Every nation has its own heart. This heart is its culture, language, traditions, and values. These values have guided people through centuries, protecting them from challenges and leading them toward the future. In today’s rapidly changing world, returning to and preserving national values has become more important than ever. Those who forget their roots lose their future as well.
The Uzbek people possess a rich historical heritage, ancient traditions, diligence, and hospitality — all of which form the living heartbeat of our nation. Every custom, every ceremony, and every piece of oral folklore is not merely a memory of the past, but a vivid expression of the nation’s soul. The rebirth of nature during the Navruz festival, the fragrance of sumalak, and the blessings given to the younger generation — each of these connects us to our shared spiritual roots.
National values make a person truly human. Through them, we understand who we are and preserve our identity. Therefore, every young generation must deeply grasp the essence of national values and learn to harmonize them with the modern world. Values are not frozen relics of history — they live, develop, and renew. When generations draw inspiration from the past and apply it to the present, the spirit of the nation remains eternal.
In the modern world, some young people view national traditions as “remnants of the old days.” Yet this perception is mistaken. True modernity is not about rejecting one’s roots, but about striving for innovation while remaining grounded in identity. New technologies, the Internet, and global cultural exchange open doors to the world — but amid this openness, preserving our national “self” is crucial. There can be no progress without identity, just as a tree without roots cannot bear fruit.
National values are not limited to customs or clothing; they are reflected in one’s heart, behavior, words, and ethics. Honesty, compassion, respect for elders, and care for the young — these are the beats of our people’s heart. Each family, each educational institution, and every individual must continue to embody and pass on these values in daily life.
Thus, national values are the heartbeat of a nation — the force that keeps it alive. If this heart stops, the spirit of the nation fades. But as long as it beats, the people will remain eternal. Our greatest duty is to protect these values, to instill them in the hearts of our youth, and to present our national identity proudly to the world. National values are not just the legacy of the past — they are the strongest foundation for the future.
Yodgorova Madina Sherzod qizi was born on August 4, 2006, in Toshbuloq town, Namangan District, Namangan Region, Republic of Uzbekistan. She graduated from her local secondary school with a gold medal. She is currently a second-year student at Namangan State Pedagogical Institute.
Did you notice that there aren’t any mirrors in here?
John Biscello’s 5th novel, The Last Furies, is a redolent, speculative box of matches; evoking his characters mosaiced spiritual reckonings; disjointed love triangles and haunted house of mirrors; in a taut avant-garde and hybrid-writing-form which boldly experiments with poetry and prose that is both lyric narrative and dreamscape, not unlike Elizabeth Smart’s surrealist prose poem novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept.
With a background in screen-writing, these influences are Biscello’s nod to cinema and emphasis on art and visual components, often eschewing traditional formatting, in keeping with surrealist writer Mikhail Bulgakov’s style, to explore emotion and spiritual quests, without typical rule-book. The publishers, Lost Telegram Press, have created an artbook with interior postcard, to complement this fragmentary style, where cinematic-scene-play, sits with a lush dream-style, reminiscent of French New Wave in its refusal to explain itself. A screen-play within a novel, permitting entry from our own ubiquitous world, to this discomfiting navarre.
Biscello utilizes elaborate world-building images; icons, tarot and psychological-affliction, to represent erasure by the passing and haunting of nonsequential time. His philosophical introspection engages readers to question abstractions of identity, with narratives taking inner journeys. Those phantasmagoric elements are not simply beguiling to consume, but serve as totems to explore more multiplex themes concerning society. A blurring of reality into dream state, permits Biscello to draw on less prosaic narratives and convention, to explore camouflaged-themes of reality and perception, not unlike Aldous Huxley’s eponymous book. This results in an unsettling atmosphere exemplifying humanities primal fear of chaos and instability, where we mislay our ability to comprehend truth; seeing instead, the fragility of reality through surrealism.
Viola felt as if she were watching a scene from a film that had never been made, in a time and a place that had never existed.
Surrealism in film attempted the same; film-makers endeavored to tap into the unconscious mind, harnessing the seeming illogic of dream state, to reject norms of rationalism and conventional storytelling. Biscello employs kindred jarring, symbolic imagery; borrowing film-techniques of non-linear editing in how he writes, to disorientate and provoke deeper consideration. His writing mirrors surrealists attempts to revolutionize cinema from passive diversion, into a tool exploring hidden desires, fears, and different layers of reality, beyond usual consciousness, much as writer/artist Leonora Carrington did. Biscello invites us to suspend time and merge histories, with less scene-breaks and; “intimately swapped semblances of reality.”
The Furies is part memory and nostalgia, part journey toward grasping identity and a powerful social commentary on the absurdity of the crushing weight of tradition, in a similar vein to Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez. “Why so much fear of masks? Because the tears we cry burns acid through em which devours our skin.” All writers consider ‘the unreliable selfhood’ whereby phantasmagoric storytelling skews perceptions of reality, based on mis-en-scene’s instability. These fantastical disparate elements and gathering of icons, mirror a deeper psychological break; considering trauma and madness as part in any stories tapestry.
