I was eight years old when they took my mother.

The night before, she had held me close, whispering lullabies against my hair, her voice steady despite the storm outside. Not the kind that raged in the sky—but the kind that lived in the streets, in the hollow eyes of soldiers, in the hunger gnawing at our ribs.

"Tomorrow will be better," she had promised.

But tomorrow came, and they tore her from our home.

I didn’t understand, not at first. I screamed, clawing at the soldiers, begging them to let her go. My little brother, Sami, clung to her dress, sobbing, his tiny fists pounding against their steel armor. She didn’t fight them. She only looked at us, eyes filled with something deeper than fear—something close to acceptance.

She had stolen.

Not gold, not jewels. Just a sack of rice and a few bruised apples from a military supply truck. Enough to keep us alive for a few more weeks. Enough to make her a criminal.

I watched them drag her through the streets, her bare feet scraping against the cold stone. People looked away. No one spoke. Fear had turned them all into shadows.

They locked her in the town square, bound to a wooden post like an offering to the gods of cruelty. For days, I stood at the edges of the crowd, watching the punishments unfold. The lashes. The hunger. The humiliation.

Still, she never begged.

The soldiers wanted her to break, to confess, to regret. But she never did. Every time they struck her, she only pressed her lips together, as if sealing a secret meant only for us.

I wanted to run to her. To tell her she had done the right thing. That no mother should have to suffer for loving too much. But I was too small, too weak, too afraid.

One evening, as the sun bled across the sky, she finally turned her head and found me in the crowd. A single tear slid down her bruised cheek. But she smiled—soft, unshaken. As if she was proud. As if she would do it all again.

I never saw her again after that night.

But I remember.

I remember her voice, her warmth, the way her hands smelled like the bread she used to bake before the war. I remember the sacrifice she made—not for herself, but for us.

And I remember her smile.

The last gift she gave me. The proof that love, even in the face of cruelty, never surrenders.