Poetry by Atta Shad: Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch
Whether morning or eventide, dawn or twilight— what remains to be said of the rainbow and raincloud, of the scented breeze, of the beloved earth? The heart seems withdrawn from all.
The heart, a patient mendicant, feels and endures each rebuff. Desire wanders beneath the scorching sun, a traveler without a destination.
Night falls, (so we’ve heard). Day breaks, (so they claim). But who can tell of day and the night? Both are deemed dead now. Joy wraps itself in mourning’s cloak.
Love’s springtide carries the green pulse of bloom. Yet to slay hope, to shatter a vow, is a catastrophe enough for any age. Love and wrath are bound in a single knot.
In the mirror of dreams the world becomes a marketplace. And in that marketplace a shadow falls over translucent melodies of spring, over verdant meadows, over pearl-laden, swaying fields.
Eyes go blind. Ears turn deaf. Only wealth gleams, only riches glitter.
What remains to be said of the rainbow and raincloud, of the scented breeze, of the beloved earth?
In this marketplace you are for sale. So am I.
The heart, a patient mendicant feels and endures each rebuff. Desire wanders in the scorching sun, a traveler without a destination.
Atta Shad(1939-1997) is the most revered and cherished modern Balochi poet. He instilled a new spirit in the moribund body of modern Balochi poetry in the early 1950s when the latter was drastically paralysed by the influence of Persian and Urdu poetry. Atta Shad gave a new orientation to modern Balochi poetry by giving a formidable ground to the free verse, which also brought in its wake a chain of new themes and mode of expression hitherto untouched by Balochi poets. Apart from the popular motifs of love and romance, subjugation and suffering, freedom and liberty, life and its absurdities are a few recurrent themes which appear in Shad’s poetry. What sets Shad apart from the rest of Balochi poets is his subtle, metaphoric and symbolic approach while versifying socio-political themes. He seemed more concerned about the aesthetic sense of art than anything else.
Shad’s poetry anthologies include Roch Ger and Shap Sahaar Andem, which were later collected in a single anthology under the title Gulzameen, posthumously published by the Balochi Academy Quetta in 2015. The translated poem is from Gulzameen.
Fazal Baloch is a Balochi writer and translator. He has translated many Balochi poems and short stories into English. His translations have been featured in Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters and in the form of books and anthologies. Fazal Baloch has the translation rights of Atta Shad from the publisher.
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Many, many years ago, even before time could be stamped with a number, our earth was absolutely empty. The utter silence depressed Singh Buga, the Adi devata—the First God. He could not live in peace in his heavenly abode. So Singh Buga decided to use his magical power to fill up the void with living things. But there was no soil on which they could be nurtured. Water, water, that’s all he saw everywhere. Yes, there was soil under the water, but who could bring it up from such depths? If only he could get some earth, even a small amount, he would fill it with trees and flowers, animals and other living beings. He thought and thought and then he created a leech, a crab and a tortoise. The leech was sent first to get some soil, but he failed in his mission. How could he go down to such great depths under the water? So, Singh Buga sent the crab. But for him too, the soil was too down below. At last, he sent the tortoise. The tortoise followed his Lord’s command and plunged in. He swam far into the depths, reached the bottom and touched the earth’s core. He smelled the earth, took a deep breath, rubbed some of the earth on his body, dug up some more that lay almost inert for eons under the cold water and carried it back for his Lord. Singh Buga was delighted and soon created all the things he desired. The earth that had lain lifeless underwater for thousands of years was touched by sunlight. Wind blew over it. It became full of life. The fertile land became green and spread to the horizon. Plants flowered, trees bowed down with the weight of ripe fruits. The earth was now full of colour. The God decided to create living beings. The calls of birds, animals and insects broke the silence. A pair of milk-white swans laid two eggs. From them Singh Buga created a pair of humans—a man and a woman. He was elated that men would now inhabit the earth. He let them live in a cave and waited with bated breath for news of a new arrival. But where was the news? He waited and waited, finally feeling crestfallen. The pair were very happy roaming around in the beautiful land, but they were ignorant about the mystery of creating life themselves. So, he made them drink laopaani—rice wine—to make their bodies throb with desire.
See that couple sitting morosely in a corner on the ferry? They are no older than the young couple Singh Buga had created out of two swan eggs. But this young couple exudes no sense of happiness. They belong to this burdensome earth; not for them the serenity of the pristine world that God Singh Buga had created. True, they worship him, but in their lives there is only pain and sorrow. Hunger and the torment of a painful existence has chased them every moment. Lack of peace and resentment towards their lot were their constant companions. Adi devata could intoxicate the young couple he had brought to life with liquor and generate in them a desire to create. But for this couple, even if God Singh Buga offered them the best drink, he would only lull them physically from the pain; he would be unable to awaken in them the ancient hunger of the body. Their minds were as dry as the drought-affected earth. On that famished land, only hot tears trickled down drop by drop. The hungry earth sucked in those tears instantly.
The girl, at the cusp of youth, looked utterly dejected. The long arduous journey had drained her energy. Her eyes shut, she rested her head on the shoulder of the equally exhausted young man sitting next to her. If she opened her eyes, the bright sunlight playing on the river’s surface dazzled her and made her head spin. She was too weak to move much.
Her name was Durgi. Durgi Bhumij. An expert sculptor seemed to have lovingly carved her figure. Her statuesque body had thinned down somewhat, but strangely, though wreaked by hunger and thirst, her light brown face had not lost its charm. She was, after all, Durgi—Durga mai, Goddess Durga. She was born during the autumn festival of Durga puja, when the throbbing madal drum was beating frenziedly outside their house. Her grandmother cut the umbilical cord, gave the baby a bath and placed her on her mother’s breast and said, ‘Durga mai has come to our house.’ The old woman named her Durgi in the likeness of the Shakti Goddess.
But now, her granny’s beloved Durga mai was facing terrible times. A devastating famine had crippled their land of red earth. Its canopy of forests of mahua, sal and teak were now filled with only heart-rending cries from hungry mouths, and death.
