The Boy Who Named a Country

Years ago, back in Tashkent, I had a dear friend with a little grandson named Ilyashka.

At the time, I was preparing to leave for New Zealand. My friend and I talked endlessly about visas, plans, fears, and this mysterious faraway place where I was about to begin a completely new life.

The boy listened quietly for days.

Then one afternoon, he suddenly announced:

“I want to go to New Desire too!”

He simply renamed a country he didn’t yet understand into something that made sense to him. Something closer. Something warmer.

Not New Zealand.

New Desire. Land of New DesireLand.

The name stayed with me.

Years passed. I really did leave. I built a new life in Aotearoa New Zealand. A home. A garden. I learned to listen to birds, to the ocean, to silence. Along the way, I became a writer in English, a language that once felt impossibly far away from me.

And yet, sometimes I think that child accidentally named something much bigger than a country.

Because perhaps I did not simply move to New Zealand.

I moved into a new desire.

A new version of life.

A place made of hope, mistakes, old memories, second chances, books, laughter, and the occasional existential crisis.

So welcome to Notes from New DesireLand.

I’m glad you’re here.