the heroes among us
One question stopped thousands of people in their tracks at the Riyadh International Book Fair in 2024.
Three words, written at the entrance of a booth: who is your hero?
The answers that followed were anything but simple.
where it began
HEROES RIYADH grew out of something miswada had already seen in Jordan. HEROES JORDAN, launched in March 2024, invited Jordanians to write about the heroes in their lives through a national writing competition. Over 600 stories came in. The response was clear: people have something to say. They just need to be asked.
So miswada took the question to Riyadh, in a different form. A booth. A wall. A recording space. An open invitation to anyone who walked past: tell us about your hero. No competition, no word count, no rules. Just a few sentences, written by hand, left on a wall for others to read.
Heroes inspire us to dream bigger and push past our perceived limitations. We want to honor the heroes around us and strive to unleash the heroes within.
what happened
From September 26 to October 5, 2024, approximately 8,000 visitors stopped at the HEROES RIYADH booth at the Riyadh International Book Fair. They wrote on paper tags. They recorded voice messages in the recording booth. They paused, in the middle of one of the largest book fairs in the world, to name the person who had shaped them.
Nearly half of all responses named a family member. A mother. A father. A sibling. Heroes, it turns out, are closest to home.
what the stories said
The brief was simple: a few sentences. What came back was generous and honest in a way you do not always expect from strangers passing through a fair. People wrote about mothers who held families together. Fathers who taught through example. Teachers who stayed. Friends who showed up. Some wrote about themselves, quietly and unapologetically.
The voice is already there. People do not need to be taught how to feel or how to tell a story. They just need a space that makes it feel possible to say it. Even briefly. Even imperfectly.
The booth received attention from several prominent media outlets, including Al-Sabaq Newspaper, reflecting how deeply the question resonated beyond the fair itself.
what comes next
The stories collected at the Riyadh International Book Fair are not staying in a box. miswada is working to transform them into lasting formats that honor the people and the words behind them.
the book
A curated, bilingual publication featuring scanned handwritten tags, reflections from the fair, data visualizations, and thematic groupings of the stories. A cultural artifact and a tribute to everyday heroism.
the journal
A personal keepsake with excerpts from the collected tags, selected quotes, and writing prompts to guide readers in exploring their own definitions of heroism.
the calendar
A wall or desk calendar featuring selected tags and messages celebrating different forms of heroism, month by month, throughout the year.
the bigger picture
HEROES RIYADH is part of something larger. miswada launched HEROES in Jordan as a pilot, and the campaign is now expanding across the Arab world and beyond, with the ambition to reach all 22 Arab countries and eventually international markets including Europe.
Every city holds stories that deserve the light. Every community has heroes that have never been named out loud. HEROES is miswada's commitment to making sure they are.
Follow the journey at miswada.com and @miswada.ai on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, and TikTok.
The hero within is waiting to be unleashed.