Biscello’s startling evocation of spectral vaudeville alongside theater, draws these influences to break free of the mortal actors’ stage, weighing his character’s inner-lives beyond performance. Questions of where we go when we exceed our fictional-lives, can be applied to the reader as much as fictional-character, because as a universal question, in an increasing artificial reality, we’re already experiencing this disassociation. With a mystical radio that can defy time and space, through main protagonists, Viola, Evie and Arturo; an actress, playwright, and poet, Biscello engages phantasmagorical means to transcend history and ask germane questions. Considerations of whether technology is dreamed into existence, or means of entering a private esthetic, creating an immersive atmospheric dreamworld and interfacing like radio-waves do? What was once disparate, permits us to see differently; against an allegorical shamanistic universe, seeking the unknown, in a collectivized unconsciousness.
Biscello possesses no literary canon or convention; his surrealist annotations stir in evocative desertscapes, whose inhabitants exist as characters from Tarot, poetry, Joan-of-Arc inspired suicide cults, mystics and artistic-outsiders. Carl Theodore Dreyer’s 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, is one of the fundamental components in The Furies; intersecting narrative, whereby Artaud, claimed his ouvre; “was intended to reveal Joan as the victim of one of the most terrible of all perversions: the perversion of a divine principle in its passage through the minds of men, whether they be Church, Government, or what you will.” These metamorphic tours through the mutable wilds of persona, are backdrops for profound undertone, alongside an erudite exploration of unreality, mirroring the character’s inner-world. The novel’s atmosphere itself, becomes a character, with its own influence.
Phantasmagorical novels operate on the impossible and illogical, rarely explaining anomalous events within their narrative. Releasing the need for a clear set of rules for their magical system; magical realism can feature fantastical events, in the real-world, utilizing ghosts and prophecy in a philosophical, puzzle-like introspection They explore vertiginous intellectual conceits, not least; parallel realities, which permit the fantastical to be plausible. The bizarre metamorphosis of protagonists, slipping into a phantasmagorical realm, allow obscure magical elements like a radio, to be key tools in exploring more psychological themes of isolation and belonging.
Biscello’s reality is a threshold hallucination, considering individual perceived reality, against a shared universe outside the laws of time, ultimately begging us to imagine, what would we find? Both in ourselves and without.
Phaedra, Phaedra, was it all a dream?
I’m now sealed in and withering
Having lost the golden key.
Candice Louisa Daquin is the author of several poetry collections, and her debut novel, The Cruelty, will be released on November 25th, 2025 (FlowerSong Press).
It is rough around the edges but that will eventually work out- the water will make everything smooth and flat and standard like an envelope.
I will let you in on something: when I was a boy my parents were octopuses. Do not task me
with explanations. I just knew. Okay. It was a certitude.
When I went to sleep my father had to lie in bed with me. I had recurring nightmares. Each night the room was filled with ghosts who wore red fezzes. I know it has Freudian overtones, but who knew then. Not even my father, who was a human. I think my mother sometimes kept him company, which settled nothing.
Anyway, I grew up, you might say. And I am acceptable, at least on the surface and that takes up most everything.
Where I Live
I am not Chinese. But I am married to a Chinese woman. And I have observed over years that if a Chinese person comes upon a patch of earth, they will fetch a pail and shovel, bring some seeds and plant a garden. It is all those years of agrarian living.
In my building there is an OC who had allergies. Instead of going to a doctor, he chopped down all the trees and bushes and every living green thing outside his window and then sat back pleasurably.
Mao Zedong took care of the sparrows in China. It was called The Great Leap Forward. Sparrows ate grain so the Chinese destroyed their nests and killed them off by noise and terror and exhaustion. Of course, sparrows ate locusts and when the sparrows were gone the locusts consumed all the crops. This was The Great Chinese Famine.
I am very partial to sparrows. When I approach and they hop off I find it very gratifying. In Montparnasse on the steps of Sacre Coeur Basilica I once fed sparrows from my hand and it was secretive.
Talking To The Tree
Looking up at the tree its heart hanging there aimlessly still I could see its filigree leaves and catkins
planning something: perhaps to pay a debt or fill an old order. There was an idea doubtless germinating in that bound body. I stopped my aimless wandering, my body stiff with age, my hands in my pockets, empty but for small change. What would I say to the tree? If we were in the same world it was only because of our bodies. The mind of the tree and its body were close together. My mind had flown from my body, a bluejay screeching in the uppermost branches.
