The sun’s orb resembled a mosque’s dome rising in the east. Palm-tree columns and smoky columns from burning rubber met a roof of light whose magnitude belittled our delusions of control, Tariq beside the driver, Marwan behind Tariq, James and I on the third seat, the non-English-speaking driver taking an unforeseen route, the usual driver replaced that morning. Instead of charging down the Baghdad-Amman highway we were in the heartland of horror.    

Tariq said: “I’ve got no idea why we’re here.” 

A dead dog’s roadside head, facing away from its paws, epitomised horrid inevitability.

“Imagine,” James said, “if the normal driver wasn't sick.”  

A town rose over asphalt’s converging edges. Palms towered over low buildings. Fast-rising, black-smoke pillars, inexplicably ascending from flaming tyres, evaporated into celestial ambivalence.     

“I think,” Tariq said, “it’s Falluja.”     

Orange flashed in a hole in a fence, gas veins sucked up into permanent annihilation. 

Blue, red, yellow, and green doors, men in white, women in black, people rimmed with light; multicoloured minarets, rusting cars, bleating horns, a long traffic island, criss-crossing pedestrians, honk-bleat, mono-syllable traffic language honking, bleating. 

I gawked through a crack between my window’s curtains, my nose meeting glass. A girl’s ivory corneas slithered with surprise when seeing me. Mica-island dots floated shocked in her eyes’ milky lakes. I thought. Girl–don’t say anything! Why did I stuck my stupid face against this glass!  

She was on the traffic island, a baby in her arms. James drew his curtains. The baby, wrapped in the same fabric the girl was wearing, resembled a reference to an inevitable future, our futures now unclear. We sat in gloom. Metal glittered outside in sharp light.

The girl looked away. My temples ceased pumping. 

“It’s Falluja,” Tariq confirmed. 

War places places on the map by blowing them of it and Falluja was again on the map. 

Traffic lights ahead. Concern fizzed in the lake of hope that desire had excavated in my head. Lights green. We shouldn't have been in Falluja! Who the hell was this driver!?    

“Sometimes,” Tariq added, “the Americans close the highway. Maybe that’s why we’re here?”

The real reason, I feared, was because the driver had masterminded infiltration.      

One by one, cars shot past green. People were on the traffic island beside the road, lights green. Two men’s faces were covered by red scarves, lights green. Thin slits in the scarves sat above the men’s eyes, lights still green. A glimmer appeared where an eye should have been, lights still green. My lake temples boiled. Lights still green. The car ahead of us shot through, lights orange. The driver accelerated. Temple-lake steam thickened. Lights red! The last vehicle through! A gap opened behind us. James hissed: “What are we doing here?” 

“Having fun,” I replied.

Beeping, honking fume-exhaling cars bleated arcane speech. 

We left the main street, houses twenty metres from the road, streets again unpopulated, vision less checked. A swirl disappeared on the lake’s surface where that fizzing had been, newness again attractive, passing jade-coloured minarets like stems of exotic plants, the green bulb between two stems displaying white and yellow tiles beneath blue, green, and gold on the mosque’s walls. The people entering the mosque resembled colourful specimens lured into a wondrous plant.

A tank turret faced us. An armoured vehicle beside the tank. A black soldier’s eyes’ whites–like ivory in ebony–became even more ivory with amazement as our eyes passed, thin glass separating our corneas, his ivories shining astonished in black. 

We were as ignorant as he was as to why we were there. 

“A short cut?” Tariq suggested. 

“The driver must know,” James replied, “what’s happening here?!”

“I hope not,” I said.

Marwan cackled. 

Two tanks, separated by a dirt traffic island, spun and faced us with perfect synchronisation, an armour dance, exoticism obliterating my concern. 

The driver darted onto the island. The tanks brushed past on each side of us, vision blocked by dust. Disappearing dust revealed machine gunners poised to shoot from the tanks’ tops. Eyes, like stagnant pools of coldness, stared down at me; a gun barrel faced my window. No sympathy, intrigue or compassion coloured the machine gunner’s irises. Buoyed by thermals of hot information, I floated in wonder. 

Death happens just like that. 

“This,” James said, “isn’t the highway.”

We returned to paved road. I still felt elated because of those spinning tanks. I had never imagined such bulk being so nimble, wonderful seeing the unimaginable–sometimes.    

Women in blue wearing pink headscarves were whipping black-and-white cows up an incline. Dawn’s violet ringed Earth’s lip. A woman in burgundy-pink apparel emerged from a palm grove. Yellow dates hung under the trees’ boughs like golden eggs under mothering branch arms, colours colliding gorgeously before rainbow horizon bands. Buzzing with gladdened fulfilment, I now didn’t care about the highway. Maybe soon I’ll regret this. But I’m going to love it before I do.

