Tag: Syrian

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Essay

On Both Sides of the Border: The Techno-Political Erasure of Bureaucracy, Memory, and Refugee Lives

By Rengin Uçkan

For over fourteen years, government paperwork piling up in back rooms, relief boxes stacked in chilly warehouses, the blue glow of fingerprint scanners, and temporary numbers stamped onto ID cards have painted a stark picture of a system that reduces human survival to raw digits. This isn't just about lines drawn on maps between countries. It’s the unyielding reach of state power, stretching from the breathless textile sweatshops of Bursa to the quiet stone courtyards of Mardin, treating flesh-and-blood people as mere case files. When the civil war erupted in Syria in 2011, it triggered one of the largest mass displacements in modern history, sending shockwaves through global politics and everyday human lives alike.

Historians will likely look back at these years through the lens of high-level summits, treaties, and diplomatic rows. But down on the ground, where poverty and memory actually live, people remember this era by far more mundane and exhausting objects: scanners casting a pale blue light over fingertips, plastic ID cards that have to be renewed every single year, cardboard boxes stamped with donor logos, and quiet crowds waiting out in the cold outside provincial migration offices. The shockwaves that rippled out from the first protests in Daraa back in the spring of 2011 hit Turkey’s legal and social landscape with a force that went far beyond a simple logistical puzzle or a temporary surge in arrivals. No one back then could have predicted where things would end up. As the Syrian conflict dragged on year after year, millions spilling across borders turned into a permanent humanitarian and governance crisis—one that continually stretched the limits of international law and domestic administrative muscle.

The daily grind of young people working off-the-books in the hot, unventilated textile shops of Bursa, or large families trying to hold things together in the shadow of Mardin’s historic stone houses, never quite lined up with the neat spreadsheets put together by ministry officials in Ankara or international aid agencies. Over the years, local and global players built a massive, heavy-handed bureaucracy to manage the fallout. On paper, it looked like a lifeline, but in reality, it stripped people of any real say in their own lives, turning them into passive recipients waiting for handouts. Even when the initial intent was simply to cushion the blow of the crisis, the resulting programs routinely missed what people actually needed on the ground. The bleak warnings Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) once wrote about statelessness, legal limbo, and losing the protection of the law are playing out all over again through the automated rules of the modern state. Instead of being seen as individuals with inherent rights, people have been reduced to paper files waiting on the grace of state-approved assistance.

As Michel Foucault (1926-1984) noted, modern power doesn’t just rely on physical borders; it works through systems that constantly track, categorise, and log bodies into official databases. The temporary protection framework set up across Turkey following the arrival of Syrian refugees is a textbook example of this tight surveillance net. From where someone is legally allowed to rent a home to what kind of healthcare they can receive, every detail is dictated from the top down. Unlike the exiles or refugees of earlier centuries, today’s displaced populations live out their uprootedness under the cold, watchful eye of digital databases. Much like the angel of history Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) saw in a Paul Klee (1879-1940) painting—driven backward into the future by a storm while wreckage piles up at its feet—refugees find their individual voices and political demands completely drowned out by the noise of the machinery around them. Echoing the unprotected figures of ancient Roman law who stood outside standard statutes yet weren’t criminals but millions of people who have been pushed into a legal blind spot, their lives stripped down to pure survival within the cogs of a sprawling bureaucracy.

What started out in the early days of the crisis as an urgent, compassionate response by local and international groups gradually hardened into a long-term control apparatus. Over time, the primary goal stopped being about helping people in trouble as the focus shifted entirely to managing and containing the influx. The complex digital networks set up by migration authorities log every move a refugee makes, locking them into a state of strict dependency rather than granting them genuine freedom.

Standardised projects drafted by international donors often look brilliant in air-conditioned meeting rooms, but once they hit the messy reality of the streets, they turn into abstract paperwork with zero practical impact. From child protection schemes to integration workshops, none of it carries much weight for a family struggling to survive in the dust as seasonal farm labour or in the poorest corners of the city. The speed at which institutions push data back and forth has long since outpaced the actual help reaching human beings. Much like the endless corridors in a Franz Kafka (1883-1924) novel, human lives get ground down in a system where stamps, signatures, and forms swallow everything whole. People are left to navigate a bewildering maze without knowing which office to visit or which paper to sign—mostly because procedures are rarely explained in terms they can actually grasp. Left to fend for themselves in this administrative labyrinth, grassroots organisations that should have been amplifying local voices ended up squeezed into compliance, effectively turned into field clerks for the state machinary.