Durgi was at an age when she could digest even chips of stone. But there was nothing to eat. The fields lay dry. The white sahibs had taken away everything. There was no water in the river for them, no forests to pick fruits from. There was no work: no field to till, no forest to forage for potatoes and yams. Entering the forest for their age-old practice of hunting was banned. As was fishing in the river next to their village. All these now belonged to ‘others’. The only word that echoed through the land was: NOTHING…NOTHING. Nothing was left for them. Rice became as costly as gold.
There had been floods in the past, even droughts. But like a mother whose annoyance with a child does not last long, Mother Nature’s anger also did not carry on forever. The earth became indulgent again, green shoots showed up joyfully once more. But the kind of famine Durgi and her people were now facing was like coming up against a formidable hill they could not surmount…
(Extracted from Moonlight Saga by Arupa Kalita Patangia, translated from Assamese by Ranjita Biswas. Published by Speaking Tiger Books 2026.)
ABOUT THE BOOK
In the lush yet brutal landscape of colonial Assam unfolds a haunting chapter of history—the rise of the tea plantations and the human cost that sustained them. Drawn by promises of Assam desh—a land of dignity, abundance, and fair wages—Adivasi families from central India are packed onto overcrowded steamers and sent upriver, where hunger, disease and death shadow every step of their journey. Among them is Durgi, a young woman whose resilience endures even in despair. With her, she carries a small bundle of marigold seeds, a fragile memory of the land of red earth she has left behind. At her side is her husband, Dosaru, the rebellious archer, bound to her by love and the shared hope of building a life of their own. However, what awaits them at Atharighat Tea Estate is no promised land. Labourers are stripped, disinfected, confined to barracks, and driven into relentless work, while sickness, fear, and muted defiance simmer beneath the ordered rows of tea bushes.
Durgi’s life takes a complicated turn over the years—an intimate affair with Fraser, the white manager of the tea garden, results in the birth of three mixed race children. Their unequal relationship exposes another unspoken truth about plantation life—the generations of similar children, many of whom, abandoned by their white ancestors, still live in Assam’s tea gardens today.
Rooted in lived experience, Moonlight Saga gives voice to the forgotten men and women who built the empire’s ‘green gold’, bearing witness to their suffering, endurance, and fragile hopes—as the British Raj begins to crumble in the shadows of India’s Independence struggle.
Originally written in Assamese, the novel is a celebrated and much-discussed work in Assam, recognised for its unflinching portrayal of plantation life and its place in the region’s collective memory. Its translation into English opens up an essential regional story to a wider readership, ensuring that the sacrifices and struggles embedded in the tea gardens are not forgotten.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arupa Kalita Patangia is one of the best-known Assamese writers of today. She has five novels, twelve short story collections, several novellas, books for children, and translations into Assamese to her credit. In 2014, she received the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award for her book of short stories, Mariam Austin Othoba Hira Barua.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Ranjita Biswas is an independent journalist, fiction and travel writer, and translator. Ranjita has won the KATHA translation awards several times. She has also to her credit eight published works in translation.
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We are living under fallen skies in dark basements of sorrow a world of broken elevators and stairs too steep for us to climb up from our depth of despair lying curled like a foetus for comfort waiting waiting and waiting for the skies to clear waiting waiting and waiting for the sun to fill the blanks waiting for the sun to shine again
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality.
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The phrase “irony of fate” is usually illustrated with the image of a sailor dying of thirst in the desert. Neat. Canonical. But as a mental exercise, one might try to find others, less obvious, less obedient. For instance, history has no grave for Herodotus, the very man whom Cicero, with the confidence of a Roman who knew how to assign paternity, called the father of history.
No tomb. No urn. No reliably identified city where he saw his last sunrise, or survived (or failed to survive) upto his final day. No one knows now. No one knew three hundred years ago. And judging by the silence, no one was particularly eager to know then either.
What remains are versions. Hypotheses. And the thick, practiced silence of old Hellas.
Thurii[1] gave him his second name, his last one, acquired while still alive. Yet, Thurii never returned the favour. No monument. No plaque. No modest column leaning into oblivion. Athens, meanwhile, built him something closer to a pedagogical complex. It was recommended for students who expected from the Lyceum not only rhetorical muscle but moral posture. Almost a museum. Almost a cult.
This asymmetry conveniently feeds the supporters of the so-called Periclean Scraper theory. According to them, Herodotus died not in some conveniently barbarian elsewhere, but in radiant Athens itself. Symbolic. Elegant. As the theory goes, he was removed along with other initiates into Pericles’ grand ideas by men who had begun to feel less like assets and more like liabilities. Or worse, witnesses.
We are not inclined to dignify such conjectures by reinforcing their place in history. Still less to supplement them with later interpolations produced by interested hands. These surface periodically in northern Aegean archives as lists or tables.
Yet one fact remains stubbornly intact. Herodotus was involved in the founding of Thurii.
A “common” colony, raised almost at the site of ancient Sybaris. Almost. Instead of theatrically restoring the legendary city of pleasures and refined excess (the Sybaris that gave its name to an entire philosophy of living), Thurii was assembled in haste, shoulder to shoulder with the ruins.
It was populated by Athenian volunteers, new settlers, descendants of Sybarites by blood or coincidence. Every day they walked through the ruins of yesterday. Every evening they returned to today. Dour, makeshift Thurii, assembled without taste or patience, it was like a punishment for former luxury.
The only unresolved detail was the addressee of that punishment.
Herodotus’ role in the final phase of Athenian democracy remains opaque. So opaque that one is tempted to suspect the opacity was the point. Too many moments in his biography coincide neatly with zones where documents stop leaving footprints. From fragments, partial transcripts, unsigned notes, and a couple of discreetly scraped tablets, the following version has been reconstructed. Its coherence is provisional. Responsibility for interpretation rests with the reader.