An oil tanker slowed us at a bridge at the Euphrates, morning’s blurred eye reflected with fuzzy palms in the river’s pale-blue glass. Tightening wire-time strapped us in, opposite-direction, bumper-to-bumper drivers observing us like cats observing humanoid chickens, unshaven, sharp, cold, feline faces spouting whiskers, steely curiosity glinting on dark faces. The traffic crawled. Faces stared. The tightening wires snapped on the river's other side when we accelerated, leaving the tanker behind.

We followed the river, relief like cruising at high altitude, men wearing white under palms on the other bank, heads wrapped in red-and-white scarves. The palms’ Bangalore-tube trunks produced green eruptions; worry obliterated by exoticism’s cleansing alleviation. Mosque domes, amid high palms, sparkled with elegant tastefulness. Pleasure and wonderment struck again before the magnitude of Iraq’s tourism potential, like a brilliant future emerging from a troubled past. 

Vehicles, rushing along the distant, umbilical-cord highway, flashed into the horizon, their occupants escaping with fascinating information–and soon we would be joining them.

But the driver, leaving the umbilical cord, joined a queue entering a petrol station, relief disappearing like those smoky columns into an engulfing sky. Our mouths sagged open. He, I thought, dismisses reality! 

Two other queues were waiting. Only people were moving inside the station, cars still, the people inside the cars also still. Only men, with heads covered by scarves, were wandering around–carrying guns! 

James gasped: “Jesus!”  

Tariq, raising his hands, said: “The petrol gauge is almost on FULL.”

His forehead furrowed. 

The gun-carrying men wandered, observing. The station’s roof produced a rhombus of darkness, the highway like false hope disappearing into the horizon. 

My temples simmered, vision sharpening and hazing simultaneously. I now yearned for boredom, for what normal people adore–predictability. What a turnabout in thinking! I had spent all day oscillating around a thin line of difficult-to-sustain, rewarding sensibility, abstractions removed, feeling a purity of emotion like being a part of nature. Now I was feeling too much like a part of nature! Often my mind had sat contented on that line, but you never know how close intolerability will get, and the potentially intolerable–in this unpredictability–was now making dullness attractive. Maybe, I thought, it’s better having a coward’s imagination, for this restricting blessing would be an intelligent restraining device, like morality. 

“Marwan, lay my jacket down,” Tariq said.

The Western jacket screamed against Marwan’s window. Tariq’s left arm, along the back rest of the vehicle’s front seat, exuded pretentious relaxation. Marwan laid the jacket down slowly–no fast movements. James and I drew our curtains slowly, gloom our only protection. Only our eyes shifted in our still heads. 

I hissed: “If something happens, and I survive, I won’t be responsible for my behaviour.” 

My lips hardly moved.

I was referring to the driver’s mutilation at my hands. He was risking our lives for cheap petrol, Jordan much more expensive than Iraq, risking death to make quick bucks–assuming he even knew the risks existed!

The armed men stared, James’s left-right-then-back-again eyes glinting, his head still. Subdued amazement smeared his stony face. Stacked-up seconds battled to break through uncertainty’s barrier. 

James hissed: “Idiot!”

Who was this driver? Nobody can be trusted here! Everyone could be a killer! Especially him! 

Speculation swayed my mind, howling possibilities creating blustery cerebral clashes, everything focussed down tight, like staring into wide-lens binoculars. 

Tariq, gesturing, expressed: Another place? The driver waved this off, shaking his head, the driver client and supplier simultaneously–a new venture in business practise.

“Just when I thought we’d made it,” I said, “we get a trendsetter in exotic business practices! We’re paying him! He’s supposed to be doing what we want!”

James groaned. One of those scarf-hidden faces filmed before Arabic slogans–groomed to heighten martyrdom’s mounting mountain–knocked on the driver’s window, the “martyr” clutching an AK-47! That gun, with its bony metal braces, resembled a steel skeleton, a cold, bony instrument of annihilation creating cold, bony skeletons. 

Molecules, previously unknown, swum up my veins. They felt like the transparent blue spheres of deep-sea creatures. Now I understood terror. The spheres shrunk my ego, sucked, by foul information, into nothingness. My name was supposed to get etched into history’s bedrock through my unusual experience. Because I was supposed to live long enough for this to happen, my possible impending death attained the sad grandeur of tragedy–at least to me. Dying prematurely, without my "vast potential" getting itself realised, smashed all other considerations as I plunged into microscopic insignificance.    

The driver’s window fell. James whisper-hissed “Idiot!” like steam escaping from a crack in a pipe, Head Scarf Head persistent with inquiry–a head full of what? Eyes gleamed in the split in the scarf that covered Head Scarf Head’s face. The only visible part of his body were those gleams, James mumbling: “Gawd…” Chemicals swirled like one of those black smoky columns from my feet to my temples, a coiling dread-snake slithering around my heart, squeezing it, Head Scarf Head, of machinegun Arabic, splattering words, driver hands rising exasperated, Tariq staring straight ahead, Head Scarf Head facing Tariq, chemicals sweeping from my feet through my legs and exploding in my head. We resembled street entertainers specialised in immobility. The driver’s hands and head shook again before he tossed them up with recondite annoyance. Was a deal involving us now off? 