For the past decade, the aid sector has loved the word “localisation.” But no matter how good it sounds in funding proposals, it hasn’t solved the core trap of keeping everyone hooked on foreign money. Instead of treating Syrian refugees as independent economic actors capable of working, building, and making their own choices, the systems designed to support them keep them tied to grocery vouchers, periodic social assistance, or short-term rent relief.

You can see the quiet toll of this setup in the rural development projects scattered around Mardin—a palpable sense of burnout and resignation. When people are systematically cut out of the rooms where decisions about their own lives are made, they quickly learn to keep their heads down and take whatever comes from above. Like characters in a Greek tragedy who can’t outrun their fate, Syrian refugees try to weather massive economic shifts and heavy-handed regulations that they have zero power to influence. This goes far beyond simple poverty. It is the direct result of living underneath a precarious legal label handed down from above. Through the lens of Martin Heidegger’s (1889-1976) thoughts on what it means to truly dwell and belong somewhere, a refugee hasn’t just lost a physical house; they’ve lost that bedrock sense of safety and home. Over time, the very aid meant to keep people afloat turns into another layer of chains. Because long-term structural solutions never materialised, these barriers have only grown deeper, keeping refugees locked out of full economic and social life.

Ten years in, this ongoing intervention has long outgrown the label of a temporary emergency response. It stands instead as proof of how rigid state borders and inflexible institutions buckle under sustained human reality. Millions of personal stories have been neatly filed away behind quarterly reports, statistical tables, and budget sheets, while the centuries-old tradition of neighbours living side by side in this region quietly frays at the edges.

If this heavy-handed, rule-obsessed mindset doesn’t shift, the debates of the coming years won’t be about social cohesion or peace. We are looking at a future defined by deeply divided, alienated, and hostile communities. No technical fix that strips away human dignity, emotion, and agency is ever going to solve a crisis of this scale. Unless borders dissolve not just on government maps, but inside public laws, institutions, and everyday empathy, the scars left by these policies will take generations to heal. As Spinoza (1632-1677) pointed out long ago, any social order built on fear, instability, and a lack of trust can never produce real peace; instead, every new crisis simply builds higher walls and widens the chasm between people. Ultimately, the future of forced migration in the region can only be reframed by starting from a single, uncompromised premise: human dignity and rights shared by all.

References

  • Adıgüzel, E. (2016). Migration, Refugees and Turkey: International Migration and Refugeehood. Ankara: Seçkin Publishing.
  • Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
  • Benjamin, W. (1968). Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. New York: Schocken Books.
  • Erdoğan, M. M. (2018). Syrians and Living Processes in Turkey. Ankara: Hacettepe University Migration and Politics Research Center.
  • Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Paris: Gallimard.
  • İçduygu, A. (2015). Syrian Refugees in Turkey: The Long Road to Integration. IPC Policy Brief.
  • Kirişçci, K. (2014). Syrian Refugees and Turkey’s Challenges: Going Beyond Hospitality. Brookings Institution Press.
  • Uçkan, R. (2023). The Role of Civil Organizations in Turkey’s Migration Governance: The Case of Syrian Refugees. (Unpublished Master’s Thesis). Marmara University Institute of Social Sciences, Istanbul.
  • Yıldız, A. (2018). Migration Management and Refugees in Turkey. Istanbul: İletişim Publications.

Rengin Uçkan is a writer and researcher focusing on humanitarian development, human rights, and cultural narratives, with a strong interest in long-form investigative journalism and global issues.

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Categories
Notes from Japan

Weekend in Futaba at the Japan Writers Conference

Narrative and photographs by Suzanne Kamata 

Many years ago, when my children were small and I was working on my first-to-be-published novel Losing Kei, I joined an online writing group made up of members of the Association of Foreign Wives of Japanese. Since I live off the beaten track, on the island of Shikoku, this group was a godsend for me. Not only was I able to connect with non-Japanese women raising biracial kids in a supposedly homogenous country, but I could also connect with others writing in English. 