Pericles ( 495BCE–429BCE), Ancient Greek statesman and general.Herodotus (484 BCE – 425 BCE), Ancient Greek historian and geographerFrom Public Domain
Pericles acted with the confidence of a mature servant of democracy. His concept of an external threat (Persia) was remarkably versatile. It justified emergencies, softened expansion, and wrapped ambition in collective security. The threat itself worked better than any actual invasion. While others clung to the marathon, Pericles spoke of the future. A unified alliance of poleis, decisions made swiftly, centrally, and preferably in his office.
In practice, matters were simpler. The democratic faction wanted more. Territory, tribute, votes in foreign councils. Everything else was rhetorical upholstery. Their opponents could read subtext too, so Pericles began by clearing the flanks at home. The Areopagus was “reformed,” officially. Thucydides and his circle were removed next, with minimal explanation and maximum finality.
In the end Pericles remained one of the ten Strategoi[2], exactly as the constitution prescribed. But he alone decided. The others attended meetings, signed when prompted, nodded often. Formally, it was a democracy. In reality, a political singularity noticed by everyone and addressed by no one, because addressing it would have required rewriting the rules.
Only then could the Idea of a greater Hellas[3] be carried beyond the sacred city.
Herodotus arrived in Athens the way one arrives when one’s biography has already begun to resemble the synopsis of a tragedy. Still negotiable, but increasingly reluctant to change genre. There had been an attempted coup in Halicarnassus. It failed, but failure in Athens was judged alongside the elegance of the leap itself. Exile followed. He sailed with the Athenian fleet. More excursion than service, but the checkbox mattered. What he brought back was not heroism so much as stories, trimmed, calibrated, arranged with care. Athens was perpetually hungry for narratives, especially those that began as personal experience and ended as matter of state.
Pericles learned of him long before shaking his hand. By their first meeting, Herodotus had already been tested in conversation, whetted at banquets, evaluated through third parties of both sexes and varying loyalties. When Pericles finally invited him, first informally, then into his office, Herodotus was already half-installed. They spoke like men who had been reading the same books for years and drawing incompatible conclusions. Herodotus offered careful directness, still marketable. Pericles listened, then made the small, economical gesture Athenians read fluently. This man would be allowed closer.
From that moment on, Herodotus ceased to be merely a gifted interlocutor and became part of the infrastructure. His notes were quietly reclassified as “auxiliary material for decision-making.” He began to appear at discussions of issues that officially did not exist, meetings without agendas, where unrecorded questions were discussed and ideas could not to be seen walking alone in daylight.
It was elegant. Herodotus believed he was being heard. Pericles ensured he was being used. Athens congratulated itself on the illusion of mutual benefit. In conversations with Pericles and those nearest to him, Herodotus eventually let slip two places that unsettled him by their scale, precision, and absolute dissimilarity to anything he had encountered among any monuments created by human.
It was an even octagonal platform, a night’s march east of Tyre, made of marble cracked by age, yet laid so carefully, and on such a foundation, that no one, however motivated, managed to pry out blocks or grind it down into reusable rubble. The vacant expanse, roughly the size of four Athenian quarters, stubbornly refused conversion into cheap building material. And also a pyramid sunk deep into sand, referred to as Shaytep by locals. Later it was imitated with scholarly enthusiasm by Egyptians who inherited the territory above it. Its accessible chambers suggested the scale of a ten-story palace, if such a structure could ever make sense as habitation. Immense, curiously pointless, poorly translated allegories, it had the same heavy geometry, the same sensation that it was not built for people.
The locals knew nothing. Those who called them tombs did not argue with those who believed them to be stations of the gods. But one detail struck Herodotus as well as Egyptians, Persians, border tribes – all speaking different tongues had the same conviction – structures like these existed elsewhere.
No one had seen them. No one had mapped them. Yet everyone “knew” they must be there. Drunken sailors’ tales from the inhospitable north. Evening stories about distant shores of the Pontus. No names. No coordinates. Only background noise, the shadow of something once called knowledge.
Then there was Lampon, a seer, a priest, an interpreter of higher meanings knew how to speak with the gods or at least how to simulate the effect convincingly. In Athens he was respected not as a person but as a function. He had a lifelong right to dine in the Prytaneion, where the Council of Five Hundred formalised the will of the people. Lampon had access without election as he was said to have authority delegated directly from the sky. His task was to ensure no decision passed that might anger Olympus. A dizzying appointment for a supervisor overseeing assemblies theoretically designed to lack any single supervisor.
Lampon stayed close to Pericles, intimately close. Either Pericles believed in signs, or he understood the value of myth and knew how to deploy it. The two are not mutually exclusive. On the square, the people saw a priest and heard a voice as to who stood behind that voice remained speculation.
It was almost certainly Lampon who conceived the idea, layered like honeyed pastry. He compiled all reports of megalithic structures, convened a council of moderately learned men to interpret them, dispatched colourfully dressed priests with sombre escorts to the empire’s edges. And made the big announcement.
Athens, the statement would go, had recovered forgotten pre-literate knowledge. The knowledge of how to turn piles of stone into defensive infrastructure. Or, with fewer syllables, a wonder-weapon. Against it, Persian arrows and anonymous triremes would amount to little more than wind in a vineyard.
Domestically, it was signal geometry. Parallelograms of fact intersecting triangles of legend, with the Athenian party standing at the centre beneath the slogan. We read stone better than anyone. Anyone asking unnecessary questions simply would not be invited to the next symposium.
Externally, it was never about hoisting a catapult atop a pyramid. It was about saturating every diplomatic front with a myth. Athenian hegemony was not merely foreign policy. It was access to ancient knowledge, to a power beyond imagination.
Beneath the ornamentation lay the real goal – to ensure recalcitrant polies[4] would arrive voluntarily, bread and butter in hand, at a confederation where Athens controlled the bread, the butter, and the ledger.
Pericles did not merely approve Lampon’s hypothesis. He sealed it with an official nod and an unofficial proceed until it smoked. Marketability mattered more than the truth. If more than three neighbouring poleis believed it, it would cease to be a local myth and begin to function.