The driver grabbed the steering wheel. We reversed, swinging around. Then: hollow swat, tight-drum-skin boooom….our roulette-wheel eyes spun, dumb-surprise gapes…A round?....Tariq said: “He was trying to buy petrol! And a car backfired!” We yelled: “A car backfiring!!” The van shot past the burnt skeleton of an upturned bus that resembled the fossil of a creature that had withered aeons before, our Nile-relief laughter flowing amid parched earth. 

“Petrol!” the vehicle streaming down the highway. “A car backfiring! Haaaaa!”

We cruised under heavenly vastness. The space now had the levitating beauty of a precious gift. A gigantic horizon rimmed the desert. Relief loosened our limbs. Our heads lolled between wakefulness and sleep. Glinting-dot traffic, a moving diamond necklace, fell over the earth’s edge. The speck of the most distant vehicle glinted where hazy barrenness met gargantuan heavens. 

Pylons, twisted into frozen-melt falls by air attacks, lined the road. 

James, who real name was Jamal, said: “I’m now worried about my visa.”

He smiled self-deprecatorily. He was Indian. He didn’t have a visa for Jordan. 

“You really would be worried,” I replied, “if they shot people for false entry.”

Half-melted pylons disappeared and reappeared behind his grinning face. The road narrowed where buildings, like ivory nuggets at the base of an enormous sapphire dome, dotted the horizon. Those buildings possessed for James a significance that disassociated them from the past, James’s present expanding, future contracting, nuggets expanding. We shot straight at them.

A goat herd throbbed like a moving black carpet. The driver pulled into a petrol station. The carpet halted besides the station’s paved surface, the border just ahead. The driver removed plastic containers from the vehicle’s boot. 

The goat herder filled a bucket with water so his goats could drink. The orderly way the goats took turns to drink unconsciously mocked human greed. 

The driver filled his containers with petrol. We stretched our legs. 

“He loves petrol,” James said.

“Imagine if the Jordanians confiscate it all,” I replied.

“They might,” James said.

“He’d go crazy.”

“He already is.”

Between two border fences was a refugee camp of tents bordered off by barbed wire. Women wearing overcoats and headscarves moved between the tents, their fabrics shimmering like precious stones against tent whiteness. The camp was divorced from normal chronology. You could feel it; it wasn’t just a staging post between more fluid physical states, but an incident freeze that fate had absorbed into the giant-backdrop sky. Time in that camp had geological scales. 

“Refused entry,” James said, referring to the refugees. 

We passed the first fence, stopping beside a hut. The driver asked for our passports. James wanted to get out. He leant forward, hands on the top of the facing backrest. His nose almost touched the backrest. There wasn’t a door adjacent to our seat.

“Don’t worry,” Marwan said. “The driver will take care of it.”

Marwan’s unflustered casualness suggested destiny was in the hands of Almighty Good. 

The driver entered the hut with our passports.

“Please!” James insisted.

James believed his destiny was in the hands of Almighty Earthly Influence. 

“It’ll be alright,” Marwan said.

“Please,” James continued. “I really have to get out.”

Marwan let James out. James raced into the hut, clutching a letter from the Indian ambassador obtained through a family connection. I followed him into the hut’s gloom. A man shrouded in half-light behind a desk looked stripped of sentiment. A fan swished. A map of Jordan covered a wall. The man was studying James’s passport. 

James said: “Excuse me sir, I’ve got a letter from the Indian ambassador.”

The man read the letter. He was formal, but relaxed, eyes solid with concentration. His facial expression didn’t change. 

He said: “I’ll fax the letter to the authorities in Amman for verification.”

“Thank you,” James replied. 

“How long are you intending to stay?” the man asked.

“Two days,” James replied. “I’ve got a flight from Amman to Madrid.”

“Can you show me the ticket, please?”

James dashed back to the vehicle, relieved his destiny had returned to his mitts. We were too rational to believe in universal protection–hence we had rational fear. James had a long stride for a short man; he used it to the full while returning to the hut, stretching out with the purposeful enthusiasm controlling fate induces. The letter was in the fax machine. The man studied the airline ticket; then said: “Thanks.”

The fax machine fell silent, the fan humming like summer lethargy.

“It’ll take a few minutes,” the man said. 

The driver, drinking tea beside the fax machine, possessed the inoffensive distance of one pursuing vital business. Being in the oil business makes all other activities irrelevant as any oil man can tell you.

The black moustache on a man in a white ensemble on a chair outside the hut contrasted vividly with his apparel, his red headscarf lurid against the hut’s whiteness. Smoking a shisha, he was as sedate as the desert. James paced around in front of him. The curious, non-judgemental pipe smoker observed the pacing James, fretting foreign to the pipe smoker as terror had been to me only hours before.  

James, hearing the fax machine, dashed back into the hut. The immigration officer, studying the response, remained mysteriously impassive. Concern's leaf-structure pang sprang inside James’s head–or, at least, it appeared that way to me. The immigration officer’s distance was joyless, no desire to help or hinder.    