We are the immortal goodbyes the gods said to each other
Aeons ago at the gloaming hours of broken covenants
Every word is now a forging of newfound courage, or hope
Behind gray clouds that quiver on the breast of crestfallen dew
Do not bind us now to the oaths of our failed bloodlines
We may fail yet again with tired maxims, axioms hiding
In the palimpsest of hardworking mediocre metaphors
—————–
At a bullet train station in Fujian
Ten years ago around this time of year
The weather was biting like a lover gone bitter
The fellow Chinese teacher said something about winter wind in China
Which can typically lick human faces off with frost bite
That there’s no way to know pain from shame
Because the cold is an anaesthesia
So we could be walking around like zombies
With nice-smelling coiffed hair
Empty eye sockets staring back at people
I didn’t know if he was only trying to shock or humor
A newcomer with excess baggage to boot.
When the train arrived, the wind howled harder
Stepping inside I caught myself in the glass door
Not a zombie yet, whatsoever, thank God
Just a Bukowskian traveler with frozen lake eyes
Emeniano Acain Somoza, Jr., is a native of Siquijor Island in Central Visayas, Philippines. He was last based in Fujian, China as a second-language teacher after over a decade stint as a Corporate Communications Officer in the Middle East. Some forthcoming online and in print, most of his poems and stories have been published by literary magazines and journals, including The Philippines Graphic, The Philippine Free Press, The Philippine Star, and the Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints Vol. 53 , among others. He has published three poetry books since 2010. and currently Editor-At-Large for The Syzygy Poetry Journal.
Every society’s foundation and backbone is the woman. The development of any nation depends on the role, position, activity, and participation of its women. The degree of progress and prosperity of a society is the result of women’s active involvement. A woman is not weak; she is the pillar of society. Her role in the formation and development of any community is invaluable. A woman is not only a homemaker but also an educator of both her children and society. Even great scholars such as Muhammad ibn Isa al-Tirmidhi were raised and educated by their mothers. After his father’s death, Imam al-Tirmidhi’s mother personally took charge of his upbringing and education. Similarly, the great Renaissance painter Chopin became interested in art thanks to his mother’s bedtime stories.
Many such examples can be cited, proving that the foundation of every society is a woman. However, many still fail to recognize this truth, seeing women as fragile and incapable. Yet, history tells a different story. Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae bravely led her people to victory against Cyrus II of the Achaemenid Empire in defense of her land and nation’s freedom.In the 15th century, France’s national heroine Joan of Arc led her country’s army against the English at the young age of sixteen, winning several battles for her nation’s independence before sacrificing her life. Her courage and determination made her a symbol of patriotism and heroism.
Behind every successful man stands a strong woman. Behind the great commander Amir Temur (Tamerlane) stood his wise and supportive wife, Saray Mulk Khanum. Similarly, behind the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent stood Hurrem Sultan, a beautiful and intelligent woman who influenced state affairs.
Today, women continue to hold an important place in modern society. In many developed countries, women play a significant role in state governance. For example, the United Kingdom was ruled for decades by queens who served as heads of state. Singapore is recognized as a global leader in education and development, led by Halimah Yacob, who has served as the nation’s president since 2017. Before her presidency, she was the Speaker of Parliament from 2013 to 2017, already holding an influential position in society.In Uzbekistan, Tanzila Narbayeva has been serving as the Chairwoman of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis (Parliament) since 2019. Before assuming this position, she worked in several government institutions and organizations, contributing to state and social development.
However, there are still countries where women face violence, discrimination, and barriers to education. For instance, in India, 330,998 crimes against women have been recorded, of which 38,947 were sexual assaults. India ranks 132nd among 152 countries for women’s health, despite women making up 48% of its population. Only 12% of them hold positions in the national legislature. In Afghanistan, strict restrictions have been imposed on girls’ education. Girls over the age of 12 are prohibited from attending school, universities have been closed to female students, and women are banned from working. Similar issues persist in many other parts of the world.
Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan, great opportunities are being created for women and girls. Gender equality is given special importance. In 2021, 2,000 state scholarships were allocated for girls from low-income families to pursue higher education. By 2025, this number rose to 4,000, and by 2026, it is expected to reach 6,000. Since 2019, Uzbekistan has paid special attention to ensuring gender equality. The Chairwoman of the Senate, Tanzila Narbayeva, also serves as the head of the National Commission on Gender Equality.
The government has established state awards such as “Zulfiya” and “Hamshira” to honor outstanding girls and women. All these efforts aim to enhance the participation and role of women in society. Indeed, as women’s involvement in social life increases, the development and prosperity of nations also rise. Women are the pillars of society.
I, Jumanazarova Muxlisa Murodbek qizi, was born on December 22, 2007, in Qo‘shko‘pir District, Khorezm Region. From 2014 to 2025, I studied at School No. 39 in Qo‘shko‘pir District. During my studies, I won first place three times in the district stage of subject Olympiads and took an honorable second place at the regional stage. Currently, I am a first-year student at Urgench State University named after Abu Rayhon Beruni.