I ultimately finished my novel. I was not the only member of this group who went on to publish books. In addition to writing and publishing, another wonderful thing that came out of this now defunct virtual community was the Japan Writers Conference, which was first held in 2008. One of the members, poet and writer Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, whose most recent book is the searing LUNA (Isobar Press, 2024), proposed a grassroot gathering of writers in Japan. There would be no keynote speaker, no fees for participants, and no payments for presenters. We would just get together and share our writing and our expertise. 

Another member, Diane Hawley Nagatomo, who recently published her second novel, Finding Naomi (Black Rose Writing, 2024) after an illustrious career in academia, volunteered to host the initial conference at her university. Chanoyu University, in Tokyo, is famously the institution attached to the kindergarten attended by the Japanese royal family. It was also the site of the first Japan Writers Conference. 

Since then, the conference has been held at various universities and colleges around the country, including in Okinawa, Hokkaido, Kyoto, Iwate, and at Tokushima University, hosted by me in 2016. Over the years, many notable speakers have appeared, such as Vikas Swarup, whose novel Q & A became the film Slumdog Millionaire, popular American mystery writer Naomi Hirahara, and Eric Selland, poet and translator of The New York Times bestseller The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide. The list goes on and on. 

This past year, the conference was held not at a university, but at the Futaba Business Incubation and Community Centre. 

When I told my husband that I was going to Futaba, he looked it up on a map. 

“That’s in the exclusionary zone,” he said, somewhat alarmed. 

Indeed, the conference would be held on the coast in Fukushima Prefecture, not too far from the site of the nuclear power plant which was hit by a tsunami in 2011. For years, there have been concerns about radiation, however the area is staging a comeback. The host of this year’s conference would be the Futaba Area Tourism Research Association, an organisation committed to “promoting tourism and land operations, inviting people to rediscover the charms of Fukushima’s coastal areas. The company’s mission is to bring people worldwide to this unique place that has recovered from a nuclear disaster.” 

“I don’t think they would hold the conference there if it wasn’t safe,” I told him.  

The JWC website reported that although the town had been evacuated after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, evacuation orders had been lifted for about 10% of the town on August 30, 2022.  Decontamination efforts are still underway. New homes are being built, new businesses are emerging, and the annual festival Daruma-Ichi resumed in 2023. The areas hosting the JWC had been deemed safe, “with radiation levels regularly monitored and within acceptable limits.” I reserved a room at the on-site ARM Hotel and went ahead with my plans. 

Getting to Futaba from my home in Tokushima took all day. I got up before the sun and took a bus, a plane, then a succession of trains. As I got closer to my destination, I noted the absence of buildings along the coast. I tried to imagine the houses that might have been there before the grasses had gone wild. Later, the appearance of earth-moving equipment suggested future development.   

From the nearly deserted train station, I took a bus, and then lugged my suitcase to the hotel’s registration desk. There was nothing around besides the convention center and the hotel. I saw a very tall breakwater, blocking my view of the ocean. I felt as if I were on the edge of the world. 

The evening before the conference began, I had dinner at the hotel restaurant, where I met up with some writers I had gotten to know at past conferences. Ordinarily, we might have moved on to a bar to continue our literary discussions, but after the restaurant closed at eight, there was nowhere else to go. There was some talk of going to the beach. A few of us went out into the night and sat on the seawall, sipping Scotch from paper cups, and talking under the stars. At one point, we contemplated the waves below, all those who were washed out to sea and remained missing. 

The conference began the following morning. I was amazed that, in spite of the effort that it had taken to get there, presenters had come from all over the world – a Syrian poet who was based in Canada, a poet from Great Britain, a Japanese writer and translator who lived in Germany, a Tunisian writer and motivational speaker who’d flown in from UAE. 

I gave a presentation on writing for language learners and shared my haiku in another session. Others presented on a variety of topics including literary correspondence, storytelling and tourism, climate fiction, and writing the zuihitsu[1]. In between sessions, I caught up with old friends and met new ones. On Saturday night, there was a banquet with bentos featuring delicacies such as smoked duck, mushroom rice, and salad with Hokkigai clams. 

In retrospect, it was especially meaningful to attend the conference in Futaba, and to feel that we were able to play some small part in the rejuvenation of the area. It was also exciting to interact with writers who came from so far away. Although it’s still very much a grassroots event, it has become truly international. 

American authors Karen Hill Anton and David Joiner talk about literary correspondence
Paul Rossiter, publisher of Isobar Press, introduces new Japan-related titles.