He picked up a stamp, silence engulfing fan humming. Light from the door left the man’s eyes aglow with lifeless sparkles as if the hut’s gloom had drained those irises of enthusiasm; repressed intransigence could have ignited into something regrettable had any false moves been made by James who observed the stamp with that look that dogs have when they suspect that their food bowls could be filled. The threat the bureaucrat offered to Jamal’s immediate future altered Jamal’s perception of time, trapping him in refugee-camp abeyance, feeling he could have ended up in that camp, separated from progress.

Fear gushed out of him when the stamp struck his passport. The wheels I had imagined spinning in his temples stopped as his stamped passport re-entered his hands. The refreshing light he drifted back out into made things look younger.                                               

In the vehicle, we headed towards another white building where men in blue uniforms were waiting for us. James’s head fell against our seat’s backrest. He glanced out a side window. A self-absorbed disassociation from possibility left him incurious with contentment. The uniformed men’s black moustaches made hairy crescents upon their faces. 

We had to get out with our possessions, the driver instructed to place his vehicle over a rectangular hole. A man entered the hole through a door. A metal detector swept over the vehicle’s underside. 

Was the driver making Molotov-cocktails? I imagined the man in the hole discovering bottles pasted to the vehicle’s underside.

“He’s just seen Molotov cocktails,” I said.

James hid his amusement. 

“He combines driving,” I said, “with Molotov-cocktail manufacturing.”

Marwan and Tariq were asked to enter another hut with the documents and disks they had brought with them from Iraq, Tariq walking head down like a condemned man. Bureaucracy emerges from the territorial instinct. Everyone unknown entering a new space is suspicious until proven otherwise, the more important the space, in the minds of the occupiers, the greater the suspicion.

Tariq conjured up worst-case possibilities. Bureaucracy does that to consciousness, especially as he had to say–exactly–what was on the disks.

“You don’t know?” he heard.

“Only generally,” he replied.

“Generally–what do you know?”

“It must be information about our projects in Iraq.”

“And what projects are they?”

He explained.

“Okay. Wait outside, please.”

Tariq paced around, staring at the hut, terror now distant, like it had occurred to someone he once knew, who now faced paedophilia or planning-terrorism charges, torture and beheading again things that only occurred to others, circumstance elevating or relegating experience with subjective shuffles.

The driver’s hands flew in response to questions about the petrol filling his boot, his vehicle a powder keg. The immigration officer, concerned about a blaze on the road to Amman, listening with pleasant reasonableness, found the driver curious for the driver exuded a disarming oblivion that made the driver look harmless. With spirited determination, the driver convinced the officer that a rear full of petrol wasn’t dangerous, driver hands describing circles, Tariq staring, pacing, stopping, pacing, repeating: “Nawful–what did you put on those disks!?”    

“Don’t worry,” Marwan said.

Marwan breathed calmness. He and Tariq had prayed together in Nawful's house in Baghdad that morning. I had reached a conclusion: Only Marwan was a consistent follower of eternal optimism. 

We had to put our luggage through an X-ray machine. A conveyor belt entered a grey, metal box. Vents lined the box, other people ahead of us in a queue. 

A television monitor sat before a security officer’s face. The solid objects in other people’s bags made schematic representations of reality on a screen. Security is now big business, money made by creating schematic representations of reality in the minds of TV viewers, terrorism, like an oil field requiring exploitation, power’s latest money-making scheme. 

I relaxed until seeing a black plaque on the machine’s side. Crosses lay over a sign showing film. Tariq was still staring at the hut. I felt he had little to worry about: his staff would have been careful about what they had put on those disks. But it still didn’t stop him from staring.

“Don’t worry,” Marwan repeated. 

I raced to the other side of the machine. My backpack was moving on the conveyor belt towards the X-rays. I removed the film from my bag. The security officer confirmed my suspicions by saying: “Good idea.” I put my backpack back onto the belt. Bending over, I studied the vents inside the machine, trying to convince myself that the rays started past where my backpack had been. I couldn’t determine anything definitive because the purpose of the vents was unclear. Niggling fear arose–a great loss might have occurred! Dread smothered me. I may have lost photographs of a unique phase in history, radiation possibly having obliterated a “glorious” past. And what is death–total obliteration! And now, not directly confronted by real obliteration, I had become sensitive to trivialities, the ego smashing perspective, things swollen by narrowness. My photographs may have been destroyed! My very being may have been compromised! 

Tariq, still facing the White Hut of Fate, hands on head, muttered: “Nawful–what did you put on those disks!?” That hut had become a place of grave import in Tariq’s imagination, like a Versailles or a Reichstag, where he felt his future was being decided.

“It’ll be alright,” Marwan calmly insisted.

Tariq’s tight face quivered. I studied those vents. James looked around like a satisfied visitor. He had his visa. I needed evidence to sustain a desired view that had achieved monumental importance. I now had to endure a frustrating wait to discover if X-rays had obliterated a dramatic part of my past. I chastised myself for having been lax. I hadn’t controlled destiny when I should have. What an idiot I was! The fact that I had possibly survived being murdered now wasn’t enough for Fate’s goalposts had moved.  

