Ibrahim stood where the road thinned into dust, coat flapping like a pennant. He had a face that remembered every fight he'd lost and every one he’d stolen back at the last second. People said he fought like a spring thaw—sudden, unstoppable. Beside him, little Noor, barely sixteen, tightened the laces of his wrestling shoes with hands that trembled for different reasons: pride, hunger, a need to prove that being small here didn’t mean being small in will.