(To find out about the next Japan Writers Conference and sign up for the mailing list, go to https://japanwritersconference.org/) 

[1] A loose collection of personal essays

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.

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Categories
Slices from Life

Mister, They’re Coming Anyway

Narrative by Timothy Jay Smith

Refugees landing at Lesbos. Photographs by Michael Honegger

Memories of Lesbos, 2016.

Sunrise over the Mediterranean. The island’s hills brighten as the chug of boat engines can be heard over the lapping waves. These aren’t your typical Greek fishing boats returning from a night at sea, but a flotilla of black rafts, nine total carrying some 400 refugees to land on the north coast of Lesbos Island. Under five miles off the Turkish coast, Lesbos has become a beachhead for a flood of refugees that has come as unannounced as a tsunami, and for which local communities are even less prepared.

There has always been a trickle of refugees across the narrow channel. In the ten years that I have been coming here, every week I would find one or two rafts abandoned on the beach with ten or so life jackets or paddles. Until recently, most had been young men from Afghanistan and Iraq, escaping wars they didn’t want to fight, who would later be spotted on a road walking the forty miles or so to the island’s capital, Mytilini, to be processed and transferred to a camp in Athens. In the whole country, the number of such migrants has increased five-fold over the same period last year; but for the islands offshore Turkey, the numbers have risen far more dramatically. On Lesbos, the count has gone from a few dozen a month to over two thousand in one three-day period alone.

A surge in Taliban-led violence in Afghanistan, the rapid spread of the barbaric Islamic state in Iraq, and Syria’s devastating civil war have sent millions fleeing for their lives. Over half of the Syrian population has been displaced, and now accounts for half or more of the new arrivals. Often members of the middle class—teachers, IT specialists and engineers—more often Syrians come as families, forced to leave when their children’s school was bombed; or if from Aleppo, when their neighbourhood was razed. On the whole, Syrians have more money than others, but that doesn’t mean much when they have nothing else but the clothes they are wearing.

Refugees in Lesbos. Photographs by Michael Honegger

Some Afghani refugees have walked from as far as Kabul, taking weeks to hike over Iran’s mountains and cross the length of Turkey to its west coast. The odd Syrian has flown to Istanbul, and taken buses to where, even if he or she has money, still has to hide in forests, waiting for days until his turn for the ‘trafficker’ to bundle him aboard a rubber raft. With the craft’s captain (usually one of the refugees) given an hour of training, they are launched for Greece with nothing more precise nautically than a pointed finger.

It’s a harrowing journey for everyone, not the least because of the real risk of capsizing their overloaded rafts even in light seas—sometimes purposefully. The traffickers instruct them to slash their pontoons if the Greek Coast Guard approaches to keep from being turned back to Turkey, which inevitably tosses forty-some non-swimmers into the sea with a crew of only four frantically trying to save them. Ironically, the Coast Guard’s mission is not to turn them back, but to ensure their safe arrival.

Ahead of them, the journey will still be hard. They don’t know it yet. Their dream—their safety—is their first footstep in Europe. It’s only one step in a perilous journey that will take them to processing centers, overcrowded camps, and force them into the hands of other traffickers, more malevolent than anyone else they have met on their way, who, for extortionist prices, promise to get them to Germany or Austria—the current popular destinations.

That emotional first step on European soil can’t be overestimated. As their rafts slide ashore, it’s a celebration. The journey has ended and they have arrived safely. Regardless of their wariness of what’s next, they scramble ashore, some feeling the need to run a short distance from the water; but others, overcome with their first sense of security in years, weep, embrace each other, believing—rightfully—that they have made it to a better place. Certainly a safer one.

It’s different, too, from what they imagined. There is little officialdom at this northern point of the island. No police to register them, no information other than the latest rumours that their rescuers—sometimes the Coast Guard, sometimes local volunteers—can pass on. Frequently they don’t know where they landed, only that they need to register with the police to get in the long line to be processed.

Where are the police?

Seventy kilometers away.

Will there be a bus?

Maybe.

Maybe?

Probably not. But maybe. It changes daily.

What do we do?

Walk.

Walk? My wife is pregnant. My boy is three years old.

I’m sorry. Walk.