A policeman appeared with Tariq’s disks. Tariq’s temples, if his eyes were any indication, seemed to throb like frogs’ cheeks.

“Here,” the policeman said. “Have a good trip.”

Boyish glints appeared in Tariq’s eyes. 

“See,” Marwan said. 

Marwan knew what follows death. He had it clearer than anyone I’d ever met, like a pebble of unbreakable consciousness washed smooth by belief’s caressing waves.                                          

“What a relief,” Tariq said.

I hoped to say the same after picking up my developed films; anything could bother me because permanent annihilation was for me the likeliest end, fretting hence inevitable when ideal illusions of destiny got hit.

I breathed again after collecting the undamaged developed films. That happened as two Americans got hung on that bridge near Falluja. I wondered who the driver had been.

Feeling truly lucky lifted me with volcanic grace as it should have when the Jordanians were checking us out. 


THE END

April 26 is the birthday of the People's Poet of Uzbekistan,  Muhammad Yusuf. In this regard, various activities are being organized throughout the republic. Critics and creators are publishing articles on the work of Muhammad Yusuf in the press.

The People's Poet of Uzbekistan, Muhammad Yusuf was born in 1954 in Andijan region in a peasant family. He studied at the Institute of Russian Language and Literature (now the University of World Languages) in Tashkent. He served in the Republican Society of Book Lovers, the newspaper "Tashkent Aqshomi", the Publishing House of Literature and Art named after Gafur Ghulam, the magazine "Tafakkur" and the newspaper "Voice of Uzbekistan". After studying at the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, he spent f
1998 to the end of his life in the Union of Writers of Uzbekistan.

His "Sleeping girl", "We will be happy", "I will take to heaven", "Ulugimsan, Watanim" and other poetic collections have become a golden heritage of Uzbek literature.

MUHAMMAD YUSUF
     ( Poems) 

There are many books that you love to read.
Dreams are one world, the world is narrow to it,
Tolei-happiness is good luck,
The singer of my country - MUHAMMAD YUSUF!

My Uzbeg, introduce my people,
Sometimes to the desert, sometimes to the flood,
Why?
MUHAMMAD YUSUF is the pride of Uzbeks!


Surkhondarya region
The city of Termiz
Adiba Pardabayeva 

Pardaboyeva Adiba Shuxrat kizi

Nukus State Pedagogical Institute, Faculty of Uzbek Language and Literature, 1st- year student, member of the scientific girls’ community “Kizlarjon” and the participant of the “Unity forum”

Pardabayeva Adiba Shukhrat qizi was born on September 4, 2003,  into the family of a businessman. She lives on A. Nabiyev street, Khojango MFY, Angor district, Surkhondarya region.

In 2010, she was admitted to the 1st grade at the primary school N3, situated in the district of Angor Surkhandarya region.  She actively participated as a screenwriter and presenter in the cultural and educational events held during the study period and became an example to her peers as she was active in public affairs. At school, she differentiated herself from other pupils with her hard work and interest in books as well as her talent in various other fields.
In 2017, she took part in the district stage of the “Knowledge Competition”  in the subject of the French language.  In 2019, she graduated from school with excellent marks.

That year, she was admitted to the academic lyceum of the Termez State University in the field of social and humanitarian sciences.
As a result, she mastered history, English, her mother tongue, and literature with excellent marks. During her studies, she was active in various activities and public affairs and became the winner of many competitions held at the lyceum

For example:

The winner of the nomination for “The most talented student”,

The winner of the “Highly Spiritual Generation” essay writing contest.

– 1st place in the “Orasta girls” audition contest (2020).Winner of the “Most Talented Student” nomination.

– The winner of the “Highly Spiritual Generation” essay writing competition,

– She took the proud 1st place in the “Orasta girls” audition contest (2020).

In 2020, she finished college honorably and was awarded a diploma from Terdu Academic Lyceum. Additionally, she is also the recipient of internationally acknowledged awards such as
The Certificate of THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, LEARNING FOR SUSTAINABILITY SCOTLAND AND BRITISH COUNCIL,
Organizational member of Quality council India- QCI NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN FEDERATION of India.

With an insatiable thirst for knowledge,
she has never stopped working on herself and trying to strengthen her knowledge constantly.
Moreover, she became a member of many forums and won the heart of a lot of teachers as a young girl who is willing to get more and more knowledge. She actively participated in different conferences, trainings, and events organized by the writers’ association and attracted their attention with her skills.
In 2019-2020, she studied at TerDu Academic Lyceum in Termiz. In 2021, she graduated from the “Yosh Jumalists School” in Tashkent.

