psychology graduate from the University of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Anambra State, Nigeria. She is passionate about writing and this has made her lay her tent in the world of modern literature.
Email: chukwuemekavictoria23@gmail.com

Kingdom Collapse

On July 5 of 2033 Antarctic bases McMurdo, Davis, Casey and others reported earthquakes of 6 magnitude on the Richter scale.  South Africa and Tierra Del Fuego in South America had minor tsunamis shortly after the earthquakes.  Helicopters flew to the suspected center of the disturbance near the South Pole.  What they saw was deeply disturbing.  An area of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers had subsided anywhere from a few to a hundred meters deep.  What appeared to be naked humans were slowly digging out of the steaming slush.  As the observers goggled at the scene, something like a red guided missile flew out of the depression so fast it was just a blur.  There was no safe landing place, so the helicopters which were short of fuel flew back to their bases.  When the film they had taken was released, the world observed a second odd event.

Only seconds after the “missile” had left Antarctica, a red giant with goat horns wearing a loin cloth and nothing else took over the United Nations.  It had no problem taking over the podium during an active meeting of member nations.  He spoke in English but was translated for the member countries as is usual at the UN.

“Hi there.  You might know me as Satan, but I prefer Lucifer.  Hey, have you heard that Rolling Stones number ‘Sympathy For The Devil’?  Love it.  Lucifer is from the Hebrew and means light bearing.  I know I’ve got a bad reputation, but I serve a valuable purpose, like a garbage collector.  That may be a bad analogy, but OK.  For sure, you wouldn’t want to mingle with my guests in the afterlife”

The giant covered its chest with his hands as five gunshots were heard, then collapsed.  Everyone turned to see a security officer with a smoking gun.  The stunned crowd watched Lucifer as it lay motionless.  A minute and half later the body made strange noises which turned into laughter.  Lucifer got up and looked at his assailant.  “You got spunk kid.  I like your style.  Would you like to do a podcast together?”

After a silent and motionless sixty-four seconds, the gunman said “Ah.  Sure.”

Lucifer seemed pleased and continued “I got a little off track.  You may want to know what happened in Antarctica.  The roof of Hell collapsed and put out our heating system.  I suspect that the inmates are not happy with hell freezing over, but at least it’s a change.  As you may know, it’s a good thing for all the guys whose girlfriends said they wouldn’t have sex with them until hell froze over.”

Lucifer laughed loud and long.  The audience was stunned into silence by the unexpected frivolity of Satan.

“I could go on and on, but maybe you want to ask questions.”

“You from Bulgaria, what’s on your mind?”

“Do you mean hell is a real place where bad people go when they die?”

“That’s right.  Oops.”

Lucifer’s loin cloth fell off.

The audience gasped, laughed, cheered, and made many rude and crude remarks.

Lucifer pulled up his loin cloth and said “Oh, grow up.  If you think that was weird, be glad you didn’t see the flip side.  Anyway, haven’t you ever seen two dicks together before?  How about the president and vice president?”

While the audience was cheering and booing, the Bulgarian delegate grabbed his chance before anyone could pose another question and asked “Follow up.  Why locate Hell in Antarctica?”

“OK, that was a dumb idea.  Fire and ice don’t mix very well.  It was the idea of my colleague.  It thinks it’s some superstar, but it’s not the boss of me.  I shouldn’t have accepted Kolak’s idea of where to locate hell.  As we had to expand due to our population explosion, we kept weakening the structure.  Boom!  Roof falls down, puts out our heating, everything freezes.”

An unidentified person yelled “Kolak?”

“Yeah, that’s its name.  For some reason it’s known on earth by a multitude of different names.”

“You, shorty from Albania.”

“What are the demographics of Hell?”

“Just like earth’s criminals, mostly male.  All of your major religions have contributed a lot of souls.  Masters of war of course, and any soldier or civilian that enjoyed killing and destruction.  Pretty high percentage of politicians.  No surprise.  Common criminals, not so much.”

Lucifer pulled out something from somewhere on its back that looked like a cell phone and looked at it.  “I see we have 2,678,534,968 souls currently and that the number goes up about twelve hundred a minute.  Because of space limitations, we cycle inmates between actively tortured and time outs as small cubes.”

A woman from Canada yelled out “This might not be a question for you, but do you know if there is intelligent life on other planets?”

“Other planets, yes.”

“You from Sweden.”

“How do you handle all of the inmates?”

“You must be a bureaucrat back home.  I have thousands of trustees to make life unpleasant for the inmates.  They are chosen from the worst people – mass murderers.  They hate everyone and are hated in return.  They whip, burn, slice and dice their fellow prisoners who are in constant revolt inflicting damage on the trustees.  Win – win.”

“What’s your question Canada guy?”

“Do you ever do that Faust thing about collecting souls?”

“I have dabbled, but only for amusement.  Thing is, it’s easy to cheat a cheater, so that part is fun.  There’s this business guy recently who was an easy mark.  I delivered for him, but he will regret it.  Some well-known actors.  The involuntarily celibate.”

“The guy with the bad moustache from Sri Lanka.”

“Lucifer, what are you plans for Hell now?”

“I’m not in a hurry to decide.  If the earth people want some zombies to wander their streets, I could lend a few billion, but that seems unlikely.  More likely I’ve got my eye on some real estate on Pluto where we could relocate.  The guys in Antarctica can have snowball fights while they freeze until I decide.”

“I see you have more questions, but I’ve got a hot date with a demon from Mars, so I’m getting out of here.  Don’t pet or feed those guys in Hell while I’m gone.”