Herodotus received two sets of instructions. The written one was to collect and systematise material on the Greco-Persian Wars. Paperwork for the Academy and the gullible. The oral one was simpler – to locate traces of the “ancients” across the edges of the oikoumene[5], and try not to damage them too badly while taking measurements.
What would be done with the material was not explained, not out of mistrust, but pragmatism. Knowledge without leverage becomes ballast. And Herodotus already carried enough weight — nobility. faith in democracy coupled with dependence on his own authorial voice. Throughout the expedition, whose geography we know in exhausting detail, he sent Lampon encrypted reports with exemplary regularity about the locations of structures of titanic scale and improbable forms.
The earliest reports were meticulous, almost embarrassingly enthusiastic. As if he were seeking revelation in massive forms. He analyzed slab placement, light behavior, hypothetical priestly processions, even the dietary preferences of imagined builders. But by the eighth object the style thinned. By the tenth it collapsed into two lines, as if the text itself had grown embarrassed.
Geodesy and geometry remained precise. His team continued to perform duties in full compliance with instructions and payroll. But metaphors vanished. Comparisons evaporated. The rhetoric crumbled. The stones remained. The words did not.
Lampon followed the change with mounting concern. Some blamed fatigue, barbarian cuisine, women insufficiently trained in Hellenic desire. But Lampon was not convinced.
Herodotus’ second arrival in Athens was calm, without excessive praise. His report to Lampon was scheduled without urgency, for the evening. The time when architecture becomes philosophy and political maneuvering turns into liturgy. This meeting has been reconstructed below as per the authors’ assumptions.
“We’ll pour the wine ourselves,” Lampon smiled. “So, did you bring us an oracle from the barbarians?”
“I did,” Herodotus said. “The oracle, and the barbarians.”
He did not elaborate.
Lampon pressed gently. Herodotus replied, almost apologetically. “I’m avoiding language. When you try to describe what was created outside description, you don’t move closer to understanding. You build a private labyrinth of words and find a sign reading Museum Closed.”
“At first there were words,” he admitted. “Epithets. Analogies. Cyclopean observatories. Celestial surgery. Shafts draining souls to Sirius. But these similarities are projection phantoms. My culture reflected onto something without a reflective surface.”
Lampon asked what changed.
“We see a monument like an unsolved equation and immediately insert familiar context,” Herodotus said. “Circle means cult. Twelve means zodiac. Stone means ancestors lacked better materials. And we’re satisfied because we’ve obtained an answer that stops thought. That isn’t research. It’s mental self-fertilization.”
“So you went looking for a different answer?”
“No. A different question.”
A pause, then. “If you want to understand a shadow, you don’t stare at the object. You examine the source of light. I looked at the invisible craftsmen. At the light they emitted so we could amuse ourselves by drafting plans in the shade of their buildings.”
“How do you encode emptiness?” he added. “The impulse faded. I accepted the emptiness as it was. And I began to write accordingly. As a witness, not an apologist.”
Then, unexpectedly clear, as though rehearsed to the point of premiere. “They caught the wind not for movement, but for taste.”
“That’s all?”
“I found not an explanation,” Herodotus said, “but an understanding. That if among the ancestors there was one whose mischief outweighed his fear, he said: let’s place the stones like this. By the stars. Or the other way around.”
“And others followed,” he continued. “Not because they understood, but because it felt exciting. Amusing. New. And it spread, like a fire no one meant to light, but everyone enjoyed feeding.”
Lampon pressed. “You reduce the work of titans to a game?”
“A game,” Herodotus shrugged. “Or play. Or fashion. Rituals without gods. I searched for depth where there was only the width of a moment. Sometimes a dolmen is just a dolmen. The imprint of laughter that has gone silent.”
Lampon looked inward, auditing the contents of his guest’s soul. He found no deceit. Herodotus had tried earnestly to assign cult and function to chaos. Each new structure replied: “No. Nothing. Calm down.”
By the tenth, the traveler had calmed down.
In practice, however, Thurii happened.
The initiative came from the democrats, formally from Pericles’ associates, informally perhaps from Pericles himself. Here the fog thickens. Was this merely bureaucratic arrhythmia, or the final phase of a longer operation? The sponsor colony’s paradox remained. It did not eclipse Sybaris. It multiplied despair by forcing a daily view of its ruins.
It was there that Herodotus acquired his enduring epithet, the Thurian. It was there, tradition says, that he unified his Histories, at least in the “recommended” reading. The sequence gently guides an inexperienced reader toward the conclusion that the author prioritised events that glorified Hellas. Everything before appears as clay, material to be kneaded into anonymous coating for tablets meant to record the “truly significant” milestones.
Later editors, we now know, divided the work into nine books. Another irony. A life devoted to weaving disparate accounts into a chain. Successors dismantled it into links, then displayed them in whichever sequence proved momentarily convenient.
For a time Athens mentioned Thurii only occasionally, as one recalls a long dinner with dull relatives. Then something occurred to pull Herodotus back into the field of managerial imagination.The answer is disarmingly prosaic.
The old man decided it was time. Not to die. To speak.
Publicly. Before an audience. With scrolls and a lectern, and that expression professional speakers wear just before and do you know what else? Publication was discussed. Workshops began calculating margins.
Word of this reached Lampon not as a fresh wind but as a warm exhalation of antique panic. Ready for readings was enough. He knew how easily Herodotus could forget the boundary between narration and confession when listened to attentively. The danger was not a direct accusation. Herodotus was no enemy. Far worse, he was a witness. In the vortex of his diegesis[6], scraps of geography, personal reflections, unapproved versions could be swept together. Everything Pericles had ordered to be formulated, but not pronounced.
The decision was swift. Herodotus was summoned to Athens. The pretext was patronage. A chair. An audience. A laurel wreath and a lifetime bust. Perfect timing. If there were readings, let them occur at the center of the world.