Adiba actively took part in more than 80 district and regional contests and forums. Her first book was published in the 9th grade under the name of  “Kongil Gunchalari.” Her poems are included in the poetry collection “Sparks of Hope.” Her poems were published and still being published  in the press and newspapers. She was a reporter and presenter in several TV shows. To make a count of her achievements, there is no way but to stop to pay attention to the following:
Adiba Rainbow stars”-2017,
“Captain of the year”
The most active captain”,
“The best reader”,  the awarder of  the 1st degree diploma in essay writing in the competition titled: “We are against oppression”.
Her poems were well appreciated by the philologists of the Republic, and she won the “Two Great Figures” competition. She has achieved a number of achievements in the field of creativity. In 2021, she was awarded a certificate by Amirkhan Umarov. She is a participant in the Unity Forum. Currently, she is a student of the Uzbek language and literature department of the pedagogical Institute of Nukus.  She is a natural learner and an exemplary girl.
Her aspirations and interests are very high. From a very young age, her  interest in poetry began.
In the near future, Adiba’s next collection is expected to be released in cooperation with the Double Wing Foundation of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
In the future, a capable and knowledgeable Adiba has a desire to learn the Turkish and English languages.
Her dream is to study abroad on a grand basis and become the winner of the state award named after Zulfiya. We wish our young poetess good luck in her future dreams and goals.

Pardabayeva Adiba is pure, loyal to the ideas of the national ideology, embodies a high sense of patriotism, philanthropy, self-sacrifice and hard work on the basis of national spirituality.
She is a real Uzbek girl whom we might recognize as an example to others proudly and as a young exemplary girl who can do her favor to help her motherland flourish.

smitten

I’m flying above the clouds,
eyes closed and arms expanded;
I’m laughing like an idiot
with my chest about to burst
and I wonder if you feel the same,
every time my name appears
on your screen.
I wonder if I’ve put a smile
to your lips
as you have done to
mine.
I hope that your
friend across from you
teases you for your
stupid, smitten
face
and I hope that you
say my name.

say that I’m
yours,
say that you’re
mine.

gumdrop

why don’t we try something different?
you know very well how it feels to have me
like a gumdrop in your hand
or between your teeth
why don’t you get to know how it is
to truly taste me?

damn the critics who’ve rotten
your innocence,
making you believe such saccharine
bliss could never exist
without its own health complications

i suppose if diabetes runs in your family
as it does in mine
it’s best to be wary of the thoughtless, uncontrollable
consumption of delectable confections
but one gumdrop wouldn’t hurt you

now, watch as I do and place
your gumdrop against the cushion of your lips
smooth edged and firm
now, take it in with a pop as if it were
a pill– don’t swallow though

sink your teeth deep into it
and taste what it truly feels to have something
forever irrevocably yours
for I am endlessly longing to be
either on your hand or between your teeth
all I ask is for you
to cherish me

now you know

if you place a rose
and let it bloom in the sky,
it means that she wonders
about your touch–
traces of lemon
(spunk),
of blueberry
(charm),
and of strawberry
(mirth).

if you don a daffodil
and let it smile on your chest,
it means that she’s given
you a second chance–
accents of dew
(clarity),
of rose quartz
(healing),
and of olive
(forgiveness).

but if you leave an orchid
in a cardigan’s pocket
it means she has
left–
notes of pining
(for gazes unmet across crowded rooms),
of hoping
(on the accidental brush of shoulders or skin),
and of regretting
(to have done something to preserve it)

if you’re left with a flower
slowly slipping from your grasp, it means you have lost
what can never be found
 again

if you didn’t understand this before
well,
 now you know

Back (as though) //not//colour


like                           the 

////////////////////////////////flies

like                            the 

/////////////////////////////////...


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[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[leading


this
                           BLACKENED
edge



swing*
swing*
swing*


                                                        i
                                                  think
i 
have

                             developed                  


vertigo
Leaving as in//(rhinoceros)


pitch                       ///waa
pitch                      /////waa


               as 
         coelacanth


as///////////////////////////////////////
and             not                 as


                    not                 as

and##############################

as                              yellow
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Pulse (redacted)


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--posed


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                                  needed?????????

or          ▲▲            so

             

told


                                   i caught it in the
                                  cough??


as           ■■              is


as




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            is

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repetition 


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                    T



find
the
dog

                                          and

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                       the


....................................................
....................................................
....................................................
..........................................■▲●•

Nathan Anderson is a poet and artist from Mongarlowe, Australia. He is the author of numerous books and has had work appear widely both online and in print. He is a member of the C22 experimental writing collective. You can find him at nathanandersonwriting.home.blog or on Twitter @NJApoetry.

First of all, we have an announcement, an open call for video submissions from women of color, up to four minutes long, showing any artistic practice or medium and how it helps you heal yourself or others. This is for Sista Creatives Rising, a mother-daughter run nonprofit in New Hampshire. Claire Jones and Amaranthia Sepia invite you to submit videos here.

PAID OPEN CALL

Art & Mind: I Know Who I Am! Journeys of Women of Color & Femme-Expressing Creatives in partnership with @sistacreativesrising & @dancingqueerly

Please share our call with any BIWOC or femme-expressing creatives of color! A newsletter will be sent at least once a week, into July, featuring our team and other info!

