The idea for this issue was first seeded during our visit to the Wakhan Corridor in 2024 — a borderland in the Badakhshon Autonomous Region. What began as a geographical encounter has since evolved into a broader reflection: What is a border? Who determines its location? How does nature itself become entangled in imperial contests when a river is turned into a line of division?

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As we witness a global political climate in which borders are increasingly enforced and violated, we are drawn to reconsider what borders mean today. Borders can function as sites of violence and restriction, but they can also become crossings and spaces of transformation.

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The choice of Hudud alongside Borders is intentional. Hudud (from the Arabic hadd—limit, edge, the point beyond which one does not pass) carries meanings that the English word border cannot fully contain. In the Sufi poetic tradition, hadd is the horizon approached through longing—a divine limit that calls one forward rather than turning one back. In Urdu, behadd (boundless) describes love or grief that exceeds containment. In parts of Southeast Asia, hudud names state power made law, inscribed directly onto bodies.

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For this issue, we invite artists, writers, poets, researchers, and thinkers to reflect on borders through multiple perspectives, including but not limited to: geographical and political, bodily, linguistic and cultural, psychological and spiritual.

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We welcome essays, poetry, fiction, visual essays, conversations, translations, experimental writing, and hybrid forms that engage with the theme in unexpected ways.

 

The publication will be bilingual, in Tajik and English.

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A fee will be provided for selected submissions.

 

Submission deadline: 15 November 2026.

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We look forward to reading your work.