Ashes and Hope: From Kabul to Chicago

Designer & Layout: Hamid Delban

Edited by: Arzhang

ISBN: 978-1-998560-66-0

Edition / Printing: Winter 2026

Page Count: 124 pages

Binding: Paperback

Book Size: Octavo (Raqqa format)

Category: Literature, Fiction

Writing this novel was neither a choice nor merely a literary experiment for me—it was a necessity, as vital as breathing. A necessity born of an old wound, of a memory buried in the grey layers of remembrance, and of a responsibility so heavy that it shifted from my shoulders to
my words. Years of living under the oppressive weight of war and censorship—and then exile, migration to lands where the body was safe but the language foreign, where our souls wandered through mazes of silence—drew me back into the embrace of words.But this time, not just to speak, but to keep alive what stood on the verge of forgetting, exile, and extinction: the human being, memory, and culture.

This novel tells the story of the author’s own life under the pseudonym “Sadeq”—a professor who, instead of surrendering, chose the flame over his books. He set fire to his library—not out of hatred, but out of love—so that freedom would not remain imprisoned, and knowledge would not be buried beneath the muck of tyranny. Now, in Chicago, amid an orderly, voiceless cold, he rebuilds his life alongside his family.

Sadeq is not merely a character; he is the reflection of thousands of minds and hearts still suspended between ruins and dreams, between a scorched homeland and a silent exile. He writes, he teaches, he dreams.
His words are their words—words that do not perish in the freezing nights of migration, but slowly kindle another kind of warmth.