Now, for mid-June’s issue of Synchronized Chaos.

Even with all that we have learned about life, much of our existence is still blanketed in mystery.

This month’s submissions express encounters on different levels with the unknown.

Rezauddin Stalin’s fanciful pieces draw on mythology to remind us of all that we do not yet know. Z.I. Mahmud analyzes the comedic aspects of Christopher Marlowe’s Faust, a character driven by an infernal quest for knowledge.

Kahlil Crawford reviews Jeff Deutsch’s In Praise of Good Bookstores, which discusses the life of the mind and the curated bookstore, the physical architecture of the store and how it can encourage learning and discovery. Quademay Usanova probes the linguistic structure of Russian, Uzbek and Central Asian languages while Mamatkasimova Sitora urges us to understand ecology in order to show respect for the world in which we all live.

Sayani Mukherjee conveys the mystical, distinctive gauzy light of evening, while Mercedes Lawry finds moments of art in everyday outdoor scenes and Patrick Sweeney renders glimpses of children and the outdoors into haikulike poetic phrases.

Anshi Purohit renders homeless street survivors as heroes and protagonists, inspirations for art.

Kimberly Gomes and Christina Chin collaborate on tan-renga poetry that takes closeups of everyday scenes from various vantage points. Michael Todd Steffen’s tribute piece celebrates and memorializes Seamus Heaney and the spirit of his poetic readings.

Mark Young contributes some more of his geographies: fanciful, yet intricate enough to contain an element of realism. Channie Greenberg creates painted computer images of various kinds of flowers. Don Bormon describes the welcoming and lovely environment of a local beach in his South Asian homeland.

Joan Leotta’s poetry probes the balance of nature’s elements, and what happens when things get out of kilter during a flood. In contrast, Damilola Oyedeji’s work celebrates the rhythm of rain and Rob Plath evokes the calm that comes and returns between life’s literal and figurative storms.

Chuck Taylor’s young and broke protagonists remember the fascination of watching lighting strike near their fireworks stand. Leslie Lisbona speaks to life’s precarity: young adventures traveling and dating in the face of death. Peter Dellolio probes the mindset of those with survivors’ guilt and trauma in his one-act play about a car wreck survivor.

Lorena Caputo writes of travel around the Caribbean, watching locals and tourists and vegetation come and go. Brian Barbeito also aims to capture the spirit of natural scenes through his photographic images, which include many closeups of flowers and stems.

Daniel De Culla regales us with pastoral scenes of dogs and cats and chickens around a small historic village in Spain.

Other contributors look to what is less understood about human psychology and relationships.

Maja Milojkovic depicts efforts to communicate with people who are distanced, either by fear of being themselves or by societal and gender misunderstandings. Azemina Krehic relates a desperate attempt to stay together, to cling to union with another person, while Elmaya Jabbarova affirms undying and elemental love. Mesfakus Salahin speaks to how love affects our brains and psyches.

Damilola Oyedeji’s second piece explores the awkwardness of processing lost love and figuring out how to re-categorize and understand the person who has left your life.

Vlad Volochun writes of a deathly, crushing breakup, while Yahuza Uzman probes the pain of loneliness and J.J. Campbell speaks of aged, broken bodies harboring broken dreams.

Stephen Jarrell Williams describes the journey through life under a shadow of continual grief.

C.L.S. Sandoval addresses death and people’s outer and inner griefs, as well as the inevitable and even healthy tension that arises in relationships.

Chimezie Ihekuna’s suspense novel involves unhealthy tension, the inter-generational effects of intimate partner abuse and trauma.

Mukhlisa Safarova looks at political tension at a much broader level than Ihekuna, with an analysis of a way to understand the balance of power among states. Tuyet Van Do suggests a darker reality behind our own, along with caution about technology. Pat Doyne satirizes Donald Trump in the language of card games, rendering him a historical caricature while Mark Blickley and Dario Saraceno contribute an ekphrastic spoof of both high art and life coaching.

Other writers look inward. Ammanda Moore’s poetic speaker reflects on losing control of her psyche, rapidly cycling through a bipolar manic episode that distorted her sense of reality.

John Culp describes a different sort of loss of control, spiritual and romantic ecstasy.

Others continue in the vein of celebrating human connection. Kuziyeva Shahrizoda’s piece explores the meaning of gratitude and respect while Sevara Eshonqulova shares memories of her mother’s generosity in hard times. Shoxijahon Urunov advises readers on how to choose a good friend while Mokhinur Abduhalilova relates a story of how a young boy overcoming obstacles inspires others to do the same.

Noah Berlatsky reflects on our search for beauty while Rus Khomutoff’s speaker embraces the moment where he finds himself even while transcending it.

Fotima Sayfullayeva discusses self-awareness, figuring out who she is, wondering if she can change herself.

Mytyka Rzyhykh reflects on where we find joy, on the compromises we make to live, while J.K. Durick explores our relationship to time, how we remember and forget.