The rules, and the probability of a bus, change daily. It’s not because of some great inefficiency by Lesbos’ government, though the elimination a few years ago of village mayors to create a central authority in Mytilini has complicated providing services as essential as portable johns at the bus park where people are often stranded for several days. Earlier this week, that meant thirty persons crowded into a bus shelter on a chilly and rainy night; among them, eight children and five women—two of them pregnant.

While it was foreseeable that the Syrians would mass in camps just over the border in Turkey, it was far less predictable that they would become such a massive wave of refugees headed for the West. If someone saw it coming, that message never got to frontline Lesbos. It might not have mattered if it did. The country is bankrupt. Local officials can hardly provide basic services, let alone cope with an explosion of refugees. International NGOs haven’t caught up with the crisis either.

Local volunteers are making extraordinary efforts to meet the rafts on arrival, and ensure that they have food, water, clothing, shoes, and even Pampers because there are so many infants. Of course, not everyone agrees on what assistance, if any, should be provided.

Most refugees don’t plan to stay in Greece. Some will, of course, but the locals, seeing first-hand the dimension of what is happening, are starting to ask the bigger picture questions: What does it mean for Europe? Who are these people, coming from war-torn countries, possibly armed because in war zones people have weapons? How many refugees can be absorbed before fundamentally changing the culture of Europe itself?

Closer to home, the concerns take on an economic aspect. What if tourists stop coming because they don’t want to be confronted with the plight of refugees, as some reports suggest has started to happen on other islands? No one denies they need water and food, but what beyond that might actually encourage the next groups to make Molyvos their destination? Tents? Toilets? The worry is that if the refugees, using their cell phones, report back to those following in their footsteps that they are being helped, even more people will come here.

The refugees expect to be met and confronted in some way. The lack of even one policeman in my village, or the absence of a bus to take them to Mytilini, puzzles them. A couple of days ago, a few staged a sit-in, blocking traffic on the road in the village, demanding to be arrested and taken to Mytilini. It lasted only as long as it took to convince them that there really was no one in authority who could arrest them.

One of the young men asked me why not a policeman? Why not a bus? I told him that Greece was a poor country, but he didn’t buy it. His was poorer.

I tried the argument: There are too many of you. The village can’t cope. You are sending messages back that here you get water, food, and until a few days ago, we had a small camp where you could sleep. Now too many people are coming.

He shook his head sadly at my obtuseness.

Mister, they’re coming anyway.

Photograph by Michael Honegger

Timothy Jay Smith, writer, wanderer and philanthropist, has traveled around the world many times collecting stories for his novels, screenplays and stage plays. 

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Categories
Editorial

For the People, Of the People, By the People

Painting by Gita Viswanath
"I wish you survival, 
Health
And the closed sky above you."

— Refugee in my own Country/I am Ukraine, Lesya Bakun

Despite this being the season of multiple new years around Asia, we cannot close our eyes to the skies that connect all the world like a blue dome. Though celebrations and humour continue to lighten the darkness of war, while Ukraine is being wrecked, can we turn our faces towards only festivities?

I had an interesting anecdote about how before the onset of the Gregorian calendar, new years in the world were celebrated around March and in some places in September. The Earth would turn fecund and green with spring, a beautiful season sprinkled with love and nostalgia as Michael R Burch tells us in his poetry. However, despite all the opulence of nature, it is hard to watch a country being bombed and families splintered to man a war that supposedly guards a human construct called ideology and blocs. Ukranian refugee, Lesya Bakun, in an interview says: “It is not a clash of ideologies. It is a fight for our country and nation to exist.” Listening to Lesya’s stories makes one amazed at the bravery of the Ukrainians battling what seems to be cultural hegemony. It reminds of the war in Bangladesh in 1971. Though incredibly courageous in voicing her experiences, Lesya is traumatised and has a psychosomatic cough as she sends her voice and text messages from her mobile through Telegram. There were times when she was just weeping or angry for the questions asked, and justifiably so, as her home in Kharkiv, where she lived was under attack, and the town of Mariupol, where she was born, has been wrecked by the war.