And on the way back, a stone, rain, a robber, a horse — the classic, well, age after all. In modern terms, something we would call prevention. The Greek lexicon offered a more refined word. Hygiene. If nothing else, the Hellenes knew how to keep a narrative clean. Thus, according to proponents of the Scraper theory, the true story of Herodotus ends. Pericles methodically erases associates from the commemorative board.
His work survived, though not without excisions, and the factual foundation thinned accordingly. Speculation about conjecture and truth continues to feed professional unmaskers.
Pericles never obtained his diplomatic wonder-weapon. No column trembled under an egregore’s vibration. Instead, two blocs of poleis emerged, welded by paranoia and ambition, and the Peloponnesian War followed. An internal conflict of unprecedented scale, like a culinary dispute between the two heads of a single serpent.
As if that were insufficient, a plague disembarked in the Piraeus — classical symptoms with a metaphysical aftertaste. Pericles himself exited through an emergency door politely opened by the Queen of Epidemics.
Lampon, however, seems to have drawn a different conclusion — divine retribution for attempting unauthorised access to the gods’ toy chest. He dissolved his name into topical comedies and administrative archives.
Time, as is well known, is not the enemy of knowledge, but its only victor.
The pyramids sink deeper each year, as if the earth were ashamed of their nakedness. Island statues once mistaken for fallen heroes increasingly resemble quirks of terrain. The blurrier the outline, the freer the hypothesis. The fewer the features, the louder the voices eager to explain.
Perhaps this is how history repaid Herodotus. Monuments built in the style of titans (?) simply fade just as the meaning of their existence once faded, just as Herodotus of Thurii himself faded, leaving behind only a controversial image.
Andriy Nivchuk is a Ukrainian-born author with a background in IT engineering. He spent fifteen years working as an artistic photographer in Paris and now lives in Ukraine.
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Bibliography
Herodotus (life, association with Thurii, traditional framing of the Histories)
I could be a molecule of thought Uncanny, secret, Dimension less.
I could be all elements --immense, eternal -- A cosmos holding galaxies of passion.
I may be a note of music Hanging in the air, faint, feeble, But repeating like an echo,
Or a speck of silence in a wind-funnel, Gyrating into a tornado, Sonorously lingering to infinity.
I’m overwhelmingly tender. I hold worlds in a gentle embrace. I’m also a razor blade, Can slash love with a single stroke And leave it to bleed to death.
I am war. I am peace. Dispassionate and diligent, I’m a nuance undulating through Sangfroid and turbulence.
I’m a bubble forming, dissolving, Forming again, breaking again, Floating relentlessly to join waters On alien shores And linking minds.
I’m a length of thread from a kite that is Stubborn in its desire to fly, Connecting to the Earth While scanning the strip of its sky.
I wander free, unfettered by Diverse minds and tongues, Wearing my happy pan-world face,
Spanning dams and deserts, Oceans and mountains, Freezing and erupting in alternate moments, I travel borderless.
Snehaprava Das is an academic, translator and writer. She has multiple translations, three collections of stories and five anthologies of poetry to her credit. She has been published in Indian Literature, Oxford University Press, Speaking Tiger, Penguin and Black Eagle Books.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
I levitate around my home. My toes barely graze the cold stone floor. Moving one box here, displacing another there, but still not getting any real work done. For I am a sorceress, a descendant from a rare and powerful subspecies of human who knows fearsome magic. Yet still, I cannot part with my piles of odd socks and large frocks. I clasp my slender, bejewelled hands together. That’s it, today I will declutter the castle for only twenty minutes – as that’s what the pros recommend.
There is a friction keeping me from knowing how to start, as too many souls have come and gone from this castle over the centuries. My father passed away grumpily in his bed in the north wing four decades ago. In his chambers, he left behind a husk of a gaming computer, piles of tangled tendril-like cables, a dusty vinyl record turntable and hefty piles of skating and street art magazines. He was bizarrely fascinated with the subculture he observed in mere mortals, one which he called ‘hip and cool’, despite being a gaunt three-hundred-and-forty-two-year-old wizard. He spent his last decades of life locked away in that room playing video games. I only ever witnessed an unearthly rainbow glow and pew-pew sounds from under his door day and night.
Then don’t get me started on my mother. She left behind her lifetime of artsy hobbies. From mosaic tile clippers, to a vinyl design t-shirt press, she had been the crafting queen. I don’t mind the crafting supplies, but other items of hers are more of a dilemma for me to know whether to keep. As a prolific vampiress, she had a tendency to never part with even a single skull belonging to her victims. They’re nostalgic, she used to parrot at me over the dining table. I opened the closet in her room and more than a dozen skulls fell on top of me. Mother, I am not up for dealing with your nostalgia right now!
Yet the worst of it all was my brother. It all happened one morning in the dead of winter, a blizzard was raging outside.
He said: ‘I can’t stand this place anymore!’
I remember his pained green eyes as he pushed open the large iron doors. With nothing but a bag on his side and tattered coat on his back, he left. That was half a century ago. It really worsened my father’s depression, and he never really got over it. I haven’t talked to my brother since then. I had assumed his old room had probably been taken over by clusters of breeding spiders by now. Yet, the one time a draught creaked the door open, I was horrified to see how empty it was — not a single book or a scrap of a poster left on any wall. Just bits of hardened Blu-Tak. Now whenever I pass by his room, I cannot remember the good times me and my spellcasting sibling had. I can only remember the hurt in his eyes when he left, so many moons ago. That memory is the one thing I cannot get rid of.
Decluttering is a challenging task, even for a wise and formidable sorceress such as myself, who can conjure up thunder and lightning with a mere twitch of my finger. It is inherently existential – well – it is for me at least. It makes you think about what legacy you’ll be leaving behind. Despite knowing I will probably live longer than both my mother and father, (both never, never exercised and the latter had a video game addiction, mind you) I feel such dread seize my heart just by looking at the piles. My lifelong research, reduced down to flaky and pitifully unsubstantial yellowy parchment.