Humanity is created in such a way that self-awareness is the first priority for it. A person is an individual at birth. Later, he gradually overcomes the trials of life and reaches the level of a mature and mature person. As we mentioned above, a person must first understand his identity and learn about himself. We know that every human being has an "I". I want to talk about my "I" today. Before that, "What kind of person am I?" everyone should ask themselves that question. I judge my humanity by my behavior. Like everyone else, I have flaws and shortcomings. No one is perfect in this world. Perfection belongs only to the Creator. I don't want to praise myself. Because there are opinions among the people that you should not talk about yourself, let others talk about you.

I am very gullible. I believe in people as much as I believe in myself, and for this I have been criticized many times. I am capricious, capricious, very demanding of myself and others. My capriciousness and capriciousness must be related to my temperament. Our teacher says: "The temperament and character of people cannot be changed." Maybe that's why people around me are not able to change this character trait of mine?!

I think that people around me are sincere, as I imagine them to be. But they are not what I thought. They came one day and took off the mask from their faces and left an indelible wound in my heart with the hypocrisy of those I loved. Life is like that... People treat you well only for their own benefit. When the time comes, even your close relatives will not see your achievements.

CARNAVAL’S MORN

I am awakened by an explosion & a faint flash of orange light.

& the successive blast of rocket after rocket shakes these four-a.m. streets.

Gunpowder smoke drifts down the main avenue towards the pier.

Nearby, at a makeshift stall, men sit drinking beers.

They yell in English at this foreign lady up on the hotel balcony of termite-gnawed wood.

She ignores them.

A weak shaft of light shines out from her room.

The stall owner sprawls in her chair.

Her blue dress stretches across splayed knees.

Her closed-eye head rests on an upturned hand.

Cumbias flow from a jam box, gentle wash of waves behind them.

After the last reverberation of the last rocket fades, a marimba begins playing up in that central park.

~      ~     ~

Several hours later, morning dusk washes over the gulf, the islands, the shoreline.

The rose-colored full moon fades.

On the corner of the pier avenue & Calle Marina, a person lies stretched in a hammock strung under a palm-thatched porch, unawakened, unmoved by the loud voices of those men who are still drinking.

A couple hurries down that long pier to where others await a panga for the mainland.

Soon one leaves riding deep in the leaden water.

The buzz of the outboard motor fades with its distance.

Twittering birdsong fills the sparse-scattered trees.

The distant landscapes clear.

CROSSING THE ISTHMUS

I.

We escape the banana plantations

            & enter mountains

Stilted homes of

            cane slat, palm thatch

                        nestle into the folds of

The land carpeted with

            bamboo, ficus, palms &

                        flamboyant flame-colored flowers

In this sear noon sun

            clothes hang on lines

Wending       now  & again

            glimpsing below a plain &

                        Bahía Almirante

Near San Agustín a cemetery

            of nameless same white headstones

                        deeply carved with numbers

Then on the heights

            above that bay &

                        its islands

II.

Into the cordillera

            that is the spine

                        of this country

Serpentining

            a river serpentines

                        through the jungle

Serpentining

            past small cattle ranches

A mother & her children

            walk under a large umbrella

Serpentining        serpentining higher

            these mountains

                        the trees tower

Deep valleys in patched

            shadow & sunlight

Broad ríos meander

            a swift roadside waterfall tumbles

The air is cooler

            clouds descend on peaks

III.

& dimly on the horizon

            sabanas stretch to

a lacey coast

wending       wending

            down into warmer air

Away from the clouds

            towards the

                        Pacific Ocean

FROM SHORE TO SHORE

When we leave the south side of Isla Santa Cruz, the light rain still falls.

And into the highlands, the misting fog heavy. The scent of escalesia and lichen-draped palo santo is so faint – like a fading watercolor in this garúa.

To the twin craters of this island’s volcano, heading north. Here, the sky is sun-cleared, sun-dried. The landscape a bit more sere, less green – but much greener than when I came three months ago.  And on this side, the earth is free from the hand of man. We are ascending, drying. Then, descending to Canal de Itabaca which separates this isla from the island to the north.

Outside this bus window, I watch for the gentle giant, the Galápagos tortoise, who – at times – wander to this highway, watching the humans come, the humans go in their metal shells.

That channel is now visible, a broad blue ribbon draping the northern coast / shore. To the west the Daphnes, Mayor and Menor, dot the sea. On the distant horizon is a large, hazed island, perhaps Santiago.

And on the shore of that canal, I watch small dory fish swim this way, that way, above larger, blue-bellied fish. Across the turquoise water, several frigatebirds soar above the rough, red-lava cliffs streaked with guano. A great blue heron wades along on the shore green-laced with mangrove.

---

Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose writings appear in over 400 journals on six continents, and 23 collections – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023) and Caribbean Interludes (Origami Poems Project, 2022). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks.

Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and thrice nominated for the Best of the Net. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures at:

www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or http://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.