The city where dreams come true
SynopsisPlot
Informed partly by her own experiences as a journalist, these beautifully interwoven stories are imbued with both her affection for her native land and her hopes for its future. The narrators - Horosho, his granddaughter Nekbaht, her husband Ali and his cousin Shernazar - each endure harrowing episodes of loss, injustice and violence but against all odds, remain driven by a will to survive, and restore peace, prosperity and new opportunities for themselves and fellow citizens.
Story
About this book
The City Where Dreams Come True is a collection of four interconnected stories by Gulsifat Shahidi, set against the backdrop of Tajikistan's civil war in the early 1990s. The conflict, which followed the country's independence from the Soviet Union, caused tens of thousands of deaths and displaced many more. Shahidi, who worked as a journalist during this period, draws partly on her own experiences to shape the narratives.
The stories are told through four narrators spread across three generations of the same family: Horosho, his granddaughter Nekbaht, her husband Ali, and Ali's cousin Shernazar. Each voice carries a distinct perspective on what the war cost ordinary people, from personal loss and displacement to encounters with violence and injustice. Despite these pressures, the characters share a persistent drive to survive and to rebuild some version of normal life for themselves and those around them.
Shahidi's writing reflects both a close familiarity with Tajik culture and a concern for what becomes of a society after prolonged internal conflict. The four narratives are interwoven rather than separated, linking individual fates to broader questions about recovery, opportunity, and what people choose to hold onto when stability disappears.
