By Dean Moghadham
20th Annual Solas Awards Silver Winner in the Doing Good/Kindness of Strangers category
I was seven years old when my family took me to New York City in the winter. We did what families from the suburbs always do there: wandered through Times Square’s riot of light, drank cocoa that scalded our tongues, marveled at a store that sold nothing but candy in every color. We stopped to stare at street performers, let snowflakes melt on our jackets, and laughed at the strange energy of a city that seemed to stretch endlessly upward. It was loud and chaotic, yet wrapped in the kind of magic only December can give.
And yet it is not the neon or the sweetness that I remember most.
What I remember is a chessboard in a park.
It was not glamorous like the skyscrapers, not dazzling like the billboards. Just a folding table, its surface worn from weather and time. A few wooden pieces chipped at the edges. Beside it sat an older man, bundled against the cold. A yarmulke rested on his head, a quiet sign of faith among the noise of the city. His face was lined but not stern. He caught my eye and gestured toward the empty chair.
At seven, I had no hesitation. Children do not yet know the suspicion adults cultivate. To me, a stranger was an invitation, not a warning. I sat down.
I was a Muslim boy, Iranian by heritage, American by birth. He was a Jewish man, older, his English scarce if it existed at all. Between us there was no common language. Except chess.
We began to play.
Chess, I would learn, is not only a game but a conversation. It speaks in moves and countermoves, in hesitations and risks, in sacrifices that reveal not weakness but faith in what remains. On the board, every advance is a question. Every retreat is an admission. Every exchange is an argument in miniature. At seven I knew none of this, but I felt it in my bones.
The pieces moved and the conversation grew. His bishop slid out like a carefully chosen phrase. My knight leapt like a child blurting out too much. His pawns crept forward with patience; mine stumbled recklessly, eager for impact. We were two speakers of different tongues, yet perfectly fluent in this shared dialect of squares and strategy.
Around us, the city roared. Taxi horns blared, pigeons startled at sudden footsteps, the smell of roasted chestnuts drifted from a vendor’s cart. The wind needled through my coat. Somewhere beyond, a saxophone played a tune no one stopped to hear. Yet within the sixty-four squares there was quiet, as if the board itself demanded reverence.
It was as though we had built a private chamber of peace in the middle of Manhattan — one in which faiths, accents, and ages did not matter.
The game grew tense. He leaned close, his breath rising in small clouds, his eyes fixed on the board. I pressed forward, clumsy yet bold. For reasons I still cannot explain, the balance tilted my way. A boy’s hand, too small for the pieces, found itself dictating the terms of the endgame.
And then it was over.
He looked at the board, then at me. For a moment, silence.
And then: a laugh, sudden and warm. After it, the greater gesture — he extended his hand.
I reached mine.
Our palms met across the board.
That handshake has stayed with me for twelve years. It remains sharper in memory than the lights of Times Square or the taste of hot chocolate. I have never shared this story before. Perhaps I have guarded it because the world does not often reward such simplicity. Perhaps because it feels fragile, like something that would lose its truth if spoken aloud too often.
But the truth is this: I remember it because the handshake was not only between us. It was, in its small way, between our histories. Between Muslim and Jew, child and elder, foreigner and citizen. It was proof that the barriers others insist on are not inevitable.
Much has been said of chess as a metaphor for war. The pawns are conscripts, the bishops ideologies, the queen unchecked power, the king the fragile state. To many, the board is a battlefield, a distilled version of conquest and control.
But I have come to believe something else. Chess is peace disguised as war.
Because even when pawns are sacrificed, even when rooks fall and queens are trapped, the end of the game requires one simple act: recognition. At the end, the two who have opposed each other must meet as equals. They must acknowledge one another, hand to hand, eye to eye.
The game insists on this ritual. And in that ritual lies its quiet lesson.
I think of that handshake now when I see the images that dominate our present: children running from smoke, homes reduced to rubble, walls rising where lives once intertwined. I think of how often the powerful treat human beings as pawns, to be moved and sacrificed for ends they will never share.
And I think, too, of how easy it is to let division harden. To say Muslim and Jewish as if they are boundaries, not beginnings. To believe that difference is danger, rather than possibility.
But then I return to that afternoon in New York.
A Muslim boy. A Jewish man. The winter air sharp. A battered board between us.
We did not speak. We did not need to. We played. We shook hands. And for one moment, the world was not divided.
The truth is that memory is selective. Childhood is full of bright days, toys, trips, arguments, and laughter. Yet most of it blurs. Why this? Why a single handshake in a park with a stranger?
Perhaps because the handshake revealed something the world refuses to accept: unity is not a grand bargain struck by leaders, not a slogan carried on banners. It is a practice, fragile and ordinary, enacted each time two people choose to see one another not as enemies but as partners in the same game.
I do not know that man’s name. I do not know his story. But I carry his handshake as proof that humanity requires no translation.
In the years since, I have thought often of that board.
As I learned more of history, I realized how many moments have turned on games of chess. Cold War showdowns between grandmasters who carried not only their nations’ flags but their nations’ fears. Immigrants in Washington Square Park, slamming pieces down like punctuation, hustling for rent money. Children in Tehran and Tel Aviv, learning openings before they can write essays.
Chess, I see now, has always been larger than sixty-four squares. It is a stage where humanity rehearses its deepest questions: Will we sacrifice for power? Will we risk for vision? Will we honor the other, even in defeat?
And maybe that is why the memory endures. Because in the most ordinary of places, with the most ordinary of gestures, I glimpsed the answer.
When I return to New York now, I see the city differently. Times Square is still loud. Cocoa still scalds the tongue. The candy store is still overwhelmed with its abundance. But what I search for are the folding tables in the parks. The players hunched over boards, hands hovering above pawns, strangers watching from the sidelines.
I wonder if the man I played against still sits there, older now, perhaps slower, perhaps gone. I wonder if he remembers the boy whose hand met his across the board. Probably not. But that does not matter.
What matters is that I remember.
Because the board is still there, in every park, in every country, waiting. The board is there when two strangers sit across from each other, Muslim and Jew, East and West, child and elder.
The board is there when the world insists on division, yet two people quietly insist on play.
The board is there, reminding us that even in a city of noise and neon, peace can be carved into the simplest of squares.
And I believe, more than ever, that the world can learn from that.
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Dean Moghadam is an American-born Iranian writer whose work is rooted in the belief that stories can outlast borders and bring people closer together. His goal as a writer is to raise awareness about political and social issues through the lens of his own experiences as a young man growing up in America. He grew up playing soccer, chess, and piano, activities that taught him discipline, patience, and rhythm. At Rutgers University, where he is currently a student, Moghadam is building the foundation for a life of learning that extends far beyond the classroom.