I do not have any progeny, at least not yet, so will I leave behind a sorceress’s lifetime of sorry spellbooks that no living soul can decipher? How I wish there was any spell in one of these antediluvian old grimoires, anything to help me shift through these emotions and clutter! The only spell I can conjure up is to magically teleport everything to a storage shed in another continent, but my conscience gets the better of me.
The only living soul in this cold old mansion is me — and well, my greyhound, whose name is Speckles. I dust off my hands, I may not have made much progress today, but there is something I must do. I go into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea. I then plop down in the loungeroom. Speckles snuggles his delicate pointed snout into my lap, I smile at him, I pick up a loose piece of parchment, dip my pen in ink and begin to write:
Hello dearest brother, how have you been?
Time will sort things out. The skulls in the closet can wait.
Illustration by Vela Noble
Vela Noble is multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Adelaide, Australia. She finished a BA majoring in Creative Writing at Adelaide University. You can see her work at velanoble.com.
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Life By the River by Liu Kang (1911-2004)Kampung Life by Lim Tze Peng (1921-2025)Depiction of Kampung or village life in Singapore more than fifty years ago. From Public Domain
THE BENCH
The melodious magpie on the bamboo twig -- the passing breeze welcomed the chirping. Sitting on a dilapidated wooden bench, under the thick canopy of the mango tree, village folks rested in the shade, calming the tremors of troubled hearts. The hardship evident in the sighs, still hopeful of tomorrow’s dreams, drying the sweat of weariness. Honest earnings chased away worries. A pinch on the thigh, a cry of pain. Laughter and jokes were shared merrily, teasing the maiden sitting by the door, smiling sheepishly, welcoming attention. Recollecting a slice of an old tale, fun and camaraderie were reminisced, firm and amicable bonds were fostered. It’s but a memory. It’s but a memory. It’s but a memory. Now alone in a room, gazing at the handphone screen, chatting aimlessly in social media— do we remember and long for the dilapidated bench, crafting old tales, forging firm and amicable bonds? Do we remember and pine for the maiden sitting by the door?
CUSTOMS
Customs are not like banana fritters coated with rice flour, dipped in hot oil, served instantly, crispy and delicious, eaten warm, accompanied by sips from a cup of black coffee. Customs are like rain that falls on the whims of the weather. It’s always there, although infrequent, temperamental and purposeful, sometimes an inconvenience— plans thwarted— but always invigorating and instils a sense of acceptance. If received with gratitude, directed with perseverance, and tempered with wisdom. Life is beautiful with droplets of grace. Life is fertile with the pouring of bounties. Life is prosperous with love bestowed. Customs make the earth supple. Customs make the village noble. Customs make a people well-mannered. Once in a while, relish a crispy banana fritter and sip warm black coffee while it rains cats and dogs. Momentary disruption of plans, the alleys and roads flooded— moments of reflection, moments of appreciation for the day, is inherent in droplets of grace, inherent in the pouring of bounties, inherent in love bestowed. Shifting of time and signs the soil is tilled with purpose. The village gathers and collectively agrees, the people ready to realise aspirations of good character and respected stature.
SMOKE
Like smoke billowing amidst rubbish, he burns his self-worth, dances in the flames, when the fire is meant to warm breakfast and meals to school. Now like smoke, his children are floating, begging for favours at tips of cigarettes and cars’ exhaust pipes, crushed by confusion in the stifling air. Who would be hungry if the smoke does not billow in the kitchen, and for generations, our humanity returns uncooked to God?
CURSE OF A WARRIOR
Hail the snake and its venom! Call it a callous and rebellious act! Shame be endured, head decapitated! Surrender not, carry the corpse! Foolish is the mind, desperate are the moves. Let death fulfil the curses. Let death be executed by the Angel. Destroy my body, take my soul. The wooden club hit the coffin. Pierce my tongue and neck. Stab my chest, guts dis-embowelled. Blood spurts, life departs. The warrior kisses the earth. Blood turns into pus. Pus turns into ambers of Hell. Let me die so you die. Let us die so everyone dies. I give you my sin, my hurt, my sadness. You’ll bathe in blood.
Isa Kamari has written 12 novels, 3 collections of poetry, a collection of short stories, a book of essays on Singapore Malay poetry, a collection of theatre scripts and lyrics of 3 music albums, all in Malay. His novels have been translated into English, Turkish, Urdu, Arabic, Indonesian, Jawi, Russian, French, Spanish, Korean, Azerbaijan and Mandarin. Several of his essays and selected poems have been translated into English. Isa was conferred the S.E.A Write Award from Thailand (2006), the Singapore Cultural Medallion (2007), the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang (2009) from the Singapore Malay Language Council, and the Mastera Literary Award (2018) from Brunei Darussalam.
He obtained a BArch (Hons) from the National University of Singapore in 1989, an MPhil (Malay Letters) from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia in 2008 and is currently pursuing a PhD programme at the Academy of Islamic Studies, Univeristi Malaya. His area of research is on the problem of alienation and the practice of firasat (spiritual intuition) in selected Singapore Malay novels.
The Lost Mantras is a collection that blends spirituality, Malay cultural heritage, and universal human experience. First published as part of Menyap Cinta (Love Greetings, 2022, Nuha Books KL), these poems are like a bridge between mysticism and everyday life, where traditional images (betel, jasmine, kris[1], oil lamps, setanjak[2]) are woven with Qur’anic echoes, prayers, and existential questioning. The collection carries a Sufi resonance—always circling back to longing, humility, surrender, and beauty as signs of God. The poems are not only lyrical but also function as cultural memory: they preserve Malay traditions, communal practices, and village life, while situating them in a cosmic framework of faith, sin, and redemption. The use of Malay customs, rituals, and objects is powerful: it asserts that spirituality is not abstract but embedded in heritage. This makes the collection uniquely Southeast Asian despite its universal in appeal.
