***
“Faqir!”
I turned; my eyes landed on a boy—no older than seven, thin as a reed but with eyes that burned like embers.
…Faqir?
The boy grinned, waving me over.
“Come on, Baba! If we don’t get there first, old Ahad is gonna sell the best ones!”
I, Malik—or rather, Faqir—felt my legs move on their own, chasing after the boy.
It was a foreign thing, but I could feel the urgency, the excitement, the hunger that twisted deep in my stomach.
We darted through the market, rushing between stalls of fruit and cloth, dodging men carrying heavy sacks over their shoulders.
Every scent, every sound—it was all too real. Too vivid.
This wasn’t just some vision. This was a memory.
Faqir’s memory.
I felt my mind spin, but my feet kept running, my body moving as though it had done this a thousand times before.
The old baker’s stall came into view.
Ahad, a grizzled man with a beard like a lion’s mane, was already handing out fresh loaves of bread, steam rising from their golden crusts.
I skidded to a stop, panting.
“Five!”
I gasped, slamming a worn copper coin onto the counter.
Ahad barely spared me a glance before tossing five loaves onto the counter.
My boy grabbed them two, while I shoved the other three in my robes, hiding them.
He then handed one over to me before tearing into his own with all the grace of a starving dog.
I felt myself do the same.
The warmth of the bread spread through my fingers; the taste filled my mouth—rich, buttery, impossibly good.
I licked the crumbs from my fingers, savoring the last remnants.
My son grinned wide, teeth flashing beneath the grime of the streets.
“Told you we’d make it, baba!”
His voice was full of the cocky confidence that only came with youth.
I smirked, shaking my head.
“We almost didn’t.”
“Almost ain’t the same as not. We got the bread, didn’t we?”
He tore off another chunk, stuffing it into his mouth, speaking around it.
“That’s what matters!”
I should have agreed.
Should have let myself enjoy the moment.
But the future gnawed at the back of my mind, a future I dreaded.
“Hey, Baba? You listening?”
I snapped my head up, realizing I’d been staring blankly at the crumbling walls of the alley we’d ducked into.
“Yeah.”
I said, forcing a grin.
“Just thinking.”
“Thinking’s a waste of time.”
He laughed, but there was something bitter beneath it, something that didn’t match the carefree image he worked so hard to maintain.
“Ain’t nothing gonna change, no matter how much we think. We take what we can when we can. That’s the rule. That’s the only rule.”
I nodded, because what else could I do?
“Don’t parrot my words and think yourself smart.”
He was right, though.
In the slums, the only law was survival.
The rich had their gold and guards, high walls and tables, feasting while we fought for scraps. The merchants kept their best wares out of reach, their eyes suspicious whenever people like us came too close. And the gangs… the gangs lurked in the corners, waiting, always waiting, like vultures over a dying beast.
“Come on, Baba.”
My son dusted off his hands.
“Let’s get back to Mama before someone decides we look too full for our own good.”
…
It was not every day I was lucky to get a copper or two.
Work was rare. And it got worse as time went on.
Yet, I… I persevered.
Even when the world spat me out, even when my stomach roared, even when I begged the sands to swallow me whole—
I still worked.
I still did what I must, for a father did not have the luxury of despair.
Regret clung to me like a second skin.
Regret for bringing three children into a world that had no place for them.
Regret for believing the silver-tongued devils who sold us a dream.
The ‘rebels’ promised paradise.
A kingdom of gold, where even the poorest lived like kings.
It was a chance, they said. Our only chance.
A chance to rise, to live, to breathe air untainted by struggle.
And we believed them.
Of course we did.
Too good to be true? Perhaps.
Probably, most definitely—it WAS too good to be true.
But that was the thing about hope, wasn’t it?
It made fools of the desperate.
Made you think, maybe this time, made you believe in things that never had a chance of being real.
Still, it made sense. In its own twisted, rotten way, it made sense.
The Nobles—the blessed ones, the chosen ones, the ones who never walked the streets but were carried by palanquins, the ones who bathed in rose-scented water, the ones who had all the candles illuminating their nights—of course, they wouldn’t want us filth staining their paradise.
Wouldn’t want our stink drifting through their halls, wouldn’t want our broken, starving bodies in their perfect world.
No.
They’d have had us killed sooner or later.
Like rats. Like pests. Like something to be disposed of.
And yet…
I was so damn dumb.
Because I didn’t realize it—no, I refused to see it.
We weren’t just filth to them.
We were useful filth.
They needed us. More than we ever needed them.
Who else would scrub their stones clean, polish their palaces till they gleamed?
Who else would break their backs carrying their cargo, stitching their silks, harvesting their grain?
Who else would bleed in the mines for them, acquiring glass for their houses and gadgets?
They weren’t going to wipe us out.
Not when our suffering was the foundation their world stood on.
We weren’t just necessary—
We were their damned lifeline.
We would’ve gone nowhere.
If only…
If only I realized that.
But I did not.
My life before all this wasn’t much to brag about, but I still lived a life worth living.
Glass mining, a tough, incredibly demanding job that only the lowest in our society had.
They worked us like slaves, but honestly… it wasn’t that bad.
It brought in some decent coin, and that was good enough.
I was almost thankful… almost.
Because truly? I had ambition.
That ambition led me to believe them.
I wasn’t the only one. Many of my workmates did so as well.
And so, we supported them.
Smuggled them in like cargo, allowed them to join our fold.
I was the best of us. The one who did the most to support them.
They promised me many things, making me believe that I’d never touch a pickaxe again.
I thought of myself as fortunate, better than those around me. Sneering at them, believing them to be too stupid to realize a truth so obvious.
Pride swelled in my chest.
…Now? That pride was dust in my mouth.
I cursed the day I allowed them to set foot in this place.
I cursed myself for being a fool.