Date: November 15, 2027 – 8:17 p.m. EST Location: Emil’s tiny studio apartment, Brooklyn The phone buzzed once. Emil stepped into the quiet stairwell and answered. “Grandpa?” A familiar voice, warm and gravelly, answered on the second ring. “Hey, Emil. You okay?” “Yeah,” Emil said, exhaling. “I just needed to talk to you.” There was […]
The Call About Ash Read More »
Justice
Date: November 14, 2027 – 11:11 AM Location: Security Council Chamber, United Nations Headquarters They brought a child. Layla (19) walked in first, holding the hand of a 12-year-old boy named Sami from Gaza. He wore the same navy hoodie, three sizes too big, sleeves rolled four times. Under his left eye: a faint scar
Date: October 17 – November 3, 2027Location: Sub-Basement Level -3, UN Headquarters, New York They weren’t allowed in the archives.So they went anyway. At 2:14 a.m. on the seventeenth of October, seven kids in navy hoodies slipped past the night guards, carrying nothing but two tins of Sudanese ash-ink, a box of reed brushes, and
Murals in the Basement – Memory Basement Read More »
Leadership
Date: October 2, 2027 – 10:03 AM Location: Security Council Chamber, United Nations Headquarters, New York The door was heavier than Emil expected. Seven college kids in hoodies and scuffed shoes stepped into the Security Council chamber like they didn’t belong—because they didn’t. Not yet. Fifteen ambassadors in suits looked up from carefully curated expressions.
First Day, First Breath Read More »
Leadership
Date: September 14, 2027 – 11:47 PM Location: Room 312, West Quad Residence Hall, Ann Arbor, Michigan The radiator clanked like it had something to confess. Emil sat cross-legged on the carpet, hoodie zipped to his chin, eating cold ramen straight from the pot with a plastic fork. One bare bulb. One cracked window letting
The Letter in the Dorm Read More »
Leadership
August 12, 2026 — Crestview, under a bruised summer sky The orchard back home had grown wild in their absence. Tiny blossoms clung to branches as if afraid to fall. Emil stood beneath one of them, the soft hum of insects mixing with the ache of memory. His hands still smelled faintly of paint and
The Ledger’s Weight Read More »
Peace
August 1, 2026 — The First Sapling The siege had ended in silence. The murals—veiled in breathable cloth—stood like ghosts with open eyes. But the valley did not wait. In Jammu, Neelam arrived at dawn with a cherry sapling in a clay pot. She planted it beside the mural’s base, where the mothers’ gold pulse
The Orchard of Names Read More »
Peace
July 12, 2026 — The First Coordinated Strike The siege began not with noise, but with absence. In Srinagar, the chinar’s open door was painted over in black—a thick, deliberate slab. In Jammu, the restored rose door was slashed with red, the streak now a wound. In Muzaffarabad, the cherry tree was uprooted in paint,
The Siege of Memory Read More »
Critical Thinking
July 5, 2026 — Dawn over Srinagar The Jhelum woke in ribbons of rose and ash, its surface catching the first light like a canvas before the brush. In the courtyard, the Srinagar mural stood unveiled—a sky of violet mist cradling a ghost chinar, its open door glowing in soft rose. In Jammu, Neelam’s valley
The Mirror of Valleys (Part I) Read More »
Life
July 1, 2026 Written on the back porch, Crestview, under a sky the color of old iron My dear Emil, I have not crossed a border in forty years, yet tonight I feel the Jhelum in my bones. You sent no photograph, only a ledger page—three murals, one river, 312 names. I held it to
The Mountain, the River, and the Wound (Grandfather) Read More »
Leadership