Yusuf had always known the weight of a name. In his small village, names carried stories, legacies, and sometimes, curses. His was the latter—a curse that had followed him since the day he was born. “Bastard” they called him, and it echoed in every corner of his life, as if the wind itself whispered the word when he walked through the narrow streets of the village. His mother, Sara, had once been the brightest star in the community. Beautiful, educated, and full of promise, she had the kind of future people envied. But all of that had crumbled the day she returned from the city, her belly swollen, her head held low. No man followed her, no wedding ring glittered on her finger. She had come back alone and pregnant. The villagers, who once spoke of her with admiration, now turned their backs, silencing her with their harsh judgments. Sara never spoke of Yusuf’s father, not even when the village elders demanded to know. She simply lowered her gaze, clutching the small bundle of life in her arms, refusing to give in to the shame they tried to heap upon her. And so, her silence became her undoing. The village "devoiced" her—she was no longer seen, no longer heard, as if her presence had been erased from the fabric of their society. For Yusuf, this silence became the backdrop of his childhood. He learned early on that he was different, that he carried the mark of a mistake he hadn’t made. His name was a promise his mother had whispered to him in her moments of weakness: **Yusuf**, meaning "God will increase." But it wasn’t easy to believe in that promise when every day, the world around him seemed to shrink. At school, the other children mocked him relentlessly. They would shout "bastard" when the teacher wasn’t looking, their cruel laughter filling the air. Yusuf learned to turn inward, finding solace in books and his own thoughts. Despite the torment, he excelled in his studies. He refused to let their words define him, even though the weight of them was unbearable at times. In the evenings, he would sit with his mother, their tiny home filled with the silence of unspoken truths. Sara would stroke his hair, her eyes distant, as if lost in memories she could not share. Yusuf wanted to ask, wanted to know who his father was, but every time he opened his mouth to form the words, something in his mother’s face stopped him. The sorrow etched in her features was enough to tell him that whatever lay in the past was too painful for her to revisit. But Yusuf was growing older, and with age came the unbearable need to understand his origins. Who was he, really? Who was the man who had left his mother in this state of voicelessness, the man who had disappeared into the fog of her silence? --- ### **Childhood Struggles and the Weight of a Name** Yusuf's days were marked by a duality—by the contrast between the boy he was at home and the one the world saw. At school, he was brilliant, a student who always excelled despite the odds. His teachers admired his intelligence, though they too whispered when they thought he couldn’t hear. Outside of the classroom, the whispers from his peers were louder, more biting. "You think you’re better than us, don’t you, bastard boy?" one of the boys sneered as Yusuf left the classroom. His name was Jibril, and he was the leader of the group of boys who made it their mission to remind Yusuf of what he lacked. Yusuf kept walking, his fists clenched at his sides. He had learned that to fight back was to give them what they wanted. "Maybe if you knew who your father was, you wouldn’t be such a freak," another boy chimed in, his voice cruel and mocking. A flicker of anger rose in Yusuf, but he swallowed it down. Fighting was pointless, he reminded himself. His mother had always told him, “You are more than their words.” But even her reassurances couldn’t drown out the gnawing desire inside him to know the truth. It wasn’t until he was alone, seated on the roof of their small house, that Yusuf allowed himself to think about it. The world below was quiet at this hour, the village settled in for the night. He stared up at the sky, the stars blinking down at him, and he wondered if somewhere, his father was staring at those same stars. Was he thinking of Yusuf? Or had he erased them both from his memory? The questions gnawed at him relentlessly. Why wouldn’t his mother speak? Why had she allowed herself to be silenced? As the days turned into months, Yusuf’s need for answers grew. He couldn’t live under the shadow of a story half-told any longer. One evening, after a particularly difficult day at school, Yusuf decided he couldn’t keep silent anymore. His mother was seated by the window, her hands busy with mending clothes, but her mind clearly elsewhere. “Mother,” Yusuf began, his voice soft but insistent. Sara looked up, her eyes meeting his. There was a weariness in her gaze, a kind of tiredness that came from carrying too much weight to gain muscle relaxer for the next week and see hour