“When I got out of pris0n, I ran to my father’s house, but my stepmother coldly told me, ‘Your father was 𝕓𝕦𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕕 a year ago.’ Sh0cked, I went to the cemetery to look for his grave. The gravedigger stopped me: ‘Don’t look for it. He’s not here. He asked me to give you this.’

PART 1: I stepped off the bus just after sunrise, the cold air cutting through my thin jacket as if it wanted to remind me that freedom was not the same as comfort. Twelve hours earlier, the prison gates had closed behind me for the last time, and I had not allowed myself a single pause to celebrate. My thoughts had only one destination. My father’s house. The place that had kept me alive in my imagination during the years when concrete walls and metal doors defined my world.