The refrain of the pain of a refugee continues to reverberate in a book reviewed by Rakhi Dalal, Ramy Al-Asheq’s Ever Since I Did Not Die, written originally in Arabic and translated by Isis Nusair. The Syrian-Palestinian poet refused to clarify whether his writing was prose or poetry — perhaps these borders and boxes drawn by humankind are breaking down in reality. Perhaps, this new year, the time is ripe to look forward to a new world that transcends these borders. This is also the first time we have had the privilege of carrying reviews of translations from Arabic and also from Turkish. Gracy Samjetsabam has reviewed a translation of a Turkish novel by Iskendar Pala called The Tulip of Istanbul, translated by Ruth Whitehouse. Bhaskar Parichha has reviewed a book by Kiran Manral, Rising: 30 Women Who Changed India while Candice Louisa Daquin has drawn our focus on a poetry collection by Marjorie Maddox, Begin with a Question, where the perceived divisions do not matter while the poet questions the larger issue of faith in quest of answers.

Is it the same kind of quest that has led Strider Marcus Jones to create the Lothlorien Journal, named reminiscently after Tolkien’s elvish ‘Lothlorien’ in Lord of the Rings? Find out Jones’s views and flow with his fluid poetry in the featured interview. Keith Lyons has been in conversation with Ivy Ngeow, an upcoming writer and the editor of a recent anthology of Asian writing where she has retained different styles of English across the world in a single book. While this could be beneficial to writers, would readers be comfortable reading stories with different styles or dialects of English without a glossary?

Our book excerpts are from more Asian books.  The Year of the Rat and Other Poems edited by Malachi Edwin Vethamani has an interesting title poem which has been shared in the excerpt. The other excerpt is from a fast-paced novel, Half-Blood, by Pronoti Datta. We also have a fast-paced story by a writer from France called Paul Mirabile set in Portugal; two that verge on the bizarre from Keiran Martin and Amjad Ali Malik; a poignant story from Sutputra Radheye and another that shows the positive side of voicing a protest against wrongs by Devraj Singh Kalsi. Kalsi has also given us a tongue in cheek musing called When Books have Wings.

On the lighter vein are travel essays by Ravi Shankar and Meredith Stephens. They take us to the Himalayas in Nepal and to Tasmania! Suzanne Kamata has taken us to an owl cafe in Japan! At the end of her column, one feels sad for the owls as opposed to Erwin Coombs’ narrative that evokes laughter with his much-loved pet cat’s antics.

Humour is evoked by G. Venkatesh who with an ability to find silver linings in dark clouds talks of cricket and lessons learnt from missing his school bus. Adnan Zaidi has also analysed his poetic abilities with tongue-in-cheek comments. Kenny Peavy gives a lighthearted rendition in praise of boredom and interactions with nature. It is good to have laughter to combat the darkness of the current times, to give us energy to transcend our grief. Keith Lyons hovers on the track between humour and non-humour with his cycling adventures. Rhys Hughes seems to talk of both his favourite poem and the war in a lighter shades, in no way insensitive but his observations make us wonder at the sanity of war. We have much of war poetry by a number of writers, poetry on varied issues by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal, George Freek, Sybil Pretious, Kisholoy Roy, J.D. Koikoibo and many more.

Candice Louisa Daquin has taken on the onus of bringing to our notice how language can impact us in the long run while Ratnottama Sengupta has explored beggary in films, fiction and fact. The Nithari column runs a real-life story of a young boy narrated by his brother, Sachin Sharma. It has been translated from Hindustani by Diksha Lamba. The trauma faced in 2006 is strangely not discussed in the story though it hovers in the backdrop between the lines. We also have a translation of a Balochi folk story by Fazal Baloch and a Korean poem by Ihlwha Choi. Translations from Tagore by Fakrul Alam and Somdatta Mandal have honoured our pages again. Mandal has sent us fun-filled skits by Tagore. But are they just fun or is there something more? We also have a translation of a long poem that explores a different aspect of Tagore, his empathy for the downtrodden which led him to create Sriniketan and regard it as his ‘life work’.

We have a bumper issue this time again — especially for the Asian new years; Thai, Nepalese, Bangladeshi, multiple Indian and more…

We would like to thank Sohana Manzoor for our cover painting and Gita Viswanath for her artwork. I would like to thank our wonderful team who with their contributions make this journal a reality. All the contributors deserve a huge thanks as do our loyal readers.

I wish you all a wonderful start to a non-Gregorian new year and hope that peace prevails over parts torn by wars and dissensions.

Thank you all!

Mitali Chakravarty

borderlessjournal.com