Imagine a woman bound by shackles – not of iron, but of her own people, her country, her religion, and above all, by men. This is not just a metaphor; it is the reality that moulded Taslima Nasrin’s life and journey as a writer. Her first English poetry collection, Burning Roses in My Garden (translated and edited by Jesse Waters), gathers 103 poems that bear the scars of exile and the defiance of survival.
Nasrin, hounded by fatwas and banned for her unflinching criticism of patriarchy and religious dogma in Bangladesh, writes from the margins yet refuses to be silenced. The anthology commences with early meditations on passion and desire, seen in poems like ‘A Bouquet of Scarlet Envy’ and ‘On Love’, toward darker elegies like ‘The Cycle of Loneliness’, ‘Walking through This Life and into Death’, and ‘Am I Not to Have a Country of My Own?’ that grapple with loneliness, mortality, and the burden of political banishment. These poems become the very tools with which she breaks the restraints, not to escape them, but to forge them into weapons of truth.
The collection opens with poems like ‘On Love’, which delve into romantic love and intimacy as the poet tenderly explores physical connection through sensory detail. In the piece ‘The Last Kiss’, the poet reminisces about a lover’s touch that transcends geographical boundaries. “That kiss that brought an entire world within her grasp, /…a rush of youth, /His kiss was becoming more than him,” compares her memories to permanent imprints. These early poems in the collection reveal a different register – more vulnerable, more willing to dwell in private emotions rather than public testimony. It creates a counterpoint to the later poems of exile and loss, suggesting what was left behind when she was forced to choose between fragile love and unwavering candour.
Through images of loss and displacement, which work both as wound and testimony, the poet confronts her banishment with stark honesty: “To me, my country is now a crematorium. /A lonely dog stands and whines all night, a few/Pyre-makers lie here and there, drunk to the bone.” In her traversal of exile, she transforms personal anguish into universal questions of belonging and continues to write from a place of loss. Her voice carries the weight of those who cannot speak, turning poetry into both elegy and resistance.
Feminist consciousness also flows through Nasrin’s verses with unflinching directness. In ‘Another Life’, she exposes the grinding reality of women’s domestic servitude through devastating metaphor: “Women spend half of their lives picking stones from rice. /Stones pile up in their hearts.” The image suggests not only physical drudgery but emotional calcification – the heart itself becoming a repository of unspoken grievances. Her feminist vision extends beyond individual suffering to collective oppression, revealing how patriarchal structures trap women in cycles of invisible labour.
The poet’s political views turn philosophical, confronting mortality while examining the cost of speaking truth to power through the lens of displacement and exile. This progression from the collection’s early love poems to these darker meditations reflect not only her growing maturing but also usher in a socio-political awakening – the recognition that private desire cannot exist separately from public consequence.
Nasrin doesn’t shy away from contemporary political realities; instead, she shows how religious fundamentalism and state censorship became suffocating forces that compress individual expression. She highlights the way authoritarian systems silence dissent through both legal mechanisms and social ostracism. In ‘Am I Not to Have a Country of My Own?’, she directly questions the price of dissent and the meaning of citizenship when one’s own nation rejects its truth-tellers. In contrast, particular tender pieces like ‘Miserable Ma’ highlight the endurance of personal relationships despite geographical separation within the collection’s otherwise relentless critique.
This collection’s strength lies in its refusal to separate the personal from the global. An American poet and professor, Waters preserves Nasrin’s directness in her translation while maintaining the emotional intensity that makes her work so compelling. These poems serve as both autobiography and historical document, charting one woman’s journey from intimate expression to public testimony. Her masterful use of juxtaposition, placing tender domestic moments against brutal political realities, creates a poetic tension that amplifies both spheres of experience.
Ultimately, Burning Roses in My Garden becomes a new mythology of endurance, not the tidy myth that comforts, but a foul-weather myth that survives storms. In the current climate, Nasrin’s poetry resonates with startling immediacy – mass rallies, hardline backlashes, midnight vigils, and student protests – the streets themselves find their voice through her verses. As if to remind us what her poetry truly stands for, the last poem of the collection bears the words: “I don’t write poetry, I write life on paper. /I don’t write poems; the wind that hits my body/When I stand on the top of a hill? I pen it down.” In closing lines like “when all game ends… I’ll sit down to write about love,” Nasrin promises that love’s survival against cruelty becomes an article of faith. The world of the poet and that of the reader blur here, and in that blurring, a strange comfort arrives, a lesson that even in a country’s crematorium, the rose of hope can burn and perfume the air.
Anindita Basak, a student at the University of Calcutta, is an avid enthusiast of literature and philosophy. Her published works include poetry, prose, and reviews in reputed magazines.
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And murdered through their masks, as if to sift My trembling from the air; the corridors Grew longer, bending out of shape, and drift Enshrouded every threshold. Through the doors Came whispers, half‑remembered, half‑designed, That pressed like winter’s knuckles on my chest; And still the ward‑lights flickered, re‑aligned To mark the pulse of something unexpressed. I walked as though the floorboards might collapse, Or tilt me toward a darkness I had known, Where every echo tightened into traps And every heartbeat felt no longer owned.
Yet through that trembling hush, a figure stood— A patient, pale as frost upon a blade— Who watched me with a calm misunderstood, As if my fear were something he had made. He raised a hand, then let it fall again, And muttered fragments drifting into sense: That storms of thought could batter any brain, That none were proof against experience. His voice, though cracked, retained a tempered grace, A cadence forged from long‑endured despair; And in the trembling angles of his face I saw a truth too heavy to declare.
For madness, in its quietest disguise, Can settle like a frost upon the bone; It does not always shout, but softly lies In corners where the mind stands most alone. And so I passed him, feeling something shift— A weight that was not his, nor wholly mine— As though the ward itself began to lift Its veil and show the seams beneath design. The nurses moved like shadows on a screen, Their footsteps merging with the humming vents; The world grew thin, translucent, in between The drifting of my fractured sentiments.
And still the year went on, a tightening thread That pulled me through each hour’s unsteady frame; The nights were long, the mornings filled with dread, Yet somewhere in that cycle, something came— A gentler breath, a pause within the storm, A moment where the mind, though bruised, could rest. It did not heal, nor wholly re‑transform, But held itself with slightly steadier chest. And in that pause, I learned to stand again, To walk the ward without the same despair; To see, in every trembling fellow‑patient, A fragile strength that hovered in the air.
So through the endless corridors I moved, Not cured, not whole, but slowly re‑aligned; And though the year remained a thing unloved, It left a quiet scaffold in my mind— A place where all the fractured thoughts could meet, Where shadows softened, though they did not cease; Where every trembling pulse, though incomplete, Could find a moment’s tentative release
Jim Bellamy was born in a storm in 1972. He studied hard and sat entrance exams for Oxford University. Jim has a fine frenzy for poetry and has written in excess of 22,000 poems. Jim adores the art of poetry. He lives for prosody.
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Narrative by Meredith Stephens: Photographs by Alan Noble
Sydney Skyline
We are not champagne sailors. The only time Alex and I drink champagne aboard a boat is to celebrate the end of a voyage of hundreds of nautical miles. Our sailing expeditions are characterised by breakages, deprivations and isolation. Sometimes the seas are so rough that I cannot move around the boat, let alone change clothes. I can only bathe once a week, and that consists of a dip in the ocean at anchor.
Our meals often consist of fish we have caught and cooked, unless we consume them immediately as sashimi. A single fish might last us days, served in various guises. Other meals are prepared from lentils or canned foods. In contrast to land trips, I usually lose a kilogram or two when at sea. I prefer not to use the term ‘yacht’, because people imagine us sunning ourselves on the deck while sipping champagne. Instead, I use the term ‘sailboat’. I do confess to a tad of reverse snobbery in the deprivations I endure and look down on those I describe as ‘champagne sailors’. But was that about to change?
We had been invited aboard the luxury observer vessel known as The Jackson to watch the start of the annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race on Boxing Day. After Christmas lunch, we headed to Adelaide Airport to catch our ninety-minute flight to Sydney. Upon arrival at our hotel, we caught the lift to our room. The lift doors opened on the third floor to let two brothers in, aged around 10 and 12. They met our gaze.
“Would you like us to sing you a Christmas carol?” the younger one asked.
The older one looked a bit embarrassed, but I thought asking strangers to join in singing a carol in a lift on Christmas Day was a nice, if not brave gesture, so I nodded enthusiastically. The younger one started singing ‘We wish you a merry Christmas’, and facing us, moved his hands in the manner of a choir conductor. I joined in. Then the boys noticed that they had arrived at their floor and stopped singing.
“See ya!” said the older one, as they exited.
We continued to the seventh floor and deposited our bags. The light was fading, so we decided to head back outside to take a stroll around the harbour. We returned to the lift. Once we reached the fifth floor the doors opened and the two boys entered again. Three other guests were standing behind us.
“More carols?” asked Alex.
They nodded and smiled. “Yes!”
They launched into another familiar carol, and again I joined in. The tall guest behind me gave a kindly chuckle. Then they reached the third floor, bade us farewell, and exited. We continued to the ground floor and made a tour of Darling Harbour in the remaining light. It had been a wonderful Christmas Day, and what better way to end it than the act of goodwill in being serenaded by children in a hotel lift.
The next day was the yacht race, which has been held annually since 1945 and is one of the world’s great ocean races. The sailors would be competing in a gruelling and treacherous race of 128 boats covering 628 nautical miles (1,200 km), south down the Tasman Sea, across Bass Strait, to Hobart in the south of Tasmania. This race is one of the highlights of Boxing Day and a television staple.
Start of Sydney to Hobart race
We walked to the appointed wharf and noticed a long queue waiting to board. Upon being noticed by our hosts, we were directed to a shorter queue and were ushered up the stairs to the top deck, limited to fewer than sixty people. A ribbon with ‘The Jackson’ written on it was affixed to our wrists. We were greeted by a waiter holding a tray proffering a range of drinks. Alex picked up two glasses of champagne and handed one to me. Was this the beginning of my new career as a champagne sailor?
The Jackson soon departed and we headed out to the deck to view the boats lining up for the race. Even though it was summer the cold penetrated my body and my hands shook. I was determined to brave the cold in order to hold my place to view the start of the race. The lady next to me made some commentary.
“That’s the start line,” she said, pointing to two yellow buoys. The start lines are staggered depending on the the size of the boats to help prevent collisions. It’s a southerly, so that should help.”
I nodded, feigning comprehension. I was not yet a competent enough sailor to pick up the wind direction so quickly. The cannon sounded on the deck below, and a plume of smoke rose. The yachts set off. Soon they had overtaken our observation vessel and most of the guests moved back inside the boat to watch the race on a large screen. Alex and I and a few other hardy souls remained on the outside deck to savour the unique setting of Sydney Harbour. Waiters braved the cold regularly to top up our champagne and offer us canapes. We accepted each time, although I eventually slowed down and shared a glass of champagne with Alex. Had we become the dreaded champagne sailors?
The yachts sailed through the heads until most of them disappeared from view. The Jackson turned around and headed back to King Street Wharf. We remained outside on the deck in the cold, making the most of every minute because Sydney Harbour is so far from home, and we may never have this opportunity again.
I stubbornly refuse to accept the title of champagne sailor though. We are temporarily boatless (which is another story) but once we resume sailing again later this year, we hope to return to the days of self-reliance on the boat and sourcing our meals from the ocean. Maybe not too much deprivation though, because we will continue to uncork a bottle of champagne, as is our tradition, after completing a major ocean passage of several hundred nautical miles.
Sydney to Hobart race
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Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her recent work has appeared in Syncopation Literary Journal, Continue the Voice, Micking Owl Roost blog, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, and Mind, Brain & Education Think Tank. In 2024, her story Safari was chosen as the Editor’s Choice for the June edition of All Your Stories.
